BBC Music Video Festival 2011

My music video "Kerse da Verse - Voodoo Browne (ft Cosha Don)" was selected for the "Launch Party and Not Safe For Work" category, alongside Chase and Status, at the BBC Music Video Festival 2011 =D

I was well chuffed with this as it's now 2 years on the trot that one of my videos has been chosen for this festival =D

Kerse Da Verse - Voodoo Browne (feat. Cosha Don) (DVCAM) (2011) from M.Y Films on Vimeo.

(see 2nd from bottom entry)
Honoured to be sharing the same space with Chase and Status (whose video for Blind Faith was one of my favourites of the year) and Noisia feat. Foreign Beggars!

(N.B - please ignore my Google search for EPMD lyrics lol).

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"Blanket of Night - Beeba (ft Jameson)" was selected for the BBC Music Video Festival in 2010

Blanket of Night - Beeba feat. Jameson (DVCAM) (2009) from M.Y Films on Vimeo.

Blanket of Night on Europe's largest digital screen at the BBC.



Me, Beeba and our new mate on our guided tour of the BBC Studio.



Behind the scenes at the BBC with Jameson and Blanket of Night.

Still Life - 4 Stories, Many Drugs (Documentary Trailer)

Still Life (Documentary Trailer) (DVCAM & miniDV) (2005) from M.Y Films on Vimeo.

Here's a trailer for a 40 min documentary that I filmed at HMP Wayland.
I spoke to 4 inmates who recounted their life stories and their experiences with drugs.

The aim of the project was to raise awareness on substance abuse and to give young people a better understanding about addiction through true-life experiences and steering clear of a "Just say no" approach.

To this day, Still Life still remains one of my projects that I'm most proud of.

The full length documentary, background info on the project and an article on the project in The Guardian can be found here: http://m-yfilms.blogspot.com/2010/03/still-life.html

Kerse Da Verse - Voodoo Browne (feat. Cosha Don) (2011)

Kerse Da Verse - Voodoo Browne (feat. Cosha Don) (DVCAM) (2011) from M.Y Films on Vimeo.

This music video was selected to be in the BBC Music Video Festival 2011 & STIX Festival.

I was approached by rapper Voodoo Browne who pitched me his idea for a typical hip hop video (rapping in various locations in his 'hood, with all his crew etc). However I wasn't really feeling this concept as I felt it would more than likely turn out to be a little cliched and also be visually uninteresting. So I pitched him a few other ideas and this is the one he went for.

The project was scripted, planned, shot, edited and directed by me.
With the exception of a few intentional scenes, the whole video was lit solely by fire.

Massive thanks to Mr Lee for getting roped in to doing the make up.
He'd never done anything like this before.
Check out his artwork at:
www.facebook.com/pages/Mr-Lee-Creative-Services/160175240667460

Enormous thanks also go to Tim and Charlie Clarkson for letting us use their place to shoot the video.

http://voodoo.ambiel.co.uk/

Playing 4 Success @ Ipswich Town FC (2001)

This was my first ever paid and commissioned job.

It's a short promo film for "Playing for Success" - a national initiative, set up by the Department for Education and Employment, which aims to help raise children's literacy, numeracy and ICT skills through football clubs and other sports grounds.

Music:
The Chemical Brothers - Where Do I Begin
Nu Tone - e.Spresso



Ipswich Town FC badge animation for "Playing 4 Success @ Ipswich Town FC".

ITFC's media department gave me an Adobe Illustrator file of the team's badge which I broke down into seperate elements, then animated and added the appropriate sound effects.

Illustrator, Photoshop, Flash and Final Cut Pro were used to create this logo.

HMP Wayland - aka - Wayland Sports and Social Center (2004)

This short tongue-in-cheek advert was featured in the middle of a Hepatitis C awareness video that I shot and edited at HMP Wayland in 2004 (and updated in 2010).

The project was scripted by HMP Wayland's Hep C Support Group, with additional material from myself, and won 2 Koestler Trust awards.

Logo Ident for Ross Dean Photography (2011)

Here's an ident/logo animation that I created for Ross Dean Photography.

Ross gave me his logo as an Adobe Illustrator file, which I broke apart into seperate layers.
I then animated it, added a transition or 2 then added some sound effects for the final touch.

Still Life (4 Stories, Many Drugs) (2005)

DVD Cover for Still Life


Please scroll down for more background information about this project.

Article from The Guardian on Still Life:
http://guardian.co.uk/society/2002/aug/07/guardiansocietysupplement5/print

Listing on the BFI website:
http://explore.bfi.org.uk/4ce2b8886e837

Still Life - part 1 of 5 from Still Life on Vimeo.

Still Life - part 2 of 5 from Still Life on Vimeo.

Still Life - part 3 of 5 from Still Life on Vimeo.

Still Life - part 4 of 5 from Still Life on Vimeo.

Still Life - part 5 of 5 from Still Life on Vimeo.

I was always curious about seeing what a prison was like on the inside, but I had no intention of visiting one through the normal route, so this project gave me the perfect opportunity, and more importantly, let me leave at the end of the day.

This was 1 of 2 projects that I made at HMP Wayland and was the first video project in British prison history to be totally left in the hands of the inmates.

A group of inmates (who went under the name of Rags 2 Riches) wanted to make a drugs awareness video aimed at young people to inform them about the dangers of drug and substance abuse.

Initially Rags 2 Riches wanted to include, amongst other things, a fictional story of a drug dealer who was living the high life and then got caught and also show some cartoons of dragons being chased.

However I wasn't really feeling this approach and I felt that laying out their life stories would be far more effective than mythical cartoon creations.

I interviewed 4 members of Rags 2 Riches and gathered together over 10 hours of footage and then whittled it down to just under 40 minutes.

As well as filming new footage for cutaway scenes, I also used footage from my own personal archives that I'd filmed over the years or footage from other old projects - all recycled to fit the project at hand.

Filming at a prison threw up a lot of different obstacles that you'd never think of until you were actually in the situation.

E.G:
Security wouldn't even let me take my camera in until 2-3 weeks into the project.

Somedays, after travelling for about an hour, we'd turn up only to be told that we couldn't go in as there was a prison-wide lockdown (i.e - all inmates weren't allowed out of their cells) and we simply had to turn around and go back home.

Having to edit out really interesting footage that could portray the prison in a bad light or potentially compromise prison security or simply because it was unsuitable for the intended audience or that it was not that relevant to the nature of the documentary.

In the end, the only thing that I wasn't fully happy with was the semi cheesy happy ending that was imposed on me.

I haven't spoken to any of the 4 lads in the film since but I've got a extremely strong feeling that most of them have started using again. (I've since found out that one of them came back inside but I didn't know exactly what for).

I originally wanted the happy ending to play out and then tag on some text or voiceover that explained their fate, providing the audience with a gut punch at the end - just to show that things don't always end up nice and happy.

However the facilitator felt that this ending wouldn't offer any hope to the young audience. Whereas I felt it was simply being honest with them.

Inspite of this, Still Life still remains one of my projects that I'm most proud of.