Kevin Pike.
Legendary Special Effects Guru.

Well as I hinted yesterday, I’ve been trying to line up an interview with special effects veteran Kevin Pike who started his career on Jaws. Well tonight after a couple of emails to and fro, my phone rang and it was Mr Pike himself.  I was rather taken aback to receive a call from a genuine special effects hero whilst I was serving up dinner for my kids.

If you don’t know who Kevin is, just check out his credits list on IMDB!

After chatting for 15 minutes or so, he said he’d happily contribute to my project despite having a very busy schedule.  I must say that I am very excited about this. I might even ask him about his legendary involvement in Back to the Future. You never know, Going Back, A Filmumentary might be a reality one day!

One of his ideas was to talk to some people who had previously been interviewed for the fabulous Jaws: Memories from Martha’s Vineyard, a book that Jim himself was heavily involved in.  So, armed with some contact details I got in touch with members of the crew as well as extras to get a handle on their unique experiences shooting JAWS!  Telephone interviews are often criticised for their low quality, but for me it’s all about content, in whatever form it comes.

Tonight I called and interviewed my first victim. All I’ll say is that she was a very willing participant indeed with great stories for me to include in the commentary track. I love hearing these tales from the unsung heroes, even if they only played a small part in the films’ creation. I really think you’ll enjoy her enthusiasm and insights.  It’s so great that people are still happy to talk about the film after all this time. I got a real buzz chatting. It’s always so difficult not to laugh along with the interviewee. But as I need the interviewees voice for commentary, I have to stay quiet!

With any luck, I’ll soon be speaking to a veteran of film making. He was also involved in a little film set in 1985. Or was it 1955? More on that later.

I was also boosted by feedback from my Jaws expert buddy Jim, who has now watched my first cut and has returned to me with some great notes.  Further motivation has been drawn from contact with a large publication in the U.S. They want to run an article about me and my filmumentaries to coincide with the release of Inside Jaws.  Well, suffice to say that it has helped push me along some more.

Real work has begun in Malaysia now but my evenings are free and staying into edit is probably better for my health and my wallet. On second thoughts, maybe I’ll edit half of the time…

Just last night, Jaws expert Jim Beller who kickstarted this project, had a look over the first hour of so of my rough cut. We then had a lengthy Skype chat, going through notes that we had both made.  Jim is my Jaws brain and is great at saying, ‘Wait, I have a piece of material you could use there”. So I came away from our chat with lots to do. All great suggestions from Jim and a couple of good ideas from me just because I was able to sound Jim out about them first.

If my new Lacie drive arrives in time, thanks to some kind donations, I will be taking it to Australia with me and spending some strange hours in my hotel room editing away.  This year I have to make some savings as recent circumstances at home have meant our income has effectively been cut in half. For now anyway. So hopefully Inside Jaws will keep me away from expensive bars, clubs and restaurants and on the way to getting the project finished before summer.

Thanks for your continued support.

I had enough room to begin Inside Jaws on the same drive, so after making a backup on a Lacie Big Disk Extreme (1TB) along with all my previously filmumentary work, I got to editing!

All was fine until about a month ago when I dropped the Western Digital drive on the kitchen floor.  I immediately plugged it back in and all seemed fine until a couple of days later when the beachball of doom appeared whilst I was editing in FCP.  Immediately I knew that I’d lost a few days work.

The annoying thing is that I don’t keep a log, so I’m not sure what all that work was. Little things occur to me here and there as I am editing. There was no way of retracing my steps.  After some moaning about HDDs on Twitter, I started editing from the big Lacie Extreme backup drive.  A few hours in, during a render of the final project, I was getting paranoid now, the power supply blew and the drive sounded broken! I was right to be paranoid. The god of hard disks had struck again.

I quickly ordered a new power supply from eBay. These projects are all about keeping up momentum and motivation. It seemed the cheapest way to potentially resurrect the project.  After a week or so the power supply came back to life and so the editing recommenced. Only a matter of hours in the drive sounded like it was copying files whilst I was doing nothing. In fact it sounded like that busy sound you get when empting the trash. Finder promptly crashed and the HDD wouldn’t mount.

I had made a second (just in case) back up on and older and apparently less robust drive enclosure. The only problem was there were some media files missing from this previous backup.  So I’ve spent today re-importing media from DVDs, CD and online, desperately trying to match it so that it can be reconnected in the FCP timeline.

I am back up to speed but it’s another day “wasted”.  Thanks to a kind donation, I’ve ordered a new Lacie Rugid and I’ve copied all the project and media files to my iMac system disk. When will this faffing with drives end?!

To be honest, I am blown away.

Thanks to all of you for your faithful support and encouragement. Doing these projects takes a lot of time and effort outside of my work and real life, so it’s really great to see that so many of you visit this site. Even if you ignore what I’ve written and go straight to the videos, thats fine by me!

In this past 12 months I’ve been invited to write for Empire Online. I’ve been interviewed on radio and numerous podcasts. Part of Inside Jaws was shown in Sydney, Australia thanks to the wonderful PopcornTaxi. Ain’t is Cool News ran a story  and Movies.com showed an exclusive clip of my forthcoming project.

Furthermore (and most importantly to my bank balance), I’ve also finally managed to convert the skills I’ve learned on making these filmumentaries to get a one day job editing a Force India F1 car launch, which I enjoyed immensely.

The next big news is that  Inside Jaws is almost complete. Just a few more weeks so go (I hope).

So what ever you are doing, keep at it, you never know what might happen!

It soon became apparent that I should have been doing this since I began the project. I thought I had compiled a list somewhere (on my phone maybe). But no.  So today, I made it my aim to trawl through my emails, facebook messages and tweets, as far as they would allow to find the names of the individuals who have helped me along the way.

If you have helped me and feel you deserve a credit. Please do get in touch. Its been a while since I began this project and without my notes, its easy to let one of two slip through the net. 

Earlier this week, I was happily editing away on Inside Jaws when the Mac OSX beach ball remained on screen for a little too long. It soon became apparent that dropping the drive on the kitchen floor the week before had in fact been more damaging than I had originally thought. After trying to remount the drive a dozen times, it was clear that I was in trouble.

I had made a backup a fortnight before, meaning that about 10-20 hours of work would be lost. However, fortunately and after 6 hours of tinkering, the drive came back to life in fits and starts and long enough for me to copy the smaller files across to my system disc. Voila, the media files, apart from two which only took a few hours to re-rip, were all back!

The only problem I have now, is that I don’t have a fast drive to actually do the editing on anymore. The system disc is no place for video editing. So, along with the wedding, my fiance leaving work due to ill health and my lack of work at this end of the year, I have to find the funds to by a new RAID. Two very kind individuals donated some money that has gone straight in that pot! THANK YOU! So, by the end of March, when the F1 season is back in full flow, I should have enough money to keep this project swimming along nicely.

What I am here to say, or more to the point, ask of you, is  that I’d be very grateful if you consider donating to one of my chosen charities. Particularly if you have enjoyed my work and feel compelled to show your love.

Yesterday, I added a donation button to a charity that I think does really great work for those with autism.  ”Ambitious about Autism works to improve the services available for children and young people with autism and increase awareness and understanding of the condition”. Now who can argue with that?

So, again, if you have a sudden need to be grateful for the work I do (remember its for fans like you), then please do think about a donation.

Thank you for your time.

This week I was thrilled to hear back from Colonel Dietrich himself, Wolf Kahler in a warm message of new year wishes.  He went on to tell me that he’s recently worked on a film (I won’t give it away just yet), using his wonderful voice doing lots of ADR for multiple characters.  It’s a film I’ve been waiting to see for some time and actually has a connection to another part of my life. Now of course I am looking forward to it even more.