Don Brett at his home in Mid-Wales 2012

Having been close friends with Don for nearly ten years, he has influenced me greatly in terms of artistic development. When choosing a subject for my dissertation, I could think of no better person than Don, whose colourful life is always packed with humour, stories, creativity, adventure and above all, art.

Shooting began in June of 2012 and continued throughout the year. Each visit with Don has been unique and I have attempted to capture different elements of his life each time. In Mid-Summer when the light was good, I got the opportunity to film him as he painted a improvised piece, especially for the film…

Don Brett painting an improvised composition at his home, Summer 2012

On another visit we were also blessed with good weather and we used the opportunity to catalogue Don’s body of work. Handling over twenty large canvasses. We hung each painting on the wall of the barn in order to film and photograph them. This also provided the opportunity for Don to talk about selected pieces and give further insight in to his working methods, as well as creating natural moments of levity in which he could reminisce and tell stories relating to particular paintings.

Cleaning the dust off…

Myself and Don with his daughter Eirys and her friend Kyle during filming, summer 2012

I have plans to shoot a little more footage in the coming weeks and I am currently editing together stuff I’ve shot so far. I’ve already created two trailers for the film which you can view in earlier posts or on my You Tube channel here. I used the blues legend Robert Johnson’s songs in each video, as I intend to record a blues slide guitar soundtrack for the final cut. It’s been a good way to see if and how something works or not, when edited together. There follows a third and final trailer which is more of a montage video, again using the great Robert Johnson and is designed to test some of the shots I have already captured. Let me know what you think! The film will be released in June 2013.

The King’s Head Open Mic night have started posting live performances recorded at their weekly open mic night, check out their channel for more live performances by me and other local musicians and poets!

The initial filming for this project began shooting earlier in 2012 under the working title ‘Atom Heart Mother’ – an idea developed by my friend Rokas Baniunas, a Lithuanian film student. Originally intended to be a surreal art film set to the Pink Floyd song of the same name, we filmed sporadically over a six month period. The project eventually got shelved due to course work we all had to do and other projects took priority.

Last week we planned to use some of the footage that we’d shot alongside new footage (filmed this weekend on Friday and Saturday). We then spent Sunday doing the editing, SFX, sound, colour and voice over. A tip of the hat has to go out to my friend Dave Roberts for being the man at the computer. He has to listen to myself, Rokas and Axle constantly barraging him with suggestions, opinions and instructions about what comes next, how this should be cut etc etc. Dave is a true professional in this respect and our combined efforts coupled with a bit of dedication, hard work and commitment is starting to yield us some results. Cougar Films is blossoming, please join us! We do of course, get a kick out of making these films, if it ain’t fun, it’s not worth doing!

Well, without further ado, here it is, the latest and greatest tasteless effort from four lads in Wales who love to make films! Please share this with any friends you have who just might enjoy it, we could really use the free publicity and we’d very much appreciate your help!

Banzai, baby!

In the past few weeks we have also formed a ‘sister’ company for Perygl called ‘Cougar Films‘. This provides us with a practice ground for trying out different shots and SFX. It’s us basically having fun and indulging our love of grindhouse and exploitation cinema.

We like to do everything in-house and have challenged ourselves to turn out a slew of  trailers for films that will never exist. The entire production from start to finish has to be completed in 24 hours and published on-line when the time is up.

Here is our first effort, filmed yesterday October 8th, 2012.

Stay tuned for the forthcoming ‘Snake Thrower’!

The second of my summer video blogs for 2012!

The second trailer for my forthcoming dissertation film ‘A Life in Colour’ about the artist Don Brett.

Because even USB devices need a little Rn’R!

When I’m not BUS-y storing and migrating digital data, I like to catch up on a little correspondence

If it’s chilly, I just jump into the microwave and warm up the circuits with a few hundred watts of warmth!

Sometimes I feel like I could take on the whole Empire by myself!

When I’m out and about, I need a little boost from time to time.

Up, up and away!

I enjoy culture and often visit the galleries. Van Gogh is my favourite painter.

Where did you last see your Motherboard?

Whenever I get the chance, I love to escape to the great outdoors. A spot of rock climbing really gets the megabytes pumping.

I also love to explore caves and underground tunnels.

Once I got snared by a huge wooden giant. I re-installed his PC for him and he let me go, eventually.

I love to relax and listen to my favourite jazz records. Vinyl sounds so much better than mp3.

I enjoy photography, here’s a little self-portrait I captured. Very post-modern.

I have perfect pitch and this has helped to find employment as a piano tuner.

Now and again I go for a spin.

I keep my pad nice and cool with lots of light. I got the fan from ikea….if you were wondering.

On a hot day I just chill-out in the fridge. Oh no, I forgot to get more beer!

As you can see, I live life on the edge!

It does get lonely, just me and my shadow. One of these days I hope to find a Mrs. R.O.B.O.T (USB) and settle down…have a few gigabytes…grow obsolete together.

Ahhhh!

Poor R.O.B.O.T.

Oh well, c’est la vie!

Stay tuned for more adventures from our little red hero, coming soon!

This is the first trailer for my dissertation project which is a film about my friend, the artist Don Brett.

This is the result of the first day of filming. Editing together a short trailer helps to give me a sense of how the location looks and how some shots work over others. I have a lot of work to do yet but this is a taste of how things will be when the project is completed.

It will be a 20 minute long documentary done in a cinema-verite style that will encompass the artist’s ethos and body of work, hopefully I will do him proud.

The first in a series of video-blogs I will be posting throughout the summer. The idea is to chronicle anything noteworthy I might have done and have a little fun with some filming techniques and editing.

Here’s a link to their website…

http://www.blues.lt/senaskuinas/index.php

You can also find them on facebook here…

https://www.facebook.com/#!/SENASKUINAS

Thanks for watching!