Blood Shed wins big at Knoxville Horror and Sick Chick Flicks fests! Podcast appearance!

Blood Shed continues to cook up a storm in the US! Our little sheddy tale of guts and gore has brought us glory the last few weeks, notching up several awards! First, we were stunned to wake up to the news that Blood Shed scooped THREE awards at the prestigious Knoxville Horror Film Fest! 

We beat stiff competition to be crowned Funniest Film, and James Moran was named Best Director for a short, and we won Best Script for a short film, too. As Producer, Co-Writer and Production Designer, I’m grinning from ear to ear and thrilled that our rather unique tale has found its place on the film scene so quickly.

The awesome trophies arrived this week and are now adorning the Moranic Productions gong shelves!

And there’s been even more glitz and glory for the film thanks to the amazing Sick Chick Flicks Film Festival in North Carolina!

The festival team kindly picked our star, Shaun Dooley, as the winner of the Best Male Lead Award. Here’s a quick peek at the trophy that is currently en route – what a hot bird! We can’t wait to unwrap this little chick.

Huge thank you to both festivals and their judges, but also to our supporters who helped get this film made and spread the word about it. It’s an honour to share it with so many like-minded shed-fanciers.

We have more screenings coming up. We’re screening at the awesome Ax Wound Film Festival in Vermont on Saturday 18th November, then we’re back in London on home turf for the Underwire Festival 2017 where we’ll be screening at the Prince Charles Cinema on Friday 24th November. Come and show your support if you can. I’m nominated for their Best Producer award and at more than 8 months pregnant, I am extra, extra emotional about this nomination!

In other news, James and I are guests on the latest edition (season 2, ep 7) of the brilliant film podcast Casting the Runes! We were chuffed to chat with the lovely Runes team and had a great time talking about Creepshow and Blood Shed. Have a listen to the episode here! We hope you find the things we say insightful as well as plain odd, weird and strange.

Blood Shed trailer and World Premiere! MA complete! Mama to be…

Months and months of hard work have now finally paid off! Yes, Blood Shed is now complete! Bringing this unique tale of a guy’s deep, obsessive love for his man-eating shed to life was far from easy, but James Moran and I can now finally celebrate as our short film is unleashed on audiences!

And even better still, we’ve had a terrific response to our trailer, and a flurry of fantastic news through from film festivals! Good news, it seems, is like buses! Long may it continue! I love it when a bus comes on time!

Blood Shed‘s WORLD PREMIERE will take place at the UK’s biggest genre festival – Horror Channel FrightFest, on 27th August! We’re especially thrilled to be part of FrightFest again and screening as one of only twenty-six shorts selected for the festival this year. Having our laughably twisted work recognised in this way is a big honour. We had no idea that our story about a bloodthirsty shed, with an aesthetic inspired by Creepshow and 80s horror, including the fashion and style, would strike a chord in this way.

Back when we wrote the first draft of the script together, last December, James and I could only have dreamed of getting this kind of response. This certainly makes the pain and torment of crowdfunding feel worth it, and we can’t wait to share it with all our pledgers, festival audiences and dare we say it, reviewers (*chews off nails frantically in anticipation*). As co-writer, producer and production designer of the piece, I put my heart and soul into Blood Shed… and she certainly enjoyed eating me up for months on end! But the hard work doesn’t stop now… The marketing and distribution has only just begun, merchandise has been designed and ordered, the extra content and digital goodies are being pulled together for Kickstarter supporters, and the press train is underway! When I see this image of our two amazing stars, Shaun Dooley and Sally Phillips, drenched in blood, it reminds me that they probably had it harder than me on this film!

Moranic Productions 2017

Though Blood Shed has felt all-consuming (how many references to being eaten can I crowbar into this blog?!), 2017 has been a huge year for me in other respects, too.

Connie continues to enjoy success on the festival scene and has even picked up some awards, and festival acceptances are still coming in. Looks like there’s life in the little foul-mouthed puppet film yet! There are numerous festivals that I’m itching to announce, but can’t just yet, but there are some very exciting ones coming imminently, including GenreBlast and FilmQuest, both in the US in September!

My next project as writer/director, Hank: Portrait of a Serial Killer, is now in pre-production, with a view to shooting over the next few months… More on that soon.

This year I’ve also achieved a couple of massive life goals! I successfully completed my second Masters degree, in Professional Media Practice, validated by the University Of Bournemouth. My final project, on slasher films, feminism and psychoanalytic film theory, was the culmination of five years of blood, sweat and tears, and resulted in my original feature film script and insightful research on slasher films and feminism. Having studied previous modules at the Met Film School, Goldsmiths and with the BBC Academy, I learned and grew so much over the five years of study, and so many of my writing and directing projects have been researched, developed or inspired as a result of the MA. Considering I hated school when I was a kid and felt like a complete outsider, it’s hard to believe that I now have two Masters degrees!

But, an even bigger life goal has been unlocked that will make me look rather different in my graduation gown at the MA presentation ceremony in November… James and I are expecting a baby! Yes, a beautiful, no doubt loud, giggly and impatient, little girl! Not only will I be an MA, and MA, I will literally be a MAMA! James and I are both thrilled that we’ll be parents. We can’t wait to meet our little warrior woman and shower her with love.

But, I’m still writing, producing, directing and am generally unstoppable. There’s nothing that Team Moranic can’t achieve. We’ll just have a super cute, extra little team player on our side soon.

 

 

Blood Shed hits and EXCEEDS Kickstarter target! Now in pre-production!

After a tiring month-long campaign, Blood Shed hit and exceeded its Kickstarter target on 27th March! James Moran and I are overjoyed. When we embarked on this crazy dream of a man-eating shed, we had no idea that we’d end up with pledges hitting 114% from 166 backers.

We initially aimed for £10,000, so this is a real triumph for us. Yes, Kickstarter takes a share of this for using the platform, and we have to cover the rewards and postage and packing from this amount, but this is still a good sum of money to make a really ambitious short film with. Nevertheless, purse strings will be tight and we want to make Blood Shed the most amazing film that we can, so we’re working round the clock on pre-production and will be squeezing the most from every single penny.

James is directing, I’m producing and we wrote the piece together – our first official writing collaboration – so this is rather a special project for us. It’s come a long way since my initial light bulb moment when I was cooking last November and improvising trailer voice overs for imaginary films! This happens to be how a lot of ideas come to me…

The support we’ve had from pledgers, press, bloggers, industry bods and film enthusiasts has been amazing, as has the support from family and friends. Running a crowdfunding campaign is tough – nothing prepares you for the sheer blood, sweat and tears that goes into it, and the round the clock management is all-consuming. You find yourself working through your sleep, skipping meals, unable to answer personal calls or even go out sometimes. Also, no amount of research into peak times, best times to launch and end, best times to make announcements, types of perks to offer and pricing, etc. really makes much of a difference – there’s a lot of luck and a lot of random peaks and troughs along the way. All the support we had really kept us going and motivated us to keep being creative and interacting in different ways across different platforms. You all helped us to keep the faith!

We shoot the film at the end of April, so just a few weeks away, and we’re hoping to have the film completed in June. The film stars the amazing Sally Phillips and Shaun Dooley, and we’ve an impressive team on board. You can read more about the cast and crew at the official Blood Shed website.

We still have a limited number of perks left, such as signed scripts, limited edition merchandise packs, digital downloads, writing-related perks, and props from the film. These perks are available for purchase from the Blood Shed website until 1st May 2017 only.

I’ll keep posting updates, but more information will be added to the film’s website over time. For now Shedites, thank you. And I’m off for a quick sleep.

 

 

Blood Shed now fully funded on Kickstarter! Perks still available!

Some joy for the weekend! Blood Shed is now fully funded on Kickstarter! I’m absolutely over the moon that we hit our initial £10K target. After several weeks of round the clock campaigning, James Moran and I can finally rest assured that our weird but wonderful Creepshow-inspired short film, starring the incredible Sally Phillips and Shaun Dooley, will actually get made! We’ve an amazing team working with us on this film and can’t wait to share it with the world.

We’re still live on Kickstarter until Monday, March 27th at 8:59 AM BST, so if you haven’t seen our campaign rewards yet, head over and feast your eyes on our sexy perks – enriched with sheddy goodness. We have limited edition merchandise, writing workshops, unique props, signed scripts and even a slap up meal at BAFTA up for grabs! So, join us!

Our composer, Ben Foster, is hard at work creating the score, with help from his synth wizard, Toby Pitman. This very fine piece of kit is being used to create the music of the shed…

All of our pledgers are so important to us and we’re so happy that, as it stands, 149 people want to help this film get made and embark on this journey with us. You are all legends!

If you want to get involved but can’t afford to pledge – we understand that completely. Times are very hard, so we’re even more thankful to get support for this. We’re on Twitter as @bloodshedfilm and any retweets would help us get in last minute pledges and every single penny will make Blood Shed even more spectacular than it is already going to be.

Many, many thanks all!

Blood Shed – 9 days to go on Kickstarter!

We’re on the home stretch with the Kickstarter campaign for Blood Shed, with just 9 days to go! We’re currently just over 70% funded. This is a lovely sprint to have achieved, but crowdfunding is a marathon. Believe me, it is definitely a marathon – possibly a double marathon. I’m personally surviving on coffee, Diet Coke, 2 hours sleep a night and an obsessive need to constantly refresh the Kickstarter page in case we’ve had a new pledge.

We’re really honoured to have an incredibly talented cast on board for this project. First, we have Shaun Dooley who will play the role of Jack. Shaun stars in the upcoming BBC One drama Gunpowder alongside Kit Harington and Liv Tyler! From the heartbreak of Broadchurch and the Red Riding trilogy, to the hit movies The Woman in Black, The Awakening and Eden Lake, Shaun can always be relied upon to deliver a powerhouse performance. He showed a sensitive yet terrifying side in Misfits, as well as a barnstorming singing voice, proving his range, flexibility and fiercely unpredictable edge. He’s also appeared in the TV shows DCI Banks, Ordinary Lies, Cuffs, Great Expectations, The Game, This is England ’90 and Exile. He is the only man who can take on a massive living shed…

Starring alongside Shaun is the incomparable Sally Phillips (Smack the Pony, Veep, Miranda, Green Wing, Pride & Prejudice & Zombies, Bridget Jones films). She’s a comedy gem! These two actors are such a talented combination, and we desperately want to bring this film to life and share it with you all.

11 days sounds like a long time, but in reality, this is a heartbeat away. We’re entrenched in pre-production for Blood Shed (location hunting, crewing up, production design elements, music) as well as cracking on with crowdfunding campaign, but ultimately, we have to hit our £10K target or sadly, the film cannot be made. Not only would we be sad, the shed would go hungry. Please pledge if you can. She loves you.

If you’re in any doubt, here are some very wise words from our wonderful supporters. You can trust them – look, they’re cleverer than us! They know it’s a good concept!

Also, here’s a little press round up below! Click through each one to read the full article.

Thanks so much to everyone who has helped to spread the word so far! Please shout from the rooftops! 9 days… YIKES!

Blood Shed Kickstarter is now LIVE!

She’s (A)LIVE! Well, our Kickstarter campaign for Blood Shed is alive.

Blood Shed is about a shed that eats people. It’s a love letter to the 80s horror anthology style, with key influences being Creepshow, Tales from the Crypt, The Evil Dead and Tales from the Darkside for visuals and feel, while telling a bizarre new tale with a unique monster.

I’m co-writer and producer, and James Moran (Severance, Cockneys vs Zombies, Tower Block, Spooks, Torchwood, Primeval) is my co-writer and director. He is ACE, and I say that as a professional with no bias whatsoever. Well, a little. But he really is an awesome talent.

Here’s the synopsis!

Jack loves a bargain. And he loves sheds. When he buys suspiciously cheap second-hand parts online to build his very own dream shed, he and long-suffering wife Helen find they’ve got more than they bargained for: a killer shed with an appetite for blood. As the body count rises, and the shed’s ferocious appetite grows, Jack is faced with a horrifying dilemma. A comedy horror about a man’s twisted love for his shed… that eats people.

We are desperate to bring this beautiful baby to life, to delight horror, comedy and classic monster fans, but we need YOUR help to do this. We need to raise a minimum of £10K to make it happen, but we’ve budgeted this within an inch of its life and we can deliver something really unique and special for this amount.

We have an incredible team on board, including BAFTA-nominated composer Ben Foster (Thunderbirds Are Go, Happy Valley, Torchwood, Scott & Bailey, Prometheus, The Grey, Prisoners) and illustrator Andy W. Clift on board for storyboards, comic book style panels for the film and poster artwork.

Ben Foster

The campaign is live until 27th March, but don’t delay, some of our perks are very limited. If you’ve already backed us – thank you so much. Please share the link, tweet it, like our Facebook page, follow us on Twitter, send carrier pigeons, semaphore… Please support! Our shed has an insatiable appetite and needs to be fed… and unleashed on the world!

Our perks include signed goodies, exclusive extras and downloads, set visits, on-screen appearances, screening tickets, props, limited edition merchandise, Executive Producer credits, writing workshops, script feedback and even a piece of the shed! With STRETCH GOALS to be announced (my god, they are COOL).

More updates on the cast and crew coming over the next couple of week, along with update videos.

www.bloodshedfilm.com #bloodshedfilm #nightofthelivingshed

Thanks so much to our supporters so far, and the very kind press who have already started helping us spread the word! We tip our hat to you lovely people!

Starburst Magazine

SciFiNow

The Fan Carpet

From Dusk Till Con