"Five Past Midnight" - a music video

Last night I finished a small video project that I’ve been working on for the past week. It’s called Five Past Midnight and it’s essentially a music video for a tune I wrote a couple of years ago, originally entitled Mile High Club. This track had been my entry in a “compose the best remix” competition organised by synth artist Bjorn Lynne, using samples from Bjorn’s original trance version of Mile High Club. I didn’t win, but I’ve always thought this was one of my best pieces of music, and it’s nice to finally do something with it.

The track is now called Five Past Midnight, because Midnight Pictures (our little film company) have made five films, and the video consists of a montage of clips from them: Zombie Genocide, The Wages of Sin, Dark Light, Encounter at Black Ridge and Saul’s Pupils. So, it’s a music video and a movie trailer rolled into one. You can download it here. Enjoy!

The bombscare movie: Filming underway

Film Club at Clounagh Junior High has been running for a couple of months now, and yesterday afternoon we finally picked up the camera to began shooting our little “bombscare” movie. I think it’ll end up being only three or four minutes long, but it’ll have a spectacular finale. Yes, this is not a phantom bombscare. The device will get to do its thing. We got half the shots in the can yesterday, but we’re by no means close to being finished. I’m estimating five weeks to get all the shooting, editing and special effects done. And we’ve got some great bloopers to show you, too.

Getting close to God

Last week I talked a little about how I felt my faith in God could sometimes reduce my creativity. Well, I’ve recently been sensing the exact opposite in my life. I’ve been spending way too much time in front of my computer - writing, video editing, DVD authoring - and way too little time in spiritual things. I had gotten into a habit of regularly praying and reading my Bible at home after dinner, but this has been slipping.

Lately I’ve noticed my feelings for God waning, and I’ve been dwelling too much on my own personal ambitions - the temporary things of this life, in other words. Worse than that, I’ve been having a lot more problems with sin. I felt a sort of anxiety about this, because it’s not that long since I’ve been really close to God. But of course, I only have myself to blame. It was me who chose how I invested my time over the last while. But, man, it’s way too easy to slip into this trap!

Earlier tonight in church we were studying the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost (Book of Acts), where tongues of fire rested on the Christians heads and they spoke about God in different languages. It got me excited again about experiencing God in my life, and when I got home I forced every distraction out of my mind and knelt down to have a serious time of prayer (as opposed to the hurried three-minute episodes I’d been doing). Of course, it was exactly what I needed.

Thing are going to get better fast. I’m determined not to end up as one of those half-hearted Christians who make their way through life with a little bit of religion tagged on, and never really know anything of the reality of God, and never really do anything for him.

Tick … tick … BOOM!

When I said I couldn’t face the strain of the film-making process right now, that was slightly untrue. I’m running a little film club at Clounagh Junior High School on Thursday afternoons for a handful of pupils. So far, we’ve constructed the synopsis for a sci-fi movie involving time travel. However, I’m starting to think the story is far too big to handle in the few months we’ve got left before the summer holidays. So, yesterday, we took the most breathtaking part of the story (a small segment where a bomb blows up the school) and turned it into a smaller story, complete in itself.

Over the next few weeks, we intend to shoot the movie, edit it, and add some special effects that will hopefully make people go, “How the heck did they do that?!” when they see it on the school website www.clounagh.com).

Writing a new novel … finally!

The last entry on my website’s diary is dated 6 June 2003; that’s over seven months ago, I say to my shame. The reason for this gap is partly due to the hassle of having to code each diary entry in HTML and the restriction of being at my home computer whilst doing so. Hopefully this “blog” service will cure that. Now I’ve got the freedom to write new posts from any computer anywhere, using a simple web interface. So, welcome to my blog!

And what have I been doing for the past seven months? Readers of my diary will remember the sudden announcement that I had rededicated my life to God. Well, it has stood the test of time. I’ve rejoined Killicomaine Evangelical Church (where I used to attend for many years), and I’ve got involved with the work there - in particular doing Bible readings during the services and helping out with the children’s work. I’ve been reading several chapters of the Bible each day, and I’m rediscovering how amazing it is. I’m determined to have it all completed within a year, and right now I’m getting close. I’ve also been praying regularly, and I’ve seen some important prayers answered (most of which are too personal to mention).

One thing I was concerned about, regarding my new-found faith, was whether it would put a stop to my creativity. That might seem a strange worry, but it has happened in the past. And sure enough, for the second half of 2003, I didn’t do much creatively. Zeal for God can sometimes consume a lot of time, to the point of blotting out other good things in your life. However, over the Christmas holiday, I settled down in front of the word processor and wrote a 5,000-word essay called The Tooth Gremlin. It’s a fairly personal one, about a painful experience that a lot of good came from. Haven’t decided exactly what to do with it yet, but it’ll probably end up on the website.

But what of my fiction writing? Will there be another novel? To that, I would tentatively answer, “Yes.” I’ve had the synopsis for something worked out for many months. Andrew Harrison and I were strongly considering making this one into a movie, but after the last one (Saul’s Pupils), I can’t face the strain of the film-making process right now. Off the cuff, I decided to start putting the story together in novel form. And it just happens to be working really well. I’m chipping away at it most days, and I’ll have an excerpt for you soon. The title is Shadow of the Dead. It’s a zombie story, in the vein of George Romero’s Dawn of the Dead. Does the world need yet another zombie story? Well, this one’s coming at it from a unique angle that nobody has tried before.

While we’re on the subject of zombies, I’ll just mention that I’ve recently converted Zombie Genocide to DVD. It’s a film made by Andrew and myself in 1993. Very tacky, but full of charm. All the details are at www.midnightpictures.co.uk.