The Making of Fixeyphoney The idea came from a little movie I saw on the internet about a guy with a fancy mobile phone, and I thought that I could have a crack at that, and put my own ideas into it. So I thought of a few scenarios that could be shot and tightly edited - with a punchy message that would boast about how you would really like a phone that does loads of tasks. I think in its first screening I had called it Phoney-do-it or something like that.

Sound and music

So I filmed the scenes with my two boys and started editing. Fortunately I have about 20 cd's with assortments of music on them, and I just went through one disk at a time until I had the soundtrack that would carry the spirit of the flick. I also used a couple of effects cd's to grab a heartbeat, an explosion and defibrillator sounds. The only sound I made by live recording was the sound of air going into a bicycle tyre.

Commentary

Telling the story was the part I found to be the most challenging. Do I do it 'newsreader' style or a more 'hard-selling' shout about the phone's benefits? I tried both, and after taking the views of my wife Jenni, picked the former and the movie was made.

I'm used to winning the one-minute competition at my local club, but it didn't win! So I was a little down, because I won the five-minute contest the same night, with what I considered to be not as good as FixeyPhoney (though it got a Silver-Plus award at BIAFF).

I was, though, chuffed to bits at FixeyPhoney's impact in Biaff's one-minute contest this year. If people like my movie, I feel highly satisfied.

- Billy Ellwood

Page updated on 21 March 2008

Authors' views are not necessarily those of The Institute of Amateur Cinematographers

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