The Bradford Film Festival

 The co-operative Young Film-Makers Festival based in Bradford was a fantastic experience which allowed me to take part in several workshops and get professional feedback on my work.

The festival was spread over two days with a wide range of workshops to choose from including ‘How to get your foot in the door’ which was a presentation giving young film makers a bit of insight into the world of professional film making and explaining the do’s and don’ts of breaking into the world of film and TV.

Probably the best workshop in my opinion was the TV studio workshop. This gave us a clear idea of how chat shows such as Richard and Judy or GMTV are put together and gave us the chance to have a go at making our own programme. This course ran for 3 hrs and at the end we were each given a copy of the programme we had put together.

The most exciting experience by far was having my film "Cyclops" shown on ‘The big screen’. This allowed me not only to have the pleasure of viewing my own film but also see the standard of all the other films. All the filmmakers who had their films screened were awarded certificates and had their picture taken.

The event took place on the 12th and 13th October at Bradford's National Museum of Photography, Film and Television. Only 100 entries were chosen from more than 220 productions entered by young film-makers, schools, youth groups, arts groups, colleges and video workshops from across the UK and beyond.

The 100 films, all under six minutes long, were shown over nine screenings throughout the two-day event and included drama, documentary, animation and comedy films along with music videos.

Overall the Bradford Young Film-Makers Film Festival was great fun and I very much look forward to pursuing my career in Film Making.

Visit www.youngfilm-makers.coop for more information about the festival.

Richard and Judy

In early 2007, Richard and Judy announced their new competition OurTube which was inspired by a Starwars film they had found on You Tube. They were offering £1000 to their favourite spoof film made by the general public.

About 10 minutes after the competition was announced, I was already emailing them a link to my film "Harry Potter and the Twisted Duel", that being my best spoof at that time. A few days later, I got a reply from the show asking if they could show my work on the TV. Obviously I said yes and I eagerly awaited my moment of fame.

Harry Potter was shown along with two other films. One of them was a spoof of Rocky Balboa and the other was my "Starwars bullets" film. I have no idea how they got a hold of that film, but when they played it they gave the credit to some guy called Matthew Trumble. From what I found out afterwards, this is a real person and they messed up by showing my video instead of his. Sorry Matt.

Anyway, in the end I didn't win, but it sure was cool to have my videos shown on the TV.

If you want to see the clip of Richard and Judy then the video is just below.