Samurai Monogatari - Concept

With cast in place I gathered a crew together from close friends who were and still are not only reliable and supportive as friends of mine but also excel at their given role within the framework of the film. Matt Flannery operated a second camera throughout the production while also being in charge of the lighting at the studio (used with kind permission at the University of Glamorgan Theatre room), Graham Hellis an accomplished musician was responsible for recording the live sync sound and gathering a host of sound fx and music from production libraries, while Huw Lloyd joined Matt with the lighting, helped choreograph the duel scenes and applied the make-up to the actors throughout the shoot.

We began filming on June 2003 at The University of Glamorgan. The first scene of the day was the penultimate scene of the film, with the lighting arranged and the positions of the actors set I sat down to listen for the first time as the dialogue I had written was spoken to me in Japanese. It was a very bizarre situation - Taka stopped as he noticed a grin on my face thinking he was doing something wrong but his delivery was excellent, the right tone, the right pace - I was smirking because it was good and it gave me a drive to get on with the task ahead and do the job the best we could.

The filming went smoothly - over the course of 3 days (two weekends) we had completed all photography utilising key locations - sparse forestry in Treforest was used for the main bulk of filming meanwhile a river bank in Radyr that I had often noticed on the train to work was ideal for two scenes of the film. We worked at a breakneck pace averaging at 60 set ups per day relying heavily for the most part on daylight holding out long enough. They were long but ultimately rewarding days, that throwaway script that was written merely as a test was being realised and I would soon be putting together the footage we had shot in Wales of all places to tell a story set in Japan. It was at this point that we had come to realise the high concept status of our project, and while I worked on the post-production Huw would begin to publicise our film.


	synopsis - concept - reviews - trailer - dvd
	With cast in place I gathered a crew together from close friends who were and still are not only reliable and supportive as friends of mine but also excel at their given role within the framework of the film. Matt Flannery operated a second camera throughout the production while also being in charge of the lighting at the studio (used with kind permission at the University of Glamorgan Theatre room), Graham Hellis an accomplished musician was responsible for recording the live sync sound and gathering a host of sound fx and music from production libraries, while Huw Lloyd joined Matt with the lighting, helped choreograph the duel scenes and applied the make-up to the actors throughout the shoot. We began filming on June 2003 at The University of Glamorgan. The first scene of the day was the penultimate scene of the film, with the lighting arranged and the positions of the actors set I sat down to listen for the first time as the dialogue I had written was spoken to me in Japanese. It was a very bizarre situation - Taka stopped as he noticed a grin on my face thinking he was doing something wrong but his delivery was excellent, the right tone, the right pace - I was smirking because it was good and it gave me a drive to get on with the task ahead and do the job the best we could. The filming went smoothly - over the course of 3 days (two weekends) we had completed all photography utilising key locations - sparse forestry in Treforest was used for the main bulk of filming meanwhile a river bank in Radyr that I had often noticed on the train to work was ideal for two scenes of the film. We worked at a breakneck pace averaging at 60 set ups per day relying heavily for the most part on daylight holding out long enough. They were long but ultimately rewarding days, that throwaway script that was written merely as a test was being realised and I would soon be putting together the footage we had shot in Wales of all places to tell a story set in Japan. It was at this point that we had come to realise the high concept status of our project, and while I worked on the post-production Huw would begin to publicise our film.
	Initial Concept - Development - Production - Post-Production - Publicity - Closure
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