The making of Fixey Phoney

Telling the story was the part I found to be the most challenging
Meet ... Billy Ellwood
his FixeyPhoney did well in the Minute Movie Contest at BIAFF 2007
and represented the British Isles at UNICA 2007

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