Glasgow Film Festival

I was invited along to join in and photograph the fray of the GFF last week. If ever the balance of culture and fun was to be tipped, this was it. Heavily in favour of fun though!

It is easy to forget that at the core of arts and culture events, swathed in glamour and panache, cinema does everything its own way. Its recipe is artistic celebration at its most social. Less the stiffness of the gallery launch and less operatic than the stage. If there is one thing the blockbuster approach brings, it is a damn fine jolly. What more can you ask from a business of entertainment? Comically up-itself perhaps, but it is the the loosest, most inclusive form of enjoyment out there that you can share with 100 strangers at a time. And at the moment (in my jazz age reverie at least) I can happily forgive its mass production for the charm and messiness and swagger of the red carpet. Film can take itself very seriously but the cinema is still a party.

Which is exactly what was put before my eyes in Glasgow. An already incredibly broad and adventurous programme of screenings was supported by an ensemble of cinema events in creative spaces full of colourful people. A total mix. Isn't that what festivals are all about? That and fun.

The full festival galleries are avilable to look at here. Also, major credit to Stuart and Ingrid for their amazing work on the other events.

Sheree Folkson and Sally Philips of The Decoy Bride

Murray Grigor, producer of the documentary Big Banana Feet, which covers Billy Conolly's 1976 Irish tour.

Step into the Blytheswood!

Tom , son of writer Sally Phillips  gets his front row seat for The Decoy Bride

Gala Champagne

Festival Co-director Allson Gardner during a tech for a Q & A

Murray Grigor introduces Big Banana Feet to a sold out Glasgow Festival Theatre

Queues rock the block on the opening gala of the GFF

The audience is listening - the premiere of My Sister's Sister opens the first night of the GFF

Director Lynn Shelton during her Q & A for My Sister's Sister

Wooden box woo the crowd at eh GFF gala

Guests at the Gala

And of course once theres a tambourine on the go how can I not make a cameo?

Say hello to the band! Corinne on cowbell and The Barman, on the wine.

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An Appointment with Greg Hemphill

I had the great pleasure of shooting Greg Hemphill for the pre-production poster of the National Theatre of Scotland's new show that launched in Aberdeen on Tuesday. I am biding my time and praying to my diary for the chance to get my tickets for its visit to Glasgow.

The show is a heart-felt adaptation of the cult film starring Christopher Lee and Edward Woodward. If our portrait shoot is anything to go on, then the production looks set to be a total howl. I was asked to coax the Lord Summerisle from Greg so the designers could later dress and drop in front of a towering wicker inferno. Needless to say there was little coaxing needed.

It has been great to see the poster spread out across the local and national media. It has made the headlines a couple of times! I keep bumping into it inadvertently when I turn the pages of magazines and the papers. The company are broadcasting their production trials and tribulations from the NTS blog and in some top notch videos.

Book your appointment!

Lame pun. Sorry.

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Play

  

Put the brakes on and ask yourself this - What would you do if you were given one day? Not a workday or a holiday. Not a Monday, not a Thursday, not any day of the week. A day from the blue, all to yourself. A limited 24 hours. Would you go out and play?

Big problems with play the older you get. We get to where we want to, we live the dream, but we start to switch off the subsidiary senses that kept us from starving. We are no longer desperate for anything and we stop following our impulses. Real creatures of habit we become, and we start to expect everyone else to be the same. We get more and more excited at the prospect of doughier, sinkier sofas, a bottle of red, a moo-vie? Bed at 10 for an early start?
   
But imagine this one impossible day. With no plan, with no wild programme. Waking up in your own bed with only your world and your resources. Do nothing? Do everything?? In our mad rush to make the most of our time we end up leaving ourselves no space to play. There can be no doubt, good play is half spontaneity, half activity. But how can you be spontaneous in your own back yard??

Well, very if you let yourself rediscover it. I am no master, don't get me wrong. I am blessed by where and how I live, but 6 out of 7 I am fully asleep to it. So, I had a visitor! For the first time in nearly 2 years, I had fresh eyes on my porch. Go through the motions all you like, see the spots and hit the views, but Edinburgh is unbelievable fun. I am no tour guide and Aidan is no tourist, but we basically stormed the city up and down and still only managed to scratch the surface.

In a single 24 hour swoop we beheld beauty, rewrote the rules of Guess Who, shopped a ludicrous hat, looked down from a mountain, blinded ourselves in World of Illusions, rewrote the lyrics to R.E.M, got chased by a street cleaner, swallowed Edinburgh's finest coffee, doubled over laughing, watched a random 17piece jazz band, went for noodles, unleashed a Kraken, sang in a trad bar at the top of our lungs,  and invented only a hundred puns on everything in-between.

Its the weekend again. Give yourself a day to play

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Sublime

2012 Campaign for Sublime shot last year, finally unveiled.

We sat down in September to talk about a way of bringing that elusive more across through Sublime's photography for 2012. A unisex salon with diversity coming out its ears, we wanted to keep the mixture as the top priority without straying too far into beauty or glamour. So how did we do that?

We asked the customers to model! We kept things light and fun in the studio as the guys powered through styles and cuts. A bit of a perfect recipe of lifestyle and energy. We mixed and matched clothing and lighting and got down to basics over and over. 

We are all mega delighted with the results (and the free haircuts for our generous posers!) Another little creative kick for the new year, enjoy!

Hair by Lesley
Make-up by Ola
Assisting and tunes by Grace

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