ABOUT
Onview Cinema is a streaming channel running on VIMEO.COM, a long established video hosting site used primarily by film makers. The channel is located here at https://vimeo.com/ondemand/onviewcinema
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Joining Vimeo is free and gives you access to lots of free films and a community - much like Youtube but different. You need to sign up as a free member to sign on to our streaming channel and you need to take out a monthly subscription to our channel, which you can cancel anytime, or once you have seen all the films on the channel. Note: for the time being, this is the cheapest way to watch all of the films made by Onview Films.
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We hope to bring other independent films made by other film makers to our Onview Cinema in due course.
FILM TALK FROM Mol Smith - ONVIEW FILMS
ABOUT - TAINTED LOVE
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This was the first film we made. A fair sum of money was borrowed to make it. (Never borrow money to make a movie!) I wrote the script but had little idea about film making so a crew was hired. I think they did a fair job but I had not realised so much external noise was being recorded with the dialogue. It has taken several years to minimise sound issues when recording in noisy locations.
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One of the things which was under-budgeted was simply food and drink for the cast and crew, a sum which ran into a couple of thousand pounds for 3 weeks of shooting. The film cost £20,000 in real money and then I did 6 months editing to put it together. So you could say the total budget was close to £40,000.
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Will Moore directed it and shot most of it, with me on 2nd camera. I learnt how to begin making films myself from the experience of making this movie, but one forever learns and rarely master's a craft.
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mol
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ABOUT - DARK MATTER
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After the terrible expensive of making Tainted Love, I wanted to see if I could make a film doing all the work myself, but keep the cost of the film to an absolute minimum. I wrote Dark Matter, and the main actors: Gina, Dominic, and Jamie worked for nothing but felt the film could showcase their skill. Originally, another actor was to play the role Jamie took, but after filming several scenes, she let me down and dropped out, saying she had a better offer. What a *****. Anyway, we started all over again.
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Before making the film, I wanted to test the lighting and the atmosphere which I had visualised for the film, and made the short 'Away For Christmas' (also called - 'Haunted') to explore the lighting idea. The film costs about £1000.00 which is extraordinarily low.
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mol
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ABOUT - THE LORELEI
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I wanted to try to be more ambitious and also make a film which might appeal more to a wider audience. I wrote a script and gathered together actors I knew were reliable. In fact, the cast of The Lorelei proved to be great fun to work with and worked well supporting each other and now most films I make try to include actors from this film.
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I like mixed genre. I think non-linear genre films have refreshing stories but are, of course, more difficult to sell. Distributors like single genre as they can realise their market. All efforts to film in nearby lakes and rivers for under water scenes failed, and we actually had to go to the coast to film those sequences. And it was an extremely cold day.
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mol
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ABOUT - ABDUCTION
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Abduction started out as a completely different film planned to be shot in Bulgaria. The script went through several invocations before turning from a straight horror story into a horror-comedy. I actually became quite ill just before we started shooting it and if not for the fantastic help and support of the cast and crew, it would not have got made.
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I was in a deep bout of clinical depression brought on my anxiety caused by multiple let-downs. Not the best place to be when needing all of ones reasoning ability to make a movie. Thankfully, the cast - now all friends of mine - became a collective mind in place of my foggy one. Some of the gags weren't scripted and were the result of creative genius of the actors.
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I am very appreciative of everyone involved and what they gave selflessly to create this feature film. Diamonds, all of them!
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mol
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ABOUT - ABDUCTION 2
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Abduction 2 is the only sequel we've made. I thought it would be a great idea and fun to bring the cast of Abduction together again along with some fresh new young actors.
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Some of the CGI took me ages to do working frame by frame.
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I have an Abduction 3 script more or less written, but I'm unsure if we will ever shoot it. I think I'd need to win the lottery to afford one of the locations in the script, but I would love to do it.
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I do think everyone involved at a great deal of fun making this movie.
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mol
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ABOUT - THE CHAIR TO EVERYWHERE
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This was originally written as a 20 minute short. I thought Polly Tregear and Sean Botha performed so well supporting the rest of the main cast in Abduction 2, that they deserved a film of their own where they could play the lead roles.
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However I liked the script so much, I decided to expand it and make a feature film instead. The edit on this one proved the most difficult yet due to extensive CGI work and post-colouring. Another interesting fact is that everyone in the film has to go completely nude which created some issues trying to reduce any graphic content so the audience focus on the story instead of the nudity.
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This film is much closer visually to my digital art images - which was one of my aims. Pure Sci-fi film with an important and unexpected twist and I suppose, a bit of a message.
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mol
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