Most Recent 50 Kisses Updates

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Filming a Kiss Goodbye by Baz Hodson

Every now and then an online competition arises which allows you to push your creative abilities on a self funded production. It’s always a welcome change from the day to day grind of making a buck, which doesn’t get any easier when you actually rely

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50 Kisses Masterclass 1 – recutting your film

As part of 50 Kisses we have invited filmmakers to act on our feedback and that of the community. Already, one filmmaking team, Sweet Home Films in LA has made their film over 20% shorter, fixed some audio problems and overall radically improved their work.

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And the screenplay award goes to…

Amidst the excitement and exhilaration of this weekend’s London Screenwriters Festival, we announced the winner of the 50 Kisses Screenplay Award to a packed Hall in the Keynote speech. Who won? “Enough” by Kirsty McConnell (Read script here) Screenwriting Legend John August said of the

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Coltons Big Night by Sebastian Solberg

I first heard about the 50 Kisses competition through Chris Jone’s blog. I loved the idea of making a crowd sourced feature film and was looking for another project to sink my teeth into. A two page script, I thought ‘how hard can it be’?

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Unbearable…

“What was I thinking?”  “Why did I think we could pull this off?” “I need to be at back work in 6 hours…” “I wonder if they’ll have bagels on set tomorrow morning? All these things were rattling through my head going into the 14th

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Enough by Simon Straub

The first desicion we had to make was choosing a script. It was rather easy because we had certain limits, no money, not much time to prepare and the cast had to be easy available. “Enoungh” gave us all that. A simple but strong story,

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Close Encounters at 1.15am…

So it’s 1.15am and I look over to see the shop manager looking sleepily at the clock. I had told him we’d be finished filming by 11pm and we’ve still got a couple of shots to do. I look at the crew but they’re working

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Shooting ‘A Ghetto Punk Romance’ on RED Epic

I heard about the 50 kisses competition through a friend and decided to read a couple of scripts out of curiosity. When I read Lloyd Morgan’s “Ghetto Punk Romance” I instantly felt inspired. It was one of those moments that you can’t quite descibe. To

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And the winnner is…

So the votes are in and we can now reveal the top ten scripts for 50 Kisses. The winner will be revealed at the London Screenwriters’ Festival next week. So to be clear, this is just the best screenplay award. There will still be awards

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A German Dream Date

We chose Dream Date because we found the script charming and witty. We could relate as parents to the storyline, and as filmmakers, well, we are all about the humour. So far in our films, we tend to stretch ourselves and try new things. So

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Standing with giants: Guest Blog by Shaun Bond

I have seen a worrying trend in some of the short film competitions I’ve seen over the last few years, where creativity loses out to high production values and polish. Often this is because the competition is held by a company looking to use the

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Q and A with Sweet Home Films’ Evan and Kerry Marlowe

How did you hear about the 50 Kisses Competition? Kerry: I met Chris Jones back in 2004 at a barbeque at Ealing Studios. He was talking about his book ‘The Guerilla Film Maker’s Handbook’ and how to be an independent film-maker, this information has stayed

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No Excuses

Maureen: For a filmmaker, I always find myself making up excuses not to make films. ‘I don’t have money’, ‘I have to work a full time job’, ‘I don’t have time’. I went to film school thinking: ‘I can write, but I can’t direct’. I

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Acting in ‘Colton’s Big Night’ by Alex Williams

I’ve been interested in acting and filming for a while, and had been looking for roles and auditions for films,programs and anything that would help me with acting and give me a real experience of what being on set and performing on camera would be like, so i started getting some background extra roles and

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Making ‘Colton’s Big Night’ by Camille Sainsbury

After reading all the scripts, I chose Nathan Gower’s ‘Colton’s Big Night’ because of its comedy factor and the interesting Colt character, which would give me another opportunity to direct a child actor. Also, its interesting to explore the perspective of children and how they interact with the world around them. For ‘Colton’s Big Night’  I

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The Last Supper… SD Disaster! By James Cookson

As soon as I read the idea for the 50 Kisses filmmaking challenge I knew I wanted to be apart of it. Of all the scripts I read there was one that really stood out, Richard Greens “The Last Supper”. Unfortunately like most projects I work on in my spare time, I left the shooting

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Writing A Ghetto Punk Romance by Llord Morgan

I’ve been putting off penning this blog post for a while. Self-reflection isn’t a skill which I exercise very often, but here goes. I first encountered Chris Jones at Bournemouth University during the Southern Screenwriting Festival. The lecture was framed around Chris’ experience with his short “Gone Fishing” and shooting for an Oscar. Afterwards, I

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Writing ‘Other People’s Kisses’ by Gabriella Apicella

Late on a cold evening in March, I encountered the woman who inspired “Other People’s Kisses”.  She was drunk, miserable, homeless and clearly in need of help, and in my semi-inebriated state I decided to try and help her. That night she slept on a bed made from spare blankets and cushions in a pair

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50 Kisses The Feature Film Enters Post Production

Last night I worked into the wee hours with editor friend Simon Reglar, planning the post production process for 50 Kisses. Simon is an old pal who worked with me on Urban Ghost Story before pursuing a career as an editor – he is currently wrapping up on Merlin for the BBC after which he

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Making Love Letters by Sue Whiting

A snog, Valentine’s night, a two minute script – easy. So what on earth made me think of setting it in an optician’s? No idea. Various stuff filters through the murky quagmire that is my brain: sunsets, violins, roses, impossibly handsome men… stop. The practicality button clicks on and all images are dumped in the

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The making of ‘Smasheroo’ by Anne Misselbrook

I read all 50 scripts with my ‘Producer’ hat on knowing that due to my very limited budget, I could achieve a film at fairly short notice, with one location and with a minimal number of actors. In other words it was the accessible location, low number of actors and low financial cost which determined

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Playing a Hitman by DJ Donnelley, in ‘The Moment’

Evan asks, “How’s your Irish accent, and would you kiss a guy no tongues?” The text came through on a sunny California Saturday morning. After working with Kerry and Evan Marlowe on their first feature project, “Blood Rush,” I have to admit, I wasn’t as surprised as I should have been at his request, or

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Writing Smasharoo by James Howard

I found 50 Kisses via Twitter, where I usually just read and write jokes. (I once tried to write a comedy with another Twitter humorist, but didn’t get past page 30. Maybe two-pagers are more in line with the short attention span of social media mavens.) The concept of the contest intrigued me. I knew

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