Jonni Tolson's Blog

Ambitious Pictures is making a step in a new direction.

We’re teaming up with comedy writer James Boughen. James has previously written for ‘Mock The Week’ and ‘Shooting Stars’ and is now lending his comedic talents to Ambitious with our first comedic production ‘Who Needs Legs?’, a short sketch that will hopefully be the beginning of a long and exciting relationship.

More exciting news on this project to come…

Finally we are able to bring you a teaser trailer for ‘The Bride of Vernon’.  The trailer has been up over a week now and seems to be gaining some good ratings, it’s had over 700 views on Youtube now and has been featured on a number of great websites from thevelevetonion.com to blackboxtelevision.com. (Thank you to Paulyne from VO and Tony V from Black Box TV for their kind help in spreading the word).

Hopefully this teaser will give you a good idea of the feel of this project and aid my mission to bring BoV to the masses.

Currently there are three very exciting things happening with The Bride of Vernon that I’m very excited to share.

The first, is that we are currently embarking on festival entry into a few select festivals all happening before Christmas time.  I have fingers crossed in hope and will obviously be posting any progress on this if and when it occurs. (Wish us luck).

The second exciting bit of news is that The Bride of Vernon has been featured on a great Mighty Boosh (and related works) fan site called ‘The Velevet Onion’.

If you have not checked their site out before and have any interest in the Boosh or anyone that has been involved with it then I suggest you check it out, you can start by reading our article.  These guys are seriously on it, they picked up on BOV in a flash.

The third, and hopefully not final, piece of great news is that we have started up a Facebook page.  We have just reached over 100 likes and will soon be putting up a  teaser trailer, which appears to be in demand.  Please check that out, feel free to click like and share it also.

All seems to be looking up for the film at the minute and I’m very excited to see what comes out of this recently publicity, if you are interested in finding out I shall be posting it all up here.

If you read the post that I put up about the casting session that Tee Pee filmed in Manchester then you will be aware that Invasion Travel are hiring a number of models called the Invasion Angels who will be fronted by the lovely Sarah Longbottom.

The promotional video we created is to act as a company update to it’s student following on what Invasion is currently up to.  This is the video we produced:

If you’d like to know more about Tee Pee Promos then please visit our website at www.teepeepromos.wordpress.com.

If you have read my previous posts you will know that I have been working hard all year on a short stop-motion animation called ‘The Bride of Vernon’.  If you haven’t, the film is a rom-com that parodies James Whale’s ‘Bride of Frankenstein’ (1935) staring the voices of Dan Clark, Katherine Parkinson and David Schofield.

Well last week we had a bunch of promotional stills taken of Calvin who Directed, Animated and Wrote the film, with the characters.

I even snagged a couple myself.

The point in these pictures was for Festival Promotion.  I am hoping to take the film to a few festivals over the next 6 months and these photos will be great for this.  Also, it was nice having pictures done with the characters for our own sake, it feels like we know them very well even though they aren’t real people.

The other reason these photos were taken was for our marketing materials.  DVD covers, Posters etc.  We’ve been working with a great designer called Emma Corkhill who came up with the idea of having the characters as 2D forms, reminiscent of the end credits of just about every Pixar film that’s been made in the past few years.  See ‘The Incredibles’ as an example.

Emma used the images we took to create the poster. We sent her this…

..now a week on we’ve got the poster back, and I do say, it’s pretty terrific.

Yesterday Invasion Travel, a company that my Promotions venture has been working with (Tee Pee Promos), went to Manchester to film a casting session that Invasion were holding.

The casting session was to find the ‘Invasion Girls’, a quartet of attractive and skilled girls who will help to promote the company both on it’s Travel ventures and here in the UK. They will be headed by the new face of Invasion, the lovely Sarah Longbottom who has been a model in magazines such as Maxim and Playboy.  She sat on the panel along with the fatastic theatrical actor Jack Pybus and one of Invasions head hochos, Lee McAteer.

The event was a success with a number great girls coming to the session. Myself Matt Prior (the Pee in Tee Pee and camera man) and Paul Quirk (our fantastic sound guy) went alogn to the session.  The video is going to be a nice addition to Tee Pee’s portfolio and will act as a great little update on the happenings of Invasion Travel for their Youtube channel and Facebook fans.  The winners will have been announced by the time the video goes up and so we will be making 30 second profiles for each of the girls soon so look out for those. When the video is complete I shall post it on here.

For now, heres some stills from the day…

So, in my last post I talked about the short stop-motion animation ‘The Bride of Vernon’ which I have been Producing as my graduation film.  (If you aren’t sure what I’m talking about then read the last post).

Well, as you may tell by the title, the film has finally wrapped after a four and a half month shooting process.  Calvin Dyson (Director/Animator) has been slaving away in a small dark room since late January shooting the piece and finally we have it shot in it’s entirety.  I would say that Calvin deserves some sort of reward for all his hard work slaving day and night to get the film shot in time, but he already snagged one at the National Student Television Awards (the jammy sod). 

Thankfully, after this long process the film has been picture locked, the special effects and post sound production are underway and the piece is on track to be finished for it’s hand in on the 19th May (next week).

I am having a photographer take some publicity stills by the end of the week for the poster and DVD cover and for general publicity uses so look out for those in the next week or so.

For now, here’s a screen shot for you to feast your eyes on…

Fritz and Vernon in the Lab