Pre Unique productions footage - never seen before!

Evolution is the only word to describe the way we have come in three years. Standout of course, was one half of Unique productions with Paul Forinton. Before that, we were real beginners who had to teach ourselves how to use a camera. As these pictures show, we have come a seriously long way...

Most of our early material was interviewing, but we got bored interviewing each other, and started dressing up as various celebrities. Fitting this in with actaul work (Paul and Rufus were both doing a-Levels at the time) it was good practise. You can see many of our trademarks even in our early work.

After about a month, Richard Ashton quit, having been a vital camera man, leaving  only 2 of us at a time in front of the camera. On the left is Jessen, an up and coming film star - watch this space for more details...

One of our trademarks was our humour - very much in our own taste. As you can see, Rufus is being reduced to looking like Stan Laurel, after the Eastern European Dentist (me) can't understand the use for anathestic, and wishes to use a hammer and chisel. When Rufus indicates that he needs to be put to sleep, he is hit over the head with the hammer.

We moved on from the plain sets, often a chair and table, to the stage, where we used whatever props we could find. I think that from this point, we really got somwhere. "The effects of the mass media" presented by me, set the lights for our award winning documentry 18 months later. This hilarious presentation, part of our work this time, included me being shot in front of the class having hit Paul with a hammer. No suprise we got a good mark. Slightly different to sombody waffling from a piece of paper, like all the others did. (No offence to you Will)

It was not all fun. Anything we did for fun went like a dream. Anything work related was hampered by rules such as "not allowed to use a lamp because it has to be checked". I replied well check it then. We were told we would have to book a session to have it checked, and could not film until so. This was when we were about to film....

The Money tin, our first big project eventually took 14 months to complete, and I don't think I enjoyed a moment of it. We resurected an abandoned project, which got us several nominations at the film awards. With Rufus gone to join the imperial Tory party, and Richard in the clutches of the trendy men, we needed more people. We had the pleasure of working with Jessen, and Nathan Pershad, an extremely talented singer, writer and actor. While the final result was superb, it had been nothing but cold locations, grubby clothes, lost tempers and more pointless rules.

Coming soon - the 2nd year. 3 Award winning productions and the future, creating a film for the big screen. Back?