In mid 2014, I directed my first recent short British ghost story called Who Is This Who Is Coming.... If you're interested, please watch the film before reading the below text as it gives away most of the plot.



Just to explain things a little, when I was younger (between 15-19) I made and worked on a number of short films with a school friend (and would rope in other school friends to play the parts), nothing major, just a collection of friends filling in various roles with no real talent or aptitude for them. I always wanted to do Evil Dead style rip-off horror films, and he would want to do though provoking dramas. Not a match made in heaven, but we worked together over a few years. Anyway once I moved to London to pursue a career in film & TV special effects, I moved away from making my own films and have toyed with going back to it ever since. I've shot my own little bits and pieces in the last 10 years (mostly special effects test footage/sequences of FX gags I've created myself), but this is my first proper short film. A little simple ghost story in the mould of the BBC Ghost Stories For Christmas series, and the first film I've created from start to finish since I came to London; coming up with an idea, writing it up, storyboarding it, shooting it, editing it, and ending up with the finished film. This film also served another purpose; to allow me to get to grips with my new camcorder; a Sony Handycam NEX-VG10 1080p camcorder. It combines the best elements of a digital SLR camera, and a camcorder. It has interchangeable lenses (and you can get adaptors to take many types of old style 35mm camera lenses, I opted for a set of Canon FD lenses; 28mm, 50mm & 35-105mm zoom), and it has a large CCD which gives a shallow depth of field. On many cheap to mid range camcorders, you have a small CCD which means everything in the frame is in focus, things up close and things behind off in the distance, which makes the footage look cheap and nasty. You can solve this with a costly Depth-Of-Field/DOF adaptor, but this camera does it out of the box. This camera has a large CCD much like a regular SLR camera meaning you can change what's in focus. However, unlike a digital SLR, it has many camcorder functions too making it the best of both worlds. I've been really happy with it, and it cost me £850 second-hand, plus around another £300-ish on various bits including lenses, a case, and a camera rig. Below you can see a gallery of photos of my camera equipment as of 2021, which has grown quite a bit over the years. I wanted to film a simple ghost story with one or two cast members, simple locations and nothing too complicated. A woman falls asleep, finds herself in a forest, finds a ring and puts in on which summons an entity which chases her. She's awoken with a start but unbeknownst to her she is still wearing the ring and the presence is now in her house. The musical score used was wholesale lifted from the PC game 'Outlast'. Anyway Who Is This Who Is Coming... served as a test, which is why there are a few poor shots in there, especially some over-exposed material. It's far from brilliant, but it is short. Some of it's a little clunky but the point was to film a range on indoor & outdoor locations, with long to extreme close-up shots with different depth-of-fields, get to grips with the camera. It's okay for what it is. One big thing I learned while filming that it's hard work to shoot without any decent film lights. if you have for instance, a bright outside window and a dim inside in the same frame, You can't get the exposure right, by that I mean something that approaches what you'd see with your own eye, either the inside is obviously too dark but the outside is right, or the inside is right but the outside window is totally over exposed to white and both look obviously wrong. To combat this I'd have needed to increase the amount of light on the inside (or reduce the light from the outside which is much harder if using natural available light, rather than a lit set). I now have a set of four 800w red-head lights (my only lighting source in this film was a table lamp with a 100w bulb!). With these I can now use filters & gels for various effects which would not have been possible previously.

This film really served as a test to work out any kinks before I started making larger scale films, like my next; The Lateness Of The Hour. If you're interested in any of my fanmade projects, you can contact me via email at , or through the Rob's Nostalgia Projects Facebook page. Check out & 'like' that Facebook page to see the latest in-progress updates to any current projects, and check out my Wants List to see if you can assist me with any future projects or upgrades.