Fittingly for a film festival on an island closer to France than England, our forth confirmed filmmaker was French born Londoner, Gaelle Denis. She drew the genre “Crime” and the title “Morning Mist” and two (and a bit) days later she and her crack international team of experts had made this…

Click below to watch Morning Mist…

My brother and me first met Gaelle through Cinema Extreme. Her film “After The Rain” was part of the same slate as “Hallo Panda”. One of the eventual frustrations of that programme, one of the inspirations behind the Branchage Challenge, was that the further we progressed the less we saw of the other filmmakers. Our film had been one of three selected from a Nottingham workshop where we met, among others, Miranda Bowen, Simon Ellis and KICKS director Lindy Heymann. It was a brilliant, creative melting pot, exciting and jealousafying all at once. However once the commissions came through we didn’t see the others again until a party following a screening of the finished films in Bristol. It was only here that we actually met Gaelle and that gap seemed like such a waste, especially since I still feel that if she’d had a bit of our thoughts and we a chunk of hers then we’d both have made better films that year.

Talk of in someway working together or, at least, close by, again sparked up when she and we were all selected for Think Shoot Distribute last year. A brilliant scheme which again captured some of that hothouse atmosphere. With time to hang out together it was clear again quite how brilliant Gaelle was; I remember watching Simon Potts when she screened her film “City Paradise”, all the way through and for sometime after all he could do was shake his head and say “Well it’s a masterpiece. A master piece. A masterpiece”, and he’s not far wrong. Consequently when the idea of organising the Branchage 48hr Challenge developed, getting Gaelle to take part was always high on our list of priorities.

Used to working in commercials, Gaelle arrived on the island fully kitted out and mob handed. She brought with her a cast, Lydia Outhwaite and Stephen Hope-Wynn, cinematographer Anne-Marie Lean-Vercoe, editor Fabrice Gerardi, script editor Marina Brackenbury and script writer Katie McCullough. They had more kit than everyone else combined, but of course this just meant more technical problems too. Also their title kinda bound them into a couple of very early starts and a lot of room for confusion…

With such a large team, and a genre that lends itself to twists and complexity, I soon got the impression that things were running away from them. Which story were Steve and Lydia playing? The one their characters think is happening or what is really happening? Is that still what’s really happening?

Steve and Lydia are clearly startled to be in a 48hr Challenge with a script...

Camera Card problems robbed them of crucial shots and suddenly poor Fabrice had the weight of the whole team’s expectations on his shoulders. Could he and Gaelle find a way to make it all make sense after all? It was around this point that I started stretching the entente cordial by giving him hassle to finish the film so we could create a screening master for that night…

But then, like the sun burning through the mist, the end came upon them and the film was finished. And it’s everything I expected from Gaelle. Beautiful, cunning, delicious and delicate, it’s hard to remember that it was made in such a sort space of time.

I remember both Fabrice and Gaelle staring at me with blank incomprehension when I told them how good it was. They were exhausted and so close to the piece they could barely see it. But putting together the screener, Chris and I were the first people outside their team to watch the finished piece. Thanks to Anne-Marie it is jaw droppingly beautiful with a start so bristling with atmosphere and tension you can feel it on your skin. Katie’s script is slick, complicated, twisty and yet, as it should be, very simple. Lydia and Steve are the perfect foils for one another, one big and lumbering, the other flimsy and flexible, the essence of butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth. Missing shots? Pah. This film is class class class.

But don’t take my word for it. Gaelle and her team are each asking of you less than a minute per team member. So please click on the link below to watch and vote and don’t forget to return here tomorrow where I shall end my run down of the competitors in the Branchage Vauxhall 48hr Road Movie Challenge by going to the other extreme with Occupied, a film made by three complete strangers with nothing more than a digital stills camera.

Watch and vote for Morning Mist here:
http://www.mishorts.com/index.php?page=shop.product_details&category_id=14&flypage=flypage-comp.tpl&product_id=898&option=com_virtuemart&Itemid=13