Emily

Around four years ago Shaun & I challenged each other to write a script for one another that we would Direct as solo projects. I wrote a film called "Register", about a man coming to terms with his new life outside of prison after years behind bars, a film for Shaun to direct. In return he wrote "Emily", a story of a family torn apart by the abduction of protagonist couple; Robert & Alice's only daughter, Emily. "Register" proved too ambitious a film to make on our no string budget, and thats when we co-wrote "Remember Me As A Time Of Day". A film with the similar theme to "Emily" around the death of a child.

I am proud with what we achieved with "Remember Me", with the film being screened firstly at The Belmont Cinema as part of a Peacock Visual Arts film showcase of local talent. Shaun got to participate in a question and answer session on our methods of work. We then took it to the Rushes film festival soon after, where it was shown with other films around the globe. Shaun and I sat after the screening answering questions by the audience. Mostly on how we filmed what would be come an infamous sceen involving a child being ran over by a car. The key of course was never to show the impact and to let the mind fill in the grotesque balnks.

After almost a year in development Shaun and I decided to make "Emily" as a co-directed piece. We got Jack from Peacock in after an amazing screen test where he held a knife to my throat rather convincingly while Shaun was safe behing the camera. I got Kate in after impressing me with her underplayed performance in my stage adaptation of Woody Allen's "Melinda and Melinda". Adam, because I liked the look of him. Not that I'm homosexual but I think he is a very attractive man, and I liked the Idea of breaking something beautiful for this film. David Falconer came in as sound man and provided us with all the camera equipment and sound gear. His knowledge and bag of tricks became priceless and I think I'll never make a film without him. Richard who we worked with on "Rememeber Me" devoted hi lighting talent. After securing Sophies house for all locations the shoot went smoothly and without hitches. We started editing whithin days of wrapping up. Then our personal lives imploded.

It started with Shaun going through a messy break up. I won't go into details but it was enough for us to shelf the film for a long time. As soon as there seemed to be a light coming at the end a very long and dark tunnel Laura and I also broke up. A saga that saw me move out and sleep in a friends spare room for nine months. But now after returning to editing and getting all the sound in order here it is. My first true labour of love; "Emily"

There is no word as to any screenings. We've unfortunately missed a heap of this years deadlines. But enquieries have been made and hopefully you'll hear of them here.

I hope you enjoy the film and one day hope it was worth the work, wait and heart ache.

To every one who helped out; to Jack for his commitment, to Kate for her hard work and help with make up effects, to David for all his advice expertise and advice, to Richard for the lighting on minimal resources and heated film disscussions and ideas, to Sophie and her family for their hospitality, to Adam for getting bruised and cut and all the commitment that is key to this films every success. And I would personally like to thank Laura because even though things had not worked out as we had planned you were always there through every film I have made up until "Emily". To all of you, thank you.

Enjoy.


Emily from Tim Courtney on Vimeo.

Dof Adapter

Dof Test Kilau from Tim Courtney on Vimeo.


This is some footage I shot just to try out my new DOF adapter for my new JVC GZ HD-7. For some reason FCP wouldn't let me output this in all its 16:9 glory. Instead its a squished 4:3 version. The magic bullit effects are a little heavy handed but it gives you an idea of the depth of field I can achieve with it.

An Artificial Light

EXT FIELD
It is a beautiful summers day. The sun has dried out the field discolouring the grass from moist green to a dry brown. There is a family picnicking in the middle of the field. Mum and Dad are enjoying a glass of wine while their son runs around playing with a model aeroplane in the field. There is a stoned wall that divides the field into sections and in one corner there is a huge tree. It is the main feature of the field and although it is the height of summer the tree has not yet sprouted new leaves. The boy runs along the wall making flying noises. He stops by the tree as a man with an old white gym bag approaches. He gazes at him with great curiosity. The man slows to a halt looking quizzically at the young boy. A wide-shot shows the two characters staring at each other for a few seconds.

JONATHAN (The Man)
Hi
The boy stands silent.

JONATHAN (cont.)
What’s your name?

BENJAMIN (The Boy)
Benjamin

JONATHAN
Hi Benjamin, I’m Jonathan… That’s a nice plane.

BENJAMIN
I’m not supposed to speak to strangers

JONATHAN
I realise that. I was always told the same when I was your age… Believe me in today’s society I’m just as scared of you as you are of me…

Benjamin continues to stare curiously at Jonathan. There is an uncomfortable silence between them. Neither seems to want to move away from the tree.

JONATHAN (cont.)
What kind of plane is that? It looks old.

BENJAMIN
It’s a spitfire. It’s from the second world war.

JONATHAN
Its nice. You interested in the war?

A phone rings from inside Jonathan’s trouser pocket. He doesn’t answer it, he doesn’t even flinch as to not alarm the boy. It stops ringing.

BENJAMIN
What’s in the bag?

JONATHAN
This bag?

He gestures to his Gym bag. Benjamin nods.

JONATHAN
Nothing much. A table-cloth, a birthday card, some cinnamon, cutlery, a book and a t-shirt. Oh, and some toothpaste.

BENJAMIN
Why?

JONATHAN
You wouldn’t understand

Benjamin’s parents can be heard calling for him in the distance. He runs off, without saying anything, not even acknowledging Jonathan, away to his Mother and Father.

Jonathan pulls out his phone and sits on the root of the tree. He holds the phone to his ear. A voice mail can be heard just enough to be audible.

ANSWER MESSAGE
Its me Isobel… I read your note… I’m really sorry… I know… there I am apologising again… I know how much it doesn’t help… but…

The voice gives off a huge sigh before eventually Jonathan clicks the phone off. He puts it back in his pocket and looks out into the distance. He takes a deep breath to stop his emotions getting the better of him. He sets the Gym bag out in front of him between his legs. He pulls back the zip and starts sifting through the contents, and true to his word he unearths all the items he spoke of to the boy.

This is the opening scene of a new film I have written. I've been busy doing location photography and sourcing actors. Which is hard. As the story unfolds we see through flashbacks what every item in the bag means to Jonathan and what impact it has on his relationship with Isobel.

This film is a relatioship study. Questioning fate and the notion of true love.

I got the Idea after discussing film projects with Shaun, moaning about my lack of original ideas, when Fionn Regan's song "Put A Penny In The Slot came on" the first verse inspired me to write this film.

"I apologise,
seem to have arrived,
On what items in my bag from your house.
There's cutlery,
a tablecloth, some Hennessy,
And a book on Presidents deceased.
I'll have them fed-exed to you,
It was a strange thing to do,
I hope we can still be friends.
Ah, it was not me,
but someone else, you see,
Twisting the steering reins.

Put a penny in the slot and make an
artificial light shine,
Leave go. Mark old and line."

Get in touch and I'll email the script to those interested.

Katerwaul's Glasgow adventure

As usual with going to glasgow, it rained. The whole car journey down it rained. I amused my self by watching the IT crowd on my ipod because the view from my window obscured by condensation and Nick and Sam had the likes of Deacon Blue blasting out of the speakers. I couldn't hear a word they said and I'm not sure they could hear me. But we got there safely. We puled up at the Belgrave Hotel on great western road about 3pm. Its a great place to stay. Me and Nick checked into our rooms and were pleasently surprised with the huge beds, flat screen TV, computer with internet and free wifi network and a Swedish sauna style ensuite. I waited for Rae to arrive and marvel at it beauty. She did so an hour later and Marvel she did.

At 7pm Rae and I met Daveheart and Graham for dinner in BLOC, our venue for the evening. We were told not to show up till 8pm because they served food till then. So we took advantage of their two pizzas for eight pound offer which was accompanied by the biggest side order of curly fries known to man or even God for that matter, seriously. While I'm on that topic why is it that curly fries taste so much better than normal fries or chips? Does everyone else agree? What is it in the curling process in the potato that brings out that crunch and flavour?

By 8:30 we were hauling our equipment into the bar and setting up. There is no stage in BLOC, just an area where they've cleared a table away by jamming into a window alcove. The first band kicked off at nine. "State Of Affairs" kicked off with what I can only describe as singable, lovable feel good rock. If Evan Dando sang for Foo Fighters and collaborated closely with Dave Grohl on songwriting duties. The crowd loved it. This made me and the others very nervous. Especially since the last out of town gig we did in Dundee didn't go down well and resulted in the only time so far we've been berated online. But when state of affairs came off it was time to sepperate the men from the boys.
Setting up seemed to have an air of history repeating itself. In Dundee I had a problem with the Amp I was borrowing in that the clean channel malfunctioned resulting in me doing the gig in nothing but distortion. Which fueled the fire for berating us on the local forums. I plugged my guitar in and what do you know... the all too familiar sound of warm dirty distortion laughing in my ear asking me "what you gonna do now?". Fortunately for me it got sorted out. And we played pretty well. The only real sketchy moment was when during the build up at the end of "December Doesn't Hurt" cramp hijacked Nick's arm a few bars early causing him to break into a random splurge of drum hits and symbol splashes in an obscure time signature. We went with it and played random notes resulting in what I like to call "free form jazz". And thats exactly what everyone else thought. Then we stopped for a bars rest before entering the heavy ending riff. I thought to myself "wow, maybe we should do that all the time." Nick, the perfectionist that he is, beat himself up most the night seeing it as a catastrophic error on his part. But to be honest if he didn't he wouldn't be the great drummer that he is. Constantly pushing for perfection not knowing just how great he actually is. I was proud of us that night and it was topped off by going home with only thirty copies of our CD out of eighty. It was great to see Adam Florence from :( an old school mate of Graham and Sam's. It was particularly nice to see Beth, Andy and Graham who had moved to Glasgow over two years ago. And for Kirsty, Graham's long serving girlfriend to finally have us play in her own back garden.

After a great gig with thanks to Sam and Jamie of 45 a-side records it was off to ABC for some dancing then some scoobie snax on the way home. So to end I want to inform you all on the scoobie snack. Its a Burger bun with a Burger, Lorne sausage, two potato scones and a fried egg wedged between it with some tomato ketchup as the moist maker. I didn't participate in this as I had already had some fish but Graham, Sam, Dave and Nick all had one. Every one finished theirs of but Sam who set his a-light and sacrificed it to the God of the Clyde.

Happy Birthday Nick & Tim

"In The Absence Of My Presence"

I understand its been a while since I last blogged, and I'm very sorry to all four of you who actually follow it. I've been very busy for the past three weeks. First of finishing "Catalyst Of Everything" wasn't as straight forward as I made out in my last post. Oh dear God no. For a start "The Sound Of Burning Letters" was dropped and replaced by "In The Absence Of My Presence", a full band re-working of the piano track of similar title on "Prologue".

Why the sudden change? Well I was pretty happy to go ahead with the original plan, that was until our producer Dave(heart or cool pants as Rae likes to call him) thought it a better suggestion to put a track that we actually played live on sampler CD. After the whole point in the sampler is to raise awareness of the band and what we do at shows. One thing we do not do is wheel an antique piano onto the stage for the sake of 5minutes. Albeit 5minutes of heart wrenching moaning while Graham, Sam and Nick get bored watching the audience in some sort of odd roll reversal.

Thats not to say that "In The Absence Of Presence" is without its emotional content. Oh no. That would not be the Tim J Courtney way of lyric writing. In fact this song is probably the most personal of songs I have ever penned. Just over two years ago I found a lump on my left testicle. If the word testicle offends you I suggest you stop reading now. We've all made ball jokes, and yes balls are funny, dicks are funny but the prospect of loosing them is the scariest thing next to dying from cancer. And I had to experience the fear both of at the same time. One in three people in Britain will have a cancer scare of some sort and I well and truly got mine, its safe to say I shat my fucking pants.

I have never before been so scared in my entire life. The only people I told were Laura (my longterm partner) and Shaun (friend/film collaborator). I didn't want to tell my family because I didn't want them to worry them unnecessarily, even though the pessimist in me feared the worst. Phoning the doctor for an appointment was hard but actually speaking the words out loud to my doctor really hit home what I was going through. I got an embarrassing feel from my doctors cold hands and the nod she gave me made me want to cry. Suddenly I was a nine year old boy who'd banged his head and feared having to get stitches again, but the twenty something male in me held it together barely.

I was booked in for an ultrasound scan at the hospital a week later. The irony in that being that ultrasound scans are most commonly used for checking on new life not determining whether they may loose one. I arrived at the hospital with Laura and Shaun, a nurse told me to follow a blue line from the lobby all the way to a waiting room. When my name was called I followed another blue line to the Scanning room. I lay down on the table and I went through the most underwhelming experience of my short life. Not only was I scared I was going to die, but a man wiped the coldest blue gel on my stones and started scanning them with what looked like supermarket pricing gun. All the while being observed by medical student before she got a hands on tutorial of how to use the machine. I'm afraid ladies and gentlemen the coolest man in the hospital is NOT the ultra-sound guy. They nodded and shook their heads, pointed at the screen, ummmmm-ed and ahhhh-ed before eventually telling me that I had to wait a week for results while they were checked over by the doctor and my GP. Bastard.

A week went by pretty slowly. I remember being really down and one argument I had with Laura at home. We were both feeling the stress and can only apologise to her for that. Although we are separated now she was the one thing I would miss the most. The prospect of missing out on living my life with the person I loved dawned on me but who was I actually angry at? I remember going into work and locking myself in the toilet to cry. I didn't get a lot of alone time at Laura's house so the toilet was the only place I was ever granted the oppertunity to be a big girl. I remember the day I went to the doctor and got the results. Another doctor, another student observation session. I was given the all clear. Thank God for that.

Months went by and It wasn't until I was looking after Shaun's house I sat down at his piano, played and Am, an F then a G and wrote "In The Absence Of My Prsence", the letter I would have left for Laura had the news been different:

"I learned that today I could die.
I'll be the presence of absence in the absence of my presence.
Please kiss me before you lay me down by the river.
Follow me along the blue line for the answers.
Our memories are an old shoe-box of polaroids.
Please kiss me before you lay me down to rest in the ground by the river.
Poke me so I don't sleep.
Make the bed around me so I don't drown in these tears."

Me and Laura are still friends after a long and complicated break up. But my fondest memory of her was the nights she would come round to my flat and bug me. We'd stay up all night talking curled up on the living room sofa. We'd poke each other saying "poke poke" if the other would begin to fall asleep. There are other references in there that I think should always be kept private, other wise It won't be as personal to me.

In reading this I hope that "Catalyst Of Everything" succeeds in being an unlikely concept CD of love and tragedy.

Thank you for reading.

You can download "Catalyst Of Everything" or get it from 1-up in Aberdeen or avalanche records in Glasgow.
Download "The Beat That My Heart Skipped"
Download "In The Absence Of My Presence"

Catalyst Of Everything

With the date for the new album pushed back even further we 've decided to appease fans by releasing a taster, free sampler CD single entitled "Catalyst Of Everything". It will feature "The Beat That My Heart Skipped" and "The Sound Of Burning Letters", the new album's piano track. Anyway with new releases means new artwork oh yeah!

This is one of a series of illustrations I've been working on for the past few weeks. This will feature as the sampler's sleeve art. There are many pretentious ideas i could point out but for the sake of not boring you fuckers to death I won't unless you ask about it.

"The Beat That My Heart Skipped" was my last featured post so I don't need to go into great depth about that. But "The Sound Of Burning Letters" is a song not heard at any shows. This is a song I wrote on a cold evening in flat. My Roland electric piano really didn't do the tone of the song any justice so it was hard to really picture the full scope of the piece. It wasn't until I recorded the song with Dave out at his house in Inverurie. There he has an early 20th century antique of an upright piano. We set up mics all around the piano, inside left and right, at the pedals and a couple of mics to the left and right of the room. This gave us options to blend the close mic sound with the natural sound you get from miking a room. I gave Dave a few tracks to listen too as to my ideal piano sound and with a mix of revebs and EQs he's really hit the mark in my eyes.

Here are the Lyrics before the song has been committed to the album, enjoy.

"The Sound Of Burning Letters"

Every night I sleep to the sound of burning letters
The sign of the life I've lost
What can I take before things are getting better?
And how much of myself will it cost?

And now the curtains are falling
And the clouds are forming

Every morning I wake to the sound of dying retrospect
One more attempt at a fresh debut
Trying to keep whats left of my self respect
I don't need these pills like all the cowards do

And now the curtains are falling
And the clouds are forming

The Beat That My Heart Skipped

For the small group of followers we have that attend Katerwaul shows, this is the song they most talk to me about. For a large percentage of the people seeing us for the first time at these shows a small number of those come to me and ask me about this song. So i think that it is safe to assume that this song is regarded as one of our most popular tunes.

I think its mostly because of the 4 minute massive wall of sound followed by the acapella part performed by every member of the band. Suddenly now we've forced you to listen to the words, simply because there is nothing else there. Acapella rounds such as the one we've employed in this song are not often used in modern music, a sad fact seeing as its one of the oldest musical forms. I can't say given the subject matter of the song that we have not done it on purpose. I felt such a subject as the one we are tackling needed such musical subtlety. The message is more important than the music in this instance.

I don't want to go into great detail picking apart every metaphor and simile, but I will say that this song is about personal matters, a failing relationship, but coupling it with the contrasting end to that of the late Mark Speight and his partner Natasha Collins. No matter how bad things were for me it was nothing compared to the setting of a modern day Romeo and Juliet story, that one could argue is the story of Mark and Natasha. With all the media hype and rumours aside, it was Jeremy Burridge's (Mark's best friend and co-host of SMart) article "Mark and Me" that hit me. There's was a tragic love story that will forever be tainted by rumours and speculations and they will no longer be remembered for their careers or who they were. And Mark will be the forgotten inspiration to many children aspiring to enter the art world. Yes he was a cartoon funny-man but for me and many other people in their twenties he was a great inspiration leading to who we are today. You can laugh all you want at such an odd claim but I'm sticking by it.

So here are the lyrics as they are before being committed to the new album, enjoy.

" i find myself wearing the flames of our love
through a spirit of recklessness, for my love of violence
and i hide from your name
it burns my ears, the catalyst of everything
and my heart is shivering
and you were everything, everything
and you wear such infamy

the beat that my heart skipped
the beat that my heart skipped
the beat that my heart skipped
the beat that my heart skipped

and they found her in the bathtub all loaded with pills
he was hanging from the rafters at the bottom of the hill
and the noose it didn't kill him he died of a broken heart
this is how they'll be remembered and not for their love nor their art
and now its time to breathe

so what now of the children in this trivial end?
keep the lies from their mouths, from their hearts
so what now of the children in this trivial end?
shut the lies from their mouth, from their hearts"

thanks for reading, feel free to sing along at our next show

you can read "Mark & Me" by Jeremy Burridge here http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2008/apr/18/bbc.television