Popcorn!

Too Much Too Soon premiered this morning at the Apollo Piccadilly Circus, along with a selection of other 48 hour competition entries, to muted applause and nervous laughter. I was kind of dreading this but actually it felt OK. It looked slightly better - on a full-size cinema screen - than I'd expected.

We weren't shortlisted, so I'll try and get the film onto YouTube in the near future. We were rushed for time so entered with a fairly minimal soundtrack - I may try and put together a slightly improved version if I get the chance too.

I enjoyed the selection of other entries I saw, including a few of the shortlisted films. General trends this year: lots of teleport effects, use of Canary Wharf or the Jubilee Line as substitutes for the future (we are guilty of these too), plenty of zombies, and everyone seemed to be using the same Now Thats What I Call Discordant Sound Effects CD. Quality varied but several films were extremely well produced, including a few with awesome soundtracks - overall the standard was higher than last year.

I know at least one other team was also ejected from Canary Wharf and there may be more - Wharf security probably fought a weekend-long running battle against amateur filmmakers. Also, we were pretty tired by the end but the two secret agents who spent the entire weekend running up and down the Westminster Station escalators must have been fairly knackered.

Watch out for the shortlist on the Sci-Fi channel, then all the films on the festival website in a month or so. There were some really funny entries - several of my favourites weren't shortlisted either. I'll post links to them when I can, for now I'll just say watch out for string and kettles.