Intel Digital Home Film Competition

Cover Story by Jamie Scholes

This film was made by a talented young chap by the name of Jamie Scholes. Jamie just graduated from drama school, has acting experience, as well as working in art and production. We grabbed some time with Jamie to find out about what he thought of the competition.


Explain what your film is about, and where you got the idea from?
Basically, Cover Story is about a guy who tells a few 'white lies' to impress a girl on a date, but she calls his bluff and asks to see proof. With the help of his neighbour, his wits and his PC, he frantically tries to produce the evidence for his outrageous lies. It's a short story about tall tales. The idea just popped into my head when I heard about the competition. I work a lot as an Art Director, so I'm always using my PC to create props and to resource materials, so I guess it came from that.


How did you bring that idea to fruition?
The first draft of the script was fairly straightforward and I just had the guy printing things out and playing musicon his PC to impress this girl. However, when the EPC arrived and I saw what it could do (explained slowly and kindly to me by Intel), I knew I had to do a major rewrite of the script. The film suddenly became far more interesting and complex. The potential for dramatic irony and humour doubled when I realised the characters could be in different rooms, watching the same thing on different screens, thanks to the technology inside the machine.

When I'd nailed the script, I storyboarded the whole film, so that the filming could be as accurate and efficient as possible.


The rewrite didn't change the opening and I really wanted to start turning over, so I shot the 'date' scene in a restaurant very early on - but it was a disaster! The restaurant was supposed to be empty, but for some reason a busload of people with terrible colds decided to eat there that night. The microphone was very sensitive and in the edit it sounded like we'd filmed inside Jabba-the-Hutt's lungs. I had to re-shoot the scene at a friend's flat, and so had to rework the storyboards, being very careful with the angles so we could pass the room off as a restaurant. I think it worked, though.

The hardest moments for me were when I was acting in a scene (I play the main character, Daniel). The crew on this film was, well, me! To keep your eye on the script, the sound, the shot itself, the other actor and your own performance at the same time is quite a challenge.


What equipment are you using to shoot and cut the film?
I shot the film on a Sony PD150 - a nifty little DV camera. The film was cut entirely on the EPC (Phillips Media Center) loaned to me by Intel for the competition. The computer itself was so much more powerful and accesible than my current home system, it just made sense to use it while I had it. I ran it through my 24" TV and a normal monitor, so I had a separate desktop and viewing screen - which was great. Besides, editing in pyjamas with a wireless keyboard from your sofa at four in the morning is amongst the more civilised ways to cut a film, I think!


How do you expect Intel's Digital Home work to affect you personally in the future?
For the few weeks I had the EPC, my house was totally wired up. I loved it. It's definitely the way forward for home entertainment, and I'll get one as soon as I can.

(At the wrap-party for the film, I had the EPC running through a digital projector on the wall, playing music and visualisations. I plugged the memory cards from my mobile phone and digital camera into the EPC and brought photos up, screened completed scenes from the film, viewed websites and then a DVD movie all up on the wall! It's a seriously cool piece of kit.)

Bringing together all the components and facilities scattered around my house into one compatible, user-friendly unit makes it so much easier for people like me to produce new work, and to get it out there for others to see.

As a film maker, what is important to you in terms of technology: power, ease of use, flexibility, or something else?
The power of a machine is always important, unless you have the time to wait for it to catch up - which I rarely do. Compatibility is often very important to me, as I sometimes work with lots of different media programmes and hardware. The EPC's twenty or so ports and drives really made things easy for me on the film. At one point I had an external hard-drive, a digital camera, a monitor, a printer and two memory sticks plugged into it and it didn't even flinch. That was really handy for someone like me.

The film

Cover Story was my personal favourite from the night. What can I say - I like humour and I absolutely loved the chain-smoking, dressing-gown-wearing best mate more than anything else. Jamie puts in a good performance personally and I can relate to the little white lies perhaps a little more than I should admit. Definitely worth the download.

Cover Story by Jamie Scholes

Duration: 8 minutes
Filesize: 45.7MB
Codec: Xvid

Download locations

bit-tech.net Server #1