The Bonney & Klein Blog

79 Degrees North – documentary takes shape

alex — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 14:23:20 +0000

Things are really getting into shape for the edit of our arctic documentary. It’s been a few months since the shoot in Svalbard, northern Norway and the follow up in Bristol.

Over the course of a couple of monthes we followed a team of biogeography scientists from the world renowned Bristol University, and shot footage as they prepared for and eventually went out for their reserach trip to the scientific community in Ny-Alesund (the world’s most northerly community).

The documentary is proving to be a fascinating and intimate look at the workings of scientists in a stunning Arctic environment, and the lengths that they have to go to aquire knowledge that benefits us all.

We’ll be finishing the edit over the next couple of months and will post some footage as the edit develops – so keep an eye on on this space.

‘Ginger’ – Post No. 1 – A guest post by Nick Bagnall

Anthony — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 20:18:32 +0000

Apart from the photos i feel flattered that i am finally being allowed to play on film (Nick is a theatre director), I’m now itching to get going.

I have been looking at loads of Martin Parrs’ photos and Egon Schiele self portraits and see Ginger in the same tone as some of those beautifully run-down overtly colourful and garish tones. A run down sea side town where faces are forced into smiles.

I just cant wait to get going and honing the script and wearing a North face duck coated quilt coat and do loads of shouting for the perfect setting.

Script meeting on Thursday and then hoping to shoot a little tester in feb.

Gonna be great working with Bonney and Klein and thanks for letting me loose on this brilliantly exciting project.

Apart from the photos I feel flattered that I am finally being allowed to play on film (Nick is a theatre director - see post below), and I’m now itching to get going.

I just can’t wait to get going and honing the script and wearing a North face duck coated quilt coat and do loads of shouting for the perfect setting.

Script meeting on Thursday and then hoping to shoot a little tester in feb.

Gonna be great working with Bonney and Klein and thanks for letting me loose on this brilliantly exciting project.

Introducing the very talented Mr Bagnall.

Anthony — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 11:30:51 +0000

We’re delighted to announce that we are going to be working with the very talented (and supremely versatile - as evidenced by attached pics) Nick Bagnall. Nick’s the real deal…a theatre director (and actor) with a list of successful and critically acclaimed plays to his name.

Most recently, he directed the wonderful Imelda Staunton and Matthew Horne (that’s Gavin in Gavin and Stacey) in Entertaining Mr Sloane at Trafalgar Studios in the West End. The play was a huge success and has put Nick right up there with the most sought-after young directors in the country (if you don’t want to take our word for it, check out the Guardian review here).

Happily for us, Nick is looking for new challenges as well, and has set his sights on directing for film now. We’ve got a great short film script in place (by the talented up-and-coming writer Matthew Hartley), and we are currently in pre-production, with shooting looking likely for the summer of 2010.

We’re really excited to be working with Nick. Its a different challenge for us as well, as we are used to directing and we’ll be working in a purely producing capacity on this one. As part of the deal (aside from having dodgy pictures of him appear on our blog), he’ll be guest-writing articles for us. The first one is going to be on the challenges of moving from the theatre to film…look out for it.

Maybe we should introduce ourselves…

Anthony — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 22:21:36 +0000

OK, so this isn’t our first website. We created one when we launched back in June 2007. And then we were really too busy shooting things to ever update it. That was good in a way, as it meant we were growing as a business. But it also meant that everything was pretty quickly out-of-date. And then everything was really out-of-date. And then it just got silly. So this time, we’re updating content all the time, keeping our website fresh, and challenging ourselves to put new, interesting content online all the time. In fact, we’re going to put up a video of the month, every month, on our home page. But that’s all plans for the future. We should start at the beginning, and for those who don’t know us, we really should introduce ourselves.

Alex Bonney – Director, Camera operator, occasional sound recordist. Creative Director and Founder. Kit room manager. Guru on video camera technology. IT-phobic. Proud owner of a first generation Ipod (still in decent condition), and first-gen iPhone. Hates Word and will not use Excel. Award-winning short film-maker.

Anthony Klein – Director, camera operator, gaffer. Creative Director and Founder. IT manager, and chief financial officer. Has never prepared a VAT return with more than a day to spare. Owns and operates a 2006 Aprilia Mojito retro-styled scooter (except in the winter). Directed his first play on the London fringe in 2006.

We’ve got some more people coming on board soon, and we’ll introduce them when they officially start. Maybe we’ll even get them to do a silly photo shoot too.

We’re live!

Anthony — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 16:05:24 +0000

Finally, after what has seemed like a very long time, our new website has gone live. We’re not quite there yet, our community page isn’t ready, and there are lots of little bugs we’re still discovering, but we’re happy to say we have something we’re proud of now living at www.bonneyandklein.com

We decided to use ‘the power of the web’ to make our website work. If you have a look around you’ll see that ‘The Films’ links to our Vimeo page, ‘Community’ goes to our Facebook page (not live just yet), ’About us’ is Wikipedia (or will be), ‘Photos’ are Flickr, etc, etc. But you always stay within the Bonney and Klein website. Nifty? We think so. Will it work? We’ll find out pretty soon.

The images on the banner are from the documentary we shot in the Arctic this summer.

Oh, and that little Skype icon on the banner at the top of this page is ‘alive’. If its green, it means we’re there. And you can Skype us by clicking on it. If its grey, it means we’re on set shooting something. Or sleeping. Go on, try it.

We hope you like our website then, and we hope you like our work.