19 June 2021

Touch

This is such a life affirming short film that it may well make you cry (if you are as big and as soft as I am it is a guarantee). It shows, through a series of tiny vignettes, the relationship between two people from their original introduction until – well, watch it and find out. At just over two minutes no one can accuse you of wasting your time, even if you are work. OK, possibly if you are at work but if you share it with your boss then you should be fine. Don’t send me a bill if you get fired, though.

Touch is directed and edited by Nimer Rashed and produced by Lindsay Fraser who also appears in the short as Katie. He was the Royal Court Theatre’s filmmaker-in-residence in 2012 (if you live outside of the UK that’s quite prestigious). He also writes plays and theater scripts.

7 July 2012

The Walking Dead - The Marriage Proposal


This is awesome – and I rarely use that word about anything to do with weddings. I have heard that people go to some lengths to propose to their sweetheart but making your own zombie movie? That’s a new one on me! The story here is that Philadelphia based director and photographer Free The Still (real name Phillip Yi) was asked by his friend Steve to help film and document his engagement to his girlfriend Hanna.

Simple enough – but this is what then became of that simple request!  As Hanna is the biggest fan of The Walking Dead ever, it wasn’t long before they came up with an idea – a very, very cool idea. A young man wakes up one morning to discover that the world has changed forever. He resolves to find his loved one, risking life and limb in the zombie-infested suburbs to do so...

The movie was shot with the help of a number of friends as zombie extras and the scene was then set for the restaurant proposal. The groom to be placed a tablet computer under the nose of his girl-friend and played his proposal movie. As Steve (bravely allowing it to be filmed: what if she had said no?) builds up to the proposal you can see Hanna’s reactions in the bottom right corner of the screen.

Not only that we get to see the actual post-movie proposal (I won’t say whether she consented; you have to watch it to find out). Plus, there is a little bit of zombie footage you just know the cast would not have been able to resist. Please note. Anyone thinking about proposing to me should know that two of my favorite movies are Mary Poppins and Gladiator. See what you can do with them, eh?

Oh and this is what Steve Yeun (who plays Glenn in The Walking Dead) had to say to the happy couple when he heard about The Marriage Proposal.