Road to Wembley #3

One of the ties which caught my eye for this Third Round Qualifying in the Women's FA Cup was FAWNL Division One North side York City Ladies vs Hull United AFC Women. Being born in York, I have a bit of a soft spot for any York side and having watched Hull United win 4-1 earlier this season playing in the North East Women's Regional League (one tier below York), I thought this could be an interesting match and maybe even a potential 'giant killing'. That's why the FA Cup is the best competition in football!

The game was played at the University of York Athletics Stadium, a style of ground which I always find fairly photogenic (though I know of people who moan about such set ups). I was kindly authorised pitchside access for this one, so my FA Cup photo project journeys on...

Unfortunately for Hull United, this was not the giant killing they were hoping for and was in fact pretty much a one sided affair. Though thanks to Hull's defence coupled with their keeper pulling off some fantastic saves, they kept the scoreline down to a respectable 3-0. York will face FC United of Manchester in the First Round Proper, with ties for that round taking place on Sunday 12th November- get that date in your diaries!

Below are a few photos from the game, and as usual, you can view the full set on my Flickr HERE. You can see the previous Women's FA Cup posts on the #RoadToWembley tag in the sidebar.

My 150th!

I know I’ve not written on here about tenpin bowling for a while (throwback to this this very nerdy post from December 2019 when I last blogged about it), but, I am very much still bowling. Just a little recap for any new readers to this blog who might be thinking ‘what is she on about now?!’ OK, so I basically go round ‘ticking’ off bowling alleys: you know like train spotting, where if you see a certain train you write down it’s number etc etc, I pretty much do that with bowling alleys. But I do have to have played at least one game in it, to make it ‘count’ (three games is my preferred amount). Then I write it all down on my spreadsheet. I’ve been doing this since 2016. So, if I haven’t weirded you out too much, then grab your anoraks and read on…

When writing that aforementioned post, I used to be hitting around about 40 ‘new’ bowling alleys each year, but Covid slowed that number extremely significantly. As did several health problems I experienced over the last few years.

I went to only one (yes one) bowling alley in 2021 and a slight improvement in 2022 of eight. Towards the end of 2022, I felt bowling was something I could try and incorporate more regularly again and try to reach the heights of pre-pandemic where we were bowling almost once every week. 2023 has proven that to an extent, though before moving to Sheffield half way through the year, our options of ‘new’ bowling alleys were few and far between due to having ticked off all in the North West and beyond. Moving more easterly, meant there was a fresh influx of lanes to go at, with 3 in Sheffield itself (all of which we bowled at in the first month or so). At time of writing, I’m currently at 18 this year- getting to 20 would be nice and 25 would be even nicer-er! Let’s see…

But also of note and what I really wanted to say in this post, was that I reached my landmark 150th! The bowling alley was Pavilion Bowl, Clacton-on-Sea. It was a 12 lane independent establishment, with ‘real’ pins (as opposed to the rapidly growing pins on strings phenomenon). The lanes were in excellent condition and get this- there was even a free jukebox! Shame we only realised towards the end though, but still had time for three songs: ‘We Didn’t Start the Fire’- Billy Joel, ‘Subterranean Homesick Blues’- Bob Dylan and ‘Eyes Closed’- Ed Sheeran. Well at least we enjoyed ourselves! It was actually a really good choice for this landmark number and would highly recommend heading to this bowling alley- and that’s not just because of the jukebox!

Hopefully I won’t leave it so long before writing about bowling on here again...

Matlock Town FC

I've had a couple of weeks off photographing football- just by circumstance and lack of planning/ plans falling through. But last weekend I was determined to get back out there and continue my aim of regular football photography this season. The weather was meant to play nice and there were a fair few options as that's the way the fixtures fell. One which really caught my eye though was Matlock Town FC vs Bedford in the FA Trophy. The Proctor Cars Stadium is one I've been wanting to visit/ photograph for some time, so why not now?! Thankfully the club granted me permission for pitchside access and a day to Matlock ensued...

I can't say the game was the most exciting, evidenced with the highlight being the burst pipe leaking water onto the pitch causing the game to halt whilst players and various club-persons pitched in to sweep it up. But the ground did not disappoint and the club was also super friendly and welcoming. The game ended 1-0 to the hosts, who scored a late goal to confirm their place in the next round of the trophy.

You can view the full set HERE and as usual, I'll put a few below.

Road to Wembley #2

I wasn't going to post about this one, because I had originally set out to photograph a game from each round of the Women's FA Cup. See images from the first round here. Unfortunately my plan fell through and it was then too late to try and rearrange pitchside access with another club. Though on the day, we thought we should still go to a game anyway from the competition because it's the best cup in football (and yes, I do say that as fact)! It was a pretty grim day weather wise, so decided to stay fairly local, choosing Chapman Fields as our destination for Kiveton Park Ladies vs SJR Worksop Women.

To be honest my expectations were quite low on the lead up and didn't think there would be much of an atmosphere or anything. But, how wrong I was: 273 people were in attendance for this Second Qualifying Round and the atmosphere was genuinely buzzing! The club has definitely got something good going on and if I was the type of person to visit a club more than once, I would 100% return. They were also issuing a programme, if you're into that sort of thing!

The game was really competitive, with both sides battling hard until the end. Unfortunately the hosts missed a couple of chances in the second half, which ended up putting them on the back foot and eventually losing 1-3 to the visitors. Hopefully next round (22nd October- for all those interested) I'll be back out with my proper camera, though here's a couple of phone pictures for proof of existence!

‘Bear’ One Year On/ WINNING AN AWARD!

In September last year, I completed my most ambitious solo project to date: my eleven minute short film ‘Bear’, which I wrote, directed, animated and I guess produced (by default) as well. To be brutally honest, it hasn’t had the most successful festival run thus far (though still waiting to hear back from a few), which kind of went against my hopes and expectations for the film- I thought it might have done a little better on that side of things. That’s not to say it hasn’t had any success- it has been selected for several screenings, all of which have had extremely positive feedback.

And to my surprise at the films' most recent outing, it won the ‘Northern Spirit’ award at The Spirit of Independence Film Festival (in a packed out screening)! This was a complete surprise to me and I’m so honoured that the Screen Yorkshire judges selected ‘Bear’ to win the prize. The films it was playing alongside were all absolutely fantastic, so to win felt even more special. And also to have an animated film picked as the winner amongst live action films was quite something. Animation is often seen as something ‘lesser’ than live action and often not taken as seriously, or just as a format exclusive to children’s media. I mean you only need to look as far as the Academy Awards as evidence…

Not embarrassing at all! Photo credit Jacob Flannery.

I feel winning this award has given me a fair amount of well needed validation in the ‘industry’. I feel my route to the ‘industry’ was slow and meandering, with not a lot of connections and not attending any of the typical universities (i.e. CSM, NFTS, RCA) which often get you a leg up in this field. I have really just done my own thing, kept plugging away and it feels like everything I have been doing to this point is finally paying off. And in my opinion, deservedly so. It makes me want to keep chasing my dreams of becoming a feature film director and has given me the extra bit of motivation to do so. More on that towards the end of this post…

I hadn’t actually watched ‘Bear’ since it’s Manchester screening prior to this in December 2022, because often when finishing a project, I need time away from it to really let what I’ve created sink in and be able to form a realistic opinion on my work. Something I find hard to do so close after finishing a project- if I’m honest I usually dislike it and can only see the negatives/ mistakes and my ability to see the film as a whole is often distorted.

The Saturday morning of the festival I was a little apprehensive about seeing my film again on a big screen with a good sound system. For some reason, I had (wrongly) built up an image in my head that the film was really ‘bad’ (probably because of the amount of festival rejections). Since my completion of the film, I feel I have grown as both a filmmaker and a person and I wasn’t sure if it would really represent me very well. But maybe some of that growth was down to having made this film anyway. Looking back, it was an extremely ambitious project, though I do feel I pulled it off- or at least to a certain extent. When it was playing at SOIFF, I was actually thinking ‘you know what, this is actually quite alright’ and there are some parts of it which I am especially proud of. I’ll go through a few of those now:

Firstly, the fact that I wrote and directed such an ambitious project, with no outside forces like funding etc to keep me going. It wasn’t a totally smooth ride either and there were bumps along the way, with my metal health and other things which kept it from not going as smoothly. Though I persisted and finished it. Which, we all know, is a hard thing to do. Abandoning projects midway is so common in creative people (myself included).

Secondly, I’m really impressed with the animation and a few techniques I used (no spoilers, sorry)! I really liked how I kept it on the experimental side and true to my style/ background, whilst keeping a cohesive look and feel throughout, with focus on story. I always think, if this is what I can do alone, then what I could produce with a team would be amazing!

As a concept piece, I also found myself impressed. I say ‘concept piece’, because the film was made to showcase who I am as a filmmaker/ director, and illustrate what I can make on an extremely limited budget with time constraints. It definitely shows the type of film I want to be making in the future, both thematically and stylistically. But with a larger team and a budget behind I could take things much further. One of my goals for this film was to have it as a so called ‘calling card’ with hope of making a feature film next. But because of it’s lack of festival run, I felt I hadn’t really achieved this or I would need to make another, 'better' short next year. Though on this most recent viewing of the film, I felt this was actually achieved and it’s something I think I can show to someone (a higher up) and say ‘I want to make this kind of thing, but bigger and better’!

Yes, there are many mistakes too and a lot I feel I have learnt from it which I can take in to my next project. One, is the sound design- it wasn’t as bad as I imagined or had built up in my head, but I know it could be improved with the right people behind it. I also feel the edit could have been a lot tighter and less ‘baggy’. Though at the time I felt all of it was needed. Yes, I could potentially do a recut now and rebuild the sound design, but there would be little point in doing that as I’ll never move on to my next project if I keep striving for an unattainable ‘perfection’ in this project. So leave it, learn from it and go again!

…So what next?

I’ve a few months left on my current work contract, but after that, I still haven’t given up on the idea that I would like to make a feature film. Over the last few months in my free time I’ve been slowly developing my idea and exploring what I want to make. So once this contract is up, I think I’m going to go full force into writing the treatment for it and aim to attach a producer in order to get BFI development funding to aid me to write the script. That’s pretty much the plan! Though because it’s such a big challenge (and therefore quite scary), I sometimes feel that maybe I’ll make another short instead as it’s more attainable etc and feels ‘safer’. But if I ask myself what I truly want to do in life, to make a feature film has always been one of my goals. So yeah, there’s never going to be the right or ‘perfect’ time to do it- so I should just go for it.

I would like to make another short alongside developing the feature (as I do have a lot of ideas for those too), but probably a music video, because it’s a been a while (2016) since my last one and I find it such a fun format to work in. I like the idea of creating something which is more heavy on the visuals than narrative (yes I’m aware narrative music videos do exist!), whilst working on my feature which will be narrative based.