Tuesday 29 April 2008

A Hardy salmon fly dresser

It was a nice surprise the other day when somebody got in touch, asking for Ken's address. Ken ties, (or rather he 'dresses' to use his correct terminology), salmon flies. Ken ties (or dresses rather) them without a vice too, just as he was taught back at Hardy Brothers 50 years earlier. I've noticed a few people commenting on this on other websites, so people do seem to notice this, even from just watching our trailer online. 

Anyway, a viewer called us up at Trufflepig to get Ken's address as they wanted him to make him some salmon flies. I don't know why but I felt quite proud about this. Ken was made redundant from Hardy's quite a few years back when they closed their fly shop down, something was lost at that moment. All these years later to be able to point some new orders in Ken's direction is very rewarding.

The Lost World of Mr Hardy - trailer

The story of a much loved family fishing tackle firm and the struggle for craftsmanship in our modern world.

Tuesday 15 April 2008

New Reviews

When we set out to make our film we kind of knew what we were up against. Both of us are experienced filmmakers and know that in reality, films take longer than first thought. But if you believe in the film it's worth doing properly, plus they're organic, they grow as you make new discoveries (yes, they are our babies! In fact sometimes I even think The Lost World of Mr Hardy has a mind of its own). 

The making the film is one thing but the whole selling and marketing was entirely new to us though. We're quite novel in that we are doing it all ourselves. I guess we are realising that in one sense that bit is exactly the same as making films too; it takes longer than you think, the summit of the hill always seems a just a little beyond the 'final' slope, the one you're now climbing.

And so that brings us to getting the film reviewed. It takes a little while to get the ball rolling but what's also new is to now have to step outside of our cosy world. By making our own film we've unwittingly built a comfort zone around it, after all we had no telly or film execs to tell us what to edit in or out. So imagine the horror when we realised one day our film has to get up and walk all by itself. The poor little bleeder had to walk to school on his first day and all alone. And all those critics are out there, and they're just waiting to pounce...

So we've been bracing ourselves for the ambush, awaiting the cruel mauling. Thing is it hasn't come yet, the reviews are starting to happen and they seem to well...purr. Pure Piscator published one just today. Malcolm Cullen the reviewer did a tremendous job and delivered a great in-depth tome on the film and Hardy's as its subject matter. What is really great too is that for the first time ever we can begin to see the film through other peoples eyes and low and behold they don't find our little critter too ugly at all.

Who knows, maybe I'm speaking out of turn though, as in the next few days reviews come out in 'Trout & Salmon' and in 'Fly Fishing & Fly Tying' magazines. Let's see what they have to say.