Almost Alone – a Newforge Halloween Production

Happy (belated) Halloween! I’ve been a bit busy…

The past week was action packed, and included the released of “Almost Alone”, the 2025 Newforge Studios Halloween film. I talked about making the film in my last post. This year was very organised (perhaps not quite as ruthlessly efficient as last year, but close) with only two narrow windows for shooting thanks to changeable weather, lighting, and working around school times. Thankfully our star was very flexible and willing to adapt to the shooting schedule. I have embedded a link to the film on YouTube below if you haven’t seen it yet.

One of these days I am going to organise a screening including films dredged up from the distant past. We’ve come a long way since “The Asylum” and its predecessors. For instance, we usually have a script these days which wasn’t always a given. Normally the film involved packing a bag with a camera and microphone and heading out into a field or to an empty house. This resulted in an almost un-editable mess, but we usually made it work. Dad on the camera and sound (or friends and family), and I would inevitably be tasked with producing the finished product.

I learned a lot by exploring myself, but I really had to step up my game when I collaborated with Stephen Riley on a project for the Ulster Aviation Society. Although this was an amateur production, it was amateur in name only. Stephen was a retired TV producer and investigative journalist by trade. Gone were the days of literal “field operations”, replaced by meticulously organised folders of video clips, scripts, ideas for opening sequences, voice over, precise timings. There was no “good enough”. It had to be just right, and that’s exactly what I needed to hone my editing skills. Tiny adjustments here and there so the clips appeared to flow without impediment. Editing with the blink of an eye, adapted from Walter Murch. It was tedious at times and progress was slow, but we managed to bring the whole thing together.

The greatest reward was the experience of working on a more formal project, and the expectations that it would be shown to a wider audience than our immediate family. Since then filmmaking has been a more peripheral part of my life, but the annual Halloween film remains a tradition not lightly broken. Even Gemini has something to say about it (although almost everything about it is inaccurate…)

I wasn’t aware I held a live show in Guildford, but I’m glad it was well received

The most recent film was not Barrel Aged, but that is at least the title of last year’s film. And the podcast does not exist outside the confines of my head, but don’t tempt me.

We’ve come quite a long way, and it has been a lot of fun. The filming remains the most stressful part of the process but it’s all worthwhile when you see it come together in the edit. We continue as we began. Modestly. Sporadically. And often with very little idea of what comes next. Most importantly, we make it work.

And with that, I’ll leave you with “The Asylum” and the running order of Halloween films to date.