|
WINNER! 2008 BAFTA Cambridge Film Festival 'Big Pitch' competition for BLACK ICE
WINNER! 2008 IceWhole Quarterly Award 'Best Sound' for LOVE YOU, JOSEFF HUGHES.
WINNER! 2008 IceWhole January Award 'Best short' for LOVE YOU, JOSEFF HUGHES.
WINNER! 2006 NPA (New Producer Allliance) Jury Prize, Best Short film, LOVE YOU, JOSEFF HUGHES
WINNER! 2006 NPA (New Producer Alliance) Audience Prize, Best Short film LOVE YOU, JOSEFF HUGHES
WINNER! 2006 BOSTON INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL Short Film Prize 2006, LOVE YOU, JOSEFF HUGHES
WINNER! 2005 CANNES FILM FESTIVAL 24 hour challenge, SERIAL FILMMAKERS
NOMINATED 2006 BAFTA CYMRU (Wales) Best Short film LOVE YOU, JOSEFF HUGHES
FESTIVAL APPEARANCES: Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Los Angeles, Boston, Rhode island, Calgary, Palm Springs, Cannes, Leeds, Cardiff, East End, London and more...
|
|
|
GUARDIAN INTERVIEW, CANNES 2007 |
|
|
|
...On the walk home from the Coen brothers' premiere we pass an impromptu screening in the street. A transit van has pulled to the kerb and is projecting a highlights show for a smattering of late-night revellers. It transpires that this is the Rogue Runner, the brainchild of British director Dan Hartley. His customised vehicle boasts a 1.5-metre retractable screen, a speaker system, an editing suite and an interview room. It has a sink, a stove and a coffee machine. It is, as their blurb would have it, the world's smallest film studio - in the back of a van.
Hartley works with a presenter, Kylie, and a cameraman, Adam. They shoot vox pops and featurettes during the day, edit them in the evening and screen them at midnight along the Croisette, wherever they can find a parking spot. Their subject matter is the festival flotsam, the blaggers and wannabes and motor-mouthed pitchers still hunting a break. "It's the underside of Cannes in a way," says Adam. We keep running into one old British woman, a Joan Collins lookalike, covered in glitter. She walks along the Croisette holding up a sign that says, 'I'm ready for my close-up - anybody'."
It's tempting to view the Rogue Runner as a blagging operation itself, although Hartley prefers to describe his team as "wingers". Both Kylie and Adam are sporting fake press passes (the photos look nothing like them) and they have infiltrated the event guerrilla-style, shooting on the run and screening for the public. Hartley points out that the rise in internet TV has freed up the medium. "I think I can do same job as a regular broadcaster," he says. "But we can produce something livelier, because we're not answerable to anyone." No one, that is, except the gendarmes who constantly move them on. |
|
|
SCREEN INTERNATIONAL FEATURE, CANNES 2007 |
|
|
|
...Our man-with-a-van friends are back in town. The UK's RogueRunner Films bring their Ford Transit back to Cannes for the second year, with even more ambition. This year, director Dan Hartley (who has been the floor editor on the 'Harry Potter' films) and crew have converted the van into a full, mobile film studio. The RogueRunner gang is shooting footage by day, editing in the evenings and showing a 20-minute program at midnight near the Petit-Majestic. Short-film screenings follow. 'It's news pertinent to the day and also current party into, like a blagger's guide,' Hartleys says of the show.
|
|
 'Few short films have depth enough to move those watching them to tears. This is one of the exceptions. Dan Hartley's I LOVE YOU JOSEFF HUGHES takes us on an engaging journey of childhood exploration through the joyous angst of first love and on through the pain and anguish of first love lost. It is beautifully photographed on 35mm in black and white and not a single lottery grant in sight, (though he did have many of the Harry Potter crew helping him out!) The film also delivers stunning debut performances from Steffan Donnelly and Sioned Eleri Jones. Little wonder that it not only won its New Producers' Alliance monthly shorts competition slot, but went on to take both the jury and audience prizes at the NPA Short Film Awards."
There's more to come, both for this film and for director Dan Hartley, whose infamous Rogue Runner blog has already launched him into the stratosphere of film legend. Looks like he should soon be heading into much deeper space....
To read the full interview Click Here |
|
 Who gets the first cut on a Harry Potter film these days? Thanks to desktop editing many scenes are now roughly edited on set - and in some cases effects and music added - so that the director can tell if a sequence is working before progressing.
Meet Dan Hartley, the UK's first 'Floor Editor', who got into the film industry by walking onto set, knocking on a 2nd AD's trailer and asking for a job (within a fortnight he was driving Ewan, Ray and Bob around Soho). He's also author of the Rogue Runner gonzo blog (occasionally seen on Netribution) and director of the acclaimed short film Love You Joseff Hughes, currently screening online and at Cannes in a mini competition. For anyone looking for proof that you don't need to go to film school to make it in the industry, Dan provides hope a plenty that commitment and enthusiasm will win out and that you can progress from extra to runner to key player on a blockbuster and back to short filmmaker. Either that or he's the king of the blaggers.
For the full article Click Here |
|
 'Proving simple is effective comes this delicately told love story with a twist.
Anna (Sioned Jones) and Joseff (Steffan Donnelly) are young pals. They play tag and other childhood games but there is a deeper resonance to their relationship.
Director Dan Hartley, who has been busily cutting his teeth as a video operator on the Harry Potter films over the past few years, elicits wonderful performances from both Jones and Donnelly – let's hope we see an awful lot more of them in future.
Although ostensibly about children, writer Catrin Cooper’s screenplay has gossamer strands of philosophy shooting right through it, yet the children never seem out of their depth, with Hartley cleverly capturing the subtleties in their acting. There is something of the past about this film – think Tom’s Midnight Garden, not Grange Hill – as childhood fun and games gives way to something far more profound.
It’s hard enough for directors to catch the nuances of adult emotion on camera, but Hartley – helped by a lovely score from Tandis Jenhudson - goes one step further and captures them in the face of a child. There is more heart in this 10 minutes than in the full runtime of Harry Potter And The Philospher’s Stone.'
To visit their website Click Here |
|
|
AWARDS & PRESS 
Over the past few years we've now been mentioned in several print magazines which have either detailed our endeavours or successes. Here are some of the things they've said.