Edinburgh Film Festival: Day Two

So, 'Blood Car' was good - full-on trashy (in the best way) low-budget fun, with some great comedy, a few really close-to-the-bone transgressive moments and strong performances. There was even a real-honest-to-God audience member fainting moment, after a particular moment of extreme close-up bloodletting - always good for a film festival anecdote. The writer/director of the film, Alex Orr was there and did a very entertaining Q and A, during which, in response to the question 'What do you plan to do next?', he pitched an idea doing about a version of Jaws with a giant pelican. And what could be bad about that?

This afternoon, I ended up being on a panel discussion with Alex - and Lizzie Francke (now at the UKFC, but previously an Executive Producer on 'Mum & Dad' and a massive horror geek (in the best way)), and journalist Claudia Andrei. The discussion was chaired by Muriel Gray, who is another self-confessed horror geek. We had quite a good crowd for the discussion, which ranged from the political dimension of horror, why low-budget is best and how transgressive you should be as a horror filmmaker (answer: very), with only a brief diversion into talking about screwing kittens (and I've still no real idea how we got into that)(but I'm now bound to get some more really odd search result hits).

Tonight we're going to see another horror film, 'Spike', followed by a party. We've also been joined by a few members of the cast in preparation for the premiere tomorrow night, as well as Gareth, Chris and John, all of whom have made it up in support - meaning that tomorrow night is going to feel a bit like one of our regular horror nights - except in a really massive and crowded living-room...