A rare blog post that isn’t solely about guitars. Here is a newly released short film by a very talented fellow Bedford-based creator called Tristan Nelson. It’s a powerful film about parental love. The overall style and feel of the film, including the score which I love, feels extremely refreshing; watching it is like reading a good poem, it feels like balm for the brain.

Having for a few years felt tired of blockbusters and Netflix series that I would previously binge like empty calories, I eventually discovered the filmmakers Kurosawa and Tarkovsky, who were more thought provoking and somehow left more to the imagination. In this film, Bakemono, much about a father and son’s relationship is left unsaid. It’s definitely sad and and the main character relatable. I’d absolutely recommend watching it.

A few years back, I actually made a guitar for the creator of this film. I had been building guitars several years at this point but only just starting to build guitars that I was really happy with. With this guitar, everything seemed to come together and it was perhaps the first time I experienced the great sense of pride in creating a guitar I had no reservations about.

A great experience but also quite confusing, as the guitar was a steel-string and my interest lay solely in classicals and flamencos. I had toiled for years to learn to build the finest classical guitars, only for my work to culminate in this great steel string guitar! I think now that I was just a lot more critical regarding my classical and flamenco guitars. I cared more about them, and knew more about what I want to achieve. Happily, since that time, I have gone on to build many classical and flamenco guitars where I’ve gotten that great feeling of pride of a job masterfully done, and these days it comes with every guitar.

Back to Tristan, he also created a great short film called Moments about four years ago which I recommend too. You can find his work on his website: lovecabinfilms.co.uk