About

My name is Joshua Carter, sometimes known as Ratboy, and I’m a creative individual in the art of film making. I like to make many kinds of films and I have experimented in all sorts of forms and parts of film making, from sound mixing to flash animations to CGI. However, Stop motion films with lego have always interested me hence the large amount of 'brickfilms' that I've made.

I showcase all my videos and films on my  main YouTube Channel. I also upload random, personal videos on another channel, which I like to call my 'Casual Channel'.

I have a blog where I post news, along with Facebook, Twitter and Flickr.

Any questions or anything else, don't hesitate to email me at joshua@ratboyproductions.com

History

At a very young age me and my brother Luke have always wanted to make films. We started making short, silly, home movies from when I was about 8 with an old Hi8 camera which were mostly about robberies and murders. I believe the first was in 2003, a news reporter (in our lounge) is attacked by monkeys. Now that was fun. We edited and added music to some of the films by using a VHS recorder. One great one was a cowboy film that we did with our cousins, me aged 9 doing an American accent = priceless. We also did a news report on the 31st December 2004, which exactly 6 years later, I edited together into a hilarious short in celebration - watch it here. These old films were funny and full of great memories, but us trying to make a serious movie was even funnier. After watching Lord of the Rings we tried making a film with sticks as swords and a pink, plastic bow and arrow set.

Luke was more into making music so we kind of went our separate ways. We still made films together every now and again, but I REALLY wanted to make good films. When the sequel of one of my favorite games from when I was a child, 'The Sims', came out in 2004, I was so excited that I was able to make films with it! With 'The Sims 2' I made music videos mostly, but I made a few little short movies using the voices of me and my cousins. Again they were silly and mostly about murder mysteries. They weren't very good at all, but it was a start. To this day, I'd like to make a really good film with the Sims 3.

Ever since Lord of the Rings I always wanted to do visual effects! The fact that you could make anything, any world and put it into your film. I got a freebie version of Bryce 4 and tried to make planes and stuff, but it was only good for landscapes. I tried out poser, but that was rubbish. I then gave up on 3D modeling and animation and found LSmaker which was a piece of free software to make lightsabers and lasers and with some customization I managed to do muzzle flashes as well. I made short little clips of light saber flights and gun fights. The best was a guy a with a lightsaber being killed by another guy on a laser gun fitted bicycle. I recorded the footage for these with a webcam because I had no idea how to get footage off my camcorder on to the computer.

When I discovered how to connect the Hi8 camera to the computer via a cheap capture card, it was a major breakthrough for me, even though it was still rubbish quality. We made numerous short comedies, including the hilarious classic 'Why Fruit is Good for you'. Its so bad that we screwed up the beginning title. It was the first film that we ever uploaded on to Youtube, in 2006 on to ratboyproductions. We even made yet another murder mystery with my brother. When I luckily got Adobe Premiere and After Effects, I made short clips of little effects such as glass shattering, scoring a goal against my self and some muzzle flash tests. We made some action films with a group of friends like such as BattleFall and Hedge Man. We did a lot better version of Hedge Man but I lost it - a lot of hard work went into that one. My brother recorded all the sounds - running, falling, nearly every rustle of leaves etc and mixed them all into the film. It was great quality on his part part.

For a little while, I didn't any make films. I lost interest. late 2007 I bought a Mini DV camcorder which I used for 3 years. A great little camera which really got me into filmmaking again. I filmed Conflict with it in 2008. To this day, one of my best films.

I then found Blender, which was incredible for a piece of free software. But Maya, (which I was veryfortunate to get hold of) has been amazing. I've made helicopters, cars, buildings etc and all of it I am able to composite into live action footage using After Effects. I final got the software that Weta Digital used for Lord of the Rings. However, after a short amount of time I got bored with it. I found out that I was actually interested in all aspects of filmmaking - scripting, sound, acting, and other parts of editing. I wanted to do it all, and I could with lego.

I found lego to be a brilliant way of filmmaking. You can be in control of everything; the sets, the characters and how they act, the sound and maybe with some effects, the WEATHER! The 'abandoned' site BrickFilms.com inspired me to start brickfilming (as we like to call it) before it crashed. I've heard that it was a great community. In December 2008, Bricks in Motion was formed. It's like BrickFilms.com but in my opinion - better. I joined in summer 2009, when I really got into brickfilming, thanks to Philip Hienrich and many others who inspired me. Around about the same time, I abandoned my Youtube channel, Ratboyproductions because it was full of some old rubbish with copyrighted music. I set up a new channel - RatboyLimited which I like to call the 'home of Ratboy Productions.' To this day I regret not just deleting the bad videos off my old channel and kept using it..

Up to the beginning of 2011, I'd been making almost only brickfilms. I got a new camcorder, a Canon Hv40 that is astoundingly good. I use that all the time now. It got me back into live action films. I also a bought an external microphone for it. I've also set up another channel called RatboyStuff where I like to upload personal things. Presently I've set up a Facebook fan page, a Twitter account, a Blog and I've teamed up with some other film makers to make top quality live action films, with the assistance of my musical genius of a brother Luke.

Joshua.