This is the site of Fernby Films, a South Australian film production & review site founded by brothers Warwick & Rodney Twelftree.

Rodney directed his first film in 1992, a school project entitled “Aliens 4″, shot with a camera utilizing VHS tapes, and edited on a primitive VHS-to-VHS tape deck arrangement. Scarred by this for years, Rodney finally got over his fear of making movies when he purchased a digital camera in 2000, in order to make a film project about golf. Things got in the way, and prevented that project from seeing the light of day, however both Rodney and his brother Warwick formed their own film company, Fernby Films, in order to continue making their projects.

Warwick’s first major film project was Hello Annabel, an hour long film saying “hello” to a family friend from England.

It was the success of this project, and the continued rise of their ability with projects for various organizations, that made the brothers pursue this hobby with interest.

Key to the success of Fernby Films is the cornerstone of the studio’s output, Thrash Bus, and it’s sequel Thrash Bus 2: Clone of the Thrash Bus. The sequel quickly became the studios signature piece when it premiered in February of 2007.

Fernby Films association with production partner Grey Phoenix Productions began in 2005, with Michael and Rodney being introduced by a mutual friend. The two had a keen interest in film-making, and Rodney asked Michael to assist on a key filming shoot for Thrash Bus 2 in 2005.

Following this successful foray together, the two began production work on Schoolyard Justice. SYJ was released in 2008 on the world wide web.

fernbyfilms.com appeared online late in 2007, initially as a repository for Rodney’s thoughts and photos, generalized comments about life, the universe and everything. Following a trip to Europe in 2008, Rodney decided to focus the website on film reviews and as a platform to promote Fernby Films productions where applicable.

In 2008, Rodney also began to invite more people to help write reviews on the site. Including James Ward, Greg Bowden, and Mick Kubler, the site expanded to incorporate almost all kinds of review for films and TV. The website also became home to the cutest furry member of the fernbyfilms.com family, the Secret Squirrel. While no doubt a squirrel has different opinions on human films, it was decided to allow the four legged fur-ball to contribute on a weekly basis regardless.

In May of ’09, Rodney and wife Lisa had their first child, Mikayla. Work on fernbyfilms.com slowed considerably at this time, and we also felt the loss of regular writer Doug Shearer due to personal reasons, and the Secret Squirrel also departed to expand his/her family.

In 2009 Rodney began to scribe reviews and articles for US based website, moviesmackdown.com, for Bryce Zabel. He also contributes Top Ten lists for Dan over at Top Ten Films. In 2010, Rodney wrote a number of articles for friend Al K Hall, at The Bar None, while Al was on leave due to personal reasons.

2010 saw a restructure of the work going on at fernbyfilms.com, as the pressure of daily postings began to take its toll. In November, it was announced that the site would be overhauled to remove much of the extraneous material pulling readers away from the site’s core focus: film reviews. Since that time, production on video projects has ceased, and the site is solely focussed on reviewing films released in theaters and on DVD/BluRay.

Our list of friendly movie-oriented websites continues to grow, with Heather and the gang at Movie Mobsters, Aiden at Cut The Crap, Rory over at Above The Line, and Bob Nowotny’s Need To Vent websites providing informative, humorous and quality reviews for you to read as well. We occasionally link to their material on our own site, generally at the bottom of a review, so keep an eye out for their stuff. We only link to sites we feel are written by like-minded people and reviewers, to add to the film community at large. Links to major commercial sites aren’t part of our plan!

We hope you enjoy your time with us, and if you think you’d like to read more, then feel free to subscribe to the site, and you’ll receive all our stuff delivered direct to your inbox!