Busy week on the film side

Firstly tonight the ad’s are going out on a couple of website’s for crew and casting of Mortus Illumina, looking forward to getting dirty with that! They are appearing on www.ukscreen.co.uk , www.mandy.com and depending on the response back from that will depend on whether to expand the search out, there Is another casting site I have come across so might give that a go too. Check out those sites and you can see the ad’s


Anyway back to MI ,The potential location for the final shoot was recced last Friday and it is ideal for our purposes. The location is an old school up near Elstree Studios. It is used by TV and film quite a bit so , one example is it was used for the court that Alfie ran into near xmas to get his marriage licence.

On my visit there they had cunningly hung a police sign above the entrance , and the car park had signs say DC Ashwood, etc etc. Murder in suburbia is being filmed there at the moment and they are using quite a few of the rooms to strike sets in. Whilst reconnoitring the location managed to see quite a few of there sets. Its kind of a good and depressing thing to see as I always like seeing big films and tv in this case in action, but it depresses me to think that one of there sets probably costs the same amount as I need to finish my entire feature!

One of the rooms I saw which used to be the old school gym would make an ideal Puppeteers workshop which where the action takes place for the final shoot. The thing I like about the school gym is its tall and it’ dark!

Another good thing about the location, is the amount of lighting and kit the surburbia guys had around them , there seems to be no problem about power which is always a good thing to hear!

Another reason for the visit was also to say bon voyage to mark (wardrobe master on MI) who is buggering off to Morocco for 5 months with the film Sahara. Sahara costume base Is based at the school and I had a good chance to look around. Costume on MI has consisted of My Mum on the sewing machine, and Mark and Rookie running around charity shops. Seeing the layout for Sahara was mind blowing, a room for materials, a room for cutting, a room for dyeing , a room for assemble absolutely massive operation! Though if you want to sum up the difference between Low budget and big budget costume, on my film if you want a costume dirty, you drag it through the mud and beat the living day lights out of it. On the big budget they have a machine to do it , which! Costs twice as much as my entire costume budget!!! One day I to will have a film where the costumes are dirty ‘fied by a machine. ;-)

Nothing is concrete about the location yet , but I have two aces up my sleeve. Firstly the Sahara connection and also the people who manage the location turns out to be the very same people we negotiated the beach location for. Going to be doing another recce soon and hopefully get some pen and ink on paper to sercure it for the shoot.

Also the weekend just gone was spent over in Somerset with Eddie (animator) drinking smiles beer and cracking through the planning for the animated sequences of MI. In total there are 6 anaimated sequences of which one has been shot so far (see photos in MI animation folder) . The final animated sequence is the most complicated and we spent a good deal going through storyboards for it.

Eddie also has the task of building the puppet theatre for the film. Remember these puppets are 3ft tall and the theatre Eddie is building is ABSOLUTELY HUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUGGGGEEEEEE!
Plus this theatre hsas to do some pretty amazing things for the script so it is being built fully operational. At the moment all that exists of it is some wood carving of Arabic arches which will decorate the top. Some giant table legs and old stair railings which will go into the making of the sides of the theatre, a old spanish galleon (sic) which will go on top of the theatre and all these old scripts and magic book pages which will decorate the theatre. Oh, plus some cewl nasty looking boards which will make up the stage. Going through the plans and the materials so far for this theatre, can quite safely say this thing is going to be huge, and absolutely blow people away.

So a good weekend in all hopefully this and next week are going to be equally productive. On another note pleased to say I made Brian Madigans (composer’s) monthly newsletter note once but twice! Here are the entries


Courtesy of www.madigan.de

Another Nail…
For a temptation sequence in his forthcoming mini-feature ‘Mortus Illumina’, film director Chance (5YLAC Film, London) asked for a piece that combined quasi-classical and porn-film music. He claims to have had the idea whilst staying in a cheap hotel, where over the classical music he was listening to, he overheard the porno soundtrack from the next room. Anyone else out there sceptical?
Anyway, I really loved this as a musical premise and the finished result evidently met Chance’s approval: “Think you have hit the nail on the head, i think the electric guitar is the killer nail. it is quite interesting to hear that against the strings… I also really like that the music has a kind of downwards feel to it”.

Middle-Class Blues
Every successful artist will tell at great length of how they come from a humble background and how they suffered a deprived childhood. Well I too was deprived but in a way that those artists could never understand. I was denied the dignity of a proper working-class upbringing. I had to withstand years of being comfortable, well fed and properly educated. What hope, then, in the big, bad world of creative angst?
This is the theme of my song ‘Middle Class Blues’, for which film director Chance is planning to shoot a promo video early this year. We’re hoping for a summer No.1, massive MTV exposure and a Sony Award for Best Video…

++++++++++++++++++++++

The Video shoot is on the 29th of February which I'm really looking forward to doing, going to be good to get back in to the Union Jack shirt.