Who ya gonna call?

So anyway, here is the cut-together footage of the RAF base last week. And before the more eagle-eyed of you have a group coronary, it’s worth me mentioning that the shadowy figure at 0:49 is not our furniture-bothering revenant, but rather our altogether more corporeal guide, Mick.

On a slightly different tack, I went to watch a preview screening of the highly excellent (and highly Australian) Animal Kingdom this morning. Only to be informed that the movie was being distributed using UK Lottery cash provided by the UK Film Council. I won’t bore you with another rant about Screen South, but I did feel a momentary pang of irritation. It was as if the voices of a million Daily Mail readers cried out in indignation, and were suddenly silenced. Aggrieved.

Getting a recce

Now, that’s more like it!

Location scouting day #2 has proved considerably more rewarding. My previous St Alban hankering has now withered away to a simple curiosity about what the Old Hospital would actually look like on fire. Basically, the same thing that I wonder about most of the buildings I see.

Because today we were invited to gaze upon the Officer’s Mess.

And did they ever make a mess… a stately building on an old RAF base in Hampshire, shut since 1996 when the military decamped from the area. 

Now, this is the proper blend of shabby magnificence that we’re talking about.

Long corridors? Yeah.

A messed-up décor throughout? Mais, bien sûr.

Space for a couple of balls? Hooyah.

Damn! All it’s missing is a bar… actually, they’ve got one of those too.

So, what’s the downside? 

Well, it turns out that we’re not going to be alone.

The building sits in the midst of a bunch of bomb-proof hangars, and alongside an airstrip. On a clear summer’s day the Lee Flying Association will happily fill the surrounding skies from dawn till dusk, like a noisy mosquito infestation. 

Wednesday is glider day. At least then we might get the odd quiet moment, save for the sound of crashing balsa.

All in all, not strictly post-apocalyptic.

However there is an important difference between planes and the M25 during the hours of darkness. The cars carry on driving, the planes have to stop. So, there is a perfectly workable solution which involves shooting Resurrection throughout the night. Sure, it means a script re-write, but then again it’ll need re-working anyway once we settle on any location. A four week diet of pro-plus and it’ll only be the Coastguard helicopter that encroaches on the end of the world.

And so I’m delighted to report that my earlier concerns about finding a suitable venue are now properly assuaged. This place ain’t ideal, and we will certainly be going to have a look at other locations. But there’s a film here if we want it.

Actually, it’s what we share the inside of the building with that’s a bit more of a wild card. Mick, the very helpful property management guy that showed us around, swore that the building was haunted. The cleaner refuses to set foot inside after hearing furniture being moved around an otherwise empty house (which explains a lot about the state of the place now).

I wonder whether it’s worth hiring a second camera and asking someone to document us making the film. We may end up with two horror movies for the price of one.

“They came to make a scary film. Until they become the cast.”

Ooooooooooooh. Creepy.

Working off that unsightly vat

And the transition to responsible grown-up continues. Today we opened a company bank account.

Not that we need one just yet, but now we can register for VAT. Which means that we can claim back 20% from every ounce of film-related spend. And all with the minimum of aggravation thanks to one of those lovely on-line forms.

That said, we may have really prised open the can of worms now. We need to do our books quarterly and send the returns in on time or we will suffer what the literature describes only as a 'hefty' fine. And a little book-cooking could result in a holiday at her Majesty’s pleasure. Let it be known that I have already nominated Jake for the position of 'company accountant', m’Lud.

But, if we’re being completely honest, are there any screenwriters out there that haven’t quietly contemplated a minor felony as a way of getting six months set aside to write a first draft?

Oh – that’s just me then?

In other news, the bloody production breakdown still lumbers on, no matter how much lead we pump into its torso. It just gets so damn fiddly towards the end, as we’re forced to track every prop through the story, or deal with machetes re-appearing in the wrong rooms and revolvers with seven-shot chambers. Having to physically leave the flat to gaze over vistas of natural beauty after every other scene to guard against Excel-mediated insanity isn’t helping either. We are at scene 66 out of 76. A solid day tomorrow should see us out the other side, with or without our marbles.

And in a slightly unexpected development, my former employers are allowing the condemned parties to walk away with our company laptops at the final whistle. Although they are planning on digitally scrubbing the buggers first, all the way back to the naked silicon (so clean that I’ll have to buy another copy of XP just to get a tune out of it). Still, it’s £400 that I won’t need to spend on a new beast, and I’m not complaining.

Or should that read £333 + VAT? Trim.

Live at San Albans

And so we welcome you to take your own virtual tour around the exquisitely knackered Old Hospital, St Albans:

To avoid any confusion, I should point out that what you’re hearing throughout are the dulcet strains of Sir Johnny Cash, and not the M25. Apologetic.

Location, location, location

Jake and I do fret so.

Nothing unusual in that, I suppose. What does make it strange, through, is that we find ourselves fixating on completely different things.

Jake’s main concern boils down to whether we are going to be able to convince anyone to invest money to make the movie. We get the project to the insert-cash-here point, and then no one will. This seems a completely rational anxiety to have, but it turns out that I have a (wholly unjustifiable) belief that we’re going to be able to talk investors round when the time comes.

No, my main concern is the location. And in this regard, Jake thinks I’m mad.

The movie was written to be a low-budget production, and accepted wisdom has it that a good way to keep the costs low is to limit your locations. So, Resurrection was conceived from the outset to be shot in only two places: some random woodland (21 minutes), and a derelict psychiatric hospital (66 minutes).

Yeah – we are asking our audience to spend over an hour in a single building. It seems to me that if we don’t get this right, we are totally boned. And I’ve just made myself nervous again.

So, this morning we drew up a list of location must-haves: absolute silence, plenty of dilapidated corridors, a large hall, and a relaxed attitude to everything being covering in gore. Everything else we can write or shoot around.

Because today we went to see our first prospective venue.

Checking through the myriad of film location services on the internet, we had dug out the Old Hospital in St Albans. It was my fondest hope that this would tick all four of these must-have boxes, and I could save myself from August's stomach ulcer.

And it came close. Irritatingly close.

We thought we were onto a winner when the owner said that he was planning on eventually pulling the building down, and we could basically destroy it from the inside out during the shoot if we wanted to. Gore, blood up the walls, graffiti – he even suggested lighting indoor fires if we needed them. Check 1.

Dilapidated corridors? Check 2.

So far, so good. But sadly, that was as far down the list as we got. Everywhere we went you could hear what GoogleMaps has since identified as the M25, and it just didn’t have that 'hero' room.

So the hunt continues. There are other places to check out, each one of which gives me its own flavour of pre-emptive disquiet, and I’ll keep you posted. I may even chuck up some of the video we shot today.

But until we find the right place, I know I’ll find myself coming back to these photos for a quiet mull, wondering how we could possibly work around the problems. It did come irritatingly close *sigh*. Hankering.

Head-full of Hell

So, it seems that I may have been a little unfair to m’colleague Mr Hawkins in my last posting. Apologies, dude.

Because by close of play today we had only fought our way through to the end of scene 38, meaning that hungover Jake was operating at nearly 60% efficiency yesterday. My particular post-session circumstances find me in the middle of the perfect storm of advanced age, lack of practice and having started off as a bit of a pussy in the first place. I’m pretty certain that I wouldn’t be able to break into double figures. It seems that begrudging respect is due.

The down-side of a fully fit Jake is that after a full day of list-making, whenever I now close my eyes my default brain activity has switched to the after-image of an Excel cell being filled in. And we’re only half way through the screenplay. My subconscious used to present me with scenes from one of the Star Wars movies, and I hope that I haven't broken it permanently.

Please make it go away. Desperate.

A nervous breakdown

There is still one enormous block of work we need to get out of the way before we can properly start to chat over the project with prospective Line Producers, splatter guys, SFX experts, etc. The production breakdown.

Basically, this is an 80-page spreadsheet with everything in it, pulled out scene by scene. The characters, featured zombies, every prop, every stunt, every element of gore, each special effect, additional sounds, animals, vehicles, wardrobe elements, every time a costume gets a piece of splatter on it…

It’s an absolute monster.

The bitch of it is that although it tries to lure you into a state of mindless repetition, if you let your guard down and stop concentrating even for a moment it is stupidly easy to make a mistake. And then chances are you have to correct the same mistake on every sheet that has gone beforehand. The further in you go, the slower it becomes and the more you have to fixate on the minutiae.

So, you can imagine my delight when Jake rocked up this morning sporting the most heinous of hangovers.

Actually, to be fair to him, he rocked up in a pretty good mood, ready to tackle the beast head on. The hangover only settled in later as he sobered up.

School-night Jagers? I’m talking to you, @ThreeSpoons.

Still, we made it through to scene 14 (the end of the first act) before the mind-fog had descended too far to carry on navigating. It’ll be interesting to see how far we get tomorrow, if only to calibrate the reduction in efficiency that a big night on the pop represents. I’m expecting it to come out at around 30%.

But on a more positive note, we received a much thinner package from Companies House than we’re used to. Step aside, signed picture of Carrie Fisher, we need the frame. Professional.