Lessons learned

We did something today that we should have done a long while back.

Before Tuesday’s auditions started, Jake and I had a meeting with the Economic Development Marketing Officer for Hampshire County Council.

Not the easiest to decipher of job titles, but as far as we can tell her role is to act as a dating agency between film-people and places-to-film. In Hampshire. And presumably with money involved.

We talked zombies. We explained our situation. And now she’s going to dip into her extensive contact list and try and find us somewhere to film.

Really? That simple? Maybe you should have done this a while back, Phelps.

Thanks. Lesson learned.

To be fair to us, we did get in touch back in February, at the time of the first location hunt. We dropped her a quick email, and we got one back with a couple of suggestions. They didn’t pan out, but then our original college happened. As shallow promises of unfulfilled glory shone down upon our heads, we moved on.

An email is just a task waiting to be completed. What schools are friendly? How about these? Question answered, mail archived, zombies forgotten. But discussing the project in person means that the Resurrection behemoth now occupies a space slightly further forward in her mind than it would have otherwise done. We’re now an assignment, a challenge to her professional network and skills of persuasion.

And this is not to say that we’re expecting the highly awesome college that we looked around on Friday to fall though. Quite the contrary. But recent experience has shown us that when it comes to moving eggs about the place two baskets are definitely better than one.

Lesson learned. Bitten.

Kicked into the long weekend

Do you ever have one of those weeks where you never quite manage to catch up with yourself?

Week one of auditioning is now behind us, and Jake and I are officially delighted. Delighted and knackered. From the initial 176 applicants (and a mere 670 emails later), we have been entertained and impressed exactly eighteen times, blown-out without notice five times, and been left with two permanent grins.

Grins made even more painful by a visit to a prospective location on Friday late-afternoon, as we snuck into another local college just before the half-term break.

This is how we should have done it first time round – meet up with the head-teacher and the estates manager first, tell them exactly what we’re after, and see what they think. Once the boss is on-board everything becomes easier and quicker. This particular college has a pedigree of performing arts, and they seem incredibly relaxed about welcoming the undead onto their premises this summer. The meeting itself lasted only about ten minutes, after which Jake and I were invited to tour the college grounds at our leisure and check out where we’d want to film.

And schools without kids in are creepy places. Add a bit of post-apocalyptic debris and turn off all the lights, and there’s a horror film to be had here.

This place was genuinely fabulous. It had the same eccentric and mismatched architecture and bizarre elements that we loved so much in the last college, but probably more so. There is an awesome hall within which to house the zombie horde, labyrinthine corridors peppered with alcoves for key lighting, and a whole load of rooms with something unusual about them.

And the debilitating location angst takes a dip towards the green zone.

Next week starts off with more of the same, albeit it with a spare Monday stuck in there somewhere which my girlfriend called shotgun on before I could laden myself up with zombie-related activities. Round two of auditions kicks off on Tuesday morning, and we hope to have our cast nailed down by the end of the week.

So just before I get harangued away from the computer and encouraged to fritter away my quickly-evaporating free time, another enormous thanks to everybody that came down to audition for us, and to Philip and Scott from the Royal Oak for letting us bogart their basement all week. Charmed nervousness regarding the rumours of hauntings in the hollows proved to be unfounded, but then again we haven’t played the audition tapes back yet. Brave.

Gore-ditioning

It turns out that I’m quite a fan of actors.

Day two of what is going to be a full week of casting is now behind us, and these last couple of days have been some of the most fun I’ve had working on the project so far. Sat in the bowels of what claims to be the oldest pub in Britain (an accolade that certain establishments in Nottingham and St Albans might well dispute), people we’ve never met before have been arriving, serving us up our written lines on carefully-chosen platters, and putting enormous smiles on our faces.

And what I enjoy most of all is that this is one of the few occasions that we get to chat about the screenplay in the same terms that we did when we originally wrote it.

I’ve mentioned before that I’m very much the reluctant director. The thing that lured me into this movie-making game has always been the writing, and I thank whatever God is still talking to us since we started this project that Jake is there to take care of the 'look'. Ask me to pick out which prime I’d want for a particular shot, or my preferred colour palette for the mise-en-scene, and you might as well be asking me the name the constellations in the night sky.

But ask about the narrative and I’m back where I belong. The roles that certain characters play in the story, how our protagonist is slammed through his arc by the actions of others, motivations and inferred back-stories… it’s the planning that went into writing the screenplay, and it’s exactly what actors want to talk about.

It’s a welcome reminder that our 87-page swearing marathon is more than a list of locations to dress, or props to find, or SFX gags to cost up.

So, in case any of them have tuned in to read this, a heartfelt thanks for making the trip to our provincial back-water and letting us taste the potential film behind the screenplay. Some great talent has passed through our pub basement, and I look forward to three more days of the same.

That said, being on full-beam from dawn to dusk is draining on the batteries. It’s Director-Andy that’s been auditioning the prospective cast and throwing out the curve-balls, but it’s Producer-Andy that then has to deal with the day’s work that’s waiting for him at 5:00.

But after that’s all done, it’s that bloody Writer-Andy that then insists on me tossing off five hundred words into a blog. Bullied.

All pork and no action

If you listen very carefully, you just might be able to hear the sound of one of those wheels coming off.

The exhaustive winning streak had to end eventually, and today finally brought us one of those production set-backs. This morning our school location fell through.

This had seemed like a done deal, but at the eleventh hour our Location Release contract terms and the length of the shoot were just too much for the school to accept. The contract is based on the standard template from the Guerilla Film-Makers Handbook, and is open to discussion. However there’s not so much we can do about the amount of time it takes to make a movie. And so that was that.

But the weird thing is that the bad news almost came as a relief. Finally we have a definite answer, albeit not the one we were hoping for.

The whole business of film production moves so fast, and the worst thing is the not knowing something. We celebrate the 'yeses', we move on the 'nos', but the 'maybes' just stall the process. At that point you are ceding control over the project time-line to someone else. On a high-budget movie everybody gets paid, and it’s much more of a business transaction. On a low-budget shoot like ours you rely on love and passion to bring it to the screen.

We adapt and we overcome. And if we’ve learned one thing from Watergate it’s to always have a back-up plan.

When despondency threatens to set in, you need to send in the heavy hitters, and today was ultimately made splendid by the fruits of some of Jake’s earlier tarting. The working week ended with a visit to the constituency surgery of Eastleigh MP Chris Huhne (lib), who clearly has better things to worry about at the moment than chatting to a couple of local film-makers.

And the man was the absolute sweetest of all fellows. I suppose that it’s difficult to convince people to put a cross next to your name if you’re not the personable type, but he gave us one of the most productive twenty minute bursts of chat that we have had since starting the project. Without us even raising the subject he offered to hook us up with a possible financier, and then he gave us the benefit of his intimate knowledge of the local educational establishments.

He is all about one school in particular, which has a long-standing commitment to performing arts. And any email to a head-teacher that starts with an introduction from the local MP is likely to survive longer in the inbox.

The only downside is that he declined our offer to zombie-up and join the horde.

So, all in all, it’s difficult to know how to feel about today. Thankfully we have found articulation in seasoned pork rind. While smashing a post-work Friday pint at the Charmed boozer of choice, an otherwise perfectly satisfactory bag of scratchings spawned this hairy monster at the bottom of the packet. Taste after taste of salty pork goodness, followed by something we simply weren’t prepared to swallow. I think I’ll dispense with the standard sign-off and just let the snacks do the talking.

The easiest route to the C++

As the 12 hour production days become 16 hour zombie marathons, my blogging window starts to suffer.

Yesterday started at the standard 9 AM as the freshly-recovered Jake arrived at Charmed Central, and ended at about 1:30 AM this morning when we finally got back to Winchester from a trip to London to hook up with our gore guys. By which time I was beyond even Tweeting.

Not that I’m complaining – yesterday was all about dismemberment and splatter, and time spent planning that is never dull.

I won’t bore you with the admin nonsense that passed for a day’s work until mid-afternoon. Thankfully Robbie-the-Gore stepped in with an invitation to his workshop in Deptford, and the day positively blossomed from there. A couple of hours later, after a guided tour through zombie heaven and about twenty deconstructed take-downs, and the three of us were in a pub in Waterloo to meet Adam-the-DFX.

Then it all got a bit hazy.

I’ve mentioned before that the horror romantic in me is all about the in-camera splatter. It’s what I fell in love with as I grew up in the 80’s, before computers came along and made everybody’s life safer. But this naïve romantic now has to share a brain with a pragmatic producer, and he can be a real ball-buster when he wants to be.

Why can’t we just fire off a bunch of pangos inside someone else’s school when a zombie gets shot? What’s wrong with filling a room with a shallow pool of blood? Why do we need to worry about hiding a supposedly amputated leg if we can just chop the real one off?

Producer says no. The git.

So Jake and I brought the prosthetics guru and the digital wizard together into one place. And plied them with beer. How can we make the join between their respective disciplines as seamless as possible, to forge the perfect fusion of Latex and software?

At last we got to feel like filmmakers again, rather than email shepherds. Although that could have just been a contact-high from all the solvents in Robbie’s workshop. Jake woke up with 101 additional lighting solutions, and this morning the prosthetics order went in. Cash got transferred, and we are officially rolling.

But then, how can you say no to this fellow? Cuddly.

The weakest Link

Today ended with a slightly more manic burst of activity than I was expecting.

It’s been an otherwise slow day in Charmed Central, as the cosmos attempts to re-assert some balance after an unexpectedly productive week. Jake rocked up at 9:00 sporting the fruits of a nephew-infected lergy, and by 9:05 it was pretty clear that we weren’t going to get his full attention on the task of bringing the walking dead to the big screen.

We dealt with our immediate missions. And then we sent him home.

Although, now I come to reflect on the day, we did get quite a lot done before the fever finally bubbled over. Crew postings for a sound guy, Production Designer and wardrobe manager went up on Shooting People and Talent Circle, much running around trying to find a place to stay while we’re up in London at Chris Jones’ Guerilla Film Makers’ Masterclass in early June, and at least thirty minutes of solid moaning about the eleventh-hour postponement of our trip to the Houses of Parliament.

Damn, did it feel good to be able to have a proper moan again.

So, after a leisurely afternoon keeping on top of my emails (for a change) and bringing all the business paperwork up to date, I was all set to settle down for a relaxing evening.

And then somebody tapped me up on LinkedIn.

I guess everybody is on LinkedIn these days, even though it doesn’t look as fun as Facebook (and I have to ‘fess up to struggling to find much in the way of entertainment there either). When LinkedIn started a few years back, I gave it the absolute minimum amount of effort required to set an account up. And then I completely ignored it. Every so often an automated email arrives from somebody asking me to link up with them. I push the Accept button. Job done.

So it was with the same casual disregard that I clicked the Accept button in an email this evening.

And then it struck me… a professional from within the entertainment industry, with whom I have been trading a few emails recently, can now see my profile. Untended, unloved and unfinished, like my enthusiasm for gardening made digital. Not only that, but according to the limited and poorly-punctuated information available, I’m still designing phones for a living.

Tell me, just how serious is this zombie project, Mr Phelps?

So bang went my chilled Monday night as I mowed and weeded through my personal LinkedIn undergrowth, hopefully in good time for tomorrow morning’s inspection. But, I’m pleased to report, that while Andy’s patch isn’t going to win any National Trust prizes, at least it now looks like you could have a wander through it without treading on something unpleasant. And can I please leave this laboured gardening metaphor behind now?

That said, one of the benefits of running your own company is you get to award yourself a job title. 'Head Honcho' won out narrowly over 'Über Daddy and 'Grand Fromage', although I see my role as encapsulating elements from all three disciplines. Autocratic.

Acting, baby

Trying to capitalise on our recent run of minor production victories, this week Jake and I have also been rocking through the casting process in earnest.

From the 170 applicants, we have whittled down the list to the people we want to chat to. We’ve had to leave a whole bunch of talent behind that doesn’t quite match our characters, and it’s been heart-breaking at times. But after five days of filtering on an industrial scale, we’re good for auditioning round one. The venue has been procured, the initial invitations have gone out, and the enormous spreadsheet has been carefully tended. In another moment of chickens coming home to roost, we are suffering the organisational overhead for writing a film with an ensemble cast of ten main roles, and we have needed to break the casting into two blocks. Without Excel this whole filmmaking process would have been doomed from the off.

And taking advantage of the whole everything-falling-into-place thing, we hooked up with a potential Continuity guy and a Gaffer yesterday, and now have two more green boxes on (yet another) spreadsheet. James and Massimo – a big welcome to Charmed Central, gents. Two safe pairs of hands and the kind of entertaining company we’ll be grateful for at 4:30 AM as the Red Bull wears off.

And that’s probably me done for today. Jake and I are about to head back to the forest to catch the Evil Dead, playing as part of the Winchester Film Festival, although I'm going to make sure I don't sit next to any grumpy-looking trees. It’s finding someone that's prepared to take the splinters out that worries me the most. Violated.