Breather

Take a breath time. I always seem to end up writing pretty generic stuff in this blog, (auditions going well/I am tired/writing going well/I am tired, etc.), but don't often scratch below that surface. Usually this is because I'm operating in something of a blind panic, and if I'm blogging I pretty much always feel that there's something else I should be doing.

This afternoon, however, I have elected to work out in my garden. It's a glorious day, I'm sitting under the shade of a tree and tapping on my laptop. My laptop has no internet connection. No wireless clever stuff, just an old laptop from about 2001 that I can write on. This means no distractions; the chiming of email arriving is another thing that usually breaks the blog spell, especially if it's the sort of email that actually requires attention. Sod 'em. They can chime all they like in my office, because I can't hear them in the garden.

See, back when I set up Jinx Media and elected to work for myself a couple of years back, this was the sort of thing I always pictured. Laptop, nice day, outside working at my own speed and doing what I felt like. It never seems to work out like that, though. Turns out that rather than the hippy rebel I always thought he'd be, the boss side of my psyche is actually a slave driving bastard.

Shit. I lied by omission. I forgot to tell you that I'd brought the phone out with me. It has rung, it is important and I need to leave.

What a piss-take.

Maybe next time.

One more batch of auditions...

...and we're done. Couldn't drag it out any longer than that even if I wanted to; we've got costumes that need to be made, and to get made they need measurements, and to get measurements we need to know who'll be wearing the costumes. So I need to quit stalling and make a couple more final decisions.

Our designer Lisa sent me through the wardrobe breakdown yesterday. Lot of outfits to source, (although I've already got several dozen to sort through, also courtesy of Lisa). We'll get there, but as I mentioned in the first bit, measurements would probably help!

The screenplays are officially locked, and some have been sent out to cast members, (if any cast members are reading this and haven't got them yet, they'll be there soon!). The screenplays being locked means that now every time I drastically change something I have to apologise to a whole load of people. Doesn't stop me doing it, of course. Just makes me apologise.

It's my wife's birthday today, which means we'll go out for a nice meal this evening and I can finally stop thinking about these movies for a few hours...

Too much, too many, too few

Trying to gather together 'To Do' lists at this stage in post-production is borderline impossible. Too many things. The old line about how to eat an elephant, ("a little bit at a time"), has never felt more appropriate.

Casting has been going fairly well. We've made a couple of decisions that we're absolutely delighted with, but we've still got some holes in the cast list that we just haven't been able to fill to our satisfaction. Journey's end for a few roles, but the quest continues for many more.

Been getting to grips with a whole new bunch of technology, too. Since we're shooting both flicks in High Definition, our trusty old edit suite is set to gather dust and I'm left looking at a bunch of new hardware and software and praying that the learning curves don't prove too steep... When it comes to Non-Linear editing packages there are always quite a few familiar elements, but it's the little things that trip you up.

Had a chance to play around shooting some test footage, though, and it looks pretty damn remarkable. Ain't technology grand?

Preparing for launch

Been an incredibly busy week in the Hellbride/KillerKiller camp. Auditions, location recces, first soundtrack elements, budgeting, costume design decisions and even, (yes!), more rewrites.

Our shooting schedules have been locked, (Hellbride is first out of the gate, and starts shooting on July 3rd, folks...), and we're firing on all cylinders. These babies are going to be fantastic, and I'm extremely excited about everything.

The shooting schedule is going to be pretty punishing, but I hope my wonderful casts and crews are going to be up to it.

Gotta run.

Peace and love,
Pat

TMWLTGR

I find that I don't go to the cinema quite as often as I used to. I think there are a million and one reasons for this, one of which is the ever-decreasing window between cinema release and DVD release. Anyway, I got into a discussion on a forum that I sometimes hang out on regarding nutters in cinemas. I remembered the following incident, and might as well share it with you guys too.

My favourite lunatic recently was The Man Who Liked To Go 'Raaaggghhh' who attended a first-weekend screening of King Kong at the Odeon Southend Victoria.

Upon entering the cinema, we heard someone go 'Raaaggghhh'. We expected this to be a teenager, and hoped it was a single incident. Moments later, we heard another 'Raaaggghhh' from the same source, and realised that this was likely to be a theme for the evening. As our eyes adjusted to the darkness, we realised that The Man Who Liked To Go 'Raaaggghhh' was in fact bespectacled, in his fifties and sitting with someone who was presumably his wife.

A few Raaaggghhhs down the line, (when it comes to Raaaggghhhs, a little goes a long way), and a guy in the row in front of us wandered over to The Man Who Liked To Go 'Raaaggghhh' and asked him fairly politely if he wouldn't mind ceasing any and all roaring activity for the following three hours or so. TMWLTGR clearly sat and thought about this for some time, then wandered back over to the guy in question and asked if he could discuss the matter further with him. Both men went out into the lobby for five minutes or so. When they returned, the guy in front of us was shaking his head sadly. TMWLTGR returned to his seat and recommenced going 'Raaaggghhh' at fairly regular intervals.

At this point, (around the time that the film was starting), two ushers decided that now was a good time to confront TMWLTGR regarding his roaring activities and the potention cessation thereof. At this point, TMWLTGR began to protest very loudly indeed that his wife had been 'looking forward to this for weeks'. Whether she had been looking forward solely to the movie or specifically to her husband going 'Raaaggghhh' throughout said movie was unclear.

But something wonderful happened. The ushers told him that if he couldn't bring himself to stop roaring he'd have to leave the cinema. And without another word, he left. Taking his wife, (despite the fact that she'd been 'looking forward to this for weeks'), with him.

Perhaps it was only the roaring that she'd been looking forward to, and at the end of the day the movie was largely irrelevant and their evening was unspoiled. The romantic part of me rather hopes so.



I should probably point out, (in case folks feel that I'm being somewhat unkind to TMWLTGR in the telling of this tale), that the Raaaggghhhs were clearly not a 'tic' or something that TMWLTGR couldn't actually help doing. They were pre-meditated, targeted at specific patrons and seemed to bring TMWLTGR great joy. He seemed genuinely hurt that others didn't share his enthusiasm.

Here comes the bride...

Here's some more good news. HellBride is happening after all, and more or less on the original schedule.

For a month or so there, the project got suspended. We'd had a few difficulties with the screenplay, and these had a knock-on effect meaning that HB was falling so far behind KillerKiller in the readiness stakes that the odds of shooting them back-to-back were getting smaller by the day. I had, to be brutally honest, almost given up hope that everything would be ready in time.

As luck would have it, it is and will be. The screenplay's extremely strong, and the locations, cast and crew are falling into place one by one. We're holding a few more casting sessions between now and the end of the month, and I hope to be able to announce some cast for both movies at the beginning of April. I'm actually very excited indeed.

It's out there.

Ten years ago, I used to work in a branch of Blockbuster video in Westcliff-on-Sea, Essex. God knows how many countless thousand hours I must have spent in that store; lugging videos around, cleaning, filing, banking and advising customers not to rent films like 'Tough & Deadly'. Oh, and trying not to laugh when they rented 'The Amazing Panda Adventure' and I had to read the title back to them. It wasn't the best job I ever had. Wasn't the worst either.

Last week, I stood in that same branch of Blockbuster and saw my movie sitting on the shelf. I think it's a safe bet that out of all those thousands of hours, I'd never previously had a single moment in that shop that had felt quite so good.

Yes, TrashHouse is out and about with the general public. I've been getting a few reviews by email, and some have been cropping up on websites. The target audience seem to like it. Seems to be shifting quite well on both rental and retail. All is well with the world.

If any of you folks out there check it out, feel free to let me know what you make of it. It feels oddly like I've had an offspring leave home.

TrashHouse Released!

After all that, TrashHouse is released to rent or buy on Special Edition Region 2 DVD today.

Don't sit here reading this... Go buy it!!!

Killers, Queens, Brides and hopefully less about Pies...

Let's get the pie stuff out of the way first, because people keep asking. Yes, the pies turned up in the end, (6pm!!!), and yes, they were fantastic and worth the wait. I find it slightly disconcerting that more people have asked me about the fucking pies than anything in any other blog entry.

Onto the slightly more relevant stuff. KillerKiller is finally hitting the starting blocks, and we're aiming for a shooting start date in mid-May. Still got some decisions to make, but as soon as anything gets signed I'll blabber on about it here. Don't mind admitting that we're still puzzling over that main female role, since it would seem ideally suited to an established scream queen but they're a bit of an endangered species in the UK. Heartbreaking, really... Where did all the scream queens go? Where's this generation's Ingrid Pitt? It's a simple wishlist really... Startlingly beautiful, excellent actress, unafraid of partial nudity or vast quantities of fake blood. Only about three names readily pop to mind, and for one reason or another none of them have happened as yet. Our search continues.

The more astute of you will have noticed that I've given a rough shooting schedule for KillerKiller yet absolutely nothing as yet for HellBride. There's a simple reason for this; we're still having script problems, and I don't know if it's going to be ready to go in time to do the back-to-back thing. I suspect, in my heart of hearts, it's going to end up getting delayed for a while. Be nice if it didn't, but that's life sometimes...

Props, locations and Pies

Just been running through the KillerKiller prop-list whilst waiting for pies. I'd like to go and get some lunch, but I'm scared to miss the pies. The pies are from http://www.pieminister.co.uk and look lovely, but the buggers haven't turned up yet and I really want to leave my office.

The props list is mercifully shorter than the TrashHouse one was, but still includes such wonders as 'Bladed Pom-Poms'...

Went on another location-scouting expedition on Monday. Still undecided about where we're going to shoot the location stuff. The two main contenders have such different looks that it would greatly affect the feel of the movie, and I can't quite decide which way to jump. One is incredibly gothic and extremely atmospheric, whereas the other feels more 'correct' but is less visually interesting. Although it is more varied. I'm torn.

There was a nice article about TrashHouse over on Fangoria;
http://www.fangoria.com/news_article.php?id=5505
I was particularly pleased with that one, since I can remember reading Fangoria at school and thinking it was the coolest thing ever. Nice to be in it!

Still no sign of the pies, in case you were wondering.

Four Weeks to DVD Release

Been engrossed in the KK and HB scripts, and trying to work out this here cashflow situation which has been stopping me from setting cast, crew and shooting dates for both upcoming films.

Four weeks to the TrashHouse DVD launch, of course. The artwork's all set, ( and you can now see the cover over at http://www.trashhouse.co.uk ), but I still haven't seen the final version of the DVD itself. That'll probably arrive towards the end of next week.

Got a lot of CVs to sift through for the next two projects. Just wish I was able to set a shoot date, but it's still not possible. Looks like there's a chance that I won't be able to manage shooting entirely back-to-back, and that KillerKiller might end up getting shot a few months before HellBride. We shall see.

TrashHouse gets rated

My first ever experience with a politician was about the BBFC. I was 12 years old, and a local Lib Dem candidate came knocking on my parents' door and chatted to them. At some point I wandered into the lounge, and he asked me if I had any questions about the way the country was run. My response was along the lines of;

"Yeah. How come I can watch The Karate Kid, Big Trouble In Little China, Spacehunter: Adventures In The Forbidden Zone and films like that at the cinema, where they are PGs, but then I can't rent them on video because they go up to 15s?"

This particular local candidate was the most efficient politician I've ever met, (and therefore, naturally, lost the election). As a non-voting 12 year old offspring of two non-Lib Dem parents, I got written responses from both David Puttnam and James Ferman, (who was head of the BBFC at the time).

As I got older, I used to enjoy toying with the BBFC from time to time. I'd book a place on their 'discussion afternoons' and point out flaws in the system, ("If you're only allowed to say 'fuck' once on a 12 rated video, and you put two 12 rated movies on one double-bill tape with one 'fuck' in each, does that make the double-bill a 15?").

I've always had a fascination with them, and yesterday we stopped the flirting and got serious. One thing led to another, and they rated my movie.

TrashHouse gets rated

I'd been looking forward to getting our certificate, but now I feel rather like I've been told off by a prudish aunt.

"Language: Frequent, strong" - 8 or so 'fucks' doesn't count as 'frequent', surely? If 8 counts as 'frequent', then what do they call The Devil's Rejects, which has got 550+?

(Goes and checks)

Oh, that counts as "Frequent" as well, apparently.

And despite the fact we got a 15 in the end, our trailer got an 18. So the disc as a whole probably will.

After 20 years of foreplay, I just feel rather used. Did they really care about SpaceHunter all those years ago?

It was in 3D, you know.

DVD Delay

Ah, bugger. Our release date has been put back nearly a month, due to some stuff out of our control involving High Street shops. TrashHouse will now hit the shelves on 20th Feb 2006, although I'm sure that the online retailers will still honour pre-orders.
I'm dropping by the set of a movie called The Prey tomorrow, ( there's a rather flash website over at http://www.thepreymovie.com ), where I'll be doing a cameo as a paramedic. The movie looks to be shaping up extremely impressively, and should be a real treat for horror fans.
I've also recently contributed a sketch to the cheerfully bizarre podcast known as 'Hammy House of Haw Haw'. You can download the show from this link here (and if you're curious as to which sketch is mine, it starts with the line "It's a horrible night, isn't it?")
Podcasting. Way of the future, don't ya know?

Nasty and Nice

Weirdly, that's how I'm thinking of my twin movies at the moment.

It's odd, considering there are actually some fairly horrific bits in HellBride, that I've started thinking of it as 'The Nice One'. Specifically, I've started wondering if maybe I shouldn't let a few characters currently slated for unpleasant endings 'off the hook'. Let a few live to fight another day. Remind myself that there isn't any great big rule of screenwriting that states that a maximum of two characters can actually survive.

KillerKiller, on the other hand, was always set to be a fairly edgy proposition. The script keeps getting harder-edged with every rewrite, too, (although there are shitloads of jokes in there as well). I wrote out a list of gore shots the other day, (to send to a fledgling effects company who have kindly offered to help us out if they can), and there's some fairly brutal stuff there. Especially when you see it written as a list. I'd love to share the list with you fine folks, but you know what they say about presents and Christmas Morning...

Been having some interesting ideas about casting, but we'll have to see whether they pan out or not. I have begun making enquiries.

The Elephant In The Room

OK, so there's an elephant in the room and nobody's mentioned it. Guess I'm going to be the one to admit that I know it's there, and maybe we can all start to deal with it.

Back before TrashHouse, I had a whole bunch of ideas for movies. Still do. Sometimes, you get ideas that sit on the back-burner for a long time, then they get their day in the sun and everything's wonderful. Sometimes that day in the sun has shitty timing, sometimes it's just plain weird.

I remember seeing the trailer for Shaun of The Dead for the first time whilst I was editing TrashHouse and thinking "Oh look. A British comedy/horror film with zombies in it. I just made one of them too, and that I can't remember there being another one since... Ooh, pretty much ever". Still, that coincidence worked out pretty well for us, I reckon. Shaun was an amazing flick, (still one of my favourites of last year), and the similarities between finished products were so slight as to not be worth worrying about.

You know where I'm going with this. I've stuck my head in the sand whilst on pre-production for the two new flicks. I've tried to wish it away. It hasn't worked, so a couple of days ago I went and saw it.

You know the movie I mean. The elephant in the room. Tim Burton's The Corpse Bride.

I had wondered if just not going and seeing it at all might be the most prudent idea. After all, here I am working on a 'ghostly bride' kind of movie with an as-yet-unfinished script. Wouldn't I be on safer ground to just deliberately never watch it?

Actually, I'm glad I watched it. Not just because it's a fairly good movie, (not up there with any of his best, but certainly no Planet of the Apes letdown), but because it's put my mind at rest. The two movies are absolutely nothing alike, beyond the involvement of a ghost that looks like a bride, (which is hardly the most original conceit in the history of fiction, regardless), and I can safely carry on the way I was headed, (although I'm going to be 'Find and Replace'-ing a particular character name that was unfortunately shared between the two movies).

By the time the flick actually comes out in late 2006/early 2007 the elephant will most certainly have wandered out of the room regardless. I just hope it doesn't eat all the potato salad like last time.

Smaller, streamed version of video blog

Thanks to some nifty advice from JinxM, those with connections too slow to previously bother with the video blog might now want to try this link:

http://www.jinxmedia.co.uk/media/KillBlogStream1.asx

And that should sort ya!

KillerKiller screenplay sort of complete

I use the term 'complete' in many different ways.

In one of the ways that I use it, the KillerKiller screenplay is finally complete. Naturally, it's not 'complete' in the sense that most folks mean it, (and nor will it ever be, probably... I was still writing new lines on-set during the TrashHouse shoot and I very much doubt whether this will be any different), but if I went and shot it tomorrow it would make sense and have a beginning, middle and an end. It wouldn't be the right length and it'd have bits that clunked badly, but it'd be a film. The polishing will now commence, probably lasting until the very last day of filming.

The HellBride screenplay isn't complete yet, in ANY of the ways I use the term. It's quite a long way off, to be honest, which is something that I really need to get sorted if I'm to succeed in shooting these buggers back to back in the early months of next year. For a while, HellBride was far further along in terms of development than KillerKiller, but KK had a real surge over the last month and appears to have crossed the finish line first. I really ought to get back to poor neglected HellBride right now.

And so I shall.

Video Blogging

Been an interesting few hours.

With one eye on the future, I've been making a video blog for KillerKiller. I suddenly realised that by this point in the pre-production of TrashHouse I had started ranting to camera on a fairly regular basis, explaining how the film was bound to fall apart any minute. Some of these little rants are ending up on the DVD, and I realised that I'd completely gotten out of the habit of jabbering to camera in the year and a half since TrashHouse wrapped shooting.

Anyway, I decided to use some of the location recce footage from the other week and make a little video blog, the idea being that I could use it online to keep folks informed, then bundle it onto the eventual DVD. Yes, just like Lucas, Jackson and Smith, now that you come to mention it. I've even grown a manky stubble beard for the occasion because, fuck it, a director simply has to have a beard.

The problems have come with sorting out a delivery format, and something that was meant to be rattled off in a few minutes has come to dominate the day. In this age of varied connection speeds, different ways of encoding and so on, how do you choose how to deliver video content? We got plenty of criticism for only making the TrashHouse trailer available in Real Video.

The answer?

(Drumroll)

Dunno. Haven't a clue. Tried lots of things, not happy with any of them yet. I'll get it sorted soon. Until then, you're stuck with a 10MB wmv file. Yeah, I know. Not perfect. But at least it's here.

Or, rather, here:

http://www.jinxmedia.co.uk/media/Blog11105.wmv

Let me know if you have any ideas for making this more accessible for folks.

Peace n love,
Pat

Writing amid destruction

Jinx Media only has an official office during shoots. For writing, pre-production and so on, I use an office in my home. That's where I'm sitting at the moment, listening to the dulcet tones of my bathroom being torn to pieces by a cheerful team of guys who turned up bright and early this morning. They are going to rebuild it. By early next week, hopefully. Just wish I'd had the foresight to actually grab a shower before they showed up this morning. I'm sitting here, feeling somewhat grubby, failing to progress very far on the KillerKiller screenplay amid the sounds of destruction.

Next week is the Tokyo Film Festival, where TrashHouse is being represented and hopefully sold. Rather fancy heading out there myself, but that simply ain't gonna happen.

Prices for shooting in that asylum I mentioned were somewhat higher than I'd hoped, but perhaps we'll be able to work something out. Either way, we certainly won't be able to base the majority of the KillerKiller shoot there, which is what I'd originally planned. Maybe we'll grab some crucial shots there and intercut them; that seems the most practical plan at the moment.

Update

Mailed out an update to my beloved TrashHouse cast and crew. Here it is with the business sensitive bits removed, (but otherwise intact);

* The UK DVD release date has been set for January 23rd. This may still move, but if so it'll only be by a week or so. At the moment, it looks like the disc is going to have;

TrashHouse Final Cut (As shown at TromaFling... Some changes from the BFI premiere version)
TrashHouse BTS (Mike Borland's Behind The Scenes documentary. There's a chance that the UK version might be shorter than the full version on the US disc. There's a very boring explanation for this that involves the BBFC)
Deleted Scenes with fucking awful introductions (Although this may not be the 'on box' description, it is accurate)
Director's Commentary
Oddments TBC

* The USA DVD has no release date as yet.

* The ******** deal is an utter nightmare. Don't hold your breath, appears to be the situation.

* TrashHouse is being represented at the Tokyo Film Festival at the end of this month.

* The TrashHouse game is now available as a download from the website, if you missed it last time!

* I had a very successful visit to a disused asylum near Brentwood earlier in the week, (not a sentence I ever expected to type), whilst scouting locations for KillerKiller. Providing we manage to work out a decent deal on money, that's looking like a likely location. Still haven't set any cast or crew in stone for either of the new flicks, but have some ideas in mind.

* Domains (with teaser artwork) are up at http://www.killerkiller.co.uk and http://www.hellbride.co.uk

* I'm in discussion for getting the novel formerly known as Blood & Popcorn out to coincide with the DVD. For those that don't know, B&P was a fictional novel set in the world of low-budget filmmaking. The main characters were making a movie called TrashHouse. I wrote the novel in 2003, then had the bright idea of actually making the movie to publicise the novel. Somewhere along the line, I forgot about the novel altogether. It has now been unearthed, but may well have a title change. Or fall through altogether. Time will tell.