We rock fairly often

Had a 'we rock' day yesterday, where I felt unstoppable. KK was cutting like a dream and all was well with the world. I've been playing around with some of the soundscapes which have been kindly provided for the movie by a chap called Patrick who works with a team calling themselves Crystal Plumage Musics. You can hear some of Patrick's work on the trailers, and its fitting the KK vibe very nicely indeed. Scenes that were merely 'working' are suddenly 'rocking' and it's a pretty damn good feeling.

Been putting together a press release for the local papers this afternoon. They were always nice to us last time around, so hopefully they'll run a little something for these flicks too. Oh, and that reminds me... If any folks out there happen to run websites or magazines and want to interview any of us Jinxy folks... You only have to ask!

How far is too far?

See, I'm presented with interesting choices when cutting these movies. I can't explain many of these situations without blowing scenes from the movies, which I have no desire whatsoever to do, but every day I'm faced with the question of how far is too far.

That's not to imply that these flicks are ground-breakingly horrible, or anything like that. It's just a matter of keeping the mood at the right pitch. It's a really fine line, especially when dealing with violence in a horror-comedy, because nothing can make a laugh die quicker than hoding a shot of someone suffering for too long. Unless, strangely enough, you hold it for MUCH too long, after which it starts to become funny again.

I recut the opening scene of KK today, substantially changing it from the first assembly. In the course of these alterations, it lost one extremely nasty shot but gained another that seems edgier somehow even though it involves no actual violence.. Ah, it's tough to explain this stuff without actual examples. Maybe in a few months time I'll get to waffle on about it at length in a director's commentary.

I'm still getting that impatient feeling in my gut where I want these movies to be finished so that I can watch them with other people. Ridiculous, considering we only finished shooting last month, but I've been licving with them for a lot longer than that now and I kind of want them to be done. The fun stuff is pretty much over, and the post schedule is, actually, bloody hard work. You get a few good bits each day; making something flow that didn't previously, getting just the right sound sting on something, but it's all a bit of a grind compared to shooting.

Ah, pay no attention to me. When I'm shooting I usually claim that editing's my favourite bit.

Trailers

They're officially out. You can find them via the links on http://www.jinxmedia.co.uk or via the news page of http://www.horrortalk.com and I very much hope that you like them.

Sat and watched the first assembly of Hellbride last Friday, and it's the funniest of the three movies that we've shot so far. Hands down. KK might have the nastier gore and the cooler location, but Hellbride has the laughs covered. I sat throughout the screening frantically scribbling down ideas to tighten it; things that need to be done, things that could be done, just so the final product is as tight as we can possibly get it. I'm hoping to gather folks for a couple of days of pick-ups in the not-too-distant future, but it might prove tricky, and I might have to swap my plans around a little depending on who is available and who isn't. We'll see.

Every now and again, an old project and forgotten project starts calling to me. The WitchPit script, which had been sitting on my hard-drive for about four years, started calling to me earlier in the year and we've plonked it firmly into our development slate. Suddenly, last week, however, a treatment that I had for a film called BrainBath also started calling. The call is getting louder and louder...

On that too, we'll see. Always fun to find out how things turn out...

Leaking

Gonna be honest here, because it's what you folks expect. I've been leaking. Just a bit, just a little. Just enough to get people interested.

Christ, that sounded disgusting. I'd really best clarify. The last thing in the world that any independent producer wants is for folks to be bored of hearing about the product by the time the product hits the market. Similarly, the other last thing would be for nobody to have heard of the thing at all. So it's a balance.

It's probably a bit early in the day to be releasing too much stuff from these flicks, but sitting on brilliant trailers and cool promo artwork gets to be difficult. So occasionally, I leak. Somewhere on the internet, on a message board or forum, I leaked the URL for the trailers for both movies. And now, of course I've just leaked the KK promo poster. All over this blog.

I'm sure at some point I'll stop finding the word 'leak' amusing, but it hasn't happened yet.

Oh, and the wrap party was great. It was terrific seeing so many folks again, and I was a very drunk bunny indeed by the time I crashed into bed.

Back to the edit suite. I might as well save that as my automatic signature from now on...



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Promo posters, postcards and possibilities

I've been wanting to get promo posters done and dusted for a while now, so that I can get postcards printed. Postcards are fantastic for low-budget movies; spend a couple hundred quid and you can get 5,000 full colour postcards with loads of info and a cool looking poster on each one. We've still got a few of the TrashHouse ones. They were the best investment ever. The idea is simple; every time you send correspondence to anyone regarding the movies, stick some postcards in the envelope. Every time you need to publicise a screening, send out postcards. Postcards, postcards, postcards, so that everyone knows the name, the slogan and the poster image. Postcards rock, but before I can get the postcards printed, I need to decide on a poster image.

And that's what I'm having trouble with.

Several of the guys who used to write for http://www.jinx.co.uk with me have been helping me by coming up with designs, and I've been messing around with a couple of my own. I just can't make up my mind at the moment. And until I can make up my mind, I can't get the postcards.

I'm going to look through the options one more time.

Doing the trailer tango

First up, I claimed at the end of the Hellbride shoot that my lovely cast and crew drenched me in fake blood. Many might believe that such a wonderful bunch of folks wouldn't be capable of such a dirty deed, so I thought you might like evidence.

Second up is the matter of trailers. I've been editing like crazy to try and get a trailer for each flick ready for next Friday's combined wrap party. I wish I could post these efforts online, but my marketing gurus advise me 'not yet, not yet, you impatient youngling'. Because marketing gurus all talk like rejects from The Dark Crystal.

Spent last week in Italy, relaxing and recuperating before the real meat of post-production begins. Italy was gorgeous; first time I've been, and I don't think it'll be the last. Been sorting out a few bits of paperwork that have accrued in my absence, but I'd really better get back to that pesky edit now.

Wrapped up

Like a Christmas present.

Digital technology being what it is, I've already been able to cobble together and view a first assembly of KK. First assemblies, for those who've never seen one, are the part of the filmmaking process where the director claps his hands over his mouth, screams silently and weeps that he's made a piece of shit. It is the worst a movie can look; cobbled together with no care or attention, no sound mixing, no special effects, just one scene after another - Bang, bang, bang. It's really just meant to give an idea of how the thing is shaping up in terms of running time and pacing, and it's usually horribly depressing. I barely spoke for days after the TrashHouse first assembly. I just couldn't believe that there was a film in that wreckage.

The KK first assembly played better than I could have dared hoped. It actually made me happy rather than making me depressed. If Hellbride slots together even a fraction as well, then the next few months might be rather more fun than they have any right to be.

Redesigned http://www.jinxmedia.co.uk today, but there's still a lot of work to be done.

Tomorrow we wrap...

The asylum's already a distant memory, the footage has mostly been digitised and tomorrow we wrap. How bizarre. Got nice and drunk last night on the basis that I could lie in today, but didn't manage to lie in because my body is still geared for getting up by 5am.

Finding it slightly difficult to contain my enthusiasm regarding KK and HB, and am trying to keep my ego in check. I'm not used to feeling quite this proud of myself, and I hope it doesn't keep spilling out of my mouth sounding like ego-wanking. I'm trying to resist the temptation to post any more images up at the moment too, so that I can offer exclusives to sites and magazines, but dammit it's tough.

Dozens of hours of HD footage mean that my ass-kicking editing m0nster of a Mac is filling up alarmingly quickly..

Asylum time

And, after all that, we finally made it to our disused mental hospital location today. The location has cost me an arm and a leg, (half the budget of the movie for THREE DAYS filming), and the paperwork elements have been extremely frustrating at times. But, this morning at 6.30, our happy band rolled up to our fog-shrouded location and shot an absurd perecntage of a movie in just one day.

See, I'm getting that feeling that things are going too well again. I really don't want to get another avalanche of bad luck like that miserable Thursday on Hellbride, but dammit if today wasn't one of the very best days' shooting I've ever had. We got a huge amount done and it looked great.

I'd best get some sleep, though...

Sen-fucking-sational

Here's the God's honest truth. For all the occasional spills and heartaches, for all the broken mains connections and irritating location paperwork, this is proving to be an absolutely amazing summer. The KK footage that we've got in the can thus far feels alarmingly like it's come straight from my brain and onto the screen, thanks to the tireless work of the folks on the project. I have such hopes for KillerKiller and Hellbride; I want them to kick the hinges off the doors that TrashHouse edged open. If folks don't like them, then I think it's fair to say that they'll probably never dig my movies.

We're off to the asylum location tomorrow. It's finally time for the bit of the shoot that everyone has been looking forward to. The bit that's going to set the mood for the whole movie. The bit that's costing half the bloody budget.

The picture at the top of this entry is the first image from KK to be made available. It's of Danielle Laws, who is proving to be absolutely fantastic in this flick; alternately sexy as hell and utterly terrifying.

KillerKiller is go...

Although our weird, weekend-heavy schedule meant that today consisted largely of the cast working together on tightening up various scenes, followed by a tiny bit of actual filming at the end of the day.

Tomorrow is straight into two major kill sequences, though... Not sure whether we'll be posting photos from either of those just yet. We shall see.

One last Hellbride image for the moment...

Before everything goes all KillerKiller around these parts, thought I'd post one final image from the Hellbride set. This one was snapped by Debbie Attwell, (http://www.debbieattwell.com), and features the wonderful Eleanor James as Josephine Stewart...

KillerKiller on the horizon...

OK, so KK finally hits the lens on Monday. The biggest deal of the shoot, however, is the days that we're spending at our mental hospital location next weekend. They're going to be looooong days, and we need to get so much footage in the can. Going to be somewhat terrifying.

Having finally digitised all of the Hellbride footage, I threw together a crash edit of the first twenty five minutes yesterday. Damn, the film moves fast. TrashHouse takes over half an hour to hit high gear. Hellbride takes, like, 7 minutes. Might try to ease off the throttle just a tad when I come to edit properly, otherwise it's likely to leave folks with sore heads. Still loving the footage.

Hellbride footage and KillerKiller prep

I've been digitising the Hellbride footage on and off, in between sorting out final arrangements for KillerKiller. Still chuffed to bits with how HB has turned out, and looking forward to chopping together a first assembly and seeing how long it's coming in at roughly. It'll end up at 82 minutes, of course. I believe that every horror comedy ever made should run for 82 minutes. Any less and people feel shortchanged, any more and they start to fidget.

As a rough indicator of my mood; on Monday I bought two new albums. I bough the Thom Yorke solo album, and the debut from The Pipettes ( http://www.myspace.com/thepipettes ). I never make it much past the halfway mark of the Thom Yorke one, because I keep wanting to put The Pipettes on instead. I suspect this means that I'm pretty happy in general.

Nobody has dismantled the wedding set yet. It's rather gross, and absolutely saturated in fake blood and bits of body parts. The unit needs to be transformed into a hospital set by a week next Wednesday, but that seems very far away indeed.

Still picking up the odd costume for KK. Got our main characters' boiler suits yesterday. I love using boiler suits as costumes. They're SO easy...

And that's a wrap.

Hard to believe, but HB just wrapped principal photography. We cracked open the bubbly, and my beloved cast and crew showered me in fake blood, bless 'em.

Other than yesterday, that was a fantastic shoot. Fun, upbeat, fast and with a positive vibe. I reckon the film is going to be pretty fucking spot-on for anyone who enjoyed TrashHouse at all. And possibly even for a few folks who didn't.

One week until KillerKiller. No rest for the bloody wicked.

Luck, and the end of it

I don't know if I believe in luck, fate, karma or anything like that. But prior to 5pm yesterday Hellbride had an utterly charmed shoot, and after 5pm yesterday every single bit of bad luck that could possibly drop on our heads did, to such a degree that if it had happened in a TV show you'd have complained at how unrealistic it was.

Short version, (although the long version and extended disco remix will play in my nightmares until my dying day), runs like this; with all cast in full, blood-drenched wedding clothing, we still had an awful lot of the wedding to shoot and limited time. Because my cast and crew are, as I believe I might have previously mentioned, wonderful, they agree to stay for as long as it takes to get the sequence finished. We hunker down for a long evening, but know that we're getting great stuff in the can.

Suddenly, a mains lead gets pulled taut and snaps out of the back of the HD camera. We don't realise for several minutes that it has actually broken the connector in the back of the camera, meaning that the camera cannot take power. The battery only has five minutes life left, and cannot be recharged because it charges via the camera, which, in case you missed it, cannot take power. Various options are discussed. Phone calls are made, but we're into the evening and EVERYWHERE is closed. The nearest stockist of external chargers for our battery type turns out to be several hours away. And here's the kicker; cast availability after tonight is a huge problem, meaning that we can't even scrap the shoot and pick up again, because one of our main characters is seriously unavailable from this point on, and tonight was due to be his last one on set.

We have five minutes battery charge left to play with. I can't even see what our DP Al is framing, because to power the extra screen would use power we can't afford to lose. And we have to shoot a main character's final scene as a one-take wonder.

I haven't even been able to watch the footage back. The camera lies inert, waiting for a charged battery. Our Line Producer Nick is at this very moment making the drive to pick up the external charger, and we've delayed the start of this morning's shooting by three hours.

There was a load more crap besides, but you can wait for the sobbing director's commentary. And that's why too much good luck makes me nervous.

Shooting a Wedding Massacre

Involving ghost, guns, mobsters, slime and blood isn't quite as easy as you'd initially suspect. We've been working flat out for the last three days on the climactic sequence, (the longest I've ever spent on a single scene), and our shots-per-day rate is tiny. It all looks fantastic, though, thanks to my ever tireless cast and crew and our frankly rather wonderful make-up and hair artist Beverley Chorlton.
In an ideal world we'd finish the sequence today. I'm going to give it my very very best shot, but I wouldn't put any money on it...
Wish me luck.

Photos

In addition to the two below, there are three more photos up on the news page of Horror Talk:
http://www.horrortalk.com/news.htm
Check 'em out!

Getting married in the morning

Wow, can't believe we've gotten to the wedding already, but we have. Our mammoth climactic scene starts shooting tomorrow, and will take up the lion's share of the rest of the week. My tireless crew have been working flat out to get the scene dressed and ready for the wedding of the year, when Nicole Meadows and Lee Parker will finally tie the knot. Expect ghouls, mobsters and shitloads of bloodshed.

The wedding venue is draped in lemon yellow fabric. Once the blood starts flowing, that place is going to look like an abattoir.

Heh heh.

Baddies

This is Somebody.

I know it's a dark image.

He's a dark kind of guy.