We were supposed to have a meeting this evening for key crew, but it turned out that no-one could make it. D’oh. I advertised for a props maker and a costumes maker last week, and some solid CVs have come in. The cogs are beginning to grind into motion. So much of the work is already done. The main thing now is to start getting the props and costumes made and to recast the characters who have moved on since last year.

David Abbott, who wore many a hat (and toupee) on the crew of The Beacon, sent through a CG animation last night which will appear in Soul Searcher as a computer game which Joe’s best friend Gary is playing in an early scene. It’s fantastic, and it reminded me of one of the great things about doing a big project like this – getting the right people in to do certain jobs, then sitting back while their excellent work flows in. Much more fun that doing everything yourself, a la The Beacon.

From an e-mail received from one of the production companies we sent the Soul Searcher pitch to:

“You have a good script here, but I don’t believe it would work as a small or medium budget film… We could not commit to finance a movie over a $30m budget, therefore we cannot go any further with this.”

Oh how I laughed. And then cried. And then put a shotgun in my mouth. Not really of course – the power of suggestion.

Okay, here’s the thing. We tried to raise money. We really tried. And we’ve failed. We could keep trying, but sooner or later it’s going to drift away as our lives go on. I’ve been working a lot lately, and with an overdraft from my bank and the money pledged by Tim Parkman of Lessons Learned Ltd, we’re talking about a figure that we can… just about… shoot the film for. I put this to James tonight and we think it’s do-able. We’re going to get the crew together next week for a meeting. I’m beginning to feel like the boy who cried wolf, but maybe, just maybe, Soul Searcher could be happening very soon.

We had an informal meeting (aren’t they all where we’re concerned?) with our friend Dave Sewell, an accountant. We talked about our options for fundraising from private investors, business angels, setting up a limited company and so forth. My uncle has been approached to fund a film called The Drop and he passed the prospectus on to me for inspiration. It was pretty dry and didn’t make the film sound interesting at all. The financial stuff didn’t seem very compelling either. We could do so much better. We’d have some cool artwork to put in it for a start.