The auditions on Friday didn’t quite go as I had planned, but nevertheless were very successful. I can’t say more than that at this stage.
Yesterday Katie and I interviewed costumers and dress-makers. We need someone to turn her quarter scale Isabelle dress into the real thing, not to mention sourcing shoes, accessories and what-nots [technical term]. Again, things went well and decisions should be made very soon.
And a fresh batch of Morning Glory has just been planted. The originals all died at the end of summer. We hope the new lot will at least serve to bulk out the inevitable artificial flora.

Things are happening thick and fast now. To begin with, I finally finished draft six of the screenplay. Amazingly, looking back at last year’s journal, I notice it’s exactly a year since I announced that I had started draft six. There have been some major changes and, though some of the new sequences are necessarily not quite as polished as the long-standing material, I believe the whole story has been lifted and strengthened.
Ian is now working full time on the production design, visiting prop houses, liasing with painters and sculptors and so on. The mysterious R.A.C.T.A.B.E. insignia and Swordsman spare parts are amongst the items currently taking shape. As for set dressing, Ian can barely get into his room without falling over all the stuff he’s gathered.
Yesterday morning the two of us plus a van driver and his son moved all the scrounged wood into a lock-up on the other side of the Pinewood lot, where it will await its calling on November 10th, the day set construction begins. And today we visited the workshop at FBFX, where Grant and his team have assembled the basic elements of Max’s bio-suit (podcast coming soon). So far the suit consists of two layers, between which compressed air is inserted. Many straps, mechanisms and pouches are then worn on top, only a few of which have been made yet. Kev, who modelled the suit for us, told us it’s nice and cool inside thanks to the escaping air.
Last but definitely not least, we’re running auditions at the end of this week for the parts of Isabelle (formerly Kara) and Max. We have some very talented people lined up and we can’t wait to put them through their paces.

Today is the fifth anniversary of the start of principal photography on Soul Searcher. (Thanks to Colin for reminding me.) That shoot seems so long ago now. I never thought it would be this long before I would be lensing another film of my own.
At Pinewood Studios Ian has been collecting wood from Prince of Persia’s set strikes. He’s been working very, very hard getting all the nails and screws out of it, not to mention doing his day job and finishing the set design.

A meeting at the Model Unit today was very fruitful. We finally sorted out how the ceiling mechanism which supposedly controls the Swordsman is going to be achieved. The solution, or in fact solutions plural, are actually quite simple, and in all fairness Ian has been suggesting one of them since day one. They’re difficult to describe, but they don’t require a walkway and they don’t pose a problem of connecting ropes in a live action plate to post production elements. The bulk of the mechanism will be achieved with a miniature element of some kind, but the section immediately above the Swordman will be in-camera.

Ian is starting to build up a crew for the set build. Meanwhile I’m trying to sort out a few things that just don’t want to be sorted, so it seems. It’s frustrating but it’s very familiar. As my previous features have taught me, pre-production is all about chasing people up.

This week I viewed another studio, lacking the convenient walkway of 3 Mills, but better in certain other respects. Cost is likely to be the deciding factor.
I’ve been looking through agents’ suggestions for a voice actor to portray the Wooden Swordsman. Among them were a Young One, a Doctor Who, several recognisably-voiced advert narrators, a son of a knight who I once witnessed singing an impromptu duet of “The Longest Time” in a kitchen with Davros’ father, and an actor I tried to attach to Dark Side as Julius Gale a couple of years ago.
This evening I met up with a stop motion animator and compositor, Susie Jones, and we discussed the practicalities of a Dynamation ceiling mechanism.

I’ve recently returned from a couple of weeks away, which were most welcome after three weeks of solid writing. The time to reflect helped solve some of the problems I had come up against, and although the redraft is going to take longer than I’d hoped, it’s definitely going to be worth it.
Today I gave the greenlight for construction on Max’s bio-suit. I can now reveal the company involved as FBFX. Ian had a very good meeting with them last week, and amongst other things they discussed how to inflate the suit. I’m not sure how, but Ian had found an extremely dodgy website showing photographs of a guy in an inflatable bondage suit which might serve as an ideal base for Max’s habiliments.

Casting director Jesse Malone is going to send out the breakdown tomorrow. I first heard of Jesse a couple of years back through Louis Savy from Sci-Fi London and the ‘Make Your Mark in Film’ campaign and I was delighted when she applied for this pilot.
Ian is currently working on the design for Max’s bio-suit, since next week we’re having a meeting with the company who are going to build it. I won’t reveal their name until it’s all official, but they have special costume credits on a number of major Hollywood films including Star Wars Episodes I & II, Gladiator and Troy.
And I’m about half way through my first pass at draft six of the screenplay, which is shaping up nicely.

Today I viewed a rehearsal room at 3 Mills Studios in East London, which may be suitable for filming the pilot in. It has the prerequisite overhead walkway and a Tim Burton-esque gin still in the corner which we could incorporate into the set, but it’s echoey and has windows which could be tricky to black out. It’s a viable option though, especially since getting an actual sound stage on my budget is going to be near impossible.
Meanwhile I’m working on the script. I’m trying to simplify it to get rid of some plot holes, but I seem to have created some new ones.

It took far longer than it really should have done to shoot all of the storyboard photos and lay them out with notes and arrows, and the name of Bill Gates was cursed more than once in the process. (I foolishly used Word to lay them out.)
There are a total of 57 set-ups, which over the three day shoot I’m planning seems quite leisurely compared with my previous films, but I’ve no doubt it will prove tough with the puppet to wrangle. Most of the Swordsman’s angles require the puppeteers to be below the level of his waist so as to be framed out – a configuration that we’ve barely tested as yet.
There is the issue of the ceiling mechanism still to solve too – the cogs and gears and pulleys which supposedly operate the Swordsman. I’m investigating both a full-size in-camera solution, and a stop motion miniature solution.