At 10:15 this morning I was wheeling the lower half of the Wooden Swordsman through the streets of Ealing, like a Roman measuring a mile. Now I come to think of it, there was a passing resemblance to the occasion twelve years ago when I wheeled the “magneplough” through the streets of Malvern on the way to film a scene from the original Dark Side of the Earth.
Reunited minutes later with his upper portions, Sir Diddymus – as he is now known amongst the crew – was ready to be put through his paces. Wrangled by four puppeteers (three at any one time), the Timber-Based Blade Bloke slowly came to life. We tried out the drunken unicyclist movement that I had envisaged for the character, which immediately brought a spark of life to the Swordsman in the skillful hands of the puppeteers. AJ got a feel for what the puppet could and couldn’t do and was able to try out some basic choreography.
Proceedings came to an end earlier than planned when, after a particularly vigorous bit of sword work, the puppet’s arm fell off. (“You are indeed brave, sir knight, but the fight is mine.”) Which is why you have test days. We also established that a few minor modifications are needed to facilitate the more complex swordplay.
One of the chief aims of today was to discover the amount of room needed for the action, so that the set designs can be finalised, allowing construction to begin. To that end Ian marked out the boundaries of his design – based on Ealing stage one – on the rehearsal room floor. It was cramped, but do-able. At lunchtime we recceed stage one and were pleasantly surprised to find that the website had been overly modest, and the stage was actually a good few feet bigger.
There are still issues to solve – chiefly that of how to achieve the ceiling mechanism which supposedly controls the Swordsman most economically – but good progress was made today. Most exciting of all is that Hank Starrs is now officially on board as producer for the pilot.
To round off the day, we met up with Joseph Flavell, a maker of armour and other speciality suits, to discuss a special outfit for a second major character who has sneaked into the pilot scene.
And some of our Morning Glory is already three inches high. Ian’s hasn’t even poked above the surface yet.

Yesterday Katie and I planted Imopomoea Purpurea, a.k.a. Morning Glory. This “exquisite climber” is the MacGuffin of a subplot and as such is required to be strewn about the Training Room, lair of the Wooden Swordsman. Ian and family are also going to grow some. If all goes well we should have plenty by the time the pilot shoots.

I finished shooting the Snow Harvest videomatic, twice. Twice? Yes, I had to do pick-ups just like on a real movie. The reason was that I had used the wrong actor. Somehow I put the scowling blue-suited “Julius Gale” figure into certain shots instead of the scowling grey-black-and-white-suited “Red Darwing” figure. Even though they have stickers saying “JULIUS” and “RED” on their foreheads.
Last week I met up with a number of puppeteers interested in helping to bring the Wooden Swordsman to life. A filmmaker called Gerard Giorgi-Coll also got in touch and very kindly offered to shoot behind-the-scenes material for the pilot, not to mention putting me onto a friend of his who might be able to make a certain special costume for us.

I’ve started another videomatic. If nothing else, eventually I’ll have the whole movie shot with cereal-box-and-toilet-roll-tube models and I can pass it off at festivals as a Michael Gondry film.
With the help of my girlfriend Katie I built a new Moravian and a new Fixer (deposing the Jif lemon which served so faithfully in the past) plus a forced perspective igloo. Ah, the classic way to spend a Saturday night – watching the commentary on Alien whilst making a forced perspective igloo. We’ve all done it.
Anyway, I’m only halfway through all the shots for this particular sequence, so I’d better get on with it.

Every time I visit the Model Unit, some film crew has hidden the workshop door behind another elaborate arrangement of make-up trailers and catering trucks. Once inside, Ian and I found the Swordsman looking very close to finished – and a lot more dangerous, now that he has a dirty great sword.
It takes three people to move him these days: one behind, one on the sword arm and one on the shield arm. A fourth puppeteer will ultimately control the head movement from above. Filming him in motion highlighted some of the challenges the puppeteers are going to face.
There’s a little more work to do on the face, more damage and ageing to be inflicted on the torso, and a comedy eyebrow to be installed before the timber-hewn combatant is complete.
Today I’ve finished typing up an FX breakdown of the most recent script, to aid Hank in his budgeting. It reveals that the film requires a total of 320 FX shots, of which 184 are model shots (or contain such elements), 89 involve miniature puppets (either stop motion or rod controlled), 15 include matte painting elements, 22 are rig removals and 21 require motion control. To put this in perspective, Soul Searcher had around 250 FX shots. Most genre movies today number their FX shots in four figures.
The next thing I need to do is find a suitable studio to shoot the pilot in. Ealing’s stage one looked promising originally, but Ian produced a sketch model which proved that it was too small, besides which it’s on a long term lease.

Recently I was contacted by Hank Starrs, someone who I met up with way back in June 2006 when I was actively seeking an independent producer for Dark Side. At the time, although enthusiastic, he didn’t have any features under his belt, but we kept in touch anyway. He has now completed principal photography on a feature called Blooded, shot in the wilds of Scotland with all manner of challenges from ever-changing weather to malfunctioning helicopters.
Hank and I met up today to discuss the developments on Dark Side, such as they are. The upshot is that he has offered to put together a professional budget, schedule and ultimately an investment brochure for the film, as well as offering his services on the pilot scene.

According to amazon.com, Soul Searcher will be out on March 18th in the US & A. Pre-order it now for just $17.99! Their cover is pretty nice, even though it includes a stock photo of some random guy in a hood with cheesily Photoshopped green eyes. And a splash of blood, to make people think it’s a gory horror movie. (Ha!)

Back home in London I recorded the remaining shots for the videomatic – mostly those featuring the small-scale Lady Vain model used in an earlier videomatic. As I was shooting the plastic heroes and heroines jumping from the ship I was forced to come up with a few cunning tricks to depict parachutes opening, which I’ll probably use on a larger scale when the scene is shot for real.

The new videomatic, one of the most complex so far, was time-consuming to film. Ian’s Lady Vain deck model was about three metres long and took up much of the loft play-room where we were shooting. To represent the underside of the balloon, we suspended several bin bags from the sloping ceiling. This resulted in a lethal web of threads akin to that game in The Crystal Maze where touching the neon rods three times led to automatic lock-in. We managed to avoid tripping and falling on the model at any point, which was just as well since it was covered in cocktail sticks acting as deck railings.
Setting the model up took so long that, by the time Ian had to leave at 7:30pm, we were little more than halfway through the shots. The usual problems of manipulating the tiny figures were compounded by the bin bag ceiling and the difficulties of moving around the room without garrotting ourselves. However, despite the frustrations, by lunchtime today I had completed all the shots on the set and was able to pack it away for future use.
Merry Christmas!

Ian and I met on Wednesday to discuss a new videomatic involving an attack on one of the airships by flying beasties. I’ve been knocking up the creatures and some laughable props while Ian works on the set – which is going to be quite large, because it has to represent the entire deck of The Lady Vain.
There’s not much left to do on the Swordsman now. The next thing to think about is getting the set built, before which we need to lock down the design.