This month’s Impact magazine contains an interview with me in a feature by Phil Hobden about the state of British indie filmmaking today.

Bang. Pop. Fizz. As if anyone could forget the fifth of November.
I paid another visit to The Model Unit today. Mike was in the middle of motorizing the Swordsman’s internal gears. We talked about how it would be puppeteered and how the ceiling mechanism might work. Podcast coming soon.
In other news, sales agent Wysiwyg Films have signed a North American distribution deal for Soul Searcher. And the Bristol Comic Expo are going to screen it next year. Hopefully it will be better organised than the farcical screening at the Brighton Comic Expo in 2005.

Whilst pondering how to adapt the Swordsman scenes into a standalone short film (as well as being a pilot, I want it to be elligible for festivals) I got distracted and started writing a new draft of the feature screenplay. Ironically, one of the first things that changed was a Swordsman scene.
I saw Stardust this morning which, annoyingly, features a fantasy Victorianesque airship, though fortunately not as heavily as I feared. And ours are better designed. What annoyed me more was that near the end there was a shot of the hero’s hand trembling on his sword as he heads into battle, and it’s identical to a shot I had been planning for Dark Side. Do you think I could sue?

The Swordsman’s head has now been carved – and it looks just like Ian’s design – and the bottom half of him is all weathered and detailed.

The Swordsman looks fantastic. He’s big and wooden and wonderful. At the moment he lacks for a hat and lower arms, but then so did that doctor in The Thing just before he died. (Eh?) He has no inner cogs or detailing yet either, but the heart button is in place.
Nick and Mike both seem to be having a good time building it. They were working on ball joints when we arrived. Ian was very pleased with how his design had been translated into three dimensions. Coming soon: pictures and maybe even some video footage.
I forgot to mention, when the UKFC (UK Football Club… or Film Council) turned me down for script development funding, they gave me a “free ticket” for a professional report from Script Connection, which came through a few weeks ago. Obviously there was a lot of constructive criticism, but overall whoever analysed it seemed to rather like it. They complimented the dialogue, which I was extremely chuffed about since in the past I have been atrocious at writing speech, though I did put a particular effort into this area in the latest draft. Even if it brings me no closer to getting it made, it was a nice bit of feedback to get.

The Model Unit are about half way through making the Swordsman. Ian and I are going down there to see it on Monday.
Last weekend I was in Malvern so I got together with Ian and AJ, who’s choreographing the sword work, and we had a little chat about how the puppet will be controlled.

Soon I’ll be living off beans and rice again. But at least I will have a Wooden Swordsman before long; the Model Unit should begin work on it any day now. Yay! That was the plan mentioned a few entries back, by the way – pay the pros to do it properly. Not quite as cunning as a fox what used to be Professor of Cunning at Oxford, but has moved on and is now Chairman of the International Committee for Cunning, but better than doing nothing.
To see the teaser trailer for the New York movie, See Saw, visit www.hamptonsmovie.com

What the hell is a Jigawatt? It’s a company, that’s watt. I mean what. Yes, Jigawatt Pictures Ltd. is now a real company incorporated in England & Wales under the Companies Act of – appropriately enough – 1985. (“I’m a time traveller from the future. I came here in a time machine that I invented and tomorrow I have to go back to the year 1985.” Slap.)
Now if I can just open a bank account for the company, work on the Swordsman can finally begin…

It was indeed a lot of fun. We got one day off – one day more than on Beyond Rec – the equipment was incredibly heavy and the weather was consistently very hot, but I had a great time.
Amongst the highlights were filming a foot chase in Times Square, shooting at Tavern on the Green (thinking “Oh my God, they shot Ghostbusters here!”) and grappling with an underwater camera housing to film Jaws-esque angles of Aimee’s drowning scene. Once again it was terrible to have to come home. Even the kettle felt wrong when I made my coffee this morning. I mean, this afternoon. (Still sleeping off the jetlag.)