I finished the videomatic, but I’m still struggling to complete the fourth draft of the script. Someone please give me some money so I can pay another writer to do it for me. If I run one more permutation of the sabotage subplot through my head, it might explode.

What usually happens is that I type the date and then daydream for anywhere upwards of five minutes before I can think of a way to begin the entry. And I won’t be able to use that one again.
A new videomatic, depicting the stopping of the world, is almost complete. No shots in it are stolen from other films. In the same way that no elements of the Sherlock Holmes stories were purloined from Edgar Allan Poe. (This is a clever, witty and cutting joke from the world of classical literature. If you do not understand, simply laugh now to appear learned.) Other shots feature the Corps action figures on sticks, my sister’s holiday snaps and lots of crumpled paper.

So Miramax don’t want to make The Dark Side of the Earth. “Tonally, it is not a Miramax sort of film.”
More Back to the Future fun here.

If you were amused by the Superman Returns video blog I recommended to Soul Searcher journal readers in February, check out this sequelific Hot Fuzz blog.
And on the subject of Peter Jackson, I would also like to recommend The Frighteners Director’s Cut DVD. Although the film is weakened by the extra material which has been reinstated, it’s worth the purchase because the second disc contains The Funniest Blooper In The Annals Of Cinema: Michael J. Fox genuinely forgets what film he’s in during scenes with The Judge and yells, “DOC!!!!”

I had a meeting today with Lee Thomas from Screen West Midlands. After twice being turned down by their script development fund, I had given up on the agency, but new big boss Jonnie Turpie told me at a Rural Media event a couple of months back that in spite of those two rejections, the production funding was administered by different people and it was still worth me looking into that. And here was the second surprise: Screen West Midlands do fund feature film production, contrary to what I’d been led to believe in the past.
Lee, who I met briefly in Cannes last year, told me that – as a result of Soul Searcher – SWM were keen to provide me with some financing if they possibly could. His initial reaction to the Dark Side treatment was one which others had previously hinted at, but no-one had put as clearly before. The story combines an epic, effects-heavy, action-adventure genre with a small, “rite of-passage” character element. (A deliberate decision.) Problem is, an expensive FX genre movie needs to find a wide audience in order to make a profit, whereas the quirky characterisation I’m aiming for tends to only interest a more narrow audience, hence it traditionally being the realm of low budget films.
Put bluntly, in order to get the film made, I may have to make the characters more stereotypical.
In other news, I’m following a couple of new leads in respect of producers and name actors. By the way, the companies with whom I had promising meetings over the summer seem to have lost interest.

Bang, bang, pop, bang. Must be almost fireworks night.
A Mr. James Furlong has won the Soul Searcher “Guess The Budget Competition”, a challenge only slightly more difficult – for anyone who’s watched the DVD extras – than those multiple choice quizzes you get at the end of CSI. “Was the victim killed by (A) a screwdriver, (B) a bus driver or (C) Minnie Driver?”
The correct answer (to return to Soul Searcher) was

It’s been a listless couple of weeks for me, getting up late, struggling to do anything useful, wondering if that distance wailing noise is the fat lady singing.
I took some photos of London landmarks in order to make a videomatic of the sequence in which the world stops turning, but the difficulty of achieving the collapsing effects in any worthwhile way has led me to put it off again and again. I reckon sandcastles are the best way to go, but since I don’t have a sandpit, that doesn’t really get me anywhere. I think I might just steal shots from other films.
To add to my general malaise, I’ve been kicking myself over a missed opportunity. Lately I’ve been camera operating for Musical Mad TV, which involves the presenters and I going to West End shows for free, then interviewing the cast at the swanky parties afterwards. (Good work if you can get it, which you can’t, because I got it first. Nah, nah, na-nah, nah!) Last week we covered Spamalot, the Monty Python musical. On our way through the party, Tim – one of the presenters – quite literally bumped into a guy coming up the stairs. Apologies were exchanged and we went on our way. Tim had no idea who he’d just collided with until I told him, simultaneously cursing my own failure to engage the guy in conversation; it was Terry Gilliam.

It really is a very small world. What film were The Model Unit working on when I last visited them? Atonement. And the second assistant editor on Atonement, by coincidence, is my good friend Matt Streatfield. And Matt put me in touch with a producer that he thought might be interested in making Dark Side. He wasn’t, but he very kindly furnished me with the names of some people that might be. So some more copies of the script have gone out.

Still no progress with the interested producing/financing parties, but no rejections either, and it ain’t over till the fat lady sings.
The storyboards are starting to come in from Luis Gayol and Neil Johnson. I’ve done a bit myself too. You can see some random frames of Luis’s in the gallery. To show you any more would give too much away.
At the weekend I sat on Brighton pier pondering the script and came up with a few improvements, but nothing major.

The videomatic is finished. You can see an extract on the video page.