Neil and I spent all of yesterday working on the nightclub crowd surfer/stampede sequence – about two minutes of the film. It seemed very empty, so we layered up a lot more sounds. I wound up voicing a bunch more extras, including the (female) crowd surfer. The first attempting at pitch-shifting my voice sounded like TV funny-man Joe Pasquale.

Right, so Wysiwyg. Soon after completing Soul Searcher, I advertised it as a film seeking distribution on Mandy.com. Wysiwyg’s Tom Swanston got in touch a few months ago and, after seeing a screener, saw the film’s potential. We met up a month ago for a chat and I found Tom to be very open and straightforward. (Unlike the used car salesmen of the Cannes Film Market.) The company is relatively small and new at present, but that’s a good thing because it means they’ve got something to prove by getting the film out there. Coincidentally, Diary of a Bad Lad – of Cannes Director’s Journal Crossover and recent Finchely Shooting People screening fame – is also being released by Wysiwyg next year.

I have just signed on the dotted line. It really is a dotted line too. Not dashed or continuous. Properly dotted. Like ellipsis gone made. Like that bikini from the Timmy Mallet song. I saw him once, at a church fete in Worcester. Days like that won’t come again. Wackadays, as they were known.

So this dotted line was at the bottom of a distribution deal. A distribution deal with Wysiwyg Films. A distribution deal for the world excluding the USA and Canada. Those are the salient facts. As to who Wysiwgy Films are and how the deal came about, that’s a story for the next journal entry – one that will be written once I’ve got the images of a man in novelty glasses beating children with a rubber mallet out of my head.

Neil and I did some more work on reel three today. Things seemed to go very slowly. Guess we’d better get a shift on now.

Neil and I did half of reel three yesterday. Neil got very excited about the Moat of Souls flashback sequence. To be fair, it does sound pretty huge now. In another scene, Kurt Russell made a guest appearance. Sorry, I mean coat rustle. I rustled Neil’s coat over an ADR scene that wasn’t noisy enough. Mental.

Thanks to the recent arrival of my long-awaited new computer, I can at last resume work on Going to Hell: The Making of Soul Searcher. That is, I can once I’ve recaptured all the footage – a tedious process if ever there was one.

The screening in Brighton was almost disastrous. A last minute room change and a lack of a crucial audio cable almost scuppered the whole thing, but after much faffing about setting it all up, with the audience already seated and probably annoyed from having been kept waiting for so long, it got shown. I’m not sure how well it went down, really. I think everyone was just waiting for the Alan Moore film that was showing afterwards. Still, they laughed in the right places.

During the week Neil and I finished reel two (not that we won’t be revisiting it, along with every other reel, once we get to the end) and moved onto reel three. The film continues to improve.

Neil and I remixed just over half of reel two yesterday. It’s frustratingly slow work and feels like painting the Forth Bridge at times, but it’s totally worth it. Soul Searcher is starting to sound like a real movie now. Looking back at some of the stuff we did in the original mix, it’s so shoddy. One scene had whole tracks overlooked. I guess that’s what happens when you only sleep three hours a day for a fortnight. I got another vocal cameo – as Clubber Girl 2 – just one word. What’s worrying is how convincingly feminine I sounded without any digital treatment. You just wouldn’t know it wasn’t her real voice.

I heard back from Jim Carl at Escapsim today. He’s going to track down some press for me, but he says the audience loved Soul Searcher.

Yesterday Neil Douek and I got to the end of reel one in our surround sound mix of Soul Searcher. It’s quite strange to be shut in that studio again after all this time, and it’s very nice not to be under such pressure of time. Of course, it’s taking longer than we expected. You change one thing and you have to change half a dozen others so the mix stills works. The film’s already sounding much better. I’m getting my voice in it a bit more. So far I’ve done a tut for Gary and a nasal sigh for Ezekiel.

I’ve no idea how the US premiere went on Saturday, and won’t know for a few weeks when I get sent all the press cuttings. Unless someone who attended posts about it on this site’s brand new guestbook. That’s right, soulsearchermovie.com just went interactive.

Last night’s Durham University screening – precisely two years after the start of principal photography – went well. It was unfortunate that the left and right speakers at the venue had been wired up the wrong way around, resulting in some confusing stereo effects as things whizzed across frame and the sound travelled in the opposite direction. In spite of that, all present – about thirty or so – seemd to have a good time. And if they hadn’t, what with it being a chemistry lecture theatre, I could have stealthily turned on the gas taps and no-one would have lived to tell the tale. Thanks to Mel Rodriguez at the film society for setting it up. I wait with bated breath to hear how it goes down in the other Durham – Durham, North Carolina, tomorrow night.

The Durham screening has been confirmed – 7pm next Thursday night, the 20th. See the screenings page for more info. It looks like Soul Searcher will also play at the Brighton Comic Expo next month – I’m just waiting to hear the details.

I’ve ordered a new computer, meaning I can finally get on with Going to Hell and wrap up the DVD extras.

Coming soon – Shadowland: The Dark Side of the Earth website…

On Monday night I gave a lecture at the SAE Institute in Islington. Jabbering on about Soul Searcher has now become a well-rehearsed routine, though being ninety minutes this was by far my longest jabbering session yet. I broke it up with screenings of clips and extras from the in-progress DVD. The turn-out was good – standing room only, somewhere between 40 and 50 people – and the response was positive.

Over the last couple of days I’ve been considering attending the Escapism Film Festival, but the cost of the flight is going to be the problem. So I called the British Council and spoke to Geraldine Higgins, to whom I sent Soul Searcher shortly after it was completed. She said she hadn’t been able to watch the whole thing yet. I asked if they could provide financial assistance towards a filmmaker attending a festival his work was screening at. But no, she said they only support short films in this way and that I should call the UK Film Council or Film London instead.

So I called the UK Film Council and asked the same question: “Do you have any funding opportunities to help filmmakers attend festivals where their work is screening?” “No,” the guy replied, “we only support feature film production.” Ah. “You need to speak to the British Council about that,” he went on. “They just told me to call you,” I returned. “Sorry, we can’t help you mate,” was the final verdict.

Next I called Film London and asked the question for a third time. The receptionist thought the answer was yes, and put me through to another guy. As I was explaining the situation to him, he interrupted: “Can I just stop you there? We only deal with short films, not features.” Fortunately he did not suggest I call the Film Council or the British Council, or I might just have murdered him by telepathy.