I got the flyers round Hereford on Wednesday, at such locations as the cinema, the skaters’ shop, the Software Store, some music shops and a whole heap of chip shops. Odeon Worcester and a couple of other locations in Oliver Cromwell’s favourite city got the flyer treatement this afternoon. Malvern will have to wait till next week. In spite of all this foot-blistering effort, sales are still slow, though I hope a general awareness will lead to word-of-mouth snowballing eventually. A lot of people seem to be waiting for the DVD. On that front, I got the storyboard and stills galleries together this week. I decided to put on storyboards for scenes that were cut before the final draft of the script – more interesting than looking at shots that are in the film, although there are three storyboard comparison scenes for your delectation. The stills gallery contains 100 photos, a mixture of in-character stills which I took, and previously unseen behind-the-scenes photos by Simon Ball.

So largely positive reviews in the local press, then. The Hereford Times’ praise-singing included: “The audience was gripped… The Beacon is an entertaining film… Several of the key players gave impressive performances – none more so than the hero of the day, Lorna-Jane Hamer… The music score by Hereford musician Alan Jones is in a class above what you would anticipate on this budget and Oseman’s technical skills are remarkable.” DVD-wise, I’ve so far completed a featurette on the window smash effect, some multi-angle scenes, storyboard comparisons, and the deleted scenes, plus of course the director’s commentary. Later I’m going to do commentaries for the deleted scenes, then I’m going to start work on a featurette about the cinema FX sequence. The flyers haven’t been done, so no-one’s actually going to know about the official VHS release on Monday. Hello, poverty…

I cut another trailer – come on, I had to do one with some 3D FX in. I don’t have enough webspace to put it up on this site, but you can view it on BT’s Get Out There website. I’m currently laying the sound effects on the deleted scenes – yes, I decided to go down the Star Wars: Episode I route and finish them, rather than just leaving them in rough cut form. And tonight I record the director’s commentary.

Thanks to everyone who came to the premiere yesterday, and apologies to any random members of the public who were misled by the newspaper articles into thinking they could come and had to be turned away. It was a pretty nerve-racking morning for me – I had to do a live radio interview at 7:45am on BBC Hereford & Worcester. The screening itself went very well. I guess there were about 100, 150 people there. Laughter occurred in the right places, even a couple of bouts of applause. (See, AJ, that clapperboard line was worth it.) I’m already bored senseless of having no films to make, so I’ve started work on the deleted scenes and other DVD material. Dave Abbott’s going to do the animated menus, and his behind-the-scenes documentary is just a few weeks from completion. Next week I’m getting some flyers printed up to blitz Hereford, Worcester and Malvern with. (Blitz, Neil?) To pepper Hereford, Worcester and Malvern with.