Yesterday was a big day for Dark Side: the day the pilot got screened to potential producing partners. With such things there is always the foolish hope that the screening will end with one attendee leaping from his chair and demanding to know immediately who he should make the multi-million pound cheque out to. This did not happen. Shocking, I know.
But it went well. Most of the people who said they would turn up did indeed turn up (which doesn’t always happen with these things), and they all seemed to enjoy it. We ended up running the lovely 35mm print four times, spilling out of our allotted timeslot at both ends. (Incidentally, the first run was at 24 frames per second, and the others were 25fps. As many times as I’ve seen it, I can’t tell the bloody difference. Carl detected some slight flickering in the highlights on the 24fps run, but honestly, listen to the advice of the Guerilla Filmmakers’ Handbook and always shoot at 25pfs. 24fps just isn’t worth the hassle.) Big thanks are due to the staff of Soho Screening Rooms for accommodating those extra runs for us.
Before the screening we met with a producer who gave us some daunting information about film marketing. To reach the sort of audience Dark Side aspires to would cost around UKP5 million in UK advertising, he reckoned, and over UKP20 million in the US. Ouch.
Afterwards we met Quay and discussed the last few niggling niggles in the script. I really can’t describe how nice it is to be left with such trivial changes to make after all that brain-mangling plot fiddling. It’s best summed up in the words of a character from Tamara Drewe who’s just finished a productive day of writing: “I feel like a man who’s just passed a gargantuan stool.”
Stop press! This morning a few emails have flitted back and forth in response to yesterday’s screening containing some very good news. I’d better say no more at this point, except that I feel we’ve taken a great step forward.
1. Development
The Dark Side of the Earth: February 23rd, 2011
As you probably know – and if you don’t, just flick back a few years in this blog – I have been working on the Dark Side script for a LONG time. And what I’ve battled with most is the complexity of the plot, both in elucidating it sufficiently for an audience to follow, and in making the internal logic work (i.e. eliminating plot holes). Given that the film deals with time travel, parallel universes, mythical creatures, fictional period technology and an apocalypse, this was a tall order. And over the years it’s caused many a hair on my head to be torn out, many a strangled scream to escape my tortured lips and many a murmured prayer for the blessed release of death to be uttered as I tried desperately to make it all work.
And finally it does!
Hallelujah!
Two news readers have been over it and haven’t batted an eyelid at the temporal twists and turns. That’s music to my ears.
It doesn’t mean it’s finished. There are still tweaks to be tweaked, but the worst is over. Touch wood.
The Dark Side of the Earth: February 18th, 2011
With the Dark Side Guides series complete, you may be wondering what will be next. If you visit this website with any regularity you will have realised that I’m addicted to making behind-the-scenes featurettes. It’s mainly because I love making films, and making dramas, even short ones, costs money that I don’t currently have, whereas documentaries are cheap (particularly when the footage has already been shot).
So what will be next? Well, fifteen years ago I was in the middle of making the original amateur version of The Dark Side of the Earth. This April will mark the fifteenth anniversary of the shoot wrapping, and I plan to commemorate this with a special documentary, reuniting the original cast and revisiting the Malvern Wells back garden where much of it was shot. I’ve already started trawling through the ridiculously over-long bloopers video that I made back in ’96 to accompany the film and have found plenty of humourous moments to include, from Matt’s infamous face-first fall into a fire, to a great bit of dinnertime footage where Chris’s mum walks in just as he’s viciously punching a baked potato.
Chris is currently away travelling, but I hope we can get everyone together in late March or April to shoot it. Whether you’ll get to see the full doc on this website, I’m not sure at the moment, but I promise you a clip or trailer at the very least.
The Dark Side of the Earth: February 11th, 2011
Today, ladies and gentlemen, I shall discourse upon a matter I like to call “Doctor Who Science”.
I have always described The Dark Side of the Earth as a fantasy film, but technically it’s science fiction because it purports to provide scientific explanations for all the extraordinary goings-on. Some science fiction, typically “hard” sci-fi, as it’s known, is fairly realistic in this regard, basing its technology on projections by futurists. At the other end of the scale comes Doctor Who Science. Don’t get me wrong – I love Doctor Who and have done since I was eight – but the technobabble rarely stands up to any scrutiny. Commonly the Doctor uses a metaphor, ostensibly to clarify things for the companion, but the real purpose is to say, “Here is a chain of logic which you know from your everyday lives. Since it works in your everyday life, it must also work when applied to a random bunch of crazy space things.”
The Dark Side of the Earth, for better or worse, subscribes to this methodology. It’s a delicate balancing act, trying to come up with science which you know is bollocks, but has just enough truth in it to (a) suspend the viewer’s disbelief and (b) help the viewer understand the rules of the world you’re creating. You’re relying on people’s ignorance to a certain extent, which is something that can work both for and against you.
Way back in my very first posting on this blog I talked about the popular misconception that gravity is caused by the earth’s rotation. I have no doubt that, if the film does get made and widely released, many ignorant people will brand it unrealistic because gravity doesn’t disappear when the world stops spinning. (Indeed, one script report has already done exactly this.) So there it’s working against me.
But in other places it might be useful. For example, the script offers its own explanation of why the earth spins. In reality, it spins because of the way gravity drew the cosmic dust together when the solar system formed, but a lot of people don’t know that, and I think I’ve put just enough real science into my fake explanation that those people will buy it, and hopefully everyone else will suspend disbelief enough to accept it and enjoy the film.
And as for the people that think time will stop if the earth stops turning, well… you really didn’t understand Superman: The Movie at all, did you?
The Dark Side of the Earth: February 3rd, 2011
It’s that time of year again – Cannes is on the horizon. If I’m going to go this year, I need to do it for less money than it’s cost me in the past. If you saw my Cannes vlogs last year, you may recall I said it costs about UKP1,000 to attend the festival: UKP100 for your flight, UKP400 for your hotel, UKP250 for your Market Pass and the rest goes on food, transfers and incidentals. So how can I get these numbers down?
Well, the first thing I can do is not be an idiot and misunderstand the differences between market and festival passes, like I did last year. There are several ways to get into the Cannes Film Festival – and I mean ways that you, as a person, can get into the festival, not your film – but the main two are the Market Pass and Festival Accreditation. (I’ll try and go into the others at some point in the future.)
Before I go any further, let me remind you of a key point in understanding Cannes – it is actually two separate events that happen in the same place at the same time: the Cannes Film Festival and the Film Market, or Marche Du Film. The first is the one you will see in TV coverage – the red carpet, the stars – but it’s also a film festival like any other, to which you can submit your film and if you’re extremely lucky it will be selected and screened, and if you’re preternaturally lucky you’ll win an award. The second event, the market, is just like a trade fair or a convention for films. It’s where most of the world’s sales agents and distributors go to buy and sell movies – most of them really, really terrible, as indicated by the thousands of appalling posters which assault your eyeballs when you enter the Riveria building at the heart of the market.
So back to accreditation. I always thought that Festival Accreditation would only get you into the festival areas, not the markets areas, but I was wrong. It gets you into both, just like the Market Pass does. So what’s the difference? Well, one difference is that with the Market Pass you get the Guide – a massive and very useful book containing contact details for all the companies attending.
But the most important distinction is HOW you get these two types of accreditation. For a Market Pass, you cough up your 286 Euros and – bingo! – it’s yours. For Festival Accreditation, you fill in an on-line form, attaching evidence that you are a working filmmaker, and if the panel is convinced by this evidence, and if they have not used up the limited number of passes they are able to give each year, you get accreditation – completely FREE. This shouldn’t be a revelation to anyone who’s been to Cannes before, but somehow I’d got it into my head that it cost about 150 Euros for Festival Accreditation, plus of course the erroneous belief that it wouldn’t get me into all the necessary areas, so I was very pleased when I finally got the facts straight.
I’ve heard a lot about how picky the panel can be when deciding whether to give Festival Accreditation or not. I know that your IMDb page is quite important, and that your credits have to be recent, so I applied in the film technician category, since I have plenty of recent DOP credits. I applied on Tuesday morning – the first day registration was open – and received an email a few hours later saying I had been accepted. And there was me thinking it would be weeks before I got a decision and that they would ring up and interrogate all my referees and I would have to supply more evidence. But no, it was easy peasy. I think this was largely due to me probably being one of the first people to apply, so my advice is to get in there on the first day registration is open.
So that’s UKP250 slashed off my Cannes budget already. We’ll see what else I can squeeze as the festival approaches.
The Dark Side of the Earth: January 29th, 2011
I was interested to read this letter to US uber-critic Roger Ebert about why 3D cinema is doomed to fail, written by Walter Murch. (Most know Murch as the master sound designer from Apocalypse Now, but to me he’ll always be the director of the brilliant Return to Oz.) Although I agree with him entirely, all the evidence is that the format is here to stay. Every single genre film that comes out now is in 3D. For me this is heart breaking, because it means that the profession I’ve always wanted to work in – making 2D fantasy films – no longer exists.
Better change the subject, before I get too depressed.
Last weekend I uploaded the last in the series of Dark Side Guides: The Dark Side Guide to Digital Intermediate – check it out.
The Dark Side of the Earth: January 22nd, 2011
This week I’ve been making revisions to the latest script draft, based on Quay’s notes. When you have spent this long working on a screenplay, you can’t see the wood for the trees, and I can’t tell you how great it is to have someone else give you a list of the things that need changing, rather than having to figure it out for yourself.
Lately I’ve been reflecting a lot on how dramatically the script has changed since I wrote the first draft in 2005 (between lighting set-ups while I was DPing a student film). Some of the things in it which were then very important to me have been eroded and in some cases removed altogether.
But the things that are important to me as a person have changed in the last six years too. I’ve got married, which inevitably alters my attitude towards the romantic elements in the script. It also makes my portrayal of women in the story more realistic, since I have one on hand to consult. And Katie’s period working for the Union of Concerned Scientists has opened my eyes to environmental issues, which have found their way thematically into the script. And of course I’ve shot the pilot, giving me the kind of insight into how it all works on camera that is normally only afforded to TV writers.
Whilst out searching for furniture bargains yesterday (ah, married life!) Katie helped me to work through a problem with Old Father Time’s motivation. What was great is that we were able to bring it back to one of the most common ideas of this character in mythology: the image of an old man who transforms into a baby on New Year’s Eve. Carl often says that in a fantasy film, it helps to tie your made-up world to existing made-up worlds, i.e. well-known mythology, and when you can figure something out like that it really strengthens the story.
So the script has evolved – for the better. Today it has a stronger, more logical plot, more defined characters and a richer – but not exclusionary – subtext of themes, literary references and mythological roots than it ever has done. Not to mention the fact that I’ve finally figured out what the sequel would be about, and let’s just say: Pink Floyd may sue.
The Dark Side of the Earth: January 15th, 2011
When Aidan and Joe were working on the FX for the pilot, John Galloway gave them many excellent pieces of advice, but one in particular sticks in my mind because it’s equally relevant to writing. Make a list of everything that needs doing, and stick to that list. Don’t digress. Don’t start questioning how the list item you’re currently executing will affect another part of the job – just make the changes, cross them off the list and get to the end. Then you can look back and reflect on the whole. But if you try to do that as you go along, you’ll never get anything done. I think I’ve finally learnt to follow that advice when I’m writing.
I’ll probably regret saying this, but this draft seems to be going swimmingly. I feel disciplined. And it really helps to have a producer, a script editor and a novelist to turn to when you hit a snag. Thanks, guys.
Last week we had an interesting meeting with Film Education, a charity that supplies teaching resources about films. It seems there may be an exciting opportunity for the extensive behind-the-scenes material to reach a wider audience and spread the knowledge.
This meeting was in London, of course, and unusually I travelled by National Express. I have always preferred trains and didn’t even bother trying coaches until late last year, when I was surprised to find the leg room was superior and generally it wasn’t too unpleasant at all – which, coupled with the considerably lower price, threatened to knock train travel into a cocked hat. This time, however, the experience was less convivial. Partly this was due to my failure to take travel sickness pills, but mainly it was because the drivers were grumpy old farts who treated us like naughty schoolkids. Looks like it’s back to trains.
The Dark Side of the Earth: January 3rd, 2011
Well, we’re another year closer to hoverboards and flying cars. The self-lacing Nikes are already in development. It’s only a matter of time before they abolish all lawyers and ties become see-through.
Amongst the bounty Santa delivered this year was a t-shirt from my sister, bearing the legend: “COME OVER TO THE DARK SIDE. WE HAVE COOKIES.” Today I have indeed come over to the Dark Side again, having restarted work on the script, after a really, really, really nice two month break from it.
Another of my gifts, this time from my brother-in-law, was a Wii. With the odd exception (notably Ghostbuster: The Video Game, which I spent most of last Christmas in the States playing), I haven’t really played computer games since I was about 18. And whilst the main purpose of the Wii was to get Katie and I some exercise (we got the Wii Fit bundle), it’s also great research for the inevitable The Dark Side of the Earth tie-in game – yes, I have already made some notes.
Movie research is also easy to do at Christmas, as the TV schedules are packed with ’em, with no shortage of family fantasy films this year. I tried to watch as many as possible, but what did I learn from them?
1.There is an inverse relationship between the entertainment value of a battle scene and the number of digital extras in it. (The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor)
2. Eighties fantasy movies are the best – even the ones with awful synth-based scores. (Ladyhawke)
3. I can’t hold enough characters’ names in my head to follow a Julian Fellowes film. (From Time to Time)
4. Cute kids who can act can really make a movie. (Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium)
5. There is a bizarre trend in superhero movies to aim acts one and two at adults, but act three at small children. (The Incredible Hulk – see also Iron Man)
6. A strong theme, in this case war and the call of duty, can lift a genre film above the crowd. (The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe)
7. I can’t understand why this franchise isn’t making more money. (Prince Caspian)
8. Seriously. (The Voyage of the Dawn Treader) And the other thing I can’t understand is why anyone would want to watch it in 3D with all those shaky fight scenes. We made the trip to Malvern especially to see it in 2D, as part of my boycott of 3D movies, as I don’t want to see the format take over.
The Dark Side of the Earth: December 22nd, 2010
Today is the 15th anniversary of the first day of shooting on The Dark Side of the Earth – the original amateur version. “Today made a very bad start to principal photography,” I wrote in my journal in 1995, as half the actors forgot about the filming and didn’t turn up.
It’s also been over five years since this blog started. So what do I have to show for these five years, other than a blogroll of rambling nonsense? I have a lovely 35mm pilot of which I’m very proud, certainly. I also have almost two hours’ worth of behind-the-scenes podcasts and documentaries, and I wonder if there’s a way for these to reach a wider audience. In the new year we have a meeting with Film Education, a charity that provides schools with learning resources based around major films. It would be great for other people to be able to benefit from the trials and errors of the Dark Side. Aside from Media Studies, there are plenty of other areas of the curriculum that Dark Side could tie into – science, (e.g. the principles of lighter-than-air craft), geography (extreme climates), history (the Victorian era), English (archaic language, Victorian literature), art (production design), drama studies, even maths and technology.
And on that thought I shall leave you. Have a very happy Noel (Christmas, not Edmonds). I hope you can get wherever you want to go for Christmas through all the snow, since there are literally millimetres of the stuff all around…