“Suuuuuuuuurrender you pitiful cur!”
On Friday the Wooden Swordsman was endowed with his true voice – courtesy of Mark Heap, perhaps best known for his role as Dr. Alan Statham in Green Wing. Recording took place at the SAE Institute in Dalston, who kindly gave us one of their very swanky suites for a couple of hours. Carl and Henning kindly provided their very swanky selves for the session too.
After a brief chat, Mark launched into the recording, quickly finding exactly the right manic, over-the-top tone which I was after. With several good takes in the can, I encouraged him to improvise a little, and I soon found myself in stitches. How much of this can be used – given that the Swordsman’s voice is supposed to be pre-recorded rather than responsive – I don’t know, but I hope we can get some of it in. It reminded me of The Labyrinth, where incidental puppet characters can often be heard muttering hilariously in the background.
When Mark was done, Kate Burdette arrived to briefly reprise her role as Isabelle. As well as some minor ADR work (re-dubbing some lines), Kate’s job was to deliver a “story so far” voiceover which can be used to introduce the pilot.
Towards the end of the month Henning and I will start the mixing process, the final leg as far as the pilot’s audio is concerned. On the video side, Aidan and Joe are currently taking a break (using the word “break” in its broadest, downright lying sense) from the VFX to write their dissertations, but will have the Dark Side work complete by the end of February.

The Swordsman’s voice has finally been cast and we’ll be recording him next week. Stay tuned for more information.

FX work continues on the pilot. It will be next year before it’s all finished. That’s almost as long as Soul Searcher was in post.
Meanwhile, some casting has been persistently not happening. And I took a read of some professional feedback on the screenplay and started to think about the next draft. But that’s about all that’s happened of late. I saw the neighbour’s cat peering at a squirrel over the fence. Does that count?

Welcome to the new Dark Side of the Earth website. You’ll find plenty of new photos in the gallery, and a brand new cast and crew section. Apologies to those crew members I couldn’t fit in.
P.S. If the site runs sluggishly, it may be due to a lack of memory. Try relaunching your browser and making sure you have no other web pages open.

Carl and I met with Henning last week to go through the new layers of sound design which the latter has created. There are many great new touches which would never have crossed my mind. Henning has really blurred the line between the Swordsman and his mechanism and the ship itself, which adds a nice bit of extra magic and ambiguity to the wooden robot. Subtle vocalisations in the mix bring the puppet to life further – even animal noises, like a rattlesnake blended into the steam hiss of the mechanisms.

Film & Festivals magazine have printed an eight page article consisting of an abridged version of this journal in their August issue. You can view it online or order a print-on-demand copy. Thanks to Chris Patmore for this excellent coverage.

Aidan and Joe are still slaving away at the FX, Henning is busy with the audio track-laying, and Carl is making enquiries about a certain actor for the voice of the Swordsman. As for me, I’m working on a new Flash website (following a failed attempt at the same earlier in the year) and starting to think about writing a new draft of the script.