In the last few weeks things have been on the hectic side in preparation for Christmas and being able to take a few days off and doing nothing much other than watching TV and playing games. So this is more of a consolidation post covering the odds and ends of what we have been up to.

Teaser Trailer

One of the main things we managed to get out of the door is our teaser trailer, it took a few days to put together and animate but were happy with the end result. Over the last week it has had a good number of hits on Youtube and its coming up well in searches.

This is the extended version of the trailer; there is also a shorter version, both can be used embedded and spread around the internet if people want to help promote Casimir Effect.

Fundraising

We have been doing well with our fundraising, were close to our goal for the end of 2009. The eBay auctions we have currently listed will help bring us closer to that goal. We also have our product page open as a way you can help us reach our goals, and any donations even small ones will help us hit our target.

First Budget Goal £5,000 GBP / £5,000 GBP 31st December 2009 (On Schedule)

Though our funding model is not wholly unique, we have taken ideas from any different models for lo-budget films. But in doing this our model has become something different. It shows the power of the internet and how it can be used for small or large scale production, helping it develop and find an audience that has some vested interested in the production either through an actor, story, genre, original work or just the tenacity of the people involved. With the current film industry obsessed with event films of little substance or derivative works taking from an already existing franchise, a hand full of people are looking for something different and it has become easier to find with site such as Facebook, Youtube and MySpace.

Not only can this model of film making offer something to the audience, it makes the audience part of the film making process, by bringing them in to help market the film, and raise funds. I would like to take this opportunity to thank all those who have helped us so far and for the continued support, and lets make a difference in 2010.

Doctor Who

Like most people this holiday season we watch Doctor Who – The End of Time pt1 and even though it suffers in places from being too fast paced and everything goes whizzing by. Overall it was enjoyable entertaining television, and everything a TV show should be. I have no doubt it will have its detractors, but the TV ratings show that it achieved what it was supposed to and entertain the masses. There was so much going on the two parter probably should have been a mini-series with at least five parts, where every loose end could have had time to be tied up and the return of the time lords could have been done with more suspense.

Also as a Cardiff based film we found that some of the locations might be useful in Casimir Effect. So this week is going to be digging and ringing around to get contacts and arranging visits.  Alpha Steelworks in Newport will be our fist port of call, and I will see if I can cut a deal at Tredegar House, as there basement levels would be ideal for parts of the film; however the cost of Tredegar might be prohibitive.

Questions

I’m looking to expand the FAQs section, so it would be good if some of our readers can comment here and offer some questions and expand the FAQ. One new question that will be added as an example:

Why did you choose the Casimir Effect?

One of the fundamental theories of time requires vast amounts of energy and exotic matter. Using the Casimir Effect unlimited free energy can be generated, and currently science is looking into the application of the effect in power generation, anti gravity and other strange an interesting things. So with the energy situation sorted, you need to generate exotic matter (exotic matter is matter that defies the current law of physics, such as negative mass), The Casimir Effect can also be manipulated to create such matter, this is then used to open a stable wormhole through space-time and widen it. The main problem is the gravitational forces caused when crossing the event horizon. However a few theories suggest that the Casimir Effect can also be used here to create opposing gravitational forces and counteract the effect of the wormholes gravitational tide.

Casimir Effect is a quantum force even stronger than gravity it represents a level of attraction/repulsion that can be used in a story telling point. With quantum particle A being attracted to quantum particle B and becoming bound in a dance with other quantum particles to create what we know as Atoms, never touching but never being apart. This fits well into a story telling narrative of unrequited love.

This is a very fluffy description of the Casimir Effect, as it is a very complex area of quantum physics that we have only scratched the surface of. We hope that through this film that some of those who find this interesting will take this further and look deeper into quantum physics.

I have received an e-mail from Helen who is one of the organisers of the Save Ianto Jones Campaign that helped raise over £12,000 for Children in Need. They are looking to help out publicising and fundraising for Casimir Effect. We thought long and hard about this as to coordinate any outside marketing efforts so they won’t take up our time. Because of this we will develop some info pack for people to use for different media.

Casimir Productions aim to promote the film and find new and interesting ways to raise funds, while also co-ordinating well planed publicity.  We hope that the people can independently come up with ideas to raise funds. We will compile info pack and make them available to anyone who wants to help.

The main reason for such coordination is that in the media industry people get bombarded everyday with spam and news stories from every angle, much of which gets ignored. So a well planned info pack and showing of support can have a greater impact especially if it is worked in with a strong viral marketing campaign. Also marketing needs to be clever just as much as it needs to be widespread, flyer and poster gangs in festival towns a few weeks before can create an immense buzz ready for the first day of the festival.

What we are doing here is in many ways the new wave of film development and marketing, it has worked with Snakes on a Plane and films by Nick Love. Taking it a step further and finding new ways for fan who support a film to let the world know about their passion and the passion of everyone involved is pushing the boundaries.

Casimir Effect Novella

About 5 years ago the director wrote a shot story as part of a science fiction convention competition, the story was never finished but the core of it was developed. The story of the first time traveller, as woman as yet unnamed who tried to travel into her own past to give herself advice to stop her life going to hell, she was similar to Alice, but was originally married to Bob and the time travel experiment failed. Rather than travelling through time, the plot revolved around alternate universes and ended up with several different Alice’s? A great story, but possibly not a great movie, I won’t give too much away as not to spoil the better bits which we kept.

We took some of the core elements of the story, and reworked them to make them more filmic and visually interesting. We also brought in other character from the NeuroSys setting, characters we knew well and loved who would add an element of intrigue and subtle hints to clandestine events and activates. This would also bring Casimir Effect into a bigger and more vibrant world which could be used to add depth and substance to the story. This also offers us a bigger world to use should we get the chance to expand or redevelop Casimir Effect for television.

In December 2008 we planned the core plot points or each character using index cards, we shuffled them around until we had a structure and plot development that was interesting and offered an air of mystery.  The cards sat on our wall for about 2 months each few days we looked it over added or move something to make the story as interesting as possible. We then told the cards down and left it for a few more months, to give us time to detach ourselves from it so we could come back with fresh ideas.

April 2009 we began the first draft of the treatment, however we realised that to get the most out of the story we had to write it as prose rather than a condensed treatment. This enabled us to dig deeper into the characters and the subtext of the story. So we batted the Novell back and forth until we reached the fourth draft, then we let it out to people we knew and trusted to give us solid feedback about what is wrong and what is right. We then worked hard on the fifth draft to make it tight and keep the characterisation consistent.

By this time it was June and we started to look at turning the story into a script, we know we would have to change things and loose some elements but this is how things go when adapting a story.

In the next instalment, script development, revisions and read throughs.

<< Read Casimir Effect Origins part I

It has been a busy few weeks we have most of our Head of Departments (HoDs) sorted, a few who have first priority are getting back to me in the next few weeks, they will do it if their other work they are negotiating falls through.

We have done some location scouting; I’m waiting to hear back from a few more places before I get photos of them but all seems to be panning out well in the locations department. Have a look at one possible location.

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The Store

Many of you have asked for t-shirt and merch to help support Casimir Effect, well after hunting around for the best deals I can get, we now have a store. At the moment we are limiting it to a single colour with 2 designs, once we get more orders in we can expand the colour range and designs. The next designs will be Dr. Alice Sharpe followed by Cromwell Jackson, each one will be rendered in a similar manner to Dr. Robert Cameron’s.

We are making sure all the t-shirts and clothes we offer are of decent quality, many of them are from Fruit of the Loom stock or equivalent quality so should last many years. We can do over sized items on request, however because these are hard to source we cannot offer them as part of the size range. But if you have a size query for an oversize item drop us an e-mail and we shall see what we can find.

We are also open to suggestions of other items you would be interested in buying, at the moment we are looking into Mugs, Caps and Mouse Mats. Once we have a good quality source for these items we will add them to the store, any other suggestions we will look into as they come in.

[View with PicLens]

Go to the store now.

It looks like the wave of new sci-fi is building, Casimir Effect is set for the festival circuit in 2011. Alvarez looks like he may have something here, though ther is no plot as such the atmosphere is there and I love the robots big clunky robust just want you want for an invasion fleet.

Sam Raimi’s Ghost House Planning “The Next District 9″ From Uruguyan Hot Shot Federico Alvarez

The hotly tipped future talent of the minute is Federico Alvarez, a 30 year old Uruguyan behind the YouTube smash sci-fi short called Panic Attack – which you can see below the break. So far, Alvarez seems to be following a very similar racing line to the one Neill Blomkamp has roared around over the last few years.

Whereas Blomkamp’s breakthrough short was Alive in Joburg, a shaky-cam alien invasion picture set in South Africa, Alvarez has now made his crash landing with Panic Attack… a shaky-cam alien invasion picture set in Uruguay. The latter features rather more giant robots, however, which you may see as a very good thing.

Blomkamp’s protector/mentor in making the transition to feature length filmmaking was Peter Jackson, while Alvarez has in turn been taken under the wing of Sam Raimi. Apparently the two have already spoken at length and the expectation is that Raimi will help Alvarez make the transition to feature filmmaking without too much interference from suits and money men.

MORE AT SLASH FILM

Here’s Panic Attack for your consideration.