Well the Saturday was fun, Lydia and I finally got our VIP passes and were able to do stuff unhindered. We caught a few of the talks, most of which went down the usual angle of talks at the hub other than Gareth refusing to talk about John Barrowman. The green room was good better than most I have been to at conventions, at least they catered for all tastes and made as healthy as possible, the green room people should pat themselves on the back. We got talking to a few people about the film and will be receiving a few donations from con-goers to auction off for the film. So keep your eyes on our eBay page over the coming months.  Sadly we didn’t get any pictures of yesterday; I’ll try to get some today.

There was a surprise visit from Kai Own who ended up doing a comedy sketch with Gareth, which from what I can guess was written for John Barrowman and James Marsters, Kai and Gareth still had the crowd screaming. Then after the hectic day we all got chance to just sit and chill as a hand full of people came over to natter.

Not sure what to expect today, Kai hasn’t been booked on anything but we presume he is talking over James Marsters slots. So once more we brave the microcosm of the Hub 3.

Were not dead yet, though it might seem that way, we have been busy this month, We have cast our final main character, though we cannot announce who it is yet it’s a good one and I’m sure some of you out there will squee a bit over the casting. Hopefully in a few weeks time we can announce this.

We have started looking at locations now, there are a number of places we would like to use and a number of places we can use. The problem is the ones we can use are not much use unless we spend a lot of money on them, so we will dig in at the ones we want until we get a price we want and hopefully that price is free. Well let s look at it this way to build the sets would be a minimum of £8,000 and that’s most of our budget, so getting locations even at low cost is worth it.

We are on our way to reaching the Christmas goal of £5,000 raised. At the moment the post stands at around £380, it will go up to around £500 after this round of auction, and the next auctions will have sorter lengths so we can get the pot filling faster. We also have a number of other angle to get our budget, Mostly it means going through the flat finding what we don’t use/need and selling it. So a few odd things may appear in the auctions, but everything will still go to the film. We will also be opening our donation/sponsorship system you can support us with donations.

The main reason for being quiet here is we have been working on the website, version one should be going live on the 24th October. We won’t close down the social networking sites, however all main news updates will be on the new website, and we will post links to the social media sites. This is basically to save time, then we don’t have to post as much, in most cases we can set up an RSS feed. We will however encourage those following us to post comments and be an active part of the new site.

We will be at the Hub 3 in Birmingham this weekend so if you are there track us down and say hi.

It’s been a few days since I have had chance to sit down and take it the scenery. So let’s try and do this in some level of chronological order. We have had audition for our lead actress; I can’t give names just yet, but she is good and overall fits our ideas of Alice. Next week I’ll pop out a press release confirming everything to do with the main roles.

The auctions are doing well, a big thank you goes to all those bidding, and I do hope you keep vigilant as they seem to have days of jumping around. At least money raised for these should be enough to start developing merchandise for the Hub 3 in Birmingham. Our aim is to make around £5,000 by Christmas 2009, both from merchandise, auctions and private funding.

Wrexham was good, for a small con it did well this year, there were a few names and plenty of interested. I think the only negative I could find was lack of publicity, so it was still quite small. However we should be at the next one with more promotion for us and we will do lots of promotion for Wales Comic-Con. There was mention that the next one will be in about 6 month’s time. I’m unsure at this time if Gareth will be there, I think the general idea was to be, but this all depends on prior commitments.

The Blue Gillespie Gig was good, an odd shape venue, but overall it worked out well. It was good to meet a few of you out there and talk a bit about the film and our plans. The Picture below is by Jann Tarrant. I will say if any of you are looking for a Photographer she is a good choice along with Mark Crowle Groves.

After the gig I was whisked off to the set of the Sherlock Holmes film Gareth is working on, it was interesting to see a full scale shoot in action and see hoe a different crew do things. Everything in this industry is a learning curve, and every film has a different way of doing things.

With the script now locked we are doing the script breakdown, this is the slow part each department looks over the script and we plan what is in every shot the sound and elements that make up the film. It’s not boring though, as you are telling the story of the world and the back-story of the characters as you build up the set dressing and props. On the props side we have found an old jetfighter chair, which were hoping to procure soon.

On other notes we have the films domain name up and running, www.casimireffectfilm.com just a holding page with links to the social network sites for now. We hope to launch the page in a month’s time just before the Torchwood convention (Hub 3) in Birmingham. Thanks to http://thelongmile.net/ for the help in getting everything setup and pointed to the right places.

We will be at Wrexham Comic-Con this weekend with Gareth and Blue Gillespie, I hope some of you can be there, as this is our first real outing on the promotion bandwagon. We won’t have much on offer but we will be free to talk and natter with anyone who is there.

We have also started up our eBay auctions, the first two items are exclusive San Diego Comic-Con Torchwood Posters. These exclusive posters are from a very limited run, beautifully illustrated by Tommy Lee Edwards, showing Ianto Jones (Gareth David-Lloyd) and Captain Jack Harkness (John Barrowman). These posters are signed by all of the above and have been made available by Gareth himself to help fund Casimir Effect.

It was only available at San Diego Comic-Con 2009 and because of this, has not been made widely available to the international market. These are possibly the last two available, so needless to say are very rare collector’s items. Beyond that they would make a fantastic piece for any collector and I would hope it can take pride of place in their collection.

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=150375320469

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=150375322128

Well it feels like the end of an era and we’re going into a new age. The script has been locked, and now the focus is on production rather than the script. We have most of our actors for the key roles, except our female lead who we will look to audition in a few weeks. I won’t give out all the names of the actors just yet, as there might be some shuffling in the next week or so, but the people we have we are happy with. The only name I can post is Gareth David-Lloyd (Torchwood’s Ianto) who will be playing our male lead, Dr. Robert Cameron.

After the workshop sessions this weeks, we are all confident this will be an engaging story. Most of the tough scenes have been worked out and the changes were mostly action based, to give the scenes more impact. We have some footage from this workshop and I hope to get it edited into a video diary in the next week or so, then you can see some of the work.  Gareth has also come on board and an Executive Producer, to help us find funding, crew and for other elements of publicity.

We have a number of exclusive items we will be auctioning off, so watch this space. Some of these include limited print illustrations from Comic-Con 2009, these feature Ianto and Captain Jack, they are signed by Gareth and John Barrowman, as well as the artist. We will also have ‘Torchwood: Children of Earth’ Blu-Ray signed by all the cast and crew we can find in the next few months. This will probably be one of a few discs to have a full set of signatures, so come back often. We have a number of other ideas, including a day on the set, photo shoot with Gareth, lunch with Gareth, exclusive Blue Gillespie and S.J. Tucker songs, and limited edition prints to be given away at the fund raiser and one exclusive print only available online. After the fund raiser is over all remaining unsold or claimed prints will be destroyed to keep these items in the collector’s arena, and something special for those who are willing to support us.

Back to reality, we have the script to take to pieces, we have started it and need to get it finished in the next week or so, then we can send lists to each department of what is needed for props, CGI, costume and Set dressing. This is where Philum Scheduling comes into its own as it enable me to keep track of what status every item is in. Rather than hoping and praying everything is ready, I’ll know what isn’t and what to give priority to. I hope I get the chance to finish the software by Christmas so we can get the schedule fully planned.

We should have our own piece of the web up soon, where much of this will be transferred to, we will keep these site up-to-date, but our site will have a lot more content to offer. We will also have a sponsorship section, which will have all of our auctions, and items for sale.

Anyway time to get back to the script breakdown and my cuppa tea.