WP Platinum Blog
It has been a busy few weeks, we have been gathering our Heads of Department and have most of them in place. Over the next few weeks we will be finalising them all and starting to put the ground work together for the latter stages of pre-production. The big news today is that we have cast an actor for our final main character, Cromwell Jackson. Neil Rayment (Matrix Reloaded) has signed to play the part of the antagonist. Neil is looking forward to getting into the shoes of the character and working with the rest of the cast and crew. We will get a press release out in the next few days. It’s a bit naughty of me announcing it here first, but a lot of visitors to this site have helped us get to where we are and I think they deserve some exciting news.
We have our first sponsor in John Malkovich’s ‘Big Sleep Hotel,’ who are providing us with meeting space and rehearsal facilities, as well of discount codes for our fundraiser and other events. We might also be filming in the penthouse or executive suite of the hotel, see the pictures in the gallery below of some of the rooms we may be using.
We have also started our Viral Marketing page, with web banners and simple flyers for anyone who wants to help out promoting the film. If you do have a chance to hit a festival or convention with flyers drop us an e-mail or message and we will make sure we thank you in the credits.
We are also looking at a number of online teasers/news reports to film and get out on the net, to establish some of the events surrounding Casimir Effect’s story.
Also a big thank you to everyone who has sent us donations and bid on our auctions we wouldn’t be able to make this film without your generous help.
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.
Posted in Budget, Casting, Events, Fund Raising, Locations, Pre Production, Publicity & Marketing, Sponsorship, Web Development, eBay on October 21st, 2009 by Gabriel Strange | | Comments Off
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.
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.
Posted in Casting, Music, Pre Production, Script Development, eBay on September 17th, 2009 by Gabriel Strange | | Comments Off
Well this month has been spent tweaking and reworking the script. The third draft saw a scene lock the next draft will be what we take to the next stage. This will mean the end of Stage One (Script Development), and we moving to a phase of meeting talks deconstruction and problem solving we affectionately call pre-production, it’s a lovely and very important monster that is 80% of the film.
The script at the moment is sitting to my left, and it looks at me occasionally, demanding to be picked up and read. The feedback of this draft of the script has been fantastic I would say its better than expected, but we aimed high with this so the feedback is what we were expecting. We have reworked the action, giving it a better pace and more immediacy. It’s now less prescriptive, giving creativity to the actors, director and crew, allowing their creative talents to shine through. That’s the key to a good script, telling the story, not telling the director, actors or crew how to be creative. Were happy with the script, but still realise we need to get to the final draft, and that requires actors and read-troughs, as hearing it will make the world of difference. It’s our first chance to allow others to play in our sand box.
On the other fronts we have a named actor interested in the male lead, he loves the script and we are meeting with him tomorrow to discuss things further. I hope we can get him to sign soon as I want to send out our next press release. We are also looking at other local talent and starting to contact actors and crew about working on our film. This is a tense and exciting time, as we know what we want from and actor but can we find that mojo is the question. There is local talent that would be fantastic to get on board, but can they be the characters. Were not after acting, were after living and being the character, we want the performances to be genuine, so the actors will be asked to dig deep and find the emotions, find the part of themselves and their life which reflects the characters state of mind moment to moment.
Posted in Casting, Pre Production, Script Development on August 18th, 2009 by Gabriel Strange | | Comments Off
