It’s been a busy week on the farm, in the office. The schedule is close to perfect, were still tweaking it, our First AD looks at me funny when I say we need to move things around. Had a few more revisions to the script moving characters from the background of scenes to make the actors day a lot smoother.

Our insurance is just about sorted now I’m waiting for paper work so I can sign it and pay, however the chap at the brokers is on holiday this week. We have final arrangements to make for our locations mostly risk assessments, recces and get in / out times.

A lot of this week was getting a few more crew on board, trying to find catering and somewhere for our out of town crew to stay. So if you’re in Cardiff and have a big house and lots of space we would love to keep it warm for you. Also if you have a van and don’t mind driving we will also love you.

The wish list is closing down this weekend, were buying the remainder of the items so if you’re lucky you may get a chance to help out with it. And our final set visit is up, I know a few people have been hovering over it but who will win?

I still have a list the length of my arm to go through, before I hand over to the production team. Once this is all done I’ll be able to focus in directing with Lydia. However I don’t want to hand them a heap of problems, so I still have a few ends to tie up.

The two week countdown goodies will be posted on the site soon. These include our previous film ‘Mr. Abershaw’s Happening Day,’ and the third wallpaper.

I’ll try to post a bit more often in the next few weeks, to keep you up to speed, but mostly it’s finding a few minutes to sit down and type up my thoughts.

Also

Don’t forget to get your copy of the theme song.

[mp3player width=300 height=20 config=fmp_jw_widget_config.xml playlist=soundtrack.xml]

Universal Blackness (S. J. Tucker) – 4:26 (D/L) £1.00 Music by S. J. Tucker Lyrics by Nina Barnfather and S. J. Tucker Format: MP3 320kb/s, DRM free Universal Blackness is the theme song for Casimir Effect, this is the first song finished as part of the soundtrack. It is a wonderfully evocative and timeless track with plays with the themes and ideas of Casimir Effect core story. If you like this song we highly recommend you visit S. J. Tucker’s site an grab one of her albums, you won’t be disappointed. Also if she is gigging in your area go see her have a natter and buy her a drink. This track is DRM free as we know you understand all money goes into the making and marketing of Casimir Effect and anything beyond that will go to the cast and crew. (You should be redirected to a download link on completion of the purchase if not contact us via e-mail casimirfilm [at] googlemail [dot] com)

Well it’s been another hectic week in the Casimir Effect production hole, and this week is shaping up to be nonstop. I have insurance to get sorted, eBay auctions and locations and crew to start finalising.

Cromwell Jackson suit has arrived, the much awaited Valentino Milan suit, all I can say it it’s very nice all of the costume department were there to open it and see. It was like a birthday. All I can say is Cromwell Jackson will look damn good, and hopefully in the next week or so we will have some pictures of Neil in costume.

The meeting with the Cinematographer went well we got through most of the script and rough out some shots and scenes. Visited some of the locations again and got some more shots of the Coal Exchange.

More pictures in the galleries…

It’s all coming together now, we have our schedule it’s still a work in progress but we have a week to get everything firmed up more before I let it loose for the crew to tear to bits. Most of it is location dependant, followed by makeup needs. Because we don’t have a massive budget we need to priorities the schedule to low cost and minimise lighting setups, so we may have to suffer some grumpy crew one day to shave an hour off filming, I’m sure they won’t mind as they can get to bed earlier (I’ll provide good ketchup for them).

The Senedd in Cardiff might be Cromwell Jackson office, if we can arrange it for the day we need. However as it is a public place we will need to ensure people are safe and we don’t cause a hindrance.

The Save Ianto Jones community has raised £435 in the Valentines campaign, we would like to thank them for their help and anyone who has donated. This money will help greatly in reaching our goals. It looking like we will hit our budget, however it would be fantastic if we went over it as this would make our lives a bit easier during filming.

Interviews

We have two interviews we are working on at the moment, these should be out soon and I will let everyone know which magazines and journals we are in. It’s good to see that there is some international and industry based interest in what we are doing and as We always say were open for any interviews or questions.

After Filming

It’s been pretty much decided we have 2 months post filming to sell off all the props, costumes and set dressing we can, these will come with a certificate of authenticity. This should cover expenses and any outstanding invoices, and start out marketing and festivals fund. So get ready for April and pick up a costume, prop or set piece.

Any wish list items bought for the film will be posted back to the buyer with a certificate of authenticity, unless the buyer wants us to auction off the items for the festivals fund. So if there is anything on the wishlist you want and don’t mind us using it a great chance to support the film.

Our Amazon Wishlist, for anyone who wants to get us some props or other things. However it seems to not work for market place items, so if there is something and it won’t ship to Casimir Productions. Feel free to paypal us the money with instruction of what you want to buy for Casimir Effect.

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.

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Go to the store now.

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.

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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.

After a rather short meeting with our university we came to the conclusion that our aims and ambitions are far greater than theirs. We mutually agreed to take a year out to develop and make Casimir Effect, then come back next year to finish the degree as this would save a lot of headaches in the long run, and open up a lot more doors for us.

Now we are an indie production company, we will retain 100% of the rights to Casimir Effect. We can also apply to official film agencies and government bodies for additional funding. Our main aim is to get matched funding, so we need to make sure we hit or come very close to our fundraising goal, if we can do this we should be able to apply to get the same again from the film agency. This would double our budget from £10k to £20k and the more we get the more they will give us. We will be asking a number of industry bodies for funding, to add to our initial funding plus any donations and money raised through auctions. So essentially for every £1 you donate we will get £2. So keep an eye on our targets and current funding, then when it comes close to deadline if we need it we hope you can help out. Keeping to our targets is more important than getting a rush of funding at the end.

We also now have full control of the film, and our aim to turn Casimir Effect into a TV series becomes more plausible as we won’t need to fight to get the rights back from the university. So we can start looking into each characters storyline for an eight part television series.

The loss of support from the university is no real problem for us as we have a number of industry professionals, the equipment will still be accessible through Skillset and many of our HoDs have their own kit. The university won’t cover equipment for 3rd parties, so we would have to get our own insurance anyway. Were meeting with our sound guy this Sunday and getting wardrobe sorted in the next few days. It’s all go from now on.

The current batch of eBay auctions are doing well, there will probably be some bidding wars towards their end time.