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.

NeuroSys

We’re going to put together a series of posts for our readers; these will details of the origins of the story, world and characters. We will introduce you to some of the complexities within the back story and give insight into the world without giving the plot away.

NeuroSys was the origin of the original story so it’s only fair to start there, and go more into the world of 2101 and how we came up with this world. NeuroSys was the original idea of our director; many years ago we were sat on a train to Stafford discussing ideas for writing companion books for role playing games. The original concept was a style guide to one of the sub cultures that inhabit the cities of the world. This covered a number of concepts of how society will develop, some of the people in one of the biggest cities, and many of the best shopping and night spots. Needless  to say that style guide was never finished; it was left for a while.

A few months later we decided that there was a large amount of stories that could be told in the world that was created. So we started expanding sections, creating new sections and generally playing around in the world seeing how society was constructed and worked together. As we started to build up a model of society, we looked at how the world worked, the companies and political organisation involved and we created Iolanthus and Iolanthe as the new generation of cities designed to protect the important people who work for the Hyper Corporations, the biggest being run by Cromwell Jackson.

Studying the latest scientific developments and keeping a massive folder full of research and information, we started to apply futurist principles to see how the society we created would evolve along with the emerging technology. Simple things like the death of the TV, mobile phones and how the internet morphs into the next generation with quantum computing. We even looked at small things gadgets and gizmos, up to the next generation of personal body armour and defence.

The core concept was that the governments of the world slowly failed, selling off departments and the military saving money where they can. These department were brought out by companies and privately run military took over the old jobs, they were more efficient and better equipped. The inevitable might happen and the Corporations started hostile takeovers and buy outs, leaving a handful of Hyper Corporations and puppet governments. Society back-lashed and formed the World Council a governing body setup to protect the rights of the people and make laws.

The principle components were setup, to start building the small parts that function or dysfunction within this setting. We started creating the people that populate the city of Iolanthus, and numerous other aspects of the world from other AI controlled cities to a lunar base program.

Now we have a file with reams of information on the setting and characters. These were an excellent source for developing the story for Casimir Effect.

Casimir Effect Origins Part II >>