Well now I have had time to recover from the Hub 3 and had a good night’s sleep in my own bed, I can gather my thoughts for the weekend and the tasks at hand. I’m still on the tail end of that throat infection I had at the Hub, not swine flu thankfully, but the coughing is a pain.

Anyway a good time was had by all evening if at times things were a bit none stop. My posts were vague because of the limited time I had in my hotel room and not getting much sleep. Most of the parties nights were good, everyone seemed to be enjoying themselves and even though I didn’t go to most of them the report I got back were good ones, plus the bleary eyes in the morning gave things away. The costumes were very impressive, I’m used the bigger US conventions and what I saw was some very well made costumes and props. I think there should be a costumer’s award presented and judged by the stars. The talks were fun, the buzz from the green room was that the old guard was training up the newbie’s and telling them what to expect. In many ways I wish I didn’t have the throat infection as it was a bit of a damp squib for me not feeling 100% so I couldn’t bounce around talking.

I have been negotiating with a cinematographer and the chap we wanted is very interested and we should be having a weekend together to go through the script and get contracts sorted. I’m also approaching a number of the other HoDs we have been after this week to get final confirmation off them. Were still on the case with locations and hope to have most of them confirmed before Christmas. Then the big parts over and done with and we’re into a stage of procurement for the film.

We have a number of eBay auctions going up over the next months to go into the funding pot, I have some cash coming to me I’m going to pop in there to. Also I have news from the US, one of my friends that has been looking for funding over that end has ask me for in depth marketing and financial info as he has a number of business contact that might be interested in sponsoring us. We also have the donate buttons at the bottom of each post, for any of you who aren’t the hording type or have some money spare any donations welcome.

Well that’s it for now.

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.

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