It’s been a rough few months for myself, illness has pretty much crippled me and meant I have only been able to keep a few things ticking over. I now have a massive backlog of work to catch up on, not only for Casimir Effect but all the other projects I’m involved with.

Now I’m back and fighting fit I can get back on with post production, I have been reviewing everything we need to do and it seems there is an awful lot more work than we first thought. So we are splitting the special effects into the ones needed to tell the story properly and everything else to make it look nice. This gives us a rough system to start prioritising things. However this doesn’t mean we’re going to do a rush job just to hit a festival date, as you only get one chance with a film so we want to be sure we have done the best we can.

So the release of the film will be delayed, provisionally until the end of the year so we can spend time on getting those finishing touches just right. The delay however has produced some good fruit, Clarky has completely reworked the music for the film the new songs he played me are awesome. With extra time we can put a lot more effort into everything and rework elements if needed.

Because of the delay I’m changing the fundraising deadlines and over the next few weeks will start getting the delayed action plan up and running. This means new merchandise, new stills and some new footage from the CGI tests and teasers. I have seen some of the work already, and have been working on the matte paintings for a few scenes, so you should start seeing things coming up soon.

We have come to the end of another year, and we hit the goals even if we over ran by a few days to get the last few pounds in. Some of the pressure is off for getting money in. Though we still need a small flow of money for odds and ends and to get the film out to festivals, however with more new merch coming, the sound track and the making of book we should see enough coming in to tide us over. We have a rough target to make £3000 by May 2011; this should cover us for our initial round of festival submissions. I have faith that we can all make the festival circuit and we will see many of our donators and fans along the way.  So…

A BIG THANKS TO ALL WHO HAVE HELPED

We made our 2010 goals.

The Final Production Stills

These stills are from filming day eleven, though we filmed for 12 days, we had a minimal crew on the last day so never got many shots for the archive.  So this is the last of them, I think next we will go through our development archive and see what we have in sketches and other odds and ends.

[View with PicLens]

As the title states we started Monday morning with nothing booked in this week which means we haven’t stopped since then. First order of the week was get our First Assistant Director sorted, then locations, then insurance. Things mostly went to plan.

Firstly

Monday marks three weeks to go before filming and it’s all systems go. I’ll be getting the last bits of everything sorted this week. However each week we will add a new desktop wallpaper, and we will try to offer something special each week to, if we can think of something. Read on for next weeks offerings.

The First AD

Well we contacted a few people over the last few months, and most of them had other things they were doing, it’s a shame as they were all good people who would have been perfect for the role. Then we remembered Lucy a recent producing graduate who is a good people person on set and she gets the job done, which is the most important thing for a First AD. Anyway she is going to run through the schedule and double check everything we have sorted, it looks good so far so the changes won’t be big. So I’ll be sending out mails to all the Set Visit winners confirming their days and times, so expect something soon.

Locations

We have running negotiations with most of our locations now, our main one is confident they will be able to come in under our location budget giving us something to play with for the other locations were still locking down. The guy we spoke to at the Coal Exchange is an ex-actor and worked in the creative industry struggling to get things going so he knows exactly where we are coming from and is confident everything will be good.

The Senedd is also fairly sure what we want to do will be possible. This is good news we should have this sorted out by the end of next week. The people we spoke to cannot foresee a problem in final approval but still need a few fingers crossed.

Insurance

Spoke to several insurance companies now waiting for them to get quotes back to me. This should be reasonable as were a low budget production we estimated about £1,000 for insurance, and it looks like it will be just over half that. So the remaining money will be shunted to art, food for the cast & crew and the wrap party.

Lighting / Gaffer

The chap we were in negotiations with dropped a bombshell on us this week and he wanted far more than we could afford. If we had the cash that wouldn’t be a problem, but as it stands we don’t. So were looking at another chap tomorrow, well not looking at him, meeting with him and sharing our interest in good ale. So now were going Guerrilla on the lighting using practical’s and what lights we can buy, borrow and hire.

Art Department

They’re coming along nicely; we are going around the prop houses in the coming week and making bookings for what we need. The other good news is the Art Department is coming together with enough assistants and people onboard now. The props maker is happy to cannibalise his workshop and most of the building if he can get away with it, he says we will only have to buy the paint. BARGAIN!

Costume

We have most of the mock-ups now, and things are looking good. We had a fitting for Cromwell Jackson suit and it looks fantastic. I might be able to get a sneak peak at a part of it, I don’t want to give it all away, we had a bonus here as Neil has a nice pair of Italian handmade shoes that work so well with the suit. Also when the film is out there look at the shoes and watches, Zoe spent a lot of time on those.

Music

Well I have the final version of the theme song, and have spent most of the time I can listening to it. It’s good, catchy and has a timeless quality to it. I’ll spend a few more days listening to it, so far it hasn’t annoyed me even though I have had it on repeat, this is a good thing. A good rule of thumb for key themes, is they have to be catchy, timeless and not annoying. This hits all of those perfectly, so thanks to Nina Barnfather and S. J. Tucker for their hard work if it wasn’t for them we wouldn’t have such a fantastic song. If by Monday were still humming it and loving it we will get it on the store.

Festivals and Conventions

We’re planning a lot of them, and will get details up and ways people can help out, from flyering, crash space and helping out at the festivals. Berlin film festival is happening at the moment and if everything goes to plan, as most of it has done we will be in Berlin 2 years from now as the last Festival on our circuit. We’re aiming for this year to do Wales Comic-Con, Fed Con and will have a presence at Supernova, so keep your eyes peeled.