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.

Things are moving forward at a good pace, there is a lot of juggling at the moment and plenty of opportunities. We may be using a 4D Camera system, 3D Monitors and other such cool stuff to make this film come true. We have some interest from Gareth David-Lloyd (Torchwood), to play the male lead in the film, were still chasing a female lead.

I spent yesterday speaking to one of our Science advisors; mostly it was to make sure the technology we show in the film is plausible, even if there are some narrative freedoms being applied. We know what were putting in isn’t going into the realms of impossible.

Today has been mostly looking up rendering engines, at the moment for the free engines LuxRender is the best we have, it has the best rendering of light and that to me is one of the most important parts of doing any CGI is the accuracy of light. I’m also tasked to write a love letter to the Renderman Crew at Pixar, to try and blag the use of their render engine for the film as our budget is currently £0. I have also started to compile our crew list, while Lydia is writing a prose short story that we will use to develop the script from.