#delfilm

Patrick Ness

Just submitted my application to the #JBAs (John Brabourne Awards) asking for support to help me finish Henry Bramble. I'll find out if I have been successful on March 3rd - As Raygo Rattlegum would say "May the Guardians of Minoitaniga watch over me!"

So having lost all hope of getting the vfx completed, DiRoom, by the skin of their teeth, seem to have found a suitable replacement vfx team - Wham Bam Productions. Although their showreel leans more towards drinks commercials and certainly does not include seven foot monsters, their test demo's they've sent me are very promising and after a productive Skype call I feel confident they know what I'm looking for. They have been briefed before I go on holiday for two weeks and I have to confess I feel a small surge of excitement by the progress they should have made by the time I get back. Fingers crossed this is third time lucky! Here's their showreel below.

It's been a a frustrating few months. The visual effects on our wonderful short halted at the beginning of July last year. Six long arduous months later and we are finally beginning to see light at the end of the tunnel. As of yesterday I have been 'linked-in' to the VFX team based in Pakistan via Asana, a clever collaborative task management application that allows me to keep track and manage the workflow, offering feedback quickly and efficiently. Today I had my first glimpse of the work they have been doing for the last month or so and it's very promising. The texture and colour of the legs and arms of the Voydarkatron are much  closer to how I envisioned them and the shoulders have that 'gravestone' fungus on it that I was so keen to have. The top of the head still needs to be semi-translucent and slimy like a slug, but apart from the that they are progressing well - Can't wait to see more!

It is with great relief and excitement that I can announce I have reached the final page in what has been a huge slog writing the feature length screenplay of Henry Bramble.  The writing itself was not necessarily hard, it was just trying to fit in the time to write around a full time job, a demanding family life and having to spend too much time on the short film that by all accounts, should have been finished over a year ago. Despite this I have thoroughly enjoyed every minute of it. There were a couple of tough psychological barriers I had to get past, but hey that's what the re-writes are for.  Anyway before you get too excited and demand a copy to read, please remember I have simply reached the end of the first pass - one of many re-writes. The story has been laid out, but it has many flaws, problems and discontinuity. Many of the characters are not clear enough on the page and the dialogue really sucks, but the point is, I reached the end! I'm going to go through it in the new year page by page, scene by scene, tidying it up the best I can so it is in a readable state for my Producers, but it is still along way off yet before I can send it out to investors! In the meantime I'm off to Florida to rest my imagination over Christmas. See you in the new year!

The completion of the visual effects for the film are now going to be managed by DiROOM based at the Truman Brewery in east London who have also come on board to complete the on-line, grade and 2K deliverables. We are aiming to have a completed film for Berlin where the Innovation Shorts Scheme will be holding the first industry screening. We are hoping our international premiere will be at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival in May.

I have just watched Snow White and the Huntsman which by all accounts is much better than I anticipated. Having been bored to death by Twilight, I was expecting a modern retelling with a lot of pale sullen faced  teenagers suffering mild depression from their broken hearts, but I was pleasantly surprised to see they were passionate about making this film. It's not quite the classic they were aiming for, but there are moments of beauty and inspiration. The beach attack on the castle was spectacular, some of the fantastical trees, fairies and toadstools were inspiring and the dark magical forest exceeded even Tim Burton's visions. The Huntsman (although his Scottish accent slipped into Australian from time to time) was convincingly masculine, without becoming homoerotic (Anyone see the film 300), though Charlize Theron's performance, particularly when she screamed, was cringing and about as effective as Ewan McGregor's 'younglings' performance in Revenge Of The Sith. However, to her credit, she has since perfected the ice cold performance in Prometheus. Anyway the point I want to make, or rather the irritation I'd like to point out is that while I have been plodding along with the writing of the Henry Bramble feature I had absolutely no previous knowledge of this film, except for it's title and the DVD cover. I was just about to tackle the scene in my script where Henry and the two chumninks enter the Castle of Shadows through the sewage pipes when I decided to take a break and look at Snow White & The Huntsman. To my surprise and annoyance I discovered they had an almost identicle scene. Three dwarfs sneak into the castle via the sewers with Ray Winstone making almost the same 'poo' one liner that I had written. In reference to my previous postings, when you are coming up with the same scene as someone else rather than the same archetypal tool, then not only does it look like plagiarism but you then start to question your own ability to imagine original thoughts. For now I am not going to change my scene, just aim to develop it differently so that it exceeds and surprises expectations of audiences who have seen Snow White. My other concern is the increasing release of gothic teen fairytale adaptations that are beginning to saturate the market with the same style and tone that I had previously liked, but is now becoming too familiar with audiences. The challenge is to have an original vision and style that audiences will be drawn to, which is no easy feat. As a result I am leaning much more towards a 'steampunk' world were medieval mixes with futuristic Victorian. It makes more sense thematically. Henry has a vivid imagination, the contents in his Uncle's country house are very traditional and Victorian, but as a boy living in a modern world, he is much more aware of technology. Merging these in his imagination would give him Steampunk which represents Uncle Geoffrey and the negative aspects of the adult world. Finally, the last lesson learned from this film is that dwarf actors in hollywood films are a thing of the past. In Lord Of The Rings and Snow White, they have shrunk normal sized actors, which basically allows them to get better performances from well known actors rather than having to rely on 'pantomime acting' which seems to be dwarf actors main source of work. Not only that, Dwarfs per-say are simply not imaginative enough for modern audiences. With the advent of Gollum there has been a surge in performance capture techniques allowing filmmakers to potentially get the best performance from big 'star' level actors and yet make them physically inhuman. I think for Henry Bramble, this has to be the direction we go in despite it's expense, as we can then put financiers at more ease by attaching huge stars to play Grimbo and Raygo. Can you imagine, George Clooney and Brad Pitt playing three foot chumninks?

Britt's incredibly useful 'story map' created during our discussions.