Execution on Tarack

Work has started on Episode 3, Execution on Tarack, which is probably the most action packed episode so far....

Starship Exeter - Act 2

Just a note to point out that Act 2 of the extraordinary Starship Exeter is now available from the site at:

http://www.starshipexeter.com/


what's great about Exeter is that it has all the excitment of the original series.... super stuff!

Galentor with its three moons...

Here we see Galentor with its three moons. From left these are the irregular satellite Multorg (undoubtedly an asteroid captured from the belt of debris surrounding Galen Alpha), the volcanic moon Tarack and the dead moon Nultarn.

A view of the planet Galentor from space...

I've been using a very venerable program called Truespace 3 for the cg in Tyranny of the Daleks but am thinking of upgrading to either Lightwave, Cinema 4d or Softimage. Lightwave is the preferred choice although the most expensive. Also I'm thinking of buying Vue5 Esprit for certain sequences involving shots of natural landscapes for the sequences in Episode 4 when the Daleks attack en masse.

Woe of Thregar - visuals complete

the Robo-Shuttle flies in to the base on Tarack.


the Robo-shuttle landing inside the underground base.

At long last the visuals are all finished for Episode 2 of Tyranny of the Daleks, entitled The Woe of Thregar. It was a lot of work but its done! Now the files for Episode 2 (on 8 DVDs) have been forwarded to our sound and music maestro, Mr Garry Seymour....

So now its onto Episode 3 for me, Execution on Tarack..

Deconstruction - Cyberman Fan Film

This is an extraordinary short film produced by our good friends at Westlake Films. It is a wonderful example of how fan films can explore new styles and moods that a television programme generally aimed at a mainstream audience can't really touch.

Featuring Cybermen costumes from the classic Timebase film "Phase IV", this is a work that stands head and shoulders above most amateur productions in terms of style, shooting, editing and lighting. With an ending that even manages to be quite frightening, this is a highly recommended production.

To acess it use this link:

http://www.westlakefilms.co.uk/deconstruction.html

Cheeky Monkey Pictures!

I thought I'd write a little article about the background of Cheeky Monkey Pictures! My friends and I have a common background of a great interest in films, especially particularly spectacular science fiction, fantasy and horror. We were also brought up in the 70s and 80s, a golden age in many ways for science fiction on British television. As a group we also enjoyed fancy dress parties and several of us are keen on role playing games. With an additional interest in computers, graphics, electronic music, video cameras and all manner of gadgets, making a film in many ways now seemed an inevitable progression of what came before.

At a party back in the summer of 2001, Matt and I were talking about snippets of film we had seen and the subject of fan films came up. He had heard of some Star Wars ones and I had heard of some Doctor Who ones. Matt was keen to produce a Star Wars one but Lizzie, his beautiful girlfriend who plays Romana, and I were ardent Whovians and talked him round. If truth be told Matt had been a huge Who fan all along and has gone out and promptly bought huge amounts of video tapes since starting this film. In fact we've all become even greater fans of the series than before since starting this project - it is in many ways an act of love for the series that gives us so much enjoyment.

So that was established: we would try and do a (very) short Doctor Who fan film just for the fan of having a project to work together. But what would be the plot? Somehow it befell me to come up with the idea. I have always been a BIG Dalek fan. They bring out the Doctor's nature to me - pitting the extreme individualism of the Doctor against the collectivized mentally of the Daleks was a wonderful way of illustrating his character. I was always very excited when a Dalek story was on.

It also became clear, without really putting it into words, that I would play the Doctor. I have always been a big fan of Tom Baker's Doctor but there was no way I could play it like him. I don't physically look like any of the proper Doctors either so some sort of imitation was out straight away.

In late 2001 my wife Alison, who plays the Thal soldier Loran, and I went on a sort of second honeymoon to St Lucia in the Carribean. On the trusty British West Indies Airways jumbo over there, I read a Who novel called "War of the Daleks" which I greatly enjoyed although its somewhat convuluted story is rather controversial with the more academically minded Who fans. It was the initial depiction of a huge battle between the Thals and Daleks on a planet populated by an innocent primitive people that excited me.

Another source of inspiration was Lizzie. She once told me that when she had been at university at Oxford, she had belonged to a student organization called F.A.F.; Friends Against Fungi, a somewhat tongue in cheek support group for people who detested mushrooms, toadstools and so forth. So in some way, she insisted, fungi had to feature in the film as evil beings of some description.

Well with those strands running through my mind, I settled down on the beautiful beaches of St Lucia and it was there that the basic plot, involving diabolical machinations from the Daleks, was conjured into life. I didn't think we could manage a huge battle scene, so the extent of the story was scaled down dramatically.

I wrote out an outline for a first episode and Lizzie turned it into a script. We then rehearsed the whole thing a couple of times during the summer of 2002 and shot the whole of The Galentor Incident on one day in September 2002 in the New Forest, England.

Somewhat elated over the whole thing we decided to continue with our little story and finish it off, so we needed a second episode. I wrote it up in script form in early 2003 after getting approval from the rest of Cheeky Monkey Pictures! and then we set about shooting it! So The Galentor Incident became the name for the first episode and the whole story was renamed Tyranny of the Daleks, which was more in keeping with the normal naming for Dalek stories. I thought the word tyranny was very appropriate when referring to Daleks. The aim of the story, if there is one, is to depict the evil of the Daleks and the terrible consequences their plans and deep rooted greed for power can have on those unlucky enough to be in their way, even indirectly.

The second episode is a much more ambitious project and features sets and interior scenes for the first time. Having made one set, I am quite clear why so many fan films are shot in forests - its so much easier!

We had of course watched all of Timebase's films - anyone who is interested in Who fan films will instantly know who they are. Three of them, Steve Palace, Paul Ferry and Neil Johnson, very kindly agreed to help us out by travelling all the way to Southampton to be in our largest day of filming involving over twenty actors. They were excellent performers and we are very excited about seeing them in the three remaining episodes when they are finished.

We are very lucky to have a number of friends who are happy to get involved and play a role in the film. Filming is a great social occasion and this sums up the whole fan film ethos to me. With fan films, the process of making the film itself is far more important than the eventual film. It is a chance to get together with friends, have lots of fun, do something creative and hopefully, fingers crossed, come up with something you will get a laugh and enjoyment from for years to come. No one should be working to a deadline, no one should be worried too much about the quality of their performance and no one should spend all their money or time making it. To me these are the most important things. The whole activity of making and putting it all together is the most important performance or experience; not the end result.

Which is not to say that we don't like our film - we love it. Its thrilling to see the results of all your hard work on the screen. We are proud of it, although we are novice amateurs and have never done anything like this before.

Tyranny of the Daleks - Episode 2

So here we are about an hour later and some further work carried out. The final visual work is putting in the laser blasts... of all the visuals this is perhaps the hardest work. I'm doing it the old fashioned way - turn the clips into filmstrips and then draw them on using Photoshop. The Thals are getting their lasers off first, and they are three layers of increasingly gaussian blurred light. Episode 2 has isolated pockets of laser fire, Episode 3 only has a little in the scenes starring Mr Feck whilst Episode 4 has quite large battle scenes both on Galentor and in the Dalek base on Tarack. Should be fun! The picture is a screen grab (and hence blurry) of Romana with Loran and Durac, two of the Thals on Galentor.

Once this is done its then a final edit, a review of the cg sequences to see if they really do work and then (once the DVD rewriter is installed properly) its over to Garry our sound and music man for the score! Its a lot of work but it really is fantastic fun. I think making this film has added so much to my enjoyment of visiting the cinema. The remake of King Kong, for example, would be for me a great film to work on.

Tyranny is perhaps a rather Flash Gordon-style Doctor Who fan film - we have tried to give it quite a fast pace. Whilst filming Episode 1 we seemed to enjoy filming action sequences and having a driving narrative that moved things along. Hopefully this will emerge in the final product. Episode 1 was in many ways a test or pilot episodes, its really 2,3 and 4 that we are excited about completing.

Anyway, enough for one evening!

Tyranny of the Daleks.. Wednesday's work..

Tonight my mission is to start work on the final stage of the visuals for Episode 2, entitled The Woe of Thregar, but before I get into that, here's a picture of the mysterious moon of Tarack. I really enjoy the visual side of our fan film especially the 3d graphic work. In fact my brother Virgil is a 3d computer graphic artist who has worked on Revenge of the Sith, the latest Harry Potter and many other projects, including Walking with Dinosaurs.

Google Video

Success!
Google video has uploaded two of my vids...

Andrew & Andrew Solicitors :

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8549598982411947166

and

Weston Shore Beach Clean :

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3270013467053609223

May put some of our Fan Film stuff on there... not sure. Well that was an interesting exercise. What can I get up to next?

After having such a wonderful weekend, I feel I've regressed back into the Xmas holiday spirit again. Its so easy to neglect your weekends and just think of them as a grasp of breath between working.