Nearly finished my first assembly edit.

Well here we are, two more scenes to edit (one of them consisting of just one shot) and I'm coming in at a whopping 22'30" Now considering I had to cut my 20 page script down to 10 pages in order to be approved for the Inovation Shorts Fund, I'd say that's not bad going!

So what does The Infectious Imagination Of Henry Bramble look like? Is it going to be an award winning classic short? Will it get me some children's televisioon work? Will it attract David Heyman and Warner Bros to give me some decent development money for a feature length version? Will I finally be on the road to blockbuster success? The answer I'm afraid is that I haven't got as clue. I'm currently suffering from editor's syndrome, a condition where you have been exposed to the material for so long you can't judge it any longer. I need a few weeks off while the VFX boys get busy creating the wire frame Voydarkatron, then maybe I'll have fresher eyes for the picture lock. I am screening it to the producers Charlotte and Annabel on Monday so it will be interesting to see their reactions and hear their thoughts on the matter.

What I can tell you however, is that surprisingly, there are not that many problems with it considering the limited time we had. Overall the interior scenes work exceptionally well and Paul Copley's performance is a real pleasure to watch and is probably the main reason the films running time is so long. He delivers so many 'telling' expressions, it's hard to cut anything out. There's less usable material for Henry and Raygo, though that's mostly because we only had a couple of takes to work with due to the speed at which we had to get through the exterior scenes. There are also a few times when Archie would get tired and struggle to completely focus (a problem I also faced with The Happiness Thief, which is why there are such strict working patterns for child actors) and where Maxwell struggled with the creation of my tounge twisting words like Voydarkatron and Minoitaniga.

Overall, at this early stage, I am not thinking we have a dudd, so that's got to be worth something. Even though i signed off the final design for the Voydarkatron, I still can't imagine it there in the flesh, blended into the footage we shot. I'm hoping it'll look incredible, but we'll have to just wait and see!

...and that's a wrap!

Director Derek Boyes demonstrating how to use a VFX prop of the Voydarkatron's trunk so that Archie, the actor playing Henry Bramble has something real to push away. Michael, the 1st AD stands-in for Archie.

From left to right: Producer Annabel Bates, Executive Producer for Screen South, Jo Nolan and Producer for Hopscotch Films, Charlotte Wontner.


...Okay so I'm over a week late. We wrapped about 5:50pm on Sunday 23rd October having run out of daylight. Overall the shoot went well in that the cast and crew worked extremely hard to get what we needed in just three days while maintaining the highest quality in performance, cinematography, art direction and sound.

The cew set up for the first exterior shot of the day. This is one of the first scenes of the film where Henry Bramble unexpectedly arrives at his Great Uncle Geoffrey's house.

Unfortunately our biggest problem was always time. Realistically we needed four days or even five to comfotably finish. We were constantly fighting time, slipping behind schedule by a couple of hours each day, as a result I was forced to drop a lot of shots including a large chunk of the action at the end. I also didn't get the coverage I needed often running out of time to shoot the reverses or only getting one or two takes before moving on.

Archie Lyndhurst and Paul Copley keep their imagination alive as they play fight between takes.

The day after I felt very depressed and frustrated. If only Screen South had let us have that extra £10,000 we could have shot for a fourth day, if only our DOP hadn't got stuck in traffic on the prep day we could have rigged the lights the night before gaining 1.5 hours before we even started, or if the owners of the location could have given us a little more flexibility when and where we shot. There were so many 'if only's' it hurt. I felt deep down that I didn't get the film that I wanted and feared the lack of coverage would leave obvious holes in the film that would be unfixable and therefore not worth screening. My hopes of success were ruined!

Archie Lyndhurst (Henry Bramble) and his Mother help Maxwell Laird (Raygo Rattlegum) learn his lines.

....a few days later however I began to feel a little more optimistic and my curiosity thankfully took the better of me. I started browsing the footage and working out in my head if things would cut together okay. Soon I was ready to take on the challenge of fixing this film. I'm currently editing a couple of hours a day working through the film scene-by-scene while the other 22 hours the computer is hard at work converting the huge RED rushes files into a more managable HD format. So far the problems would propbably go unoticed to the average audience, but then I haven't got to scene 15 yet, Gulp!

The Voydarkatron - concept drawings

The Voydarkatron is  a seven foot creature that lives in the forests of Minoitaniga and feeds on imagination. It has a short fat slimy trunk that sucks the victims brain out of their eye sockets. The only way to then restore a victims imagination is to drip a drop of Voydarkatron blood into their mouth.

A sneak peek at the props for Henry Bramble

Production Designer Damien Creagh and his Art Directing team, Paula Oropeza and Nicholas Akass have ben working their socks off over the weekend to locate and build some fantastic props for The Infectious Imagination Of Henry Bramble. Well done to you all and thank you so much for your energy and support. Here's just a few of them:

The elephant picture in the spare attic bedroom that Henry has to sleep in.

Geoffrey's bedside alarm clock.

Raygo Rattlegum's hunting belt

Raygo Rattlegum's hunting rucksack

Geoffrey's 1970's typewriter.

Warning sign in the forest.

Confirmed Cast for Henry Bramble

We can now confirm our three cast members for The Infectious Imagination Of Henry Bramble. The first is our main character Henry Bramble who I am proud to announce is going to be played by the exceptionally talented 10 year-old ARCHIE LYNDHURST who not only is a brilliant, natural actor for his age, but is probably one of the most polite boys I have ever met. 

Second on the list is Great Uncle Geoffrey, the stuffy retired judge who's lost his imagination. He will be played by the brilliant PAUL COPLEY who I first saw in the award winning series The Lakes. He has since appeared in many exceptionally high quality television drama including The Street, Life On Mars, Torchwood and Downton Abbey.

Finally we have the up and coming MAXWELL LAIRD, recently featured in the Channel 4 documentry Seven Dwarves, playing what I'm sure will become one of the most memorable parts in the film, the wonderfully enigmatic elf-like forest hunter Raygo Rattlegum.

The Crew for Henry Bramble

It's always difficult to hire crew you have never worked with before, or to put it slightly differently, it's just easier to hire crew you have worked with before. There's always that fear that someone you have never worked with is going to turn out to be difficult, incompetent or on one occassion just plain weird, but if you have the balls (which I confess I often don't), it's healthier to change your crew from project to project  so that your work stays fresh and varied.

Despite several crew members already dropping out due to 'paid' opportunities and extended commitments (which unfortunately is a common problem when making a film with little money), I'm actually very excited by the team we are gathering for the shoot. It is turning out to be a healthy mix of old friends and new. Some are doing me a big favour and for others I hope the experience will help open some doors.

So far our crew consists of:

• Cinematography: Sara Deane (NFTS, First The Worst, Verity's Summer)
• Production Design: Damien Creagh (Shifty, Island)
• Music: Richard Chester (NFTS, The Happiness Thief, Blackout trailer)
• First Assistant Director: Michael O'Kelly
• Sound Recordist: Neil Heard
• SFX Sound Design: Miha Jaramaz (NFTS, The Happiness Thief, Aliens Vs Predator)
• Sound Design & Surround Mix: Ian MacBeth (Touched By A Stranger, Birthday Girl)
• Costume Designer: Nicole Pitchers
• SFX Make-up: Gilly Church
• 2D - 3D Conversion: Mike Fraser at Prime Focus (3D Star Wars Saga)
• EPK: Talulah Birchenough
• Production Manager: Rosa Glover
• Location Manager: Douglas MacDonald
• Accountant: Nigel Wood (Spaced, Black Books)
• Emma Newman: Runner (Filmsteps Maidstone)
• And last but not least my wonderful producers Charlotte Wontner  (Island, Sickhouse) and Annabel Bates. 

....more to follow!

We have our location for Henry Bramble!

After a week of searching the Internet for local country houses I am very excited to announce we have found the perfect location just minutes from my home (very convenient I know). It is a privately owned property that is used a lot for fashion shoots and is filled with beautiful antique furniture and pictures fitting for a retired judge. What's more unbelievable is that it is actually owned by a QC! Filming will commence from the 21st-23rd October. Fingers crossed the weather will be dry!

KILL LIST - Directed by Ben Wheatley

Having heard good but disgustingly dark violent things about the new British feature film KILL LIST and getting excited by the Wicker Man style poster, I started researching the filmmaker Ben Wheatley and discovered the UK director has had an interesting career. Watch the trailer below and then hear some words of advice from Ben Wheatley, the 39 year old viral filmmaker turned feature film director.

Henry Bramble Back On Track

So it has been a while since I have spoken about my new short film, The Infectious Imagination Of Henry Bramble. Well that's basically because until now I wasn't really sure if it was going to actually happen. We went from a £20,000 budget shooting in Kent to a £55,000 budget shooting in Denmark and then back down to an £18,000 budget shooting in Kent. Why? Well it was all about getting the production value the film deserved.

£20,000 was not enough to shoot in 3D so we managed to raise another £35,000 on the condition we shoot in Denmark, but when we budgeted the film it was becoming clear that living costs and film equipment was more expensive in Denmark, there were no known dwarf actors out there or many experienced crew in the region and most importantly there were no twee English Georgian houses with pretty gated, landscaped gardened entrances. Not only that, but planning a film in another country is so much more difficult and frustrating as you have to rely on other people out there to act as an extension of your imagination, using Skype, e-mail and dropbox to share information.

Shooting in my home country of Kent is so much easier. I can walk out the door and be on location in less then half an hour to plan storyboards or pre-dress the set, I can source local crews that I have already worked with, who will not need accomodation and will work that extra mile for me. Because we have such a thriving film industry here we can also make great deals with rental and post houses. The fact we don't have to shoot in 3D now due to the brilliant deal my producer Charlotte struck with Prime Focus (a company with cutting edge technology that can convert 2D to 3D and who have been chosen by Lucasfilm to do the 2D to 3D conversions of the two Star Wars trilogies) we now don't have the added pressure of technicalities on set so we can shoot faster and cheaper and still deliver a fantastic 3D short.

So the reality at present is that we have £18,000 to make TIIOHB. I have trimmed the script to its very limits without, I hope, loosing the emotional and imaginative impact of the story. We are now aiming to shoot over a three day weekend on location in Kent at the end of Septemeber or beginning of October, so keep checking back for more updates!

Words of Wisdom & Inspiration