...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!