Epic Fantasy Adventure Resolution for 2014

At the beginning of the year I pondered on doing something to celebrate Drakkon's 20th anniversary. This led to a reunion at the falls in October, a growing Facebook page and a successful Indiegogo campaign to remaster the film in HD.

In doing all this I was reminded of my passion, ambition and fearless drive, at a time in my early career when anything seemed possible. My passion was infectious and somehow seemed to make the impossible happen. This made me reflect on my subsequent career and how over time I had slowly stopped externalising that self-belief. I realised that if I still wanted that illusive directing career, I had to externalise it again. So what better way to do this than by making the most ambitious and emotionally engaging modern fantasy adventure short that I can on a modest budget, financed and marketed through crowd-funding.

I am looking to Game Of Thrones and The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo for inspiration, re-working an idea I have had in my head for the last twenty years. The story will centre around an anti-heroine with a dark and horrific past - a cross between an older Arya Stark and Lisabeth Salander. It will be dark, gritty, graphic and emotionally engaging, aimed at delighting GOT fans and general fantasy fans alike.

The ultimate aim is to attract the attention of Hollywood, encouraging them to exploit my undiscovered talents as a director, using a strategic online marketing campaign that will run alongside the project. Sounds unrealistic? Maybe it is, but that's what I like about it!

Drakkon's Indiegogo Campaign is 182% funded with 13 hours to go!

We have exceeded our minimum target by a whopping 182% - well done everyone who has supported this campaign! 

This is the final call for the`Drakkon Express train to Remasterdome! If you were intending to contribute to this campaign, but kept putting it off, then you now only have 13 hours left. This really is your last chance, so climb on board and join the team! Wooo Woooooo! 

http://igg.me/at/Drakkon/x/3449576

Final Design for Henry Bramble poster by Richard Davies

I'm very excited to reveal the latest and final poster design for The Infectious Imagination Of Henry Bramble, created by the amazing Richard Davies (TurksWorks).

20 years since the making of Drakkon

We are now well into 2013 and in a few months it will have been a whopping 20 years since I made my first 16mm film on location at West Burton Falls in North Yorkshire. Drakkon was an incredibly ambitious first film filled with stunts, explosions and special effects puppetry.

The final results may not have been up to Hollywood standards, but they were certainly no worse than Peter Jackson's Bad Taste. For a crew that were mostly made up of national diploma media graduates from Harrogate College, who had never made a film before, it was an impressive feat in 1993.

On the surface the short is now construed as a rather embarrassing and somewhat amateur attempt of filmmaking, but for myself and many of the filmmakers involved, it holds a much deeper sentiment.

Peasant (played by Derek Boyes) being confronted by Drakkon (notice the Alien 3 homage).

We were very inexperienced at the time, attempting something far more ambitious than most other beginner filmmakers. To our Media Production course leader, we were seen as egotistical mavericks who were heading for failure, yet through naivety, passion and sheer stubbornness we proved him wrong.

The experience bonded many of us at a pivotal moment in our young adult lives. It symbolised our hopes and dreams for the future. It was a time of innocence and optimism, when anything seemed possible. I look back on the whole experience with great fondness and despite all its faults, I am still very proud of the short film we made.

Twenty years later, it seems Drakkon has made a lasting impression on our middle-aged lives, so much so that on Saturday August 10th 2013, nine (maybe eleven) out of seventeen original cast a crew members, will be heading back to the enchanting waterfall in West Burton for a 20th anniversary reunion - can't wait!

We're back! - Henry Bramble on the move at last.

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!

CBB pitching event for Henry Bramble feature

Last Thursday we had the finale of our Creative Business Base programme run by Screen South. After six months of support and advice we ended up in the Blue Room at the BFI pitching to Film 4, Bfi, Prescience, The Works, Vertigo, Revolver, Bankside Films, Moviehouse Entertainment and Guerilla Films. 

Set up like a speed dating event, we had ten minutes to impress before moving to the next table. It was a lot of fun, and seemed relatively easy to impress with our crisp one-pagers featuring the new poster design and my passionate animated pitch of the story. However it was also a sobering moment of truth as we learned of the sheer size of the difficulties we will have to face if we are to succeed in bringing this wonderful story to a big screen international audience.

Although nearly everyone who attended the pitch really enjoyed the concept and would be very keen to see it made we had several issues to address:

• Henry Bramble is not a successful entity in any previous form (e.g. best selling novel or computer game) and will require large amounts of strategic marketing to get it into the public's psyche. 
• It is unlikely that we will be able to raise enough finance from the UK or Europe.
• No financier in their right mind is going to let a first time feature film director like myself be in control of $40 million. 
• Despite her impressive low-budget feature film achievements, Charlotte as Producer is also considered a high risk .

The advice that we received was extremely welcomed and gave us a lot of interesting facts to mull over. Here are a few of them:

• You need a strong Executive Producer backing you who has produced a similar film (in terms of content and budget) - someone like David Heyman for example.
• To compensate for not having directed a feature film before you will need to surround yourself with very experienced crew in particular the cinematographer. That way if you turn out to be a complete waste of space, the film can be competently made without you. 
• You will need to attach an extremely attractive cast (monetary not aesthetic). 
• If you want to make an independent film outside of the Hollywood system then you will have to slash the budget considerably.
• Even if you get the film financed you will not be able to raise the sufficient marketing costs required for this kind of film in order to compete with similar Hollywood titles.
• If one of the Hollywood studios agrees to distribute the film, they may (like Valiant) bury the film on purpose so that it does not compete with their current release slate.
• Hollywood will want to develop the project from the beginning and would more likely buy you out than let you direct the film. However you could probably pay off your mortgage with this fee though!
•  If you publish it as a novel first, it will take a minimum of three years to become a bestseller, which statistically is unlikely anyway with such competition already out there.

As you can see, it was a daunting experience, but a valuable one and something that I am certainly not phased by. I have a plan on how to deal with these issues and will report back with my final conclusions very soon. In the mean time I will leave you with the news that I am literally pages away from completing the first draft which although will be very rough and full of poor punctuation and verse, underneath is a very exciting and emotional story that I am desperate to share.

The Creative Business Base teams at Maidstone Studios.

New Henry Bramble Poster

This is the latest poster design for the feature length version of The Infectious Imagination Of Henry Bramble. It will be used as part of a pitching pack to raise development finance for the film in London on November 27th so fingers crossed - It's come along way from the sketch I did at the beginning of the year.