Time is running out to save Henry Bramble's Imagination!

Don't take my word for it, listen to Downton Abbey's Mr Mason himself - Now come and join the adventure before it's too late at :http://igg.me/at/infectious-imagination/x/3449576

Join the Adventure and save Henry Bramble!

Help us to finish the vfx for our enchanting short film and in return we'll let you loose yourself in Henry's infectious imagination as you slip away to Minoitaniga on an incredible family adventure!

Find out why Henry's mother abandoned him with his estranged Uncle, Where Raygo Rattlegum comes from and why his Chumnink tribe need Henry's help. Uncover the truth about the terrifying Voydarkatrons and come face-to-face with Maliglut, the mysterious demon intent on destroying Henry's imagination!

Choose from a selection of exclusive perks that include the opportunity to read the latest draft of the expanded feature-length version of our heart-warming family fantasy short!

Alternatively attend a live reading of the feature-length screenplay on the London stage with professional actors AND then give us YOUR feedback.

Join the adventure and support our #‎Indiegogo Campaign to help save #‎HenryBramble at: http://igg.me/at/infectious-imagination

The Difficult Reality of the VFX Industry.

This 30 minute documentary about the demise of the Oscar winning VFX company Rhythm and Hughes is not only a nice touching tribute to the 254 employees who lost their jobs over night, but it is also an important eye-opener to producers, directors and financiers all over the world to consider very carefully.

What I found particularly shocking was that many director's do not regularly oversee the work that it done. As one employer points out, you wouldn't see a film being shot on set without the director present, why is visual effects work any different?

I'm proud to say I lean more towards James Cameron in this respect as I am a little obsessive or maybe possessive over every detail. If I had it my way I'd have daily progress meetings with the vfx team. Let's hope the film industry learn something from this example and find a more ethical business model for all. 

UCLA are developing some incredible VFX tools

Some incredible visual effects research developments happening at UCLA. Just think if you scan all our favourite actors in their prime, we can then feature then cast them in our films forever. Maybe 70 years after his death I can cast Harrison Ford in my films for free!

Texturing of the Voydarkatron almost complete!

It is with a sigh of relief and a tingle of excitement that I can finally say the Voydarkatron texturing and painting has almost been signed off. Once I approve the eyes, we'll be ready to plough through the next stage of the process and Henry Bramble will finally see light at the end of a very long and dark tunnel.

Here's a sneak peak at the beast himself in all his fully rendered coloured and textured glory. Unfortunately you'll have to wait to see his gruesome face!

The team has also been working on the inner trunk. I think this is going to be the most disgusting thing you've ever seen get close to someone's face - period!

Henry Bramble On The Move Again - Finally!

Here's a beautiful re-sculpture of the Voydarkatron's trunk just sent to me by Jan Daube and his team at Wham Bam Productions. Previous versions by the other vfx teams were not nearly as detailed and defined. This really does look like the flesh of an elephant! - Very happy right now!

Wham Bam! - Henry Bramble vfx get a boost!

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.

Henry Bramble suffers another VFX nightmare

If you haven't already heard, we didn't get into Cannes. There were just 8 films selected out of a whopping 3,500 shorts from across the globe. It was a relief to be honest, because if we had been selected, our film would not have been finished in time. It is now June and has taken the vfx team six months to deliver just one completed and approved vfx shot out of forty four?! - I can't tell you how frustrated and angry this makes me feel, but in these instances, you have to just set your emotions aside and find a way to move forward.

Currently DiRoom (who were responsible for outsourcing the vfx work) have found three UK based vfx compainies who are willing to do the work for the remainder of our budget. However, despite their impressive vfx reels I have not yet been convinced that they are capable of delivering such specific work - i.e. a life-like Hollywood level cgi Voydarkatron. having had such a bad experience with the last team, I am being more than a little cautious as I try not to let paranoia cloud my judgement.

I was never convinced that the previous vfx team were qualified for the job, but my concerns fell on deaf ears. After all the delays and additional funding, the temptation to want to believe that they could deliver what we wanted within such a short timeframe was just too great. Our judgements were clouded by the desire to resolve the problem as quickly as possible, but in doing so the problem just got bigger.

The lesson that should be learnt here is simple - you pay for what you get. In reality we hugely underestimated the budget required for the vfx. The actual cost of the work to be delivered in such a short timeframe (a month), through a professional hollywood level outfit like Framestore, The Mill or the MPC is closer to £30,000. But rather than facing that fact we seem to be still looking for a way to get them done for less than a third of that estimate still within a similar short timeframe. With vfx artists expressing their anger at hollywood for not paying them an honest fee, I find this situation very uncomfortable.

Please can everyone wake up and smell the mocha choca. I really don't want to watch us make the same mistake a third time! In my mind, the only logical solution is to either be prepared to wait for as long as it takes for a smaller outfit to complete it for the money we have or raise £30,000. However the only way we can realistically raise this in a relatively short space of time, is through a carefully planned crowd-funding campaign like Indiegogo or Kickstarter. So for now I wait in hope for the Henry Bramble team to follow my lead.

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!

Proto - A Screen South Innovation Short Film

Thought I'd let you know about PROTO one of the four innovation short films commissioned by Screen South in 2011 and the first I believe to be completed. This is the first short film directed by Nick Pittom and I think he's done a great job - Much better than my first film (Drakkon) way back in 1993! Despite our problems with the guy running the show at the time, VERL's animators did a wonderful first class job on the CGI for this short film. You can follow it's progress here or on Facebook or just watch the trailer below.

First Henry Bramble Screening ...Sort Of

On Friday 8th February, Berlinale 2013 (part for the Berlin Film Festival) is presenting the first official screening of all four Screen South innovation shorts that were commissioned back in 2011 ...The only snag is our film is still not finished! So instead we are presenting our teaser trailer which will still be an interesting experiment in terms of how the audience respond to it. 

Although we missed our deadline for this, we are actually very close to completion with the music currently being composed by the charming and highly talented Evan Jolly (Unfortunately Richard Chester, my regular composer had to drop out due to bigger and probably better paid commitments). Miha Jaramaz is standing by ready to design the Voydarkatron's roars, thumps and squelches, while Ian Macbeth is cleaning up the dialogue, atmos. and adding additional sound design where needed.

We are all now just waiting with baited breath, to see what will come back from the VFX team that DiRoom have pulled together (on a shoe-string budget of just £15,000 - less than half the cost UK major VFX companies were quoting). The VFX work is been completed by no less than ten artists from Pakistan and Dubai. They've been at it for six weeks now and so far I have seen not one pixel. The anxiety is unbearable, but if they pull it off on schedule, not only will we be submitting it to Cannes for its international premiere, Screen South also plan to present another private industry screening at Bafta in early March, so keep your eyes peeled!

Incidentally Annabel Bates (producer) bumped into one of the Sales Agents that we pitched to back in November, who said that Henry Bramble was the only pitch he remembered and was keen to hear it's progress - Always good to hear positive news.

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.