“Little hand says it’s time to rock and roll!”

It’s been a little over a month since my last article, which featured no reviews at all and was in fact really only a response piece to the article written by Max just before. We’ve been extremely busy here at Castle Grey Skullz as the final year of university is soon upon us. We’ve also been doing the odd job for Who’s Jack and you can finally check out some of our stuff at their snazzy new site www.thisisjack.tv. Last I count our page had been viewed 4600 times. I very much appreciate the support, and for those of you who come for the free music but choose to stay we both love you here for it. As you may have heard/seen (hope you liked the poster) we’re incredibly close to finishing Boiling Point to unleash on the world. And I’ll be honest I could not be happier right now, but more on that later. I come back to you again mainly with experience in the form of what we’ve been up to lately.

Before we begin can we just have a moments silence for Patrick Swayze who passed away at age 57 after a pretty goddamn awesome career. Say what you want about Dirty Dancing (1987) and Ghost (1990) but both his turns in Point Break (1991) and Donnie Darko (2001) are fantastic, as are the movies themselves. We’ve lost a lot of good actors and childhood heroes lately and it’s a shame, if inevitable.

“If the sky were to suddenly open up, there would be no law, there would be no rule. There would only be you and your memories. “

So Boiling Point nears its general release (on the internet) and though it’s been a while in real time (about 6 weeks) it’s only been about a week total in production time. It took one night to write (as I had storyboarded it first, sometimes I like to work backwards). It took two long night shoots from around 8pm till 2am (even pushing it to 5am on the final night). And it took less than 3 days to get our movie out of final cut pro. That’s less than a week of production time total, and the film itself cost us less than £100. It’s quite an achievement, hurrah for us!

“Is there a murder in your movie?”

The simple answer to that is no. The idea for the script came from my mother telling me one day when I was sitting staring at the kettle waiting for my fix that “a watched kettle never boils”. Pretty simple really, so when writing I tried to take it a step further, making it about wanting something so badly that’s being denied to you by someone or something. The first draft was pretty boring, so I took in a load of Sam Raimi and David Lynch movies and went back to work. The final result was something with a lot of tension and a very surreal vibe to it. It was only 4 pages long. Suddenly I realised I had something in my lap that could very easily be made to a high standard and very quickly. So I got on the phone to CGM and told him what I thought, and he agreed that we should do it and that we could use his equipment.

“Susie, do you know anything about... witches?”

No, and this movie isn’t about witches either. I suppose if you look deeply it’s about the human psyche and how the mind can play tricks on you. The actual shoot was a brilliant experience.

I had many conversations with Max about how we should approach it. He suggested we use our friend Iain as cameraman. Iain’s one cool customer who’s very relaxed and hilarious, and Max had worked with him before so I figured why not. Now that I’ve had a chance to sit down and watch the footage I’m very impressed with how well he did and he’s a lot of the reason this film looks as good as it does.

I knew who I wanted to act in it pretty much as soon as I wrote it. I might even have offered him the role before I even knew if we were going to make it or not. You’ve heard his music here on CGS under his pseudonyms Confucius MC or CON but his real name is Will. I’d seen a bit of his work before and really wanted to work with him. He was in the pretty awesome student film Max made last year called Compensation (and it’s difficult to make an awesome student film). And wow, this guy knows how to give a good performance. It was so intense. There were maybe 6 people in that kitchen we shot at for most of the time, but you would have only noticed Will. You can even seen from the trailer with the shots of him laughing, and as someone who was sitting right in front of him at the time I really thought his mind had snapped, it was that intense.

The whole shoot was really easy. Our friends Darren and Paddy (also just a few of the residents at the house we were graciously given free rein in) became our production assistants/special effects guru’s/script finder (God bless you Paddy). Believe me, you need production assistants, they make the whole process faster and give you more time to deal with talent or your crew. We had no problems with the lighting or getting the shots we needed. Like I said, two nights and probably the easiest shoot I will ever be allowed to experience.

“Where’s my beaver rape scene?”

No, none of that in there either. And as for Max, well the whole thing wouldn’t have happened without him. He was my Director of Photography on the project as well as my editor. His impeccable sense with lighting helped make my dark and jarring vision a reality and his love of sound editing (which is where the casual editor gives up) bought the tension up 10 fold. Funnily enough, this is the first film we’ve worked on together, and I hope that it’s only the beginning of many.

The editing process was pretty seamless except for a moment when Final Cut Pro decided it would be funny to not start up and make us thing that all hope was lost. I say us, Max was pretty calm and figured out how to fix it, but I went through the whole “Oh my god I’ve lost my movie!” breakdown routine. Everything else was simple.

I had a pretty clear vision when filming that meant we were left with a clear story done from many different angles. That is totally awesome, because you can never have too many angles of the same shot. Of the three tapes we used we managed to tweak out around half an hour’s worth of really good footage, which ended up at about 6 minutes by the time it was all done.

There was very little arguing. We both bounced ideas off each other and knew exactly what we wanted so it all went along quickly. The credits in particular I’m very proud of. You’ll see.

“So anyways...”

You may have noticed that the trailer is very random, and you might find the film to be the same. We’ll have to wait and see. But do know that it was intentional. We wanted something that would get you interested, and I can almost guarantee that the film will leave you with a very similar feeling.

But enough hype, you’ll see the film soon enough, and some even sooner than others. You may remember that I wrote an article about my experience of trying to write a zombie script for the Roehampton Film Societies first full production and how my script was pretty much given up on by everyone at the very early stages. Well I decided to put all that aside and called up the producer of Morning After (Breakfast of the Dead) to see if we could tag along to their premier of the film at our University on the 25^th of September. And against all odds they said yes.

It took me a while to get over the shock of that, I don’t even care if no-one shows up, a piece of my work is going to be shown on a big screen somewhere. That’s enough for me. So the premier is now set for the 25^th, where unless they all of sudden change their mind, you will be able to come to see both Boiling Point and Morning After in succession on a gloriously large screen. The rest of you will have to wait for the 28^th when it will be up on the internet to release to the world (I would say the 26^th but I think Max and I might have to after party till dawn if people like it and will need time to recover). So if you’re on campus on the 25^th at 5pm then please come find us, if not then check us out in full HD glory when we throw it up online.

“Which brings me back to that actually...”

We filmed it all in HD, which means that the majority of it looks fucking beautiful quality. If you’re filming projects then I suggest HD, even if it does use up more space, as it really does make everything go to 11. I also haven’t spoken about my own role as director, mainly as I can’t really give myself constructive criticism yet and I’d much rather hear it from you guys once the movie is up and out there. If any of our friends who run blogs wishes to do a review then I know both Max and I would welcome it, as we’re only interested in getting better.

And this film is better, much better, than anything I have ever done. And I enjoyed every second of it, which you hopefully will also. I’ve already begun working on the script that might be our next project called Spin Cycle which is based on a cool story Max came up with. There’s also talk of dragging Dead Knowledge out its grave (pun intended) and giving that a go as well. It would be so nice to make a sick zombie film. I’m excited about Spin Cycle already, I feel like this piece could be incredibly tense and emotional. I just hope that production (on either of them) goes as smoothly as possible.

And so once again we come to the end. I really hope you like the movie, we worked very hard on it and it’s really worth your time. The more at the premier the better, I say. Please also check us out at JackTV, and anywhere else we pop up from time to time. The more support we have the better we can get so let’s keep on rolling.

So with no further wait

BOILING POINT

Until next time, make mine Marvel!

Hah.

Oh yeah, there’s this mad philosophical dude I’ve been reading a lot of lately. He blogs over at http://drtchockii.blogspot.com/ and it’s all very interesting stuff. Check it out.