» TM:YNYN - Behind The Scenes
On January 14th 2005, Grant Naylor Productions announced that they would be holding a fan film competition. Entrants had to produce an original Dwarf-related short film, and the best ones would be featured on the Red Dwarf VII DVD. Little did they know that this announcement would consume the lives of seven internet-based reprobates for months afterwards...
With the obvious exception of John and Tanya, most of us barely knew each other before descending on Ian's flat in Enfield, North London on the weekend of 11th-13th March, despite having talked online many times over the preceding months. It was the first time any of us had met Seb, the first time any of us had met Kirk outside of Dimension Jump and one of the few occasions that Cappsy left his humble coal-mining community to go to the bright lights of T'Smoke. Plus, of course, Austin's still cursed with being American.
And yet, a few months later, we're all bestest friends. We've been fused together by thousands of laughs, a few tears, dizzying highs, soul-destroying lows, confectionery, baby oil and the ultimate accolade - winning the competition and having our film released on a shiny disc.
This is our story, told through the brains and fingers of the same seven reprobates, this time armed with the benefit of hindsight.
Cappsy
The Duke
When the planning first began on the film, two roles were left unclaimed for quite a while; The Duke and Doug. I think originally Doug was something that I was going to go for, but then it became evident that Seb was perfect for the role and I settled on the Duke for my main role.
I wanted to portray the Duke as someone completely insane and the plan was for the costume to be a totally over the top, stereotypical Aussie number. In the end, not even charity shops had sufficiently insane clothes, so we settled for Ian's shirt, plain jeans, a cork hat and a clothes peg (optional). When seen on screen, I don't think I look bizarre or eccentric enough, which is a shame, but I reckon I do portray a certain air of insanity that ends up working quite well.
The performance was hard for me, as Australian is probably the accent I have the most problems with (you would never have guessed, huh?) so my performance did suffer with me dropping back into my normal voice on some occasions. Although this might have something to do with the fact that me, Seb and Ian were filming this at 11:45 at night after watching telly and becoming slightly intoxicated, and decided to film it before we lost all chance of doing so. Professionalism, there.
Flibble
When approaching a role of this magnitude, one has to consider what ones motivation is. I mean what is Mr. Flibble's background like? Does he have any parents or siblings? How would one act if one had been crafted out of fabric and forced to endure hands forcibly inserted into your behind? Is the character a satirical look on modern life and how we're all just puppets to 'the man'?
Ok, so I considered none of those things. I did, however, have great fun arsing around (excuse the pun) with a replica Flibble; making him die, say hello to the camera and shag boom mics.
In fact, it's worth mentioning the excellent work that went into the creation of Flibble by the Northrop Puppet Company – it was truly a remarkable prop and I confidently predict we'll find a reason to bring him back in future films, too.
To play Flibble I was required to lie on the floor, in slight discomfort, sniggering at all the useless amateurs screwing up their lines above me (ahaha, I would never be that rubbish, oh no), whilst I improvised with the puppet a bit. He even got the occasional stroke from Tanya. Sorted. I did, however, almost die a horrible, flame induced death when one of the massive studio lights fell down just inches away from my face. The things I do to get my face on a shiny disk.
Luckily, I survived the whole Flibble experience with naught but a sore neck and a numb arse.
Studio Twat 3
Usually I would concede that my accent for this part was appalling, but when viewed along side my Australian accent it looks like an outstanding piece of acting.
Anyhow, this scene was made with the Orange adverts very much in mind. Looking back at it, I wonder whether having all four us being as shouty as Kirk and John would have worked better, but I think the contrast in styles works in the end.
I was a little fraught whilst filming this scene, actually, as I was feeling quite tired and it took bloody ages to shoot (we played the scene through an obscene amount of times to get all the angles as we were shooting single camera). In the end, though, it comes out as one of my favorite scenes in the film due to some great editing. Yeah, no, yeah, it's funneh.
I definitely could have better here, though. And you can see my bloody socks on the wide shots.
Writing and Beyond
One of the things that kept my enthusiasm up through the pre-production process was the immense fun I had co-writing the film. In the end my contribution was quite small compared to the others, but what I did write I was very pleased with. The two main bits I wrote were the film's title, most of the 'Talking Heads' dialogue and the idea for having a “uniform beard”. Beards are just funneh. There's no getting away from it.
Ian really did a fantastic job of gathering together hundreds of emails with ideas flying in left right and centre, and then editing it all together into something tight and very, very funny. In fact Ian ended up writing a large chunk of the script, as well as directing and editing the bloody thing. IN fact, Ian and Kirk's efforts with the VT and sound edit are very big reasons why the film turned out so well.
Obviously, winning was one of the more surreal and brilliant things to ever happen to me. I've been a Red Dwarf fan since I first started to watch television, and playing this small part in its history is utterly amazing. The 7 year old me would be very proud, if he wasn't too busy stuffing his face with cake. The fat little bastard.
John
I have a confession. When I heard the idea for the fan film, I didn't think it would work. I didn't think there was enough scope for jokes, I thought it would be impossible to do without offending the entire GNP office and I thought the whole idea was far too limiting.
I'm an idiot. But then of course, we all know that.
I have to say, I was rather nervous about playing Ellard. Mainly because I would have to see him at the next Dimension Jump, but also because I can't this: act. As it turns out, I think in some bits I'm quite good (the talking head stuff), and some bits absolutely terrible (I think I deliver the Kylie line appallingly). I did find myself wishing that I had studied him in order to find some tic of his that he does (like Seb rubbing his nose exactly how Doug does in the documentaries) - but I could remember nothing. In the end, I played him as, erm, myself. Which is a major insult, and I'm surprised he even spoke to me at DJ this year.
As for the Studio Twat... well, I can't act, and I can't do an American accent, so I thought I could either be embarrassingly bad and look like I know it, or completely overact and look confident in a desperate attempt nobody would notice how crap I am. That decision seems to have paid off. I'm not quite sure whether Ian will wear that shirt ever again, though.
The shooting weekend was great, great fun. OD is a team, with nobody leading the group, and everyone having an equal say - but if there's one thing I'm proud of, it's coming up with the idea of observationdome.org in the first place. Not just because of what we produce, but simply because it brought the lot of us together as friends. I've rarely felt so relaxed with people that I've hardly spent any time with before. Perhaps too relaxed, as the Making Of video bears out. Erm, and you should see the stuff that didn't make the final cut as I was just too offensive. Sigh.
I do remember shouting "BANG!" at Cappsy whilst he was plugging in a light. I am such a fucking cunt. I get the idea he wanted to throttle me, which is fair enough under the circumstances.
The shoot itself went very smoothly. Apart from the fact that I'm the worst corpser in the world. I laughed throughout the entire Studio Twats scene, much to everyone's chagrin. Remember all the stories you read about actors corpsing causing tensions in the studio because of the time pressure? Well, now I know what that's like...
Me and Seb did manage to quote the entire "No, it's my fault! / It's my fault! / I insist on it being my fault! / *punch*" smeg up when we buggered a scene up. "Pitiful" is the word you're looking for, dear reader.
Things I'd change? I think the script is pretty much perfect - funny, and with loads of stuff only hardcore Dwarf fans would get. (The only bit I don't like in the script is the 'politically correct' dialogue - I just think that stuff has been done to death; but the others liked it, so democracy won.) I really wish I'd had more input with the script - I'm credited as writer, but did very little apart from comment on what the others wrote. Part of this was because I wasn't convinced by the idea then anyway, and part of it was laziness. And part of it was also that even on first draft, there was a hell of a lot of material anyway - I do remember being the one who always pointed out that the film was a maximum of 10 minutes, and we also only had two days shooting time - so we didn't want to make it too long.
I think technically, the film is really good in a lot of areas - the camerawork is superb, and the editing amazingly tight (that 10 minute time limit really made the film far less flabby than it would have been otherwise) - but in some areas, it falls down. The lighting is poor (apart from the talking heads scenes) - partly due to lack of experience, and partly due to lack of equipment - which means the film has some ugly shadows, and the picture is far too dark at times (ruining the end joke, as you can't read the writing on the fax properly).
Another problem came when Ian's uni didn't allow him proper use of the editing suite, so we had to improvise and use Kirk's PC - which would have been fine, apart from difficulties in capturing the video. This problem meant that the final edit wasn't in broadcast resolution - so on the DVD, it is presented with a whacking great black border around it. This is a great shame, but couldn't be helped in the circumstances. On the plus side, the film is far more tightly edited than it would have been if we'd just used the uni's edit suite, as far longer could be spent on tightening it up.
The other problem with it is the main location - which was Ian's kitchen, and looks like... Ian's kitchen. A real office would have been far better, but logistics got the better of us. On the other hand, Ian's bedroom works superbly as... erm... a rabid fan's bedroom. I WONDER WHY.
But hey, I'm a whinging bastard. As a whole, I think it works marvellously. Although I keep winding forward my bits...
Tanya
Very few people know what Helen Norman is like, so I had the luxury of playing myself. As a consequence of that, and me undergoing some pretty heavy-duty preparation for my business trip to India later in the year, I wasn't that involved in the pre-production of the film, which I regret. My attitude before filming was a little disinterested, which is a shame, as when it actually came to the filming, I really enjoyed myself. Having such a supportive group around me dispelled any uncertainties I had about being able to act with a reasonable amount of competence, but I found the only way to perform was to stay as focused as possible, which meant trying to supress giggles at certain times. Still, I count myself as being very lucky with my role, as I didn't have to cope with John's hysterical delivery of "S-speak, Doug. How can we change what's happening?!". Poor Seb. I still marvel at his Hercleuen effort to get over the giggles and stay dead to it all.
Talking of John, I was impressed by his performance, too, as I'd never seen him act before. Despite his constant whining about how crap he was (the big ham), he managed to be far funnier than me, but he's got the advantage of having a hilarious voice even when he's not acting.
In conclusion, I can say that it will be remembered by me as one of the best weekends that I've ever had, as we were doing something very enjoyable with a fantastic group of people. I'm still pleased about how well we all worked together, especially when we don’t see each other often, and one of the group still hasn’t met any of us. Even if we hadn't won, the film stands as a record as to what a group of committed and co-operative group of people can do when they work together, which makes it fantastic regardless.
Ian
Writing
On the day the competition was announced, my excited little mind went into overdrive. I brainstormed quite a few ideas, including a documentary on how much I hate Series VII and, rather prophetically, a version of Identity Within. The idea that shone through, though, was a dramatisation of the ongoing struggle to find funding for the movie. I relayed the idea to the rest of the Dome team, and everyone loved it. Apart from John. Which sort of set a trend for the rest of the production...
A collective brainstorming of ideas and jokes soon followed. The results were varied and somewhat unfocused; a result of us all having different views on the style of the mockumentary. Eventually it was decided to go for mainly fly-on-the-wall-style footage, with the occasional talking head, and an omniscient narrator. This is fairly conventional for British workplace documentaries, as Ricky Gervais seems to have also noticed. One convention that we dispensed with was having the characters speak to camera while working, as we wanted our major scenes to focus on characters interacting with each other. This did come at the cost of at least one good gag - Andrew Ellard being caught browsing Observation Dome, and explaining to the camera that it's his favourite website...
I volunteered for the unenviable task of trying to put the first draft script together, from a series of long, rambling e-mails... Fortunately, there were plenty of excellent ideas to choose from, and quite a bit of dialogue that I was able to copy and paste directly from the mailing list. The main task was to arrange all our ideas into a decent ten-minute structure, as well as writing the dialogue for our two big set-pieces (the Studio Twats and the Duke).
The first draft had a fair few faults, most notably the over-use of talking heads and the under-use of the narrator, but feedback was very good. After the narrator problem was fixed in the next draft, the structure was set, so all that remained was to tweak a few lines, add the occasional new idea and really hone the comedy value to perfection. The final draft was completed a week before shooting, but changes were still being suggested after that, and even on-set...
Pre-production
Being a student of a TV Production course has some excellent advantages. Such as access to broadcast-standard camera, sound and lighting equipment, free of charge, for a whole weekend. This was provided by the excellent studio team at Middlesex University - we salute you.
Given that I had all the equipment, it made sense for everybody to come to me for the filming. I was hoping to have access to the studio floor at uni, but it was tied up with coursework productions at the time. Nevertheless, I figured that with a bit of furniture re-arrangement, the kitchen in my Halls of Residence flat would work as a generic, sterile-looking office environment. Provided you ignore the fact that Grant Naylor Productions appear to have a big fridge-freezer in the corner of their office.
In order to make it look more convincing, everyone agreed to bring as much office paraphanalia as possible on the day of the shoot. We also had one or two other props - two sets of three beards were bought at a fancy dress shop in Enfield, a halved ping-pong ball provided two fake eyes and baby oil was purchased in Tesco, by Seb, Cappsy and Ian, which lead to some strange reactions.
I also had to organise a location for the DVD montage scene. In doing so, I discovered that shopkeepers in Ponders End, Enfield, are generally a bunch of ignorant, unhelpful, dismissive, surly, unpleasant tosspots. Fortunately, there was a Christian book shop called Watersprings further down the High Street. I spoke to the owner, a man called Dave, and he was more than happy to let us film in his shop. Hurrah for Christianity! Sadly for Watersprings, the scene was eventually cut from the submitted version, although they do retain their "thanks to" credit.
As Kirk was more than capable of organising everything else, as well as everyone else, I was left to prepare things creatively. I produced my camera script in the week leading up to the shoot, making decisions on camera position, movement, angle and proximity to the subject. For the scenes in our film that mirror existing Dwarf moments, I took great care to ensure that we used exactly the same shots that appeared in the episode. This is particularly noticable in the Out of Time-influenced finale, and I'm very proud of my dedication, attention to detail and ability to completely rip off another director's work without anyone noticing.
Directing/Camera
Directing the OD guys was brilliant fun. Even though most of us had only met each other once or twice before (and Seb hadn't met any of us before), it was like being with a group of old friends. And there's nothing better for an easy shoot than the director and cast getting on like a house on fire. There was a lot of mutual respect - surprising, given that none of us really knew a thing about each other's abilities - which meant I could get exactly the performance I wanted, and that when the guys came up with good ideas, they'd always be implemented.
The one really, really disappointing thing about the film is the lighting. I am a bumbling amateur. I'd never done lighting before, and I haven't since. And it shows. The majority of the shots are far too dark and grainy, and the final shot is completely ruined. The only bit that I'm pleased with, lighting wise, is the talking head sequence. It's much easier to get it right when you've got a static camera and you're only lighting one person. What I should have done was re-set the lighting for every shot, optimising it specifically for what I was shooting. But then, that would have been very, very difficult to do when you've got two days to shoot 15 minutes' worth of material.
My camerawork is a bit shoddy at times. I wobble far too much whenever it's handheld. You could argue that it adds to the documentary style, but it just strikes me as a reminder of my amateurism every time I watch the film back. In my defence, you try carrying a JVC GY5000 on your shoulder all day and tell me your arms aren't aching...
Studio Twat 1
Playing the Studio Twat (as they were called in the script, but not on-screen) was great fun! Despite the crippling social catastrophe of wearing my hair in a ponytail, I got to have a break from camerawork and enjoy shouting in a silly voice. Adam Terry, my university colleague and housemate, filled in on camera, and did a much better job than me. Since the shoot, Adam has worked with Mike Agnew on The Great Garden Challenge, so he's not short of Dwarf connections...
My American accent is not my best, but compared to Kirk and John, it doesn't seem too bad. I was very pleased with my hugely-exaggerated pronunciation of works such as "Dogg", "coffee" and "Spaceballs", though. I was concerened that I'd gone too far, but my lines got huge laughs in the read-through, so I decided to push it even further when the camera started rolling.
The Interpreter
This was the smallest, most insignificant role in the entire film. So naturally, as the director, it was my cameo. Taking my cue from Chris Barrie's tips about what to do with crap feed lines, I decided to make the line as interesting as possible, just to cram up the funneh-ness of the film even further.
So, a couple of days before the shoot, I practised the line in front of my mirror. The accent was supposed to be Eastern European, but it got more and more grotesque every time I uttered the words. What really set it off was the moustache, which was cannibalised from the 'fifty years later' beards. It gave me the classic generic 1970s interpreter look, which I wanted, for some reason.
In the end, the combination of stupid voice, moustache, and the synchronised movement by me and Seb, makes this silly little scene one of the things of which I am most proud. That probably says more about me than the scene, though...
Editing
Worst. Edit. Evur. The original plan was to edit it at university, on some very high-powered Avid suites. However, it being quite late in the semester, they were fully booked for student projects. My laptop is woefully inept at running editing software, but fortunately Kirk's computer handles Adobe Premiere quite well, so off I went to Manchester.
We still needed something to put the rushes onto the computer, and, unable to borrow a DV deck or camcorder, I went and forked out £350 on a lovely little Sony DCR-HC19E. Completely fucked up my finances, but it was worth it for THE SAKE OF THE FILM. Unfortunately, we were also unable to use firewire, so we had to upload the rushes via USB, using Sony's fucking awful Picture Package software. Due to the limitations of this pathetic excuse for software, the uploads were of lower quality than the DV originals, we could only upload ten minutes' worth of footage at a time, and, most soul-destroyingly, the sound was completely out of sync with the visuals.
We vowed to fight past this, and by the end of the weekend all we came out with was a rather rough cut, with the sound still nowhere near finished. Fortunately, Kirk has a particular talent for sound engineering, so I knew I'd left the edit in safe hands. In retrospect, the film actually benefitted from the collaboration with Kirk - I'd have never been able to use the music as well as Kirk did. His work on the Out of Time scene still amazes me.
What was finalised by the end of the weekend, however, was the choice of shots and scenes for the final cut. As scripted, the film ran at fifteen minutes, which meant we had to cut an entire third of the material before we had a film that we could submit. The first casualty was a sequence based on the 'what is it?' scene from White Hole. It looked great on paper, but didn't really work on-screen. It was far too slow and repetitive, and didn't suit such a sort piece at all. It did mean, however, that our lovely visual gag of redressing the set with increasingly surreal props bit the dust - it started with a pencil holder, then a toaster, then a jar of pickled eggs.
There was also quite a big set-piece that had to go due to a stupid, stupid mistake by me. We went to a nearby charity shop to film a piece illustrating how little money GNP make from DVD sales - someone picks up a DVD, hands £20 to the shopkeeper, who hands £10 to a man with a BBC t-shirt on, who in turns hands Doug 20p. However, the customer (Kirk) exits the first shot on the left... and then enters the next shot on the left. Anyone who's seen the extract from I-Camcorder on the VII DVD will know why the scene couldn't be used.
Two other obvious trims were a pair of investors. The first was Investor Kirk telling Doug that he wasn't sure about the cast, and suggesting Bruce Willis for Lister. It worked well, but being a two-line scene with one joke, it was something that just had to go in favour of the longer pieces. The second was a great concept - me and Cappsy playing a pair of investors from The Great Vindaloovian Studios. The performances were funny, but other than the novelty of seeing two people upside down with false eyes on their chins, it didn't really justify its quite long running time.
The saddest loss, by far, was a pre-titles sequence based on the final scene from Legion. It was great - well-written (by Seb), well-performed and well-shot. It worked very well pre-titles - it draws the audience in with their first glimpse of the GNP offices, complete with a penguin and a bearded lady, and it's also a statement of intent. It shows the gist of the story as being attempts to get funding for The Movie, and also lets people know that the main thrust of our humour comes from transforming Red Dwarf references into 21st century office life. It's the only scene I'd reinstate if it came to creating a director's cut version of the movie.
Aftermath
Kirk finished up the editing within a week or so, and it was sent off to GNP in plenty of time for the deadline. After a while, we were told that we were on the shortlist, which set our confidence sky-rocketting. We knew that we'd produced something that we were all really proud of; we just had to hope that the judges shared our sense of humour...
Words cannot adequately described my feelings when I found out that we'd won. Suffice to say, I spent at least half an hour re-reading the e-mail from GNP, wandering around the house and crying. Once I'd recovered, I forwarded the e-mail to all the OD boys, as well as texting them to prompt them to get online. I've never experienced such a shared feeling of joy and celebration - the boys from the Dome done good. The next day, I met up with John, who greeted me by jumping on me and screaming "WE'RE ON THE FUCKING DVD!" in the middle of Birmingham City Centre.
But it never really sank in until I put a copy of Red Dwarf VII Disc Two in my player and actually. Watching. My. Film. On. DVD. And as for the Doug Naylor introduction... it's the most amazing feeling to see your ultimate hero praising your work, especially when it's of a medium and genre that they themselves excel at. Doug Naylor likes something that I helped to make. I don't think that will sink in for a long time.
Misc
Having trawled through every charity shop in Yorkshire, Cappsy couldn't find a shirt of such awful crapness that somebody like the Duke would wear it. Fortunately, on the day of filming, the terrible, tacky, ugly shirt you see on-screen was found... in Ian's wardrobe.
During the shoot, I wore the same t-shirt for two consecutive days. Oh dear.
I really, really wished I'd have combed my hair before doing the Studio Twats scene...
Kirk
In answering the question "What did I do towards the fan film 'The Movie: Yeah, No, Yeah, No'" - write bigger - there are various words that need to be defined. What is a movie, what is a film, why is it a fan one, and why is it so frequently linked with "Yeah, No, Yeah, No"?
Seriously though, most of my time on this film was spend producing it. In the case of a film as small as this, production effectively means doing all the boring non-creative stuff no-one else wants to do. So whilst I contributed to the script, my main drive was making sure that everything and everyone was in the right place at the right time. But that's not really very exciting, so I won't say much about that.
I decided that I didn't want to act in the film too much, which is probably just as well, and I appeared in just two scenes, one of which was cut. Unfortunately for everyone else in the room, they had to put up with my very loud and abrasive "Studio Twat" accent for nearly an hour, but there we go.
On the weekend, therefore, I generally spent most of my time worrying about the time, holding a boom and shouting "Fridge!" at selected intervals. I think people thought I was being overly pedantic about the noise the fridge made, but after hearing it in the edit, I'm pleased I insisted on defrosting everyone's food on a regular basis.
I also tried to do some work towards the lighting, as I have a few years of amateur stage experience behind me, but Ian wasn't so sure, and did most of it. In hindsight, I should have been a little more stubborn...
The end of that weekend was to be the last hands on involement I had in the film, until it turned out that Ian couldn't edit it at his University, and so my computer became the editing suite as Ian joined me for another weekend a month later.
This presented its own challenges, as we were unable to get it in proper MiniDV quality off of Ian's camera, and so several 10 minute extracts with unsynchronised sound and in fairly poor quality (considering the camera we used) streamed painfully onto my PC to begin the major task of editing.
Ian did the vast majority of this, put it all in order, chose the shots he wanted and so on. We dropped some of the sound in, but unfortunately the weekend was over, and it was left to me to tidy up and complete the edit, which seemed to do very little, but took absolutely ages. Well worth it in the end though. Especially the magical moment when moving the Out of Time music by a single frame made a massive difference to the scene...
After this, it was time to make full usage of the Royal Mail, whereby I spent more with them than I have in the past, or am likely to in the future, by sending varying copies in a multitude of versions around the country by Special Delivery.
Seb
You know that annoying wanker who comes along late onto a project, waltzes in and snaffles the biggest part? Yeah, that's me.
I'd missed initial discussions about the movie, due to not being on the mailing list. Instead, when the competition was announced, I had ambitious plans for a ten-minute animated musical using the Starbug Playset. Seriously. Thankfully, having written no more than a title ("The Starbuggers", of course), that idea was quickly ditched in favour of shamelessly jumping on someone else's great idea.
When we started discussing the film, I had no intention of playing Doug, as I assumed someone else would already be doing so. Truth be told, I had my eye on the narrator part - my voice is one of the few things I actually have confidence in, what with the radio stuff I do. But it soon became apparent that if Austin was to be involved that was the only realistic part he could take, and so began discussions over who should play the Duke and Doug between myself and Cappsy.
In the end, I think it worked out quite well. For Cappsy, it meant that as well as his gloriously manic performance as the Duke, he got to be a studio twat, which was probably the most fun thing anyone could have done in the film (I felt quite left out, having to sit there and be the straight man in the film's best scene). Also, if he'd have been Doug, we'd have missed his brilliant puppeteering of Mr Flibble. As for me, meanwhile, well, there are bits of my performance that make me cringe slightly, but in other bits I think I manage to nail the part down; I'm glad that people noticed the nose-rubbing in the talking heads, for example. Plus, I think I had the best costume; I found an old orange shirt in my wardrobe that turned out to be almost exactly like one worn by Doug on one of the DVDs, while Cappsy managed to track down a very Doug-ish jacket. If I'd bothered to cut my hair beforehand (something I actually, in hindsight, really regret not doing) I might have looked even more like him.
The writing process was a fun experience, as it was something I'd never really done before. I'd co-written stuff, but never with so many people throwing ideas in, and never over email. The quite episodic nature of the film helped, though - basically, once we had a basic plot in place, we could throw in scene spoofs and individual gags, knowing that they could be assembled in pretty much any order we felt like. At times, it's almost a succession of sketches.
I'm quite proud of some of the contributions I made to the writing. While there were some bits I liked that sadly didn't make it into the final cut (I'd written what I thought was a quite good spoof of the closing scene of Legion, which would have opened the film nicely), there are bits here and there that I can look at and feel quite chuffed with. I had quite a lot to do with shaping the Studio Twats scene into what it eventually became, basing a lot of it (as well as on the more obvious influence of the Orange Ads) on a short story by Neil Gaiman that semi-autobiographically draws from his experience of trying to get a Good Omens film made.
Despite the enjoyment of those back-and-forth emails, shaping something that rapidly began to look like it might be a bit special, it was the shooting weekend that was of course the most significant time. To this day, I'm amazed how we all managed to come together with a minimum of fuss and get the thing done. We were essentially a group of near-strangers, yet for the entire weekend it was like we were old friends, mucking about and having a laugh. Sure, tempers got frayed at times, particularly on the second day - but by rights we should have been ready to kill each other on the Sunday night.
Particular memories of the shoot include :
- The sheer volume of smeg ups that got quoted every time one of us made a mistake. I never thought it was possible to get any geekier. I underestimated the exponential increase in geekiness when you put six of us in a room together.
- Doing the "Out Of Time" scene. While the Studio Twats scene probably came out looking the most fun, it was actually a bit of a bitch to shoot, because we had to do the same thing five or six times. The final scene, though, was just great; although it took us about half an hour to shoot "Doug? There may be a what?" due to constant corpsing. I admit it was my fault, but that I simply couldn't help it as the tone in John's voice meant he sound like he was about to start laughing himself. It came out looking wonderful, though - John's performance, the editing and the terrific music mixing. I'd even suggest that this one scene was a major factor in our actually winning.
- Doing the talking heads scenes. I particularly enjoyed these, as it felt like I was actually an Important Person being interviewed for a Proper Documentary, rather than just arsing about pretending to be Doug Naylor. I thought these were among the best-shot scenes, too.
- Being oiled up, and all that. Now, I wasn't hugely keen on exposing my flabby torso to the world in this manner, but Ian claims that the only reason he forced me into doing it, and kept the scene in at the expense of others, was that my girlfriend told him to. This is of course bollocks - she did tell him to, but that's not the reason he kept it in. He kept it in to make me SUFFER. If you look closely at my performance, you can detect a hint of "Jesus, let's just get this bastard thing shot as quickly as possible".
- Complaining about false beards. I really started to piss people off during the shoot, by constantly moaning about the crapness of the false beards. But they really were terrible - they kept falling off, and reattaching them with double-sided tape took about ten minutes at a time. And they were really, REALLY itchy and uncomfortable - that's why I keep touching mine throughout the shoot. Why the hell we didn't just get black marker pens and draw them on, I'll never know.
- Cadbury's Shots. I will never again be able to eat these without thinking of that weekend. And perhaps that is the greatest legacy of all.
I was actually at Glastonbury the day the results were announced. It was the Friday morning, which some of you may remember was the morning upon which an almighty thunderstorm turned the entire festival into the worst mudbath that Glasto had ever seen. It was around noon, when the rain had finally stopped and we'd been able to venture out of our tent for something to eat; I was standing at a hot dog stand, and my phone went off. It was a text from Ian - "WE'VE FUCKING WON!!" It took me a minute to figure out what he was talking about... and when I did, I just couldn't believe it. The festival had come close to being ruined - cancelled, even - one of our friends was walking around barefoot in knee-high mud due to a lack of wellies, and my girlfriend's brand new phone had been the one thing in our tent that managed to get utterly wrecked by the rain. And yet with one text message, I was put on cloud nine. And after that, the sun came out and I proceeded to have an utterly amazing weekend. Top stuff.
Austin
Of the people involved in the film, I was probably involved the least. Nevertheless, that's my voice you hear first in the movie, and that's my name you see first in the end credits. How did that happen?
Well, I should probably start at, or somewhere near, the beginning. That's usually a good place to start, unless we're talking about the works of Quentin Tarantino, or that one episode of Spaced where they eat stewed marijuana. "It's too orangey for crows."
Anyway, Cappsy mentioned to me something about an OD mailing list for all the contributors on observationdome.org - I had no idea what he was talking about, but I was soon a part of it, and began to help the others with the script. While we were working on that, the subject of casting came up. I volunteered to be of service in any way that I could, before Ian reminded me that I could not play any on-screen roles, since the Atlantic Ocean affects both accents and video formats.
It became painfully obvious that the only way I could contribute would be to narrate the film. After the script was finished, I went off and recorded the narration, but, due to shit equipment, had to re-record it. After that, Ian and Kirk incorporated it into the final audio track.
So why am I first? Part of the reason is that I am thoroughly vain. And I have very little sensitivity towards others. If it were to do me any good (and if it were something a little more tangible, and not quite so fickle), I would gladly engage in coitus with fame. I'm out for all that I can get, if you know what I mean.
But the main reason why you see my name first is because I'm the narrator and there's a set order for the end credits. You know, British law...and all that.
