Well the press releases have gone out, the cast and crew have been invited and the cat is pretty much out of the bag. So here goes *FANFARE* 

We are thrilled to announce that we will be hosting the WORLD PREMIERE of The Stagg Do at the o2 Academy on Westgate Road in Newcastle, on June 26th, 2014.  Doors open at 7pm

Tickets will go on pre-sale (to o2 customers) from the Academy itself at the end of this week. And they will go on general sale on May 19th 2014. Available from us or via the o2 Academy Box Office (Tel: 0844 477 2000).

As it's the World Premiere there will of course be an aftershow featuring live music.  So get your tickets early and join us for this exciting event. 


We'd love to see as many of you there as is possible - it'll be a fab night and we really can't wait to share this film with you all. 


Thanks


James and Zahra
xxx



PS:  MAKE SURE YOU TELL ALL YOUR FRIENDS TOO!

We're hurtling towards the finish line, of course there are still a few things that need to be completed before we get there - a few shots need tweaking in the grade and we still have the sound mis to go, but the sound edit is 90% there.  

I've spent the last ten days looking at potential venues for the WORLD PREMIERE (woooo) and the cast and crew screening - as ever these things take forever and I'm still awaiting final confirmation - but things are looking good. Talking of looking good (what a fricken' segue - I should be on the telly, me) James and I spent yesterday looking at and making decisions on Stagg Do merchandise!  You know T-shirts, mugs, keyrings and such like… I'll be putting up a store on here in the next couple of weeks and you can all start preordering your "merch" as the cool kids say.  In many ways that's what this particular post is about - what sort of merchandise would you guys like to buy - if any?  DVDs, CDs and T-shirts are a definite - but what else would float your boat?  Fancy emailing us? Or just bunging an answer in the comments below?

Also if you know anybody who might be interested in sponsoring our release or advertising with us then please send them our way. And finally if you a spare quid or two that you can sling into our Paypal account we'd be most grateful.

And finally - check out our meme contest - the entries are currently here and our our tumblr.  Why not visit  a meme generator and knock some up for us? You can submit them on Facebook, Twitter or Tumblr or if social media doesn't appeal, you can email them to us. There will be EXCLUSIVE prizes and discounts for the winners, including a pair of tickets* to our WORLD PREMIERE this summer.

Memes are also a great way for us to spread the word about the film and to help us bring people to the website - so feel free to share any you like along with a link, to us here, on any platform that you use.  I think I'll be setting up a Pinterest and Instagram account soon - so any pointers you might have will be appreciated.  And one last thing - would you be interested in signing up to our newsletter for exclusive updates and offers?

35 months ago Pob and James went for a pint to The Cluny, there's nothing in that - at the time we were talking about working together on some comedy sketches.  Anyway, when I when to pick them up, they were like a couple of kids on Christmas Eve.  

"We've come up with an outline for a feature film - something we can do on NO money" they babbled. "It's Pissheads Go Camping - but it's not just a camping trip, it's a stag do. We've even got a title The Stagg Do."  You see one of our characters in Pissheads is called Staggy… he'll be the one getting married in the film!  

I was instantly on the hook - "yeah this is possible" I thought - it was finally an opportunity to take what we had around us and craft a story and film from that - we already had the characters, they had the plot - we had the kit… what were we waiting for?

Fastforward 3 months, and 6 drafts later,  we entered principle photography… which was HELL. Proper old fashioned hell, I could go into detail - but what's the point in raking over old ground? If you're really interested, read the archives from July and August 2011 as it was all blogged about at the time.  

Anyway we got through it and then some. I had my right knee reconstructed - we shot new scenes, scenes we dropped and scenes we fucked up the first time around.  David (our editor) busted his balls to get us a decent cut, James and I spent hours and days shooting extra footage. Richy corralled some mates to help with a big reshoot/ shoot night and on we went. Ashleigh and The Kid (Chris) slogged their guts out on animations and visual effects, music was found and replaced, musicians were contacted.

We edited, reedited, experimented - laughed, cried, pulled our hair out and generally got stuck in… And finally in December 2012, we had "picture lock".  Then we ran out of money. Literally. James and I were flat broke and everything in the house decided to die at the same time.  

We had had so much momentum and then we stopped - dead.

We didn't give up though, determined to get it finished and get it out there. As much for our own sanity as anything else.  Stephen at Fantomeline kept grading - we kept praying for a lottery win and then came another kick in the teeth. An Irish film - The Stag was premiering in Toronto and it sounded remarkably like our film. How was that possible? What could we do?  Without money not a lot… So we cried to ourselves (swore a lot) gritted our teeth and went on with our lives. In January though we learned that The Stag was getting a UK release in March… And we decided - let's beat them. Get out before them.  

But there was still too much to do. I reckoned we had 5 weeks, Aris (our sound god) said we needed 6 to sort out the sound - which of course was recorded by 3 different people!  He wanted to ADR - I didn't think the lads (Pob and Staggy - non-actors) would ever be able to do it… We STILL had no money.

Anyway a load more favours were pulled in, Richy agreed to finesse Chris' VFX (he'd now moved to Leeds), Aris persuaded Rich to help us with the ADR sessions and to let us use his studio for the mix - and so the madness resumed…

We're going into the mix next month, and we'll be going for our BBFC soon after and then finally we will be ready to release the film. It's rude, it's crude, it's insanity to the max. It's experimental both in storytelling and in filmmaking - if it were a drama we wouldn't need to explain ourselves - but apparently you can't make experimental (almost arthouse) comedies if they are chockful of low brow nob gags!  Who knew?

HELLOOOOO!

Sorry I’ve been gone for so long - 14 months or so I reckon… so what’s shaking people?  I really must apologise again for going radio silent for sooo long and I’d really struggle to explain what happened.  Safe to say, we ran out of money - came close to raising investment twice, only to be disappointed at the final minute - and then as John Lennon said “life is what happens when you’re busy making other plans”.  In other words while we’ve been scheming ways to get this film finished - 14 months went by and a shitload happened.

Anyway so sorry for being so crap people. We haven’t forgotten and we haven’t quit - it’s just that 2013 was a total clusterfuck of a year… We even discovered there’s a new Irish film (shot last year) - remarkably like ours called The Stag (I know - WTAF) that’s coming out in mid March.  All I can say is DON’T GO AND SEE IT, especially not thinking it’s ours… Remember ours is authentic Geordie cinema - not Irish. And really sweary. Really, really sweary in fact. These delays could help us out though - on February 24th, 2014 the BBFC’s new certification guidelines kicked in; meaning we might yet get a 15 certificate!

So enough preamble and daft slavvering on - let’s do an update of where we are up to:

The grade is just about there - thanks Fantomeline (Steve, you ARE a trooper).

The bits of VFX that The Kid (aka Chris Nicholls) was undertaking have been finessed by our DoP, Richy Reay - without the graft of Chris though we’d’ve been stuffed ages ago.

Richy Reay has also created a couple of other VFX spots for us AND a really FANTASTIC opening credits sequence - seriously he’s a man of many talents!

Next up: the man, the legend, Aris has undertaken the mammoth task of sound post-production.  Not an easy feat when you consider that we have 3 different sound recordists on the film!  Anyway GIVE THE MAN A MEDAL - he’s cracking on with it.  

Last Friday we had our first ADR session - with Sir Billy of Fellows (The Judge) at The East Wing Studio in Byker. It was a great success thanks to the skills of both Bill and ADR Supremo of the North East: Rich McCoull… Now how’s that for a cracking name???

FINALLY: I will be updating frequently over the next few weeks as we hurtle towards our release date (TBA ASAP) and the poster (created by the immensely talented Mark Jobson) will be available for your delectation shortly.

Thanks for not quitting on us.

Zahra, James and the Stagg Do team. x