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

We've had a further week and a half or so's editing since I last posted and all in all we're very happy with how the film is coming together. We are picture locked bar a few After Effects shots and the animation - so that's amazing!  The rest of the week has been spent working on a trailer for the film and after a couple of false starts I'm happy to say that the trailer is just about done too. Pob came by today to record his voice over, which David and James will position on the edit tomorrow. I'm just trying to get some branding done for the film to incorporate into the trailer then we'll release it for your delectation - or not.

The next major phase of post production will be the sound edit and mix. James and I went to Jerry's (pictured above) studio in the shadow of the Stadium Of Light last week.  He showed us his set up and talked us through the way he prefers to work. So I have been creating the exports he needs from us to make this work - David commented that I was doing a 2nd assistant editor/ assistant editor's job by undertaking the exports and up-rezzes that I'd done the other week!  Such is a producer's job on a nano-budget film!  We left Jerry's feeling very confident that the sound post will be in good hands - Jerry didn't seem overly concerned about the sound edit and he had some great ideas for the music too!!!

The third part of my week involved hooking up with Amazing Ashleigh the Animator and getting my grubby little hands on the animation. Now if you've been keeping up with Ashleigh's blogs you'll know that she has had a technology nightmare on this project with snafus left, right and centre, if you haven't been - then why the hell no?  Because of the aforementioned snafus we still have to composite the shots - but that shouldn't take too long, and we need to edit the animation to get it to flow exactly how we want within scenes 50 and 51. 

Altogether a rather busy but ultimately very satisfying week or so.  Onwards and upwards (and a little bit of sideways.)  

Screenings soon!