Author: flipper01

Appetite for Distraction

Howdy folks, right now I’m sitting in a motel room somewhere in between West Virginia. We’ve begun our 3 week road trip across America to is talk to some of the people that build the roadside attractions that are dotted along the highways and freeways of this country. We filming and photographing the whole thing, and when I say ‘we’ I mean me, Jason, Richard Johnson and the Boob.

We’re at day 3 right now, we landed in New York 3 days ago, we stayed the night, picked up the hire car and got the hell out of there.

We drove 130 miles down to Margate, New Jersey to visit Lucy the Elephant (America’s oldest roadside attraction). We spoke to Richard who runs the show down there and a very nice and knowledgeable chap was he. Then Sarah (also knowledgeable, also nice) took us on a tour of Lucy’s innards, which are surprisingly spacious for an Elephant. The chats went really well and we took some pretty video.We then drove another 220 miles to Haggerstown (which is a lot like an American version of Strood) and checked into a hotel for the night. Johnson got a bit frisky with the Boob during the night, Boob is still trying to catch up on the lost sleep.

Today we drove another 200 miles see Mark Cline in Virginia and have him show us around some of his attractions; Foam Henge, Dinosaur Kingdom and Professor Kline’s Monster Museum. He’s a really nice guy (yeah, another nice person, a theme may be developing) and also pretty amazing. He’s made so much stuff over the years it’s tricky to work out where he gets the time, even if he does do it full time. He just wants to entertain people and make them happy, not a bad way to make a living. Foam Henge is a life size replica of the stone original, Dinosaur Kingdom is a sprawling adventure through the woods where giant dinosaurs attack fighters from the civil war, and the Monster Museum is a full on walk through haunted house kinda deal that’s probably one of the best I’ve been in. Mark has invited us to visit his work shop tomorrow morning, and then we’re off to see how far we can drive towards Ohio for our next stop.

Waiting for Gorgo, set build and shoot

The shoot for the film we were working on at Elstree Studios finished last weekend (we did the graphic design and helped with the set build), and we’ve just got all photos together of the final set build and shooting for you all to see. It all turned out looking quite splendid.

Enjoy

 

We Will Survive

Survival Kit

This morning we had a knock on the door (well, ring of the door bell, but you know what I mean) and Mr Postman handed us 2 jiffy bags with “Survival Kit” written on each (plus address and stamps and what have you). Inside we found these essential English food stuffs to keep us alive during our imminent American Adventure (if you don’t already know about it stay tuned, we’ll be blogging all about it very soon) along with some life saving foreign translations. All lovingly crafted by our pals Oli and Meg, cheers kids, we shall surely live to fight another day with these kits tucked into our trunk.

28 Days (in one day)

Well we’ve been threatening it for a while and this Saturday we finally did it, we made a video for our mates Cassette Electrik for their track ’28 Days’.

OK, when I say ‘we’ I actually mean me n jas trotted about telling people what to do while some jolly nice people did most of the hard work. One of which people was Peter Allibone who shot and lit the whole thing amazingly, no really, he did a bang up job and added loads of ideas that we can take the credit for later. We also had the unlimited help of make-up artist and stylist Wendy Oliver, who was supposed to leave a good few hours before she finally did (cheers for that Wendy – by the way, how do you remove that pink make-up?). Of course mum made too much food, but that’s what mum does, and dad let us invade his garage again. And the band jumped about, stood still, took half a pace to the left, no a bit more, back a bit, now a bit more to the left…etc.. without hitting us too many times.

We now have the simple task of editing nearly 5 hours of footage into a 4 and a half minute clip. How hard can it be? See you in a few months.

As usual, too many photos of the shoot can be found here

Shooting ‘All the Time in the World’


Well we did it, and it wasn’t that painful at all. 24 hours of shooting in 2 days, about 300 cups of tea (plus the relevant cakes) and the help of some lovely people (no, really, they were lovely) we done shot a lil’ a movie in our garage. It went pretty much to plan, with still enough room to improvise a few shots here and there.

‘Nuff respec big up shout out thanks go to the cast and crew, they really did a bang up job and bought so much more to the project. Here’s a quick name check:

  • Neil Edmond, male lead – This is the second time we’ve locked you in our garage, this time it was for 2 days, one day we’ll get you a key cut.
  • Rosemary Smith, female lead – You had to deal with between 1 and 5 directors, thank you for not hitting us.
  • Colin Butler, director of photography – man you’ve got some sweet kit.
  • Paul Parsons, sound – sorry about the flight path.
  • Nathan McLaughlin, make-up FX – dude, that looked so good.
  • Kyle, grip – I say ‘grip’ but you cheerfully did all sorts, cheers fella.

Many photos of the shoot are here

ooo haven’t you grown?

Nathan McLaughlin (a lovely special effects make-up guy working on our little movie this weekend) sent us these images of the finished clay sculpt of an 80 year old Neil Edmond (our lead actor). The boy done good me thinks. Very good maybe? He’s right now making a silicon do-hickey thing from this mold that he then has to punch a gazilion holes in it to hand place each and every hair, which an 80 year old’s face is not too short of.