I've built it but are they coming? Episode 13 - Special Collectors edition featuring music, pictures, videos and more

If for some reason you should find yourself watching the above video for about the 18th time at 4:04am, as I did whilst putting it together, you may notice that the sound of the film projector starts to sound like a tune & you may get lost in a mesmerised state as you nod your head in time to the beat.......or that might just be me.

And so it was, after much turmoil & many tests & smoking, that upon reaching the thirteenth episode of the great quest Michael did spaketh thusly:
Thirteen! When I started this I thought it would be about 4 or 5 episodes long. Hah! Much has happened & we've come a long way over the last few months. Ive experienced scenarios & heard things that I would never have deemed plausible until now. People are fucking weird. Most are best kept at arms length. From time to time however they insist on intruding into your life. Gives you stuff to talk about I suppose. 13 blogs worth of stuff. Theres still quite a bit to cram in. You know the score by now so without further ado I'm off for a smoke & then we'll get to it.

A quick overview of what we had at this point: For the last week Andre & I had worked day & night at finishing off the armour. Running out of time & money......and enthusiasm... had meant that rather than sculpt an entire suit I was combining the sculpted torso, helmet, shoulders & Battle pants with motorcycle body armour that had been painted to match. Andre had added tubing to the suit to complete the look. The helmets had the inside of builders hard hats screwed inside to stop them lolling about whilst the torso had been lined with fleece & clipped together. Pretty much everything was held on with cable ties. Originally there was meant to be some kind of lighting going on with the eyes but I think Jobin thought that this would just magically happen by itself once the elves had been round. Many suggestions were made & none were acted on. I kept being told that someone else was going to be taking care of it anyway. Though who this someone was I have no idea. Probably the elves. In the end I just cut out the right eye socket & drilled a hole into the sensor array (Yeah man! sensor array!!) on the left. This provided a certain degree of visbility & due to the dark lighting conditions appears as dark eye lenses.

I think the plan is that Jobin is going to add CGI light up eyes in post production. Its easy apparantly. Relatively speaking it is really.....but this is Jobin. And so with the completed suits laid out all nice & neat along the armoury wall we awaited the first day of the shoot which was due to take place the next day. One slight snag that had been overlooked was the fact that the set hadn't been built yet. Students eh?

As well as Producer & Special Effects expert Robin also apparently has Production Designer & Construction Manager on his CV. His Facebook profile goes on to add author, visionary, actor AND dreamweaver to the list of this movie messiah's powers. Much like another messiah that comes to mind I suspect that whilst he may be a real person most of these other claims are a little bit made up. I'm unsure as to weather or not Jesus has followed Robins example & copyrighted his profile picture. I doubt that its real though...he's just written Image Copyright blah blah blah on it in really small writing.

So in a nutshell as Production Designer Robin (tm) designs all the sets. As Construction manager its up to him that they get built. You can see where this will go. For the last 2 weeks the set was apparently getting built in the room next door to our workshop/studio. By getting built I mean that nothing would happen all day apart from Jobin & different random people coming in from time to time to sit around & eat their lunch & talk about stuff & slate the current cinema releases. Sometimes though to be fair we would come in the next day to see that some boxes had been moved. There is so much that these two don't seem to get about what goes into making a film. Aside from technical knowledge high on the list is how to keep your crew motivated & interested, especially when they're not getting paid. Alot of people came & went during this epic. Most never came back after meeting Jobin for the first time. Others looked unsure but came back anyway & quickly came to the conclusion of "fuck this". Not just for set building either. People from all aspects of the filmic spectrum expressed interest 'till they could be bothered no more. For those that stayed however they were to be rewarded with working through the night for nights on end glueing polystyrene to the wall & spraying it silver with the worlds most noxious spray cans. This also gives an insight to Jobins mindset...."Yeah! we worked all through the night till 8am this morning getting it made!!". Time management! Instead of sitting around saying star trek is shit whilst stuffing yourselves with pasties & shit why dont you just fucking get on with it? If you got your arses out of bed in the morning you could come in & work through the day & then get to go home at night & sleep & not fuck yourselves up with a sleeping pattern that is 12 hours behind everyone else. You dont even know what day it is now do you? Andre & I worked through the day & then would do stuff at home at night but we were.......ORGANISED. Sure we were doing a shitload of stuff but because we'd planned it out we were able to remain relaxed & unpanicked as we worked away with some tunes on & a constant supply of tobacco & coffee at hand. Leaving us with ample time to have fun doing it & piss around a bit whilst being in bed at a reasonably decent hour...1 or 2. Anyway back to the set build.....Worse still is they had been doing this for about 2 weeks & there were no signs of any kind of progress. What the fuck were they doing?

And so it came to pass that the set that Robin(tm) had deemed easy to build started to kick his fucking head in. Slowly but surely the set began to take shape thanks largely to the efforts of Paul who was the only person on the set that had any inkling of a clue. Obviously Andre & I stayed well away. That set was a dimension of pain that we really werent fussed about entering. And so at the end of Saturday I asked Joey what time shooting would be starting on Monday. "Be in at 10" was the answer. OK I replied knowing full well that I'd be in for a lie in. I suppose one good thing about this particular lot is the loathing of getting up in the morning that they all share. On a real film set you can expect to be there pretty fucking early especialy if you've got stuff to get ready before hand. 4 or 5am is not uncommon. Even on a small film the amount of work involved is immense & you need to use every ounce of time that you've got. So with the students toiling away with the set in a cloud of seriously dangerous aerosol we went home & had a relaxing weekend. At about 2 am on monday morning I got a text from Joey that read - "better make it 2pm".


SHOOT DAY ONE - Monday, July 20th, 2009, 14:00 hrs

We arrived on set & was greeted by our constant companion The Champion of Chaos. Nothing was ready. Bits of set layed strewn about amongst the piles of crap & congealed paint brushes, rollers & trays. The air had an understench of potent lung melting aerosols. Discarded pizza boxes were piled high amongst biscuit wrappers & crisps & chocolate & gallons of pepsi. Oh yes. No one had slept in over 36 hours & you could tell. The students were zipping about mashed out of their tits on no sleep, junk food & solvents. And none of them knew why they felt this way.

As well as the students we were joined by a steadycam operator called Jo who Jobin had to pay to be there for the week. Fair enough really I suppose. There's plenty of aspiring fx nerds waiting in the sidelines to work for free & replace me if I'd refused. If theres a proffesional steadycam dude working for free then you might want to be asking some questions. Basically I'm quite easily replaceable, steadycam isn't. What was bothering me though wasn't the fact that he was being paid, it was the fact that Jobin had brought this guy in. He was a serious pro & contracted to do a job & he had his sweet bit of kit set up & ready to go. He was all business & probably had more experience than everyone in the building combined. Jobin can not afford to be fucking about like fannies with this guy waiting to do his job. Of course though this had failed to connect with them both & they continued with their antics - only this time fuelled by a solvent/sugar based sleep deprivated state. For the most part of the day you could tell he'd sussed them out as peni very quickly but was just keeping quiet about it & chatting with me & Andre whilst he waited patiently. Patience is something you have to have a lot of even on a real set. There's alot of waiting. Nothing on this scale though. Not even close. This wasn't waiting for the dop to adjust the lights or actors to rehearse while a shot is set up. This was waiting for people who didn't know what they were doing to finish building a set.

We asked Joey what time he thought they'd be shooting, if at all, today. He told us that it would be about 6ish so we said fair enough & kind of piddled around for a bit really. Jo fiddled with his equipment & we gave the suits a once over & made adjustments here & there but essentially we were killing time. We helped out here & there with bits & bobs but to be honest we felt that they kind of had to suffer really to realise that whilst yes, film making is fantastic fun it is also incredibly fucking hard work. This lot had seriously mis judged the level of commitment & focus needed to do this to the point where you felt like they were taking the piss out of you a bit. In a strange way it was getting a bit offensive to see something that you yourself take pride in doing to the best of your abilities & commit to doing well & proffesionally being treated with such nonchalant abandon based on nothing but the purest ignorance. And supposed final year MA students of film!! I know they're students but fucking hell. Dunno, maybe it'd be a bit like me watching some youtube videos of spaceshuttle launches & deciding that I pretty much know all there is to know about space flight & after branding NASA idiots for not hiring me based on my youtube knowledge I set about making my own spacecraft out of a chair & a large tank of calor gas. Fuck all that other shit, you dont really need it all. Its easy!

On a lighter note it soon became clear that no filming would be taking place that day at all so myself, Andre & Jo went home! Andre watched A Scanner Darkly whilst I added pictures to one of these blogs. Dunno what Jo did. He was in Leeds.



SHOOT DAY TWO - Tuesday, July 21st, 2009, 17:00 hrs

Yeah dont bother coming in till 5 now. I forgot to mention that on day one of "the shoot" the alien had arrived. Seeing as though absolutely fuck all transpired on day two I'll talk about it here. Kind of anyway. In my current timeline (18th august) the alien/creature/biomess is the cause of controversy that not even I dare speak of. In fact I'm gonna have to stay tight lipped on this one for the good of everyone involved untill there has been a resolution to the whole thing that I know about. I have no facts on the matter. All I can say for sure is Jobin is not pleased with the alien & they've told the guy who made it. Alot of rumour, heresay & accusation has been thrown about either in text or facebook format & at this point I just dont really give a fuck anymore if I'm honest. Ive had 7 months of drama, most of which I can laugh at & take the piss out of here but this issue is one that I dont need to be involved with. Trouble is I kind of need to talk about it a bit as despite all my piss taking, sarcasm, ranting & fantasy bludgeonings the real point of this whole epic series is to not only show you some armour I made but to try & give an insight into yes, its construction but also all the other stuff that goes on when in this kind of scenario. As I see it anyway. Which is a most peculiar vision.

I have not seen any footage of the creature so cannot comment on it. I have seen it in real life & while it does look a bit ropey I also know from experience that alot of this stuff can look rather dodgy when you're stood right next to it. Trust me, the Power Armour is no exception. How something looks in reality is totally different to how it looks on film or in a photo when its been set up & lit & had all sorts of things done to it. Obviously the better the thing is in reality will help out alot but you can get away with a hell of alot! Without taking the piss though! Obviously the scenario can be reversed just as easily. You can make the most amazingly life like beast in the world but if the people filming it dont know what they're doing then it will look like exactly what it is. A rubber monster. I also don't really know about the nature of it's construction. I dont know how much time was spent on it & I HAVE to take into consideration the fact that this guy has been getting his instructions & information from Joey & Robin(tm). You get where I'm coming from? If not then go back to episode 1 & start again whilst thrashing yourself with a really nasty clump of prickly thorns whilst listening to this:



Yeah right the alien. Dunno man. We'll see what happens with that one. My honest opinion , which has nothing to do with how good the alien is, is to not show it at all. Its a 20 minute pilot film of footage the main purpose of which is to get people with money interested & intrigued to the point where they will give you money & say "make the rest of it". By not showing the alien (which - SPOILER ALERT!! spends all of its time in a "cryotube" for the scenes that were being shot anyway) & if the rest of the film is done well then the chances are someones going to at some point say "What's in the fuckin' tube man?". Get your wallet out we'll show you! If they ever get to make a full length feature then they can have aliens coming out of their arses. Thats my opinion anyway. Aside from that nothing happened on tuesday so we suited up Steve & shot some footage & took photos. We also had a tentacle that we'd borrowed of the alien.


SHOOT DAY THREE - Wednesday, July 22nd, 2009, 18:00 hrs

Today was Andres last day of his week & a half visit to West Yorkshire. Not only had he helped me out with a mountain of work & been instrumental in the completion of the suits, he had also clarified that it wasn't just me. This place is fucking mental. I'll save my views on this part of the world for later tales but to sum it up: you know The League of Gentlemen? Well, that's set in Yorkshire. It has nothing to do with northeners. I'm from Carlisle which geographically speaking is about as northern as you can get before being Scottish. I'll be eternally grateful for his presence, not just for helping out, but for getting a chance to hang out & make mad shit whilst having a laugh like we used to when I was living in London & helping me get on the path to putting my head in order. I've been up here & out of it for a year after an increasingly bizzarre series of jobs led me to this place both physically & mentally. Again later blogs will enlighten but by just hanging out again & doing this shit & talking about stuff that only he really gets i was able to rediscover the original passion, enthusiasm, ambition & most importantly excitement that set me on this path in the first place many years ago. All of those things have taken a beating on many occasions & for a moment I feared were irrepairably damaged. But all seems to be gradually getting better. So cheers dude.

Wednesday........erm......nope. No filming. Not by them anyway. As it was Andres last day & I had devoted pretty much 7 months of my life to these people I figured that today was as good a day as any to finally call it a day. They had their armour & I had my work documented for my own use. There was a guy taking stills photos who said that he would get me some really nice shots of the suits in properly lit conditions on the set. The guy in charge of looking after the digital film also said he'd grab me some cool shots from the actual footage........once they had some. So fair enough really. Obviously in a real life situation if you've been chosen to work on set then you're there for as long as it takes. Fuck that though for these guys. In a few years time some bearded, web covered skeletons will be found in a building in Leeds that has been made to look like the inside of a sci-fi facility. Enough was finally enough. We'd all got what we'd wanted from the arrangement & everyone was happy. We did make an instructional video with Jo on steadycam to instruct the students on how to put the armour on to the actors. They needed showing constantly & we were bored. As was Jo. One day I hope to get hold of that footage. It'll be funny to watch as at the point of filming we really had no more time for these people who were making it worse by trying to light our instructional demo & therefore just getting in the way and slowing everything down. It'll be fine!! I've turned the big light on. It doesn't need fancy pants lighting....which you can't do anyway. Go & finish the fucking set! Once Jo told us that he wasnt recording sound we just went for it. Lip readers will pass out from shock. And so that was that. The students had been shown numerous times how to put the armour on. Jo knew how to do it. The actors knew how to do it. And they now had a fucking steadycam film taking them through the process. I told Joey that if anything urgent came up then to give me a call & i'll come & sort it. I bade them farewell.



SHOOT DAY FOUR - Thursday, July 23rd, 2009, 19:30 hrs

I think I got the call at about 6. Could I come in & help with the putting on of the armour. Their selling point was the assurance that the set was finished & filming would commence at precisely 9pm. The main focus of tonights shoot will be the power armour. It would have been ridiculous of me not to go. Tonight is the night that I get a chance to make my shit look wicked. Fuck letting them balls that up by putting it on wrong. Its not just a case of putting it on, its got to sit right & look right. A misplaced cable in the wrong place can instantly look shit. I went in to make sure that the suits looked proper for their debut. The set was finished & it looked fine its just a shame they thought it would be a piece of piss & didnt approach it with the respect it deserves. It bit them on the arse for it though. Now we just had to wait for the lights to be sorted. I had also noted at this point that Jo the steadycam man was by now completely ready to kill all of them. He was finding it very difficult to keep his cool. He'd accepted that they were students & may require some guidance but this was ridiculous. His concerns were raised to me during our many fag breaks & he was ready to call it quits. These guys just didnt know anything & he couldn't get his head round it. I think the final nails began to be hammered into the coffin when he'd had to show the "director of photography" how to turn on the camera. That is fucking well bad. In a nutshell the Director of Photography is the camera man. Obviously theres quite a bit more to it than that but being able to turn on the camera is just one useful skill in a virtual empire of skills that these individuals have in their power. Not our boy though!

Jo took command and had Joey and the "d.o.p." rehearsing shots for the relatively simple scene that consisted of the lead actress looking into the Cryotube in horror & stepping back into the power armoured marines she didnt hear coming into the room behind her through the big huge slidey doors that are to have a nice loud hangar bay door sound effect (apparently). I'm begining to wonder if anything has been properly thought about. In my world, for a minute, it'd be much cooler to have the woman walk into the room & do her thing, meanwhile in the darkness behind her the eyelights of the marines helmets pulse into life revealing that they have been in the room the whole time, concealed in the shadows, watching. They emerge from the gloom into the (relative) light as she backs into them.

It kind of adds to their supposed special forces status a bit I think, rather than just them plodding into the room through a big loud door & she doesn't notice. It also gives whoever writes the novel of the film an opportunity to have some fun going into details about how they're scanning her with their helmet arrays, targeting systems locking on & heads up display information. Shit like that, I dunno....its not my world.

As you can expect this took much longer than needed & Jo was gonna blow. He was lugging about some heavy shit & it was roasting in there & on top of that he may as well have been trying to organise a swarm of bumble bees & show them how to make a film. Eventually they had the shot sorted & it was just a case of getting the lighting set up & they could start. Jo & I went out for another fag. It turned out that the reason that it was so behind was down to Joey being a little bit stroppy with his college tutors. Obviously this film is his big secret that the college mustn't know about or they'll have ownership of it. Which I suppose is kind of fair enough on Joeys part but film making is all about negotiation & compromises, especially at amatuer level.

In an attempt to find out what was going on the head of the school had brought down a load of food for Joey's neglected crew who were thankful for someone noticing the malnutrition that was beginning to set into their already zomboid bodies. Joey however was outraged at this intrusion & when the tutor began asking about the project Joey responded in a rather insolent & unpleasant manner. Apparently the tutor gave him a humungous bollocking for being such an arsehole. Jo was on the tutors side. I wasn't there but I'll take his word for it. Joey can throw his toys out of the pram at the wrong people for the wrong reasons. As punishment for being silly the tutor sent in Mr Health & Safety who I imagine had a fucking field day. He essentially shut them down so all they could do is wait for him to go home at 5 & start then. Time was getting on & I assesed the situation. The boys were suited up & looking sound. Apparently there will be some filming done tonight but they're still pissing about & its now 11pm. If I leave now I can be back home by 12:30ish. See ya!
The following day I posted the tentacle of terror video on facebook & uploaded some more photos of the armour. Since putting the photos of my stuff up I had seen an increase in the number of friend requests from all over the place. All from sculptors & fx people who had seen the photos one way or another in a mass snowballing effect. This is good. Jobins basically useless non disclosure agreement let you show stuff as long as it was yours. Obviously everyone was putting their stuff up to promote themselves so you could piece it together if arsed. I'd recently added a girl I've never even met to my list who is mates with the make up girls on the film. Originally her & a troupe of other girls were meant to be helping but after consultation with their superiors had bailed instantly due to matters of not being paid & Jobin actually having money & probably being seen as taking the piss a bit. Like I said earlier...drama. She'd commented on the video & asked how it was going. I told her that I'd been there till 11 at which point no filming had happened so I went home. Later that day Joey had decided to put in his 2 pennies worth. He basically exploded all over my wall laying into people who had betrayed him & dismissed them as jokes. For them he ensured ruin. For the loyal few he promised eden as he leads us into the upper stratosphere of success. He didnt really do himself any favours there. I doubt that he grasps just how many people saw that, some of them are people he could do well to impress. Anyway blah blah blah.

I didnt return to the set for about 3 days. I got a call from Robin(tm) asking me to bring in my pass card & show them how to put the armour on. Jesus wept. I turned up & said hello to chaos. The make up girls were sculpting deformed faces onto random face casts that Robin(tm) would no doubt think would glue onto another different real face. Its easy. The power Armour suits were heaped in a mangled pile in the corner covered in boxes & piles of shit. OK fuck you lot now. I politely told Jobin that I didnt really appreciate seeing 7 months of work thrown on the floor. Besides they need these things quite badly, they're a major part of the film. They're not real. They will break & I will not come back & make more. After waiting around for an hour Jobin finally had the time to be shown how to put the armour on. I showed them one last time. I told Steve the actor to make sure that at the end of all this he takes home his suit.

Bollocks to Jobin really. Steve wants it & deserves it. I'll grab whats left of one for myself & everyone else can fight over the last one. I took one last look at the carnage around me whilst rolling a fag. And then I left for real. My journey to the outside from the set was interjected with people talking to me of the facebook controversy but I just shrugged. Fuck it.

A couple of weeks later we all recieved an urgent priority private facebook message demanding that all photos of the shoot of the film "Biohazard" be taken down immediately as secrecy is key at this sensitive time. Fair enough. Ive got no pictures of the actual shoot. Just my armour. The album stays. I'm quite happy for them to toil away in secrecy till their hearts content. I however need people to see what I'm doing. Its how I get work & try to make a living.

And there it is. The final blog of the series. Dont worry I'm sure we'll be revisiting the world of Biohazard in the future but untill then I hereby banish all matters on the subject to the Fat Blog. I hope its been informative & if you've got this far I guess you must have enjoyed it. Though to be honest the length of this one has pushed even my rambling limit. Hopefuly no one has been too offended even though at times I've been harsh or perhaps even cruel. Its not meant to be taken that way, though that may be hard for my victims to digest. Its just the way I see stuff & I mean no harm. Think of it like stand up. Im not an evil person, ask Ady she'll tell you. And thats a decent enough character reference really. Only time will tell if these blogs will come back to stove my face in. I dont dislike these people I've just had enough of them for now. I wish Joey & Robin(tm) all the best in their endeavour. I sincereley do. Despite all the flaws, they have in their possesion 7 months worth of accumulated work. Not just my stuff but concept designs, cityscapes, storyboards, vehicles & weaponry & alot of it is fucking impressive. They are extremely lucky to have had these contributors. If they can get their shit together & really knuckle down & do a proper hardcore job on it then it could end up at least looking fantastic. Its in their hands.

Hmmmmmmm. Untill then im going to spend the next few weeks getting on with some stuff whilst you lot catch up to here & I'll no doubt have thought of something else to talk about.

Next time:

Dont know yet...........

Take it easy,

Michael

UPDATE:

Basically.........last I saw on Facebook, Jobin is having "uploading issues" with the film. In a nutshell the whole thing was shot digitally on a very posh set up that cost them shit loads to rent.....professional you see. Only downside is Jobin hasn't got the equipment in its bedroom to deal with the files = no film. Stay tuned!

Oh! They have managed to have a wrap party though. I didnt go. Saw it on Facebook......it looked shit. Paul looked like a creepy molester as he tried to hide the erection that had resulted from his exposure to the meat market of Leeds. Also, as the whole video of said party was shot by Robin (tm) 98% of it is sideways. Dunno if this was an artistic choice or just general dimness. Either way, he's a tool. It was funny to note the photo's of the night as they were in chronological order. Starting off with shots of drunken Jobin & Paul thinking tonight was the night for some make-up girl action as they posed for various "crazy photos" with the girls. As the photo's progress Jobin & Paul start to not appear & are replaced by various nightclub geezers with jeans, shoes & shirts, one hand in pocket, other protecting pint from intruder males. Oggling pissed, flirty make up girls who are more than up for some real man action. Kids eh?

Fuck that shit!