Tuesday 22 June 2010

Scottish feature films - Sci-fi superhero movie in production

Scottish feature films - Sci-fi superhero movie in production

The second weekend of filming our Scottish superhero movie "Night is Day - The Movie" came to an exhausting end on Sunday evening at around 11pm.


(Superhero's Jason and Caitlyn, played by Chris Summers and Anna Walseth. Next to supervillains Gwen and Angel portrayed by Kelly Love and Liz Strange)

I've made around four short films in my 4 year career, as well as two seasons of "Night is Day" as a web series, all with very little money, but this movie is tough. That's not a complaint - if it was easy then everybody would be doing it. It's just a lot of work and time goes into making sure everybody knows what they are doing, where to be, when to be, what to wear, etc etc. And then you need to make it look brilliant. We're shooting on two HD cameras, Sony WEX3 to be precise. We've not got a £50,000 or a £1 million budget, we've not even got £2,000!

Let's just say I'm very glad to have a fantastic production team and a wonderful cast around me - that keeps me going. I love making the film - it's a huge step for me - and I've got a lot further this time than I did with my first attempt at a feature in 2006 - so I am grateful.

The footage is looking great and three scenes have already been edited together and coloured - I am definitely very happy with how it's going.

On Saturday the 19th we filmed a LOT of scenes. We started at 8.30am outside the Pitt Street police station,  waiting for Elaine C Smith to arrive to film her cameo scenes. In the movie she plays Rebecca Munro's mum. Rebecca is a new character to the Night is Day world, working with Superintendent Sloan and DCI Mullan in their F-Division group for the police.


(Clare Sheppard on set with Elaine C Smith)

Elaine was lovely, a real pro and very, very funny. Her and Clare worked really hard on the scene together and we got the result we wanted in the end. It's only a shame Elaine is only in two scenes of the movie. I hope I can work with her again one day. We wrapped her scenes and headed back to the Base (aka my flat) and we filmed another scene with Clare before taking a break for the day.



(Fight director Sean Clancy takes the girls through the fight)

Thanks to Glasgow City Council we've been given permission to film for three days in the Botanic Gardens, with two scenes shot over the two days, the first was a fight scene between Caitlyn (Anna Walseth) and Gwen (Kelly Love), which was directed by cage-fighter and fight director, Sean Clancy. Everybody worked really hard, and the last part of the scene was DAMN impressive. Well done to Anna and Chris for that brilliant scene.

We wrapped just before 10pm and the next stay started at 9.30am again as we filmed two scenes with Mark Harvey and Tam Toye, who play villainous assassin Frank Stone and corrupt businessman, Mr. Philips respectively. Mr. Philips has genuinely no connection to our main villain, The Caillech, but that doesn't stop him from wanting to share in the havoc that she is creating. Leigh Butler, our makeup artist, did an amazing job on The Caillech. We are NOT releasing ANY photos of the Caillech at all, not until the next trailer is created, and even then we might not. All we can say is that she is really freaky. In a good way.



With those scenes filmed we wrapped until the evening when we had a few problems with timing. We needed to film a scene where The Caillech summons her soldiers, vicious Scavenger Demons (Cat Joss, who plays the Caillech, referred to them as "her puppies"). The makeup for the scavengers is long and complicated, but scary and fantastic at the same time. Back to the Botanic Gardens we went to the abandoned train station there to film that scene before heading up the road to film a scene where Sloan, Mullan and Rebecca are confronted by the Scavenger demons for the first time. I can't wait to see the footage! 

We wrapped at 11pm, which totally wiped me out and I'm sure the cast and crew are exhausted too.

Sunday the 27th sees the next day of filming until the 3rd of July - we'll be in Muse near Queen Street to film 5 scenes of the movie - some involving The Caillech again. Can't wait to get started!


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