Frank Stone (Mark Harvey) has no idea that vampire Lexi (Nicki Fleming) is in for the kill. Photo by Dougie Coull Photography
This is a little bit of an emotional entry to write, so I am listening to the WONDERFUL soundtrack from "Scott Pilgrim VS The World" - a great movie from Edgar Wright, who is definitely an inspiration for me, starring Michael Cera and the lovely Mary Elizabeth Winstead. If you've not seen it, please do. It is awesome.
It was about September last year that I finished the first draft of "Night is Day: The Movie" when I was living in Partick and it was a pipe-dream that I would actually make it. Thanks to a fantastic crew made up of Lindsay Dowell, Gavin Orr, Andrew Dougal, Ross Hardie, Simon Ferguson, Adam Wardrop, Gregg Houston, Gillian Glencross, Leigh Butler, Bethany Apedaile, John McCall just to name a few and an AMAZING cast, we wrapped filming on the 28th of August.
We started filming on the 5th and 6th of June, oddly enough, in my flat in the city centre of Glasgow, followed by what was one of our biggest days in The Hub in the South Side, filming with Colin McCredie and Simon Weir and a room full of supporting actors playing journalists. Even now it only feels like a few weeks ago.
On the 21st and 22nd of August we were lucky enough to be at Collectormania Glasgow in Braehead promoting the movie - showing our brand new trailer (which I'll get to at the end), selling a limited edition comic book by the wonderful Ash Loydon, postcards from the movie, t-shirts and badges, and meeting a lot of wonderful people. And some seriously strange people too.
Thanks to Lindsay and Gavin we were able to give a talk as a guest had dropped out due to work commitments, and maybe one day someone will put a video of that talk online, it was certainly an experience and I loved every minute of it. I could get very used to a convention life style as long as I had enough money to pay my bills.
Chris Barrie and Danny John-Jules who played Rimmer and The Cat on Red Dwarf came along to watch our trailer and they were very supportive. As was Dominic Keating who played Malcolm Reed in Star Trek: Enterprise and Sylvester McCoy who played the 7th incarnation of Doctor Who. Again we've got video footage of all of this somewhere.
Okay, so getting carried away in convention land...
On Saturday we started at 8am, travelling in convoy from Glasgow to Airth in Falkirk, to a beautiful farm (thank you Angie!). We filmed some of my favourite scenes from the movie, where Jason, who has just taken a serious beating from 3 scavenger demons, wakes up in the cottage to be greeted by his long lost uncle, who he believed was dead.
I won't say anymore as I don't want to spoil my own movie, but it was sort of my tribute to the movie, Teenage Mutant Ninja/Hero Turtles - so if you know the movie, you'll get the reference.
Back in Glasgow and on to the patio of my building to film a fight scene between Jason, vampire Lexi and Frank Stone. It was a brilliant shoot and we managed to wrap in time. In fact, an hour early. So well done to everybody.
Now the hard work continues. Both Lindsay, producer numero uno, and myself will be editing the movie. I'll be laying down a rough cut and handing it to Lindsay to go over, correct, tidy etc. Then it will go to Mathew Crisp for special effects, Jack Ashley and Gillian Glencross for sound correction and design and Philip Martin for scoring before all coming back (hopefully) in time for the festivals.
In the meantime it would be great if you could watch the first official trailer for the movie and let me know what you think.
Until then, this is Fraser Coull, a low budget filmmaker from Glasgow, saying "I've made a feature film" and I am damn proud.
