A Tale Of Three Films

First of all, go here. Read carefully.
OK? Great.
This weekend, the Sick Puppies shot their first Straight 8 film. After a month of planning, expense, writes and rewrites, heartbreak, laughs and a few too many late nights, we have a film.
It’s not the film we initially planned.
In fact, it’s not the film we slung together as a backup, either.

This is the story of how we made “The Gourmand.”

It began, as most Sick Puppy things do, in a pub. We had decided to get back into the swing of film-making after a frustrating 2006 which had led to an awful lot of writing and abortive fund-chasing, and nothing but a short video for a Robbie Williams competition to our name. This was the way to put something together that was filled with the can-do spirit and skewed sense of humour that typified the Sick Puppy approach.

The idea we settled on was entitled “Rock ‘n’ Roll Martians vs Red Planet Earth!!!” It was pulp sci-fi done in the style of a Soviet propoganda film. It had a cardboard and tin-foil robot. It had degenerate hipster youths. It had a dance sequence, for frak’s sake. It was far and away the most ambitious thing we’d ever attempted, with special and model effects, and a team of 50s dancers.

The script was great, we had actors in place, models were coming together, sound design was by all accounts rolling along nicely.
Then it all started unravelling. Steve, the third head of the SPs, producer, composer and sound designer, vanished. Phone calls and emails went unanswered. The actor’s schedule’s began to conflict. Suddenly, people couldn’t do certain days. Everyone had day jobs. Everyone had prior commitments. The weekends that we had to do the shoot began evaporating.

Finally, a crisis meeting was called. Clive and I were the only two Puppies to show. Carefully, Clive went through the plus and minus points. In Steve’s absence, he had become defacto producer. The main Mars shoot was still just about doable, but on the one weekend that I couldn’t make. We’d have to split our resources. I could still do the model and interior shoots. It would be a three day project, but still within possibilities.
Until we looked at the budget. Bear in mind that no-one was getting paid for this. All we could manage was food and travel expenses. Three days of costume hire and transport bulked out the budget.
Once we got to the thick end of a thousand quid, we realised that “Rock ‘n’ Roll Martians” couldn’t happen. Not now, not like this.

An urgent brainstorm later brought us a plan B. A weekend shoot at my place in Reading, a crew of three incorporating our model-builder Adam, and a new premise.
Robot Porn. A standard 70’s porn scenario, acted out by two tin-foil and cardboard robots, under the title Input:Output or DB-E does DL-S. It was silly and peurile, but hey, it’s blokes in cardboard banging together. Comedy value – priceless.

Friday evening. I’m gathering prop materials, and prepping the house. The phone goes at quarter to nine. Clive. With bad news.
Adam had dropped out, with maybe three hours warning. There was no-one else available. It was us. That was it. And there was no way we could do Input:Output with two people.

There’s a point in any endeavour where you realised it’s doomed. When you come to the final understanding that the world has conspired against you to teach you that sometimes you just have to say no. That sometimes it’s just not worth the trouble.

This was that moment.

“Screw it”, I said to Clive. “Come to Reading. Bring the camera. We’ll work something out.”

Saturday morning dawned, sunny and clear. Over bacon sarnies and coffee, Clive and I worked out a plan. One person behind the camera, one in front. A monolouge piece. Clive joked about doing a cookery piece.

A light came on in my head. Yes, a cookery piece. An illustrated recipe. Narrated by a cannibal.

It was perfect. The details came together almost too quickly. I would be the cannibal. Clive would be the “meat”, hanging in my shed. The voiceover and sound design could come later. It was a true Straight8 moment. Suddenly, we were forced to think outside our normal comfort zone, without a proper script, inventing on the fly.

It made absolute sense. It was completely stupid. It would work. Unless it didn’t. Either way – we’d tried.

A quick hunt for materials, and a wasted hour while Clive shaved himself (we thought that meat should not be hairy. We were extemporising.) meant that we began shooting at around 2pm. Three hours of available light, and whatever we could push out of my house lighting. I bought a million candle-power torch from a local hardware store, that resolutely refused to work. Heyho. Just another obstacle.

The shoot ticked on, moving between cooking bits in the kitchen, and the horror bits in the shed. Clive became increasingly naked, and increasingly coated in lard and seasonings, and I can’t believe I’ve just written that sentence. I made my first attempt at mixing fake blood. It was too see-through. It didn’t matter.

As we chased the last of the spring light down the garden, we started to realise maybe we did have something after all. Whatever else, we were working with people whose creative instincts we trusted completely. There were no arguments, no ego trips. We were coming up with proof that all you needed to make a film was a camera, and an idea.
At 6pm we ran the stock out on the final shot, the cannibal chewing slowly on the meal he’s spent all day on. It was pork, and it tasted deeply wrong.

And that was that. I packed Clive off to the station, drove home and flopped. An exhausting, yet deeply satisfying day. The sound design and voiceover is yet to be done, but shouldn’t cause any major obstacles. (Hark, the hollow sound of sarcastic laughter…)

On Saturday, March 16th, Rob Wickings and Clive Ashenden made a Sick Puppy film. With luck and a following wind, it will be screened at Straight8 in May. If not, it’ll be on YouTube soon after.

Of the three films we could have made, this is the one I’m proud of.