Surfer Dude Studios

New equipment

The October break of 1998 was an auspicious occasion. The traditional university pattern of studies and holidays meant that it was a short break, often little more than a long weekend. However in 1998, second year at university, it was also marked by university closures for strikes in protest at the implementation of university tuition fees. What was normally four days off, snowballed into eight.

With no classes or lectures to attend, but plenty of studies and essays to write, and a mediocre attempt at protests by the significant minority of university students who cared enough, a lot of students dispersed home. Certainly at the very least the thought of saving money on heating and food over the extended break was enough of a determining factor, but on this occasion, what could be described (entirely without irony) as an in-differently hostile atmosphere, was hanging over the university.

It also marked the final payment from my summer employment, and came with a nice little bonus for maintaining a sickness free record, and for not taking any holidays during the course of the seasonal employment. Enough that could pay for an investment in a reasonable quality camcorder. To this point access to video equipment had been through the universities video production society. This meant booking equipment, having to pay fines for late return, being dependant on other users returning equipment on time - which was never guaranteed, and no freedom to film quickly, or on the fly. And let's face it, a camcorder is always good. So a brand new Panasonic NV-RX 11 was purchased.

Practical effects

The initial reasoning behind trying a James Bond parody had arisen from a discussion in the flat around about that time. An issue of Empire magazine had suggested ideas for recreating, practically, visual effects from famous movies. Examples had included things like putting Christmas tree lights through a hub-cap to represent the star-ship from Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and using a cardboard toilet, or kitchen roll over the lens of the camera for a Bond gun barrel.

We had also started experimenting with an excess supply of party poppers, removing the confetti from them and replacing the contents with flour and tomato ketchup in an effort to make squibs. While the blood squibs proved in some ways disappointing, there was only so much ketchup they could hold, and if you didn't use them quickly enough they would seep into the powder charge rendering it useless.

A design classic - the Panasonic NV-RX 11

They also had an effective range of about ten metres, no use at all for close shots, and they also stung on impact. While a few of us were determined enough to 'take the sauce' the lack of enough consistent blood red, and the poor aim of those firing the poppers made them a nightmare to clean up after - and that was with a university flat with a largely wipe clean kitchen.

Where the popper squibs did work was with flour, specifically wholemeal flour. The distinctive brown blast was enough to shift paper, giving the effect of a good bullet hit. The only issue was that a party popper is a big brightly coloured plastic object. If they could be hidden, they would be convincing, but otherwise they were very obvious.

It was also the time of year where just about everywhere is selling fireworks. In an effort to demonstrate the effectiveness of Eisenstein's montage or editing theory, we had filmed a firework launching, followed with news footage of a missile launch to demonstrate this. University tutors lack of humour aside, the sequence had made its point and we found it hysterical. We felt that this footage could be incorporated into something bigger and better.

The villainous plot

Armed with party poppers, the new camera, fireworks, a variety of cardboard rolls, and tomato ketchup we were determined to give some practical effects a go, and to take the previous exercise with Eisenstein's theory further. Footage from the six o'clock news was recorded every night in the hope of gathering together enough footage to make a missile launch, flight and hit sequence.

Much like our previous efforts we were already in pre-production with no real script or idea of what we were attempting to make. All we had was the desired final outcome and a few rough tools (no - that's the party poppers and ketchup not us) to accomplish it.

However, in our enthusiasm to record a Bond style gun barrel opening, we had forgotten one major detail. We were university students living in a grotty university flat, the designs of which were based on Swedish prison designs (okay, not strictly speaking true - the university's halls were based on the designs for Swedish prisons, but the flats were not much better, kind of like an open prison), it was early November, and the only car we had available to us was a 1984 Volkswagen polo. None of this suggested the glamour of James Bond.

Bond's least glamorous adventure to date

On the plus side we did have a large flat, and plenty of friends we could variously, convince, cajole, bribe, and outright blackmail to get involved in the project. Filming was planned to take place over the course of three weekends using the opening sequence from Tomorrow never dies, the most recent Bond film at the time (and as history would later record, definitely not the best).

The advantage of this approach was that several sequences, independent of the other actors in the film, could be filmed using the same spaces to shoot in. The whole project was very much an expression of Eisenstein's theories. It would be going too far to suggest disbelief could be totally suspended, but by creating in effect a movie based around a montage, we could do so in the same physical space, over a long period of time, and when it suited our friends to drop in and assist us.

Production

"I need more vodka - seriously."

The Goodie Never Dies cast member

In retrospect filming went rather smoothly. The benefits of filming in-doors meant the production could be tightly controlled. Several flat mates went home over one weekend, and this allowed the team to focus on filming all the sequences with James Bond fighting the villians in a short period of time. This in effect was the backbone around which the rest of the film would hang. The sequence on the ship bridge would be filmed over the course of one Wednesday evening and it too went smoothly.

Where the production slowed down and became difficult was over the course of a Thursday, that dragged into a Friday, filming the command post sequences. None of the cast in that scene were doing the film and media course, and with such an extensive cast for this sequence, they required a lot of managing and confidence building. Certainly some took to the production better than others (the beer drinking, noodle eating technician was actually a biology student who took to the notion of shrieking to the rest of the flat "He's going for the bombs!" with an enthusiasim that would have made Brian Blessed look reserved).

Other's like the Russion admiral, went from doing a quite comical accent to very shy and reserved in front of the camera, and required a lot of vodka and coke's to pluck up the courage to stand in front of the camera with a camouflaged cap on delivering the same line she had perfectly delivered so often before.

In the end the valuable lesson learned was that not everyone shared our enthusiasim for firstly films, and secondly for the lampoonery that we found so funny. We also, made the big mistake of accidentaly over recording some of the footage. Specificaly the sequence in which Bond throws water into the face of the main villain. Fortunately this was noticed very early on, and the shot re-filmed, however it can be noticed that this shot was filmed later at night by looking at the background. This sequence was also supposed to use a shot of the villains trousers rolling back revealing white and red striped socks after the water is thrown in his face (The Wizard of Oz). Shockingly, this was never included, because we forgot to film it!

Stock management

If you've ever watched behind the scenes of film and TV production, you will have seen someone using a board (known as the clapper board) to record on the camera the scene, take, etc. This person is the clapper-loader and actually has a far more important job than initally looks. Not only is this person responsible for the clapper board that records the scene and take infomation, and allows sound to be synched to the image, they are also responsible for the film-stock, i.e. what the camera actually records to.

Considering that role, it is quite a mix of preparing the stock, using it, recording what it contains, and preserving and archiving it. When using actual film it has to be stored at low temperatures, brought up to a certain temperature for use, and can be quite heavy. This varies from stock to stock, the tables below are a good guide to the differences and respective headaches for the clapper loader.

It's also highly flameable material, so the clapper loader has a very serious health and safety role. Even with digital, the clapper loader is responsible for the storage and management of the recording medium, and the cataloguing of its content. This was where we failed in the making of this film, we did not adequately record, what had been filmed against what was needed to be filmed, and we did not adequately protect what had been filmed.

Post-production

Post production was completed by editing on the universities linear S-VHS to S-VHS facilities. These were somewhat dated facilities, but were by this nature, underused, giving plenty of time for the final film to be cut together. It was however during this process, that another "film-stock" issue occured.

As mentioned before we had recorded footage from the 6 o'clock news to gather footage of missile launches, flights and target hits. We also used some footage from the movie "Clear and present danger". However these had been recorded using a long play facility, available on the VHS recorder, which recorded the footage at a reduced image rate, meaning the video tape could hold double the capacity. It also meant that when played back to machines that did not have this feature it ran at twice normal speed, and the time code would rapidly get out of synch with the video content. Again, poor management of the video stock.

Never the less, we managed to turn out a final cut of the film.

Premiere

The premiere took place in the usual lecture theatre on a Monday evening in early December. This was the last time that most members of the video production society would be present, as there were exams to be taken, essay's to be submitted, and usually when that was completed people would start to drift home for the Christmas break. The highlight that evening had been the decision to vote on the purchase of a digital editing suite to be made exclusively available for the video production society, taking away dependancy upon the university for access to similar facilities. It would be expensive, but there would be plenty of time in the new year to work out the logistics and how to raise the money, no doubt involving a few fund raising nights out and donations. Following that, the film premiered.

When you work on a project, of any kind, you can get far too close to it, and refuse to see anything wrong with it. Blind determination can achieve wonders, but on this occasion, not so. While in the course of making The Goodie Never Dies we had had a laugh, and learned some valuable lessons, we'd messed up the flat with flour, and tomato ketchup and it had all seemed worth it. But it could not be denied, particularly with the thought of decent, modern, digital editing facilities being so tangibly possible that it became clear how dated, and terrible all our efforts looked.

Retrospective

The most important lesson learned during this process was the value of adequate stock management. However this had also been quite a succesful project in Eisenstein's theory of montage also. To this day, the biggest laugh the video gets is during the missile launch sequence. The addition of the stock footage of the aircraft carrier prior to the screen setting up the joke, and climaxing with the original firework launch, cut to stock footage of missile on boat flying away. It's not as if the makers of Tomorrow Never Dies realistically did anything different, they just had more money to spend on it. All of our money had gone on vodka in an effort to facilitate filming of the command centre material.

If the most important lesson was the value of good stock management, the greatest insight was the skill of branding. Like our later Star Wars effort, this project would not have worked at all without some branding to hang the rest of the film on. Basically, the bond gun barrel effect acheived with a cardboard roll, and the use of Dave Arnold's take on the Bond scores. Without the establishment of this branding the film's joke is lost, and it is just a film about a student beating up other students for a pair of fireworks.

Branding is not a skill that can simply be learned, nor is it static. It takes an appreciation of the methods, and publications it delivers to, while one thing is appropriate to one medium, it may not be for another, but at times frustratingly has to match. It would be a good 15 years before the outcome of this lesson could be demonstrated with a return to the Bond Gun Barrel motif. For the time being we had turned out something pretty bad, but at least everyone knew what it was supposed to be.