Who wrote Robot Overlords – Page 2

Ten Years On: Robot Overlords and a chat with Sir Ben…

Long time readers of this blog will know that I’ve been looking back at my diaries from ten years ago, during the filming of Robot Overlords. From now on the diary entries you’ll see are the ones featured in the back of the film’s novelisation (and if you want a signed and dedicated copy of the paperback, then please step this way and click here).

In this jam-packed look back, I get to visit the set and bump into Sir Ben Kingsley and have a chat about Spitfires… as you do…

Saturday 22nd June

Belfast and Carrickfergus

Crikey, where do I start with the last couple of days? I had a meeting with my accountant, which doesn’t sound terribly exciting, but he did explain and reassure me on a few things, and I came out with a confidence that I can get through the next six months of unpaid leave from work in one piece.

On Thursday evening I was at a colleague’s retirement party and I saw Gillian Redfearn (Gollancz editor) with a big grin on her face… I got the go ahead to write the Robots book! They’re offering £10k (which I think I have to split with the production) and I gather it was Gillian who convinced them to do it. I gave her a huge hug!

Then first thing Friday, (my wife) Claire dropped me off at Gatwick and I was Belfast-bound again. First stop was at the production offices to see our editor Matt Platt-Mills, his assistant Vicki Webbley and the rushes and first assemblies of the film. It’s looking very good. You’re going to hear this a lot, but SBK is fucking awesome. His interpretation of Smythe is nothing short of bloody genius and his improv lines really work*.

*The whole cowboy Wayne bit is his. So good I pinched it for the book.

But also Milo in the scene where his dad dies… bloody hell, he really nails it

Scene after scene I was cackling with glee as each beat either surpassed my expectations or came very close to it. I left Matt and Vicki in good spirits and headed to the set on an industrial estate on the other side of Carrickfergus.

In a cavernous warehouse, there stood a huge bluescreen cyclorama, and next to it a set of the interiors of the houses in Fleetwood Street. I loved the details inside: the multicoloured piano keys, the plants in old baked bean tins, the graffiti on the walls, ‘Robot-Free Zone!’

When I arrived they were in the middle of the scene where Kate (Gillian Anderson) asks Smythe (Sir Ben Kingsley) if she can look after Connor. Everyone was on form, and I was sorry to be pulled away to do my EPK (electronic press kit – the kind of interviews you get as extras on DVDs).

These took place in the warehouse next door with the standing stones behind us as a backdrop. Trouble is, we were in a warehouse and not a proper soundstage, and so we had to keep stopping for the noise of trucks reversing, generators thrumming into life and jet aircraft zooming overhead*.

The noise did create problems throughout this section of the shoot: feet scuffling in the adjacent hall could ruin a take and our 1st Assistant Director Barry Keil had to lay down the law a few times.

*On Saturday we had about 40 minutes of the Red Arrows zooming about.

The EPK was fun. My interviewer Ian Thompson asked interesting questions and, thanks to everyone at Orion showing an interest over the past few months, I already had some well-rehearsed answers.

But when I returned to the set, the scene they were shooting was not going well.

It was the swear box scene. Designed to show that the kids were sick of being cooped-up, and that Kate might be losing her marbles.

There were two problems: tonally it was just too broadly comic, and these beats and ideas were covered in other scenes. It’s the kind of thing you desperately try to iron-out during rewrites, but this one somehow slipped through.

We finished shooting the scene, but concentrated on coverage for the montage that followed it.

I was then asked to rewrite a couple of bits for Milo’s scene with his home-made rocket launcher, and I got to write it in an empty trailer at the unit base.

Yes, I finally had my own trailer.

For a bit.

They finished the day with an exterior bluescreen shot of Kate driving the boys in the Jeep. When the huge fan they had wasn’t strong enough to suggest driving at full pelt through the hills, the SFX guys managed to find two canisters of compressed air. Very resourceful!

Gillian had to dash to catch a flight right after, and so I missed my opportunity to say hello. Big shame, but hey-ho…

I had dinner with Jon (Wright, director and co-writer) that night. He’s bowled over by SBK. We talked Skyhook*, an LA trip, and his desire to do more big budget movies. He’s tired, but working through it and he’s great with the cast and crew.

*Skyhook was an awesome spy adventure that Jon and I wrote featuring a female lead. Alas, we were told his by his LA management that no one wanted a female lead in a spy movie and it never went out. Yes… I know… FFS…

This morning was all about the bluescreen stage and Tamer Hassan and SBK facing off in the belly of the Skyship. It looked fricking amazing, like something from Star Wars. All of us, including Jon, were geeking out. Tamer’s best known for playing hard men in movies like The Business and Kick Ass. He’s certainly a hard man in our movie, but he seems to be having huge fun, holding his own against SBK in today’s scene.

There was some discussion about yesterday’s failed scene, and we decided to shoot some ennui boredom ideas for the montage. I was despatched to write them, but rather than go to the trailer (at the unit base about half a mile away) I sat on a sofa in the currently-unused house set.

This is where I found myself chatting to Sir Ben Kingsley and his PA Todd Hofacker. Sir Ben said some very nice things about the script and he asked what I was working on next. I told him it was a World War 2 movie (The Black Spitfire) and he seemed intrigued and definitely knew plenty about the period. We parted company, but ten minutes later he was back and asked if I knew the film A Matter of Life and Death. I told him it was a big influence on my new script and he approved. Since then I feel like I’ve been levitating about a foot in the air.

Callan and James came in on their day off to work on the scene I had written and they were about to start when my taxi arrived. A shame I couldn’t see them play with it, but I know I’ll enjoy the finished result.

Oh, and I got my photo taken in the Deep Scanner. My author photo for the book.

After the taxi ride where the driver asked for directions… twice… I met (actor friend) Lou McGhie at the airport. She and twenty of her army colleagues will be extras in the final celebration scenes! Brill to get an Ashtead Players/Slumming-It* actor on the movie.

*The Slumming-It Theatre Company was the name of the theatre company that I ran with my wife Claire, and Lou was one of our regular actors. And the Ashtead Players is the am dram group where Claire and I learned a lot of our craft as actors.

And now I’m home. A tired, but very happy writer.

In the end I got to keep the ten grand advance for the book, and the production got any royalties after it earned out. I think, for once, I got the better end of the deal there. To say that Gillian Redfearn was pivotal in my career as a writer would be the understatement of the century. She also read very early versions of what was to eventually become the Witches of Woodville, giving me encouraging notes on what, looking back, was complete crap! My thanks also to Lisa Milton, Jon Wood and Malcolm Edwards at Orion who had to give the nod for the deal to go ahead.

I tried to find the EPK interviews mentioned, but I don’t think they were ever used. And we did more at Pinewood later in the year, which suggests the producers weren’t happy with them. I think clips might have been used in the making of on the DVD/Blu Ray. I’ll have to check!

Wandering through the set I was constantly taking notes. The little bits of wonderful production design — the plants in baked bean cans etc — were all details that I pinched for the book. And just as well as you hardly ever see them on screen in the finished film. All parts of a greater mosaic.

The on-set rewrites definitely focus the mind. Knowing that everyone on set is waiting for you to pull your finger out and produce something pronto definitely puts a rocket up your backside. No time for staring out of the window. Open the laptop and get on with it and write without second guessing yourself. I learned an important lesson that day. Write without fear. It’s very liberating.

Here are a few pics from the day…

Ten Years On: Robot Overlords on Location

In this thrilling episode I get to fly out to the location! They only had enough budget to have me on set for eight days, so I had to pick and choose them carefully. I’d written a scene where the gang decode a message left on some ancient standing stones and I really wanted to see how it was done. And thus it was that I headed for Tollymore Forest Park in Northern Ireland (which was used extensively in Game of Thrones)…

Tuesday 18th June

Belfast and back again

Left work early, hopped on the Gatwick Express and was in Belfast City Airport by nine o’clock.

No sign of my taxi driver (again), but I was greeted by hordes of teenage girls, weeping with mascara running down their faces… turns out I’d just missed JLS passing through Arrivals.

When it eventually arrived, I shared the taxi with Martin Chamney from (our VFX company) Nvizible. It pulled up outside a magnificent hotel facing the sea in Newcastle (the Slieve Donald Hotel, look it up… it’s amazing). It must have had 200 rooms, a golf course, spa and luxurious marble lobby. ‘This,’ I thought, ‘is more like it.’ Of course, it was the wrong bloody hotel!

We were directed to our correct hotel in the main street, passing the condescending sneer of the concierge as we slunk out.

The Main Street Donnard hotel was much more welcoming. A friendly man and woman waved us in, not needing us to sign anything, and their son (?) showed us to our rooms. They were comfy if basic. Martin and I popped out for a drink and when we returned the woman was watching a horror movie on a laptop in a corner of the lobby… When we came down at 6:45am she was in the same spot with a duvet wrapped round her.

We arrived at the location in Tollymore Park bright and early. I got chatting to the security guy who had a London accent and it turns out grew up not far from me in Hornsey.

I jumped in a minibus with the VFX guys and we made the bumpy journey up twisting, narrow roads. The location was terrific. Sweeping views of hills and mountains and a lake and, in a clearing, were our standing stones. Made of polystyrene coated in concrete, they look so real that some of the crew thought that we’d desecrated an ancient monument (the story requires that they’re covered in graffiti).

SBK was up first. He had to converse with two robots who weren’t there, but he really delivered and put everything into it, take after take. We had a Panavision crane on rails, which swooped above him for the robots’ POV, and the shots were very cool.

Between set-ups it was great to catch-up with the crew, and I got chatting to SBK’s stand-in Brian. A very affable chap, not only a veteran of Game of Thrones, but also an architect. This is something I came across again and again today: many of the NI crew and extras know one another from shows like GoT and work so well and efficiently together, they save us time and money, essential for an indie movie like ours. Brian told me of SBK’s first scene of the shoot, which involved a rain machine. He told Jon in no uncertain terms, ‘I don’t get wet!’ Somehow Jon got him on board.

I was interviewed by a couple of guys from Radio 4, and Total Film. I hope I didn’t say anything slanderous…

After lunch, Gillian and the kids arrived and the energy levels went back up a notch. They’ve clearly bonded brilliantly during the shoot. Good to catch up with James Tarpey, who took the time to have a chat. Milo’s dad Ray was also on good form. Milo is having the time of his life.

Unfortunately, I had to leave earlier than I hoped as I was sharing a cab with Piers and producer Steve Milne (whose flight was departing earlier than mine). But Steve is a Spitfire fan and I took the opportunity to drip-feed bits of Black Spitfire to him and I think I might have his interest.

I also got talking Robot sequels with Piers. He’d like a pitch by the end of the month and a script by May.

Uneventful flight home, though I did see Air Force One land at Belfast International (it’s the end of the G8 summit).

I discovered later that we had been taken to that first posh hotel because that’s where the actors were staying and the taxi driver assumed all the crew were staying there. I presume the producers heard that I didn’t play golf and that’s why they put me in the cheaper hotel… (insert your own shrug emoji here).

The day was my first opportunity to see the actors in full flow and they were definitely having fun with it. There’s something very odd about watching Oscar winner Sir Ben Kingsley have a conversation with an invisible robot, speaking dialogue that you came up with in your lunch break at work.

And no, Steve Milne wasn’t interested in The Black Spitfire project, but talk of a Robots sequel was exciting. Sadly, that’s all it was in the end. Talk. But we’ll get to that later. In the meantime here are some pics…

We named the castle featured in the film after Grabbers screenwriter Kevin Lehane.

Robot Overlords on the Fifty Years of Sh*t Robots Podcast

I was delighted to be asked back on the wonderful Fifty Years of Shit Robots podcast to talk about Robot Overlords ten years after we started filming! Luckily, the hosts Matt Brown and Stephen Murray enjoyed the film and we discuss the films that influenced me, why we’re not making a sequel and what I really think of the movie after all this time. You can listen here…

Ten Years On: Robot Overlords and Gillian Anderson plugs us on the BBC…

After the amazing response to the last blog, I’ve realised that I need to put the name Gillian Anderson into the title of my blog posts more often… Sorry, Gillian (and hello fans of Gillian… plenty more to come!).

Tuesday 11th June – home

My phone suddenly went mad at about five to eight this morning with people texting and tweeting me. Robots was featured on BBC Breakfast News! We managed to catch a couple of minutes, then saw the rest online. It was part of a piece asking if Northern Ireland is the new Hollywood after the success of Games of Thrones, The Fall and now Robots. They interviewed the stunt team, Piers and SBK and it was a great plug for the film.

Mum called, very excited. She was in the canteen at work when it came on. She was proudly telling all her friends.

Wednesday 12th June – home

Had a call from Jon this morning for an emergency rewrite: needed a few lines between Danny and Sean talking about his powers. Jo C (my boss) kindly let me duck out of the office for an hour while I zipped to the relative peace of the Curzon to have a go.

Emailed them to Jon and Chris, but haven’t heard back yet (night shoot tonight).

I’ve been reading Paddy’s pass on The Black Spitfire and making detailed notes for my rewrite. There’s some really good stuff to play with. He’s done a cracking job.

Thursday 13th June – home

Got a very brief call from Jon tonight. He had to cut it short when he realised the restaurant he was in was about to close, and he had to eat!

Got some additional notes from the BFI today. Chris is going to run through them with me tomorrow and Jon and I will speak first thing.

More BBC coverage tonight. BBC NI interviewed Gillian Anderson at the ravine location. Top marks to our publicist.

Friday 14th June – home

Went with work chums to lunch at the Giant Robot restaurant in Clerkenwell Road. The taxi pulled up and we were looking for it when (colleague) Jo Jacobs cried, ‘Look! Look what it says!’ On the chalkboard on the pavement outside the restaurant was written “OUR ROBOT OVERLORDS ARE COMING SOON!”. I thought that was nice of Jo to set that up, but she knew nothing about it. When she asked, the waiter said, “Oh yeah, it’s the name of a movie coming out next year.”

Jo nearly exploded. “Oh my god, he’s the writer! He wrote the film!”

So a fantastic little bit of serendipity. Made my day, I don’t mind telling you.

Sent Chris my comments on the BFI notes. He seemed happy. Going to tweak sc200 – when Sean links with the Mediator.

Here’s that chalkboard…

I haven’t been able to find the original BBC piece with SBK and Piers, but here’s the clip with Gillian…

The Curzon mentioned is the one in Soho. It was just around the corner from where I used to work at Orion and I would regularly write in there on my lunch break. They have a great basement bar with nice quiet nooks where you can tap away in peace with a cup of tea and a bag of chocolate covered raisins.

The Black Spitfire was a script that I was developing with VFX director Paddy Eason. It was, if I say so myself, a bloody excellent action adventure feature about an Air Transport Auxiliary pilot called Ginny Albion who has to rescue Churchill from the advancing Nazi Blitzkrieg in France in the lead up to Dunkirk. Sadly, it never got picked up. Too expensive, too British for Americans, and back then film backers were iffy about an action movie with a female lead. Hey ho. But check out the sales poster we commissioned…

Art by Brian Taylor aka Candykiller: https://candykiller.artstation.com| Model: Claire Garvey

Readers of the Witches of Woodville books might have spotted that a black Spitfire arrives at the end and is piloted by a young woman called Ginny. Yup, that’s her…

Next instalment: I go to Belfast and find some standing stones, there’s more Gillian and a cameo from Air Force One…

Ten Years Ago Today: Robot Overlords, the First Night Shoot

I flew home from Belfast on Sunday 2nd June after Jon and I spent a solid five hours on Saturday working on last minute rewrites. Mostly forensic little bits, poring over the BFI notes and the notes from our exec producer Chris Clark. Once Jon and I were done, we sent the production draft to Piers (Tempest, producer) and Chris for approval. This is the document that the crew would be using to make the film. Any changes from now on would be issued as “pinks” — additional side pages coloured pink, so that every knew a change had been made: hugely important when so many people are working on a film. And so my work was pretty much done.

Not one, but four cabs came to pick me up from the airport. I guess they wanted to be sure I was off!

Tuesday 4th June, 2013

Got a call from Chris Clark on the way home last night: could I check and transcribe all the line changes for SBK? Took me about an hour and a half.

Lots of locals in Bangor posting photos on Twitter of yesterday’s night shoot of the death of Connor’s dad.

I asked Jon how it went. “Hard work,” though SBK was brilliant. And he’s doing Smythe with a Huddersfield accent! Not what we wrote or expected, but he’s knocking it out of the park.

I forget that Sir Ben doing the Huddersfield accent was a surprise to us at the time. I can’t imagine it any other way now. Apparently he based it on an old teacher of his, which was a perfect choice. For more on SBK and his line changes, check out my previous diary entry here.

As for the Belfast locals taking pics of the shoot (in Holborn Avenue), I was sent a few via social media which I can share with you here. I believe these were taken by someone known as Rossographer, but if that’s wrong, or you were one of the photographers then drop me a line and I’ll update!

Bangor was a nice neighbourhood until our crew arrived…

Ten Years Ago Today: Robot Overlords and the Shoot Begins…

Here we go. Day one of the filming of Robot Overlords. You’ll note from the image that I didn’t write my diary entry until 1st June. To be fair, I was a very excited little puppy as you’ll see…

Friday 31st May

Belfast – First day of the shoot

The first day of filming couldn’t have gone better. We were at the Belfast Metropolitan College, an abandoned edifice, now mostly used for filming. Gillian Anderson’s TV series The Fall shot there and we even re-used one of their sets for the File Room.

The day started with shots of the VC guy coming down a stairwell, followed by the gang, then lots of sneaking around and running down corridors. Then, in the afternoon, the file room scene.

The rehearsal paid off: the kids work so well together and they look so good on camera.

I snuck off to a nearby hotel lobby (the Fitzwilliam) where they had a nice open fire (it was quite chilly for June) and worked on the rewrites. Both Chris (Clark, executive producer) and Piers (Tempest, producer) are worried about the number of line changes for SBK (Sir Ben Kingsley), so I made sure to list them separately.

It was good to see Jon in action again. Very calm, very sure of what he wants and very good at getting it out of his young cast. They can be inconsistent, as young actors often are, and I think Jon is driving our continuity guy mad with his choices of performance over continuity.

As I watched all this unfold, I wanted to go back and tell my 10-year-old self that I would get to make a cool movie… and that the next 30 years would just fly by.

After the wrap, me, Matt (Platts-Mills, editor), Paddy (Eason, VFX Supervisor), Piers (Tempest, producer), Aidan (Elliott, co-producer) and Jon had a drink at the Duke of York pub before Matt, Paddy, Jon and I went for a meal across the road where we got very excited at the results of the first make-up tests for Craig (Garner) who plays the Mediator. They’ve given him black hair and strange contact lenses and he looks like Gary Numan.

And so we’re off! They have a night shoot on Monday – rather them than me – and SBK and Gillian will join the cast.

I have rewrites with Jon today – hopefully the last major pass – before I fly home later tonight.

Let’s begin with the line changes for SBK… and yes, that’s how we referred to Sir Ben in all our emails, and yes, we were asked to address him in person as Sir Ben. I know he’s had a lot of stick for this over the years, but if that’s how he wants to be addressed then fair play to him. I didn’t meet him till much later, and all I can tell you is he is everything you want him to be: a gent, no nonsense, and completely committed to the craft of acting. We were bloody lucky to have him on board.

Separating out his line changes was a curious exercise. I thought it was a complete hassle at the time, but it was later explained to me that SBK learns the whole script. Everything. And it’s all there in his mind ready to go when the cameras turn over. So any changes can disrupt this process, and he likes to have any changes in plenty of time so that he can compare them with the original lines and incorporate them into his memory and deliver a performance with confidence. It’s a method that’s made him Academy Award Winner Sir Ben Bleedin’ Kingsley, and who was I to argue with that?

Being present for the first shot of the film was a real privilege, though I very nearly fluffed it by sticking my iPhone too close to the monitor to take a photo and distracting Jon, who almost got irritated with me. Jon is completely unflappable and focused on set. This film was a step up in budget and scale for him and he must have been under tremendous pressure to deliver, but he never showed it… despite my best efforts.

Every now and then I would be struck by the scale of the production — the crew, the trucks, the gear, the cast — and realise they were all there because of some words that Jon and I had committed to paper. It’s an odd feeling. Both empowering and terrifying. But one I like.

Stay tuned for a report on that night shoot…

Ten Years Ago Today: Robot Overlords and I’m in Charge for a Day…

Long time readers of this blog will know that I’ve been looking back at my diaries from ten years ago, just as we were prepping to shoot Robot Overlords. From now on the diary entries you’ll see are the ones featured in the back of the film’s novelisation (and if you want a signed and dedicated copy of the paperback, then please step this way and click here).

After the previous day’s debacle with the chunky implant props, Jon was called away from rehearsals to sort it out. Which left me in charge of rehearsals. What could possibly go wrong…?

Wednesday 29th May

Belfast – Rehearsals

Jon had a frantic day sorting out the implant situation, so he asked me to run today’s rehearsals, while he popped in and out.

We kept off the script and improvised scenes not featured in the film – little moments before or after key scenes on the film, so the actors could get an idea of their characters’ lives outside of the script. I was worried I might become the kind of hippy-dippy workshop-happy drama teacher I hated at school, but actually it all went really well. Callan (McAuliffe) didn’t completely buy into it — he’s a very no-nonsense kind of actor, but the others seemed to really enjoy and benefit from it.

Had a good one-on-one session with James (Tarpey) going through his lines. In the middle of our meeting he got a call from M&M World, his current employers, whom he had to inform that he was quitting his job to make the film.

The kids got to try out the quad bikes today. Great fun if their excited squeals were anything to go by.

Our new Executive Producer, Chris Clark, arrived today with an armful of script notes compiled by him and the BFI. Chris is an experienced producer who’s worked with Gillian Anderson and SBK (Sir Ben Kingsley) before on films like Johnny English and Thunderbirds. I was worried by the number of notes he had, but none of them are drastic, mostly to do with clarity, and Chris’s objectivity has helped focus on a few weak spots.

I like Chris a lot. He’s very calm and methodic. When I first heard we were getting an Exec Producer to look at the script from a creative perspective, my writer’s paranoia kicked-in and I was concerned that he would sweep in and demand huge changes or you’re fired. I needn’t have worried. All of his suggestions have so far improved the script.

The only trouble we had was pinning Jon down to go through the changes. He’s so busy with the implant issues and other shoot prep that if we’re going to do this properly I might have to extend my stay until Saturday.

Jon Wright (director) and Piers Tempest (producer) checking out the implant props during pre-production.

Rehearsals: from L-R James Tarpey (making us all laugh), Ella Hunt, Jon Wright, Milo Parker, Callan McAuliffe.

Thursday 30th May

Belfast – Rehearsals

A frantic day for Jon, an odd one for me. I wrote some additional dialogue for a scene at around 9.30am this morning, but couldn’t get Jon to approve it till around 6pm (it’s for tomorrow’s shoot). He was around for some rehearsal this morning, but also had to visit the set for tomorrow, look at the finished implants (much improved), and then had to go clothes shopping with Callan because they couldn’t find him a suitable outfit (and Jon hates clothes shopping).

Rehearsals were okay, but Callan wasn’t that interested, and the others were giggly,— they just want to get on with the film and I don’t blame them. But it was nice to hang out with Jo Donnelly again, she’s a lovely person and a fine actor.

Paddy (Eason, VFX supervisor) turned up in the afternoon and I was happy to see a familiar face. He showed us a few pre-viz VFX clips which were just terrific. Some of the images and framing seemed to have been plucked directly from my brain. Paddy kindly put them on a memory stick, so I can show the kids when I get home.

And tonight we finally finished our script notes with Chris. Jon and I will use Saturday to do the final rewrite.

This has been a great week. Tiring, sometimes worrying (the implants), but a great learning experience. The team at the production office have been friendly and helpful and it’s been humbling to watch all these people work so hard to bring this story to life… and the shoot starts tomorrow.

Poor Callan, James, Ella and Milo. Suddenly their director is called away and they’re left with the bloody writer to run rehearsals! No wonder they were all a little antsy. We did a few games and bonding exercises, but by the Thursday it was clear that they were all ready to rock and all anyone wanted to do was start filming.

The sessions with Chris Clark were terrific and I wish we’d had him earlier on in the process. He challenged every scene in the script and there’s no question that he helped make the story stronger. I don’t recall how much sleep I got that night. I doubt I got much. It was the night before filming and I could hardly believe it… We were about to make a bloody movie!

Ten Years Ago Today: Robot Overlords and Rehearsals Begin

Long time readers of this blog will know that I’ve been looking back at my diaries from ten years ago, just as we were prepping to shoot Robot Overlords. From now on the diary entries you’ll see are the ones featured in the back of the film’s novelisation (and if you want a signed and dedicated copy of the paperback, then please step this way and click here). However, there were a few things that I left out of those book entries, that I’ve reinstated here (mostly me moaning about money!). We’ve got three entries in this post, just as we started rehearsals with our young actors including one new addition to the cast, James Tarpey, who brilliantly played Nathan in the film…

Sunday 26th May 2013

Belfast

Staying at the Crescent Townhouse Hotel, ready for the start of rehearsals tomorrow. Met with Jon tonight to run through the schedule and work on ideas. We’re both still smarting from not getting our deferred fees, but at least the extra money we need for VFX is now in place, and the movie won’t look like a bad episode of Doctor Who.

In the paperback diaries I changed that last line to “like a bad episode of Blake’s 7”. I clearly thought I was in with a shout of getting a Doctor Who writing gig and didn’t want to offend anyone. Looking back at interviews from the time I say that I’m a big Doctor Who fan. Actually, it turned out that I’m a big Russell T Davies fan, having lost interest in the show after he left as show runner.

Monday 27th May

Belfast – rehearsals

Read throughs. We’re in a room in the production offices in an industrial estate on the edge of town. It’s bare, but we can work in relative peace and everyone’s raring to go. I had already met Ella and Milo at the audition stage, and was probably more excited than they were to start rehearsals.

Met Callan (McAuliffe) for the first time. Nice guy, and our new Nathan, James Tarpey, fits right in. For him, today was as much an audition as it was a rehearsal. Happily, Jon offered him the part at the end of the day. We needed a couple of adult actors to read-in the other parts, and we got the fabulous Jo Donnelly and Lalor Roddy (who would also play Swanny). Jon loved working with Lalor on his previous film Grabbers. He’s huge fun, and, it turns out, worked with Declan Mulholland back in the day (an actor/director I worked with at Unity Theatre about 20 years ago, and was the actor who originally played Jabba the Hutt in the first Star Wars movie). Jo was terrific, such a good actor and a delight to be with through the long days.

I was taking notes throughout the day and we have some minor tweaks to make to the script, which I started tonight.

One fly in the ointment. A guy called REDACTED brought in the prototype for the implants and, frankly, they were shit. Bulky, with poor illumination and not at all what we need. They look like roller disco earrings from the 80s. Jon wants to investigate a CG solution, if we have the budget.

I know creative types bang on about this all the time, but our cast really was a lovely bunch of people who had an excitement and energy about them that comes across in the film. It was important for the four kids (Callan and James were adults by this point, but they’re playing kids in the film, so I’ll refer to them as such: sorry, gents) to feel like real friends, so the next few days were crucial.

Having Jo and Lalor around was such a great help. And Lalor returned to play Rory in Unwelcome where he gives one of my favourite line readings in the film, ‘Big feckin’ hole in the roof.’

And yes, the implants aren’t great. The ones in the film are a slight improvement, but not much. Not at all what Jon and I imagined — we needed something small, battery-operated, that could flash and change colour — but it all came down to the lack of time and budget in the end. I think we’d definitely do those differently if we were making it today… That said, when people talk to me about the film now they almost always mention them, ‘Oh, yeah, that film where they’ve got those lights plugged into their necks!’

Tuesday 28th May

Belfast – Rehearsals

Read throughs. We got to the end of the script today. James is really making the part of Nathan his own.

There’s still no easy solution to the implants issue. We might resort to single colour devices that we can tweak in post. Not ideal.

Got to the end of the script today and finished around 4:30, giving me time to visit the Belfast Titanic Museum.

Belfast is a beautiful place to film. Having grown up in the 70s/80s I’d always associated it with the Troubles, but you could not ask to meet more friendly and welcoming folks. The city is a great mix of old and new and yes, definitely take the time to go to the Titanic Museum. The real awe comes from going around the back where they’ve marked the slips for both the Olympic and the Titanic. The sense of scale was quite moving.

It was great to see James take ownership of the role of Nathan, as you’ll see from the next entry (coming on Monday!), this was a big deal for him…

Ten Years Ago Today: Robot Overlords and my Last Day in the Office

Long time readers of this blog will know that I’ve been looking back at my diaries from ten years ago, just as we were prepping to shoot Robot Overlords. This entry is from my last day in the day job (I was a sales manager at Orion Publishing) before taking a six-month sabbatical…

Saturday 25th May, 2013

Up early. Too many things rattling around my head. Not least a £1000 VAT demand for money we’ve not received. I’ll have to sort that out with the accountant, pronto.

Yesterday was full-on. It started with a text from Jon. The BFI are coming in to save our VFX and shoot budget, but not our deferred fees. Jon’s really pissed off.

Meanwhile, my agent Katie was apologetic, but at least had news of a meeting with someone at Left Bank in a couple of weeks (they liked Myths & Magic and want a general meeting).

It was also my last day in the office before rehearsals next week, so I was trying to tie-up all sorts of loose ends, while also enduring a launch meeting, and putting together a presentation to Gollancz. All done, though. Now it’s in Jennie’s hands.

To be clear: I got the VAT sorted! You don’t muck around where the taxman is concerned. And the Jennie I mentioned there was my colleague Jennie McCann who is now a managing director at a major publisher and is one of those people who is brilliant at whatever she turns her hand to. I had no qualms about leaving all my accounts in her hands.

Jon and I were so angry about the deferred fees thing. Not least as it was done without anyone giving us the opportunity to properly protest it. You can read more about my thoughts on that here

I don’t recall if that Left Bank meeting happened, but the project they liked — Myths & Magic — was an early version of what became The Witches of Woodville series. Back then, it was a TV series idea set in a modern day village, but I could never quite get it to work. It took years of going round in circles before I realised that writing it as a series of novels and setting it in the Second World War is what it needed to click into place.

Leaving the Orion office on a sabbatical was a big step and the first time I had ever done anything like this. I had fantasies that this was it, and I’d never be coming back, and it was a thrilling and liberating feeling. I was a writer. One who’d been paid to write a movie and a novel, and they were now flying me out to Belfast to rehearse with amazing actors on location. We were off! More on that tomorrow…

Ten Years Ago Today: Robot Overlords and Losing a Cast Member at the Last Minute

Long time readers of this blog will know that I’ve been looking back at my diaries from ten years ago, just as we were prepping to shoot Robot Overlords. We needed more money to make the film and it looked like the BFI were coming to our rescue…

Thursday 23rd May, 2013

Jon (Wright, director) says the BFI thing is looking good. They want to give us a creative director to look at the script. Basically someone to be their eyes during production, and in return we get our VFX budget and writing fees back. Sounds good to me.

We might be losing Eros (Vlahos, actor who was originally cast as Nathan). His agent can’t get the dates to work with filming for Da Vinci’s Demons (a show that Eros was working on at the time). Be a shame to lose him, but Jon’s already looking at other kids.

I resumed work on the (Robot Overlords) novel. Still waiting for the nod from Gollancz… But it’s good to be writing again. I get glum when I’m not.

Katie (my then agent) has sent my stuff to the Doctor Who people! Were were both doubtful they’d even consider me, but they seem to be quite receptive.

We were assigned a creative director — he was credited as an Executive Producer — in Chris Clark, who was terrific when it came to honing the script in the frantic days before the shoot began. More of that soon.

And yes, sadly, we did lose Eros who was a terrific actor, but we did get the brilliant James Tarpey to play Nathan and now I can’t imagine anyone else doing it. But if you’re curious, you can see some pics of Eros on our test shoot day here.

I have no recollection of the Doctor Who thing. Needless to say it never happened. I’m not a huge Whovian, but it felt like a good after Robot Overlords… Though, let’s be honest, it’s the only original* science fiction show on the Beeb, so it’s not like I had any other options. I have a theory that the BBC treats science fiction like religious programming: they have one original show (Doctor Who… and when that wasn’t on it was Red Dwarf) and that’s it. Doesn’t exactly seem fair when there’s countless gritty dramas about cops, but such is the fickle nature of televised drama.

*Original being the important word here. Don’t come at me with ‘But they did His Dark Materials etc…’ That’s based on a bestselling book series. I’d love to see more new and original SF&F on the Beeb, but it’s not going to happen while Doctor Who is fulfilling the geek quota.

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