As Flickering Myth’s first film production gears up to go before the camera, we bring you an update on the joys of pre-production…
Our first venture into making movies has proven to be a massive undertaking. A successful but stressful crowdfunding campaign was rife with challenges. What is the magic formula? What makes for an enticing perk or project to back? Throughout a gruelling campaign, there were plenty of ups and much-appreciated support from readers, casual crowdfunding observers and fellow indie filmmakers.
We also had to deal with attempted sabotage from a rival filmmaker who you’d think had better things to be doing. Filmmaking is a tough racket, even in Hollywood as ongoing strikes will attest, but in the indie world, everyone is doing their best to scrape together the pennies and put together a production that they hope doesn’t get unceremonially shat on by IMDb reviewers (although it seems like that’s the only worthwhile thing to do on IMDb these days). Collective support for and from your contemporaries is far better than trying for one-upmanship and as an entire industry struggles there’s no benefit to acting like a shithouse.
In the months between our campaign closing and the impending shoot, our time has been largely spent wondering whether we’ve been hit by another horror curse. There have been a number of horror films that have a myth built around the films being cursed, including The Exorcist and Poltergeist. From May to September with almost daily issues we had been wondering just whether we’d angered the big man upstairs or been the subject of some dark curse. Perhaps our unsuccessful saboteur put a hex on production. Or perhaps this is just par for the course.
Sometimes all you can do is laugh and in our quest to source a titular baby to appear in the production and make enquiries to baby agencies we managed to source our title star. Just one problem though… the baby hasn’t been born yet. It’s times like these when you need a Del Boy type to source a baby from the back of a van perhaps. Anyway, we’ll just hope said baby isn’t prone to diva behaviour and makes his grand entrance on time. Still, it’s one thing I never expected to say coming up to a week before production on a film; “Our title star isn’t born yet!”
Freddy Shepka, The Stunt Baby in the Basket
We finalised our cast and can’t wait to see them on set, so every frustrating challenge is countered by reasons to cheer. Speaking of the aforementioned strikes in the US, we didn’t expect them to have an impact on us as a UK indie production but the fallout did see us needing to recast the role of Lucy, with Alexandra Faye Sadeghian seeing another production pushed back into ours. It’s one of those things in film and in truth, we half expected more chops and changes and we’re hoping to work with Alexandra on the next project. So in came Lisa Riesner and an interesting recalibration to the character that adds a new element to the film.
Perhaps the biggest challenge of all has been logistics and organising the locations, travel and accommodation. How the chief, Gary Collinson has stayed sane throughout this process, having taken on the bulk of the bookings, I’ll never know. One thing is for sure though, the UK is not in a good place right now. The country hasn’t been set up to adequately support the creative arts for a long time but processes are even more difficult now, not least just dealing with the soaring costs from inflation. We’ve found that so many costly factors that eat into your budget, but ultimately are things that won’t appear on screen, are unnecessarily difficult.
Our “St. Augustine’s”
Booking domestic flights should be simple and comparatively inexpensive and they haven’t been. Our easiest flight to arrange was an inbound international flight. That’s before we consider the ongoing worry about potential strikes or plain old technical blunders potentially shutting down airports (and/or trains). At this budget level, there’s little option to just delay and reschedule shoot days without incurring potential devastating costs. The way flights are costed in a sort of make it up as you go manner is a source of ire. If a cast member wants to move to a domestic flight two hours later on a particular day we could be looking at double the price. Go figure. The cast thankfully, have all been reasonable. Except for Nathan Shepka whose constant demands to be fanned and fed grapes have been a nightmare.
We also have to contend with frustrating bureaucratic matters like needing police presence for a day with a special effects sequence and the use of replica guns. Understandable, but when they insist on two officers at double the price it boils down to extortion but I suppose as underfunded as the police are, they have to make a buck or two where possible. I’m half expecting that we’ll need to pay off Glaswegian mafioso at some point the way things have been going. It’s just a lot of kerfuffle for what will be 30 seconds on screen. Bit like my wedding night to be fair.
As all this has unfolded though, the script has been picking up more awards and festival selections. Feedback from the cast about the script has been pleasing and we have in place the bones to make something great. Money buys you immunisation from compromises. The more you have the less creative compromises you need to make and we’re in the micro-budget realm where we have to do our best to deliver the best version of our vision we can. Time will tell but the film will certainly benefit from a small but well-oiled crew and a talented cast.
On top of that, we have some stunning locations that will look great, and we have also welcomed aboard a number of new executive producers offering their support to the film in Sanatan Kadakia of Hidden Ridge Productions along with Steven George-Hilley and Gavin and Kathleen McKinley. So with a final flurry of schedules, call sheets, booking confirmations and last-minute props and locations, we head full steam into filming hoping we’ve got the Film Gods onside…
The Baby in the Basket begins shooting this coming week and features a cast that includes Maryam d’Abo (The Living Daylights), Paul Barber (The Full Monty), Amber Doig-Thorne (Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey), Annabelle Lanyon (Legend), Michaela Longden (How to Kill Monsters), Elle O’Hara (When Darkness Falls) and Lisa Riesner (Charlie’s Angels).
Tom Jolliffe is an award-winning screenwriter and passionate cinephile. He has a number of films out around the world, including When Darkness Falls, Renegades (Lee Majors and Danny Trejo) and War of The Worlds: The Attack (Vincent Regan), with more coming soon including Cinderella’s Revenge (Natasha Henstridge) and The Baby in the Basket (Maryam d’Abo and Paul Barber). Find more info at the best personal site you’ll ever see here.
