Cleaning Up on Free Thinking

Last night, Radio 3's Free Thinking was on the subject of landladies. The guests included magnificent Louise Jameson, and at 13.40 conversation turned to her role as landlady Mrs Pellman in Cleaning Up, the short film written by me and directed by my brother Tom - which is still available to buy from Big Finish. It's a particular honour to be spoken of alongside the great This Sporting Life (1963), a film that's been much on my mind lately. 

Thanks to presenter Matthew Sweet and producer Torquil MacLeod.

Here lies David Whitaker

Today, Matthew Sweet and I journeyed out to Chiswick to find the grave of David Whitaker (1928-80), original story editor of Doctor Who and the subject of the book I'm currently writing. It's taken me some time to track down the location of the grave and I wanted to pay my respects.

Having researched David's life for so long, it was oddly emotional to actually find and stand with him. And it was a far grander grave than I'd expected, with an aptly book-shaped headstone. Matthew, who has done this sort of thing before, was ready with a bottle of water and a sponge.

Afterwards, we took the bus up to Hammersmith Bridge, on the way Matthew pointing out the house where Jon Pertwee used to live. We crossed the river -- over the spot where the TARDIS lands in The Dalek Invasion of Earth -- and went for a pint in the pub opposite Riverside Studios, where Doctor Who used to be recorded. There's a blue plaque to Verity Lambert, original producer and David Whitaker's boss. What wonders they created together. We raised a glass to them, just as the storm broke.

Before

Cleaning

David Whitaker's grave

Verity Lambert's blue plaque

Chris Chapman and Toby Hadoke's documentary Looking for David - on which I was researcher - will be included in the forthcoming Doctor Who Season 2 Blu-ray set, announced yesterday. Details of my biography of David Whitaker will be shared in due course, but yesterday Obverse Books announced that my book on The Edge of Destruction, the two-part Doctor Who story from 1964 by Whitaker, will be published in October 2023.

Cleaning update!

News from our masters at Big Finish:

A big thank you to everyone who has bought Big Finish's debut short film Cleaning Up, starring Mark Gatiss and Louise Jameson. All profits from the sale go into a fund to make a feature film version of Cleaning Up – a Big Finish movie. We asked Guerrier brothers Simon and Thomas how the film project is progressing. Read on...

'Brilliantly!' says Simon. 'I'm currently hard at work on the script, reworking and revising our initial treatment. It's all go!'

Thomas adds: 'We've spoken to a number of production companies and individuals who might help take the film forward – and being able to show them there's already an audience buying the short has really helped.'

'It's looking very positive,' says Simon, 'though there still a long way ahead of us. So thanks to everyone who's supported us, bought the short and spread the word about what we're trying to do. We'll keep you all posted!'

Cleaning Up is still available to buy in two versions:

'Rookie' Standard Edition for £1.99:
HD version of film

'Hitman' Special Edition for £4.99:
HD version of film, 'first cut' with commentary, behind the scenes film, trailer, image gallery, soundtrack, PDF scripts, posters and wallpaper.

All profits go to developing the Cleaning Up feature film.

Buy Cleaning Up starring Mark Gatiss for £2 - and help me make a movie!

Buy Cleaning Up, the award-guzzling short film I wrote and starring Mark Gatiss and Louise Jameson, is now available to buy for £1.99. All profits made will help to fund a full-length feature film.

In a veritable blaze of publicity, we've been talking to journalists:

• Cult TV Times feature
• Starburst feature
• The Consulting Detective interview
• Doctor Who podcast review and interview with me and Louise Jameson
• Verity podcast on the film
• Pop Matters - "Crowd-funding a crowd pleaser: the feature future of Cleaning Up"
• Cult TV interview with Louise Jameson
• Script, shoot, slice, screen Q&A with me and Tom

Guerrier brothers' films news

Thrilled to learn that the spooky short film I wrote (and appear in), Revealing Diary, will play at the Aesthetica Short Film Festival in York this November. We had a brilliant time at Aesthetica last year, when we took Cleaning Up. We made lots of new friends and won an award which is currently on my parents' mantelpiece.

Also, while we wait to hear how The Plotters has done in the Virgin Media Shorts competition, the Virgin Media people recently chose as their blog of the week a post by our amazing director of photography, Sebastian Solberg, with lots of thrilling behind-the-scenes pics. Including this one of me looking sophisticated:

New year, new product

Happy new year! I'm back from a week in Luxor, touring ancient sites and drinking a beer called Sakara. Will try to blog something about what I saw, and also about the various good books I've been reading. But first, these important messages:

There are lots of screenings next week of my short film, Cleaning Up.

• Tuesday 10 January: London Short Film Festival in Hammersmith, London
  
• Friday 13 January: "British Shorts" festival, Berlin
• Saturday 14 January: Blue Box convention in Tunbridge Wells
• Sunday 15 January: Shortwave in Bermondsey, London
  

I'll be at all but the Berlin screening. Do come along and say hello. I'll also be showing the film at the Gallifreyone convention in Los Angeles next month.

I've also written a superhero comic, The 100% Awesomes for the Autism Education Trust. With art by William Potter, it's designed for use in school lessons to teach kids about autism and difference.

My short story "Last Rites" features in The Hammer Out Book Of Ghost Stories 2012, published this month to raise money for brain tumour charities.

Also out this month is my Doctor Who audio adventure, The Anachronauts, starring Jean Marsh and Peter Purves.

Loads of things we learned about making short films

Cleaning Up won Best Thriller at the Aesthetica Short Film Festival this weekend. Brother Tom and I had an amazing time in York, seeing loads of the 150 short films shown, comparing notes with lots of spectacularly talented film-makers and wannabe film-makers, and generally larking about.

As a result of all the nattering, we've realised how much we've learned by making our film – and stolen from all the clever people we've worked with.

Calling card
Short films are a way to get noticed, to get more – or different – work, and to prove that your idea for a TV series or film really works. Make your short representative of the things you want to do next.

Volunteer
We spent a day as runners on Danny Stack's Origin and two days as coppers on James Moran and Dan Turner's Girl Number Nine. That gave us a good sense of what to expect, plus we learned loads of practical things that helped us set up our film and make the shoot run smoothly. We also nicked Danny's producer, one of James and Dan's stars, and loads of crew from both.

Research
Watch all the short films you can. Go to the festivals. Buy the DVDs of award-winning shorts. If you've got a particular genre or audience in mind, research it and find out what other people are doing. Most festivals will put your film in a group with a similar theme (we've been shown as a thriller, a comedy, and as part of a group called “wrong place, wrong time”).

No matter how much of a film buff you are, the festival programmers will have seen more films than you. A festival can easily receive 1,000 to 7,000 submissions. What makes your comedy, horror, fantasy any different from the hundreds of others? What are you doing that's better? Watching lots of film, you’ll see they usually all very well made. And then one makes you sit up and take notice. How can you make your film do that?

Genre
Are you making a genre piece – comedy, horror, thriller? That can help you place your film with the festivals, sell it to an audience, build a following. Having watched a huge number of shorts now, comedy is clearly the hardest to get right – and there's nothing worse than an audience sitting stony-faced waiting for a comedy to end. But when it's right, when it works, you can be the talk of the festival.

Good script
We watched a lot of short films before making ours. A lot of people will tell you that it's easier to make films now – you can even get mobile phones that record in HD. But that makes it all the harder to stand out from the rest. A lot of short films look beautiful and are stylishly played and edited. But the thing that makes the best ones stand out is that they have good scripts. Commission a writer, as Tom did, to write something an audience will remember.

• James Moran recently blogged a whole, free seminar on writing.

It also helped that we had a professional TV writer as our script editor. Joseph Lidster made me work very hard: the script for Cleaning Up went through more than 20 drafts.

Why should anyone care?
You need to ask this a lot. Will the basic idea of your film grab people? Will the tag line? Will the names of the actors help sell the film? Are the roles they're playing not what they normally do? Or is the point that you're using people who aren't so well known? Your film needs to fight to gain attention.

Make a film on your own
Before you start assembling a big cast and crew, make a small film first, perhaps on a mobile. That way, you understand the process from start to finish, can see where your weaknesses are and can make a lot of mistakes – without a whole huge crew watching. It doesn't have to be any good; you don't have to show it to anyone. But edit it, put music on it, make sure you complete it.

Make it count
The standard of shorts is high, so make sure your money shows on screen. Every shot and line of dialogue has to count. Good locations, good production design and music all help sell your film. (A heck of a lot of short films include sunsets, which look amazing and are cheap.)

What do you offer the star?
I'm presuming you don't have much of a budget. So the only thing you can offer an established, “name” actor is a good script, with a good role for them – and something they don't normally play. And you've no comeback if they turn you down. Nobody owes you this.

Also, every actor should play a character with a name. They've given their time and skill for free, so the least you can offer them is a credit as “Keith”, not “Guard number 5”. It looks better on their CVs.

What do you offer the crew?
You're (probably) not paying people, so you have to treat them well. Don't tell them it's a great opportunity for their careers (klaxons go off, there are axes and bazookas). Define the working hours – and stick to them. Make sure there's a good lunch provided for everyone, tea and snacks and supplies.

You're the one who'll benefit from the film, not them. So you need these people more than they need you. And a good, experienced crew is essential. Ideally, you'll be the least experienced person on set.

Scheduling
Your cast and crew will – and should – drop you in an instant if they get another good, paid gig. You also find you can't work the schedule to get your dream cast and crew together in the same same place at the same time. So you have to work out who is the most important.

Say what you don't know
I made a stupid blunder on Origin by not letting on that I didn't know how to work the walkie-talkies. Don't bluff your way through. Ask advice. Listen and learn. There's a lot of bullshit in films – you have to big a project up just to get it made and seen. But people, especially the crew, will be much happier when you're honest.

Prepare
Do as much groundwork as you can yourself. Your producer and crew may only be there for the shoot itself. Make people's lives easy, and have as much prepared in advance as possible.

Tone
You set the tone of the shoot. So be cool, decisive and fun. As director, everyone will want your opinion all the time, so know what you want from every aspect of the film – and don't dither when they ask you. A happy crew works 10 times harder.

Adapt
As much as you might plan, all shoots run on luck, short films even more so because there is no money. So you'll have to adapt and improvise. Roll with it.

Gratitude
Say thank you. Buy drinks. Have a cast and crew screening. Keep everyone informed of what's happening. Return the favours people have done you. Let them know to call the favours in.

Edit
When you finish filming, you're halfway through the process. Keep your film short and relevant. Cut every frame you can. Cleaning Up lost a whole scenes and at least one of my favourite lines. Be ruthless. Audiences sitting through lots of shorts in one go will thank you.

Trailer
More people will see the trailer than the film. The cut of the trailer is potentially more important than the cut of the film.

Website
Don’t just watch lots of short films – look at how they’ve marketed themselves, too. Some do fancy websites and loads of PR, others don’t. We based our efforts on the Academy Award-winning short The New Tenants.

Don't waste people's time. You want a simple, good-looking website where people can quickly – no, immediately – find your trailer, a list of cast and crew, the tag lines and blurbs, a press release and how to contact you. Make it easy for people to see where it's playing and what awards you've won.

We'll write about sending your finished short out into the world later, when we've a better idea of how what we've done has worked.

Plugs and plugs

Sorry - a pluggy post. I have a new CD out this month - Doctor Who and the Memory Cheats starring Wendy Padbury as Zoe Heriot and Charlie Hayes (Wendy's daughter) as Jen. The spooky cover is by clever Marcus at Amazing15 (who I also sometimes work with doing daftness for Doctor Who Adventures). Here is the blurb:

Zoe Heriot remembers everything. But she remembers nothing.

A genius with instant recall, Zoe’s mind has been purged of her memories of travelling with the Doctor and Jamie in the TARDIS. And years later she is in deep trouble – prosecuted by the mysterious company that has evidence that she has travelled in Space and Time.

Except Zoe knows they’re wrong.

Aren’t they?

But if that’s the case, why is there proof that Zoe was in Uzbekistan in 1919.

Can the memory cheat?

The story owes a bit to Col. Bailey's Mission to Tashkent, which I have blogged about before. I'm interviewed about the CD in the new issue of free Vortex magazine (issue #31). Look, my name is even on the cover, as if I am a draw.

My next CD is out in November. Doctor Who and the First Wave is the final part of my trilogy starring Peter Purves and Tom Allen. Me and Will Howells went to see Tom's show in as part of the Scipmylo festival in Shoreditch last night, a chat show with guests Stephen K Amos, Katherine Ryan, Ed Byrne and some bloke called Matt Smith.

Will, Nimbos and the Dr will be on Only Connect on BBC Four on Monday. Oh, and there is a Twitter competition to win tickets to the first screening of my short film Cleaning Up.

Think that's everything.

Trailer and details for my short film, Cleaning Up

Cleaning Up - Official Trailer from Guerrier Brothers on Vimeo.

Full cast and crew for Cleaning Up - a short thriller starring Mark Gatiss and Louise Jameson - is now up on the spangly official Guerrier brothersTM webventure. Why not follow @cleaningup_film on Twitter and join the Facebook Cleaning Up experience journey thing.

Screenings start next week with a showing at the Cambridge Film Festival at 1pm on Saturday 17 September, followed by a screening at the Branchage Film Festival in Jersey at 1pm on Sunday 25 September. More screenings and things to come.

Reel time

You Tube now boasts a new show reel by Alex Mallinson showing his CGI skillz.

It includes clips from Alex's amazing Bernice Summerfield "Dead and Buried" cartoon (also available in full), the Cyberman DVD documentary he did for me and the brother, and some sneaky peeks at our short film, Cleaning Up.

Alex is also after your face for the cover of Graceless 2.

Blam! Blam! Blam!

Feast your eyes on Stuart Manning's brilliant poster for Cleaning Up, a short film starring Mark Gatiss, Louise Jameson and Anton Romaine Thompson. It's directed by Thomas Guerrier and - by some staggering coincidence - written by me.

We're in the final stages of post-production and are already elbows deep in submissions to film festivals and whatnot. I'll be hollering on a lot more when there's more to be hollered, but in the mean time you can join the Cleaning Up Facebook massive and the official Cleaning Up Twitter experience.

Catching up

Blimey. 2010 has been a bit of an old sod, all told. Having had next to no work for most of the summer, things suddenly got a bit manic in the last few months. Hence the lack of blogging. What follows is a splurge of me trying to catch up, more for my own future interest than yours.

My day job since September has been at Doctor Who Adventures, which has been a joy. It's quite a trek into the office and back - especially when there's any hint of weather - but that's given me lots of time for reading, which I'll try to blog about in the next few days.

At the end of November, the Dr and I jetted off to the States so I could spend the weekend showing off at Chicago TARDIS. Had a brilliant time - and the Dr made her debut on a convention panel, too. As always, there was too little time to natter with some very good friends and it was all over too quickly. But Graceless - which me, Ciara Janson and Laura Doddington were there to flog - seemed to go down well.

I also got a copy of Running Through Corridors by my chums Rob Shearman and Toby Hadoke, in which they watch all of black-and-white Doctor Who, two episodes per night. It's a pleasure to be in their company anyway, and the book is full of smart insights and jokes. It helps that Rob's a professional writer (he wrote for Doctor Who on TV himself) and Toby a jobbing actor - that experience gives them more of an 'in' to the mechanics of the programme than many other guides.

My favourite bits were when the two authors disagree over something and where real life crops up as part of the diaries - when their (non-fan) spouses chip in thoughts, or where the authors tell us about personal links to the stories. It's also fun just seeing how they juggle the watch round conventions and train journeys and things: the everyday minutiae of being a fan, fitting the programme around real life. Can't wait for the next volume.

After the convention, the Dr and I bussed up to Madison, Wisconsin to stay with some friends. We poddled round Madison and ate huge burritos, but mostly we spent the week loafing about. That was, sadly, quite a highlight of my year. I wrote two chapters of the Novel, read a fair bit and also did some thinking, which is a crucial part of being a freelancer and not something I've had much time for recently.

We returned to Chicago for one last night, and went out for a splendid dinner with T. All the time we were away we'd heard horror stories of the snow in London and how civilisation had collapsed. But on our last day the snow came down in Chicago - and it made not a jot of difference. We wrapped up warm and ventured out into the street, where the cars and buses and trains were all running just fine.

We caught the train down to the Museum of Science and Industry, where we had time to look round the U505 German submarine before going into Jim Henson's Fantastic World (runs until 23 January 2011).

Cor, that was fun. It's a comprehensive history of Henson's work, with many original sketches and puppets amid film clips and live performances. I'd seen a lot of the sketches before (in Jim Henson's Designs and Doodles - a Muppet Sketchbook), but its a very different thing then seeing clips of the realised creatures, shambling about.

I loved seeing Henson's non-Muppets work - his adverts, his documentaries, his experimental films. The producers of Sesame Street apparently brought him on board because they'd noticed that children were hooked on the speed and brightness of adverts. The Dr was much taken with the exhibition and is going to use it as the basis of some report thing she has to do at work.

As always, the museum shop was full of things we didn't want and had little that we did. So we made our way to the airport. Blimey, O'Hare Airport is a dreary place to sit for hours. There's little in the way of shops or distractions - you have to go back out of Passport Control for most things, and the one bar was the only place to ID me the whole time we were away.

But the plane home was pretty much on time and unencumbered by the snow. I watched Inception and Salt, neither of which really did anything for me. (On the way out, I watched Agora - featuring Rachel Weisz, and her nekkid bum in one bit - and Toy Story 3. The Dr cried at the sacking of the Library of Alexandria, I did not so much as sniffle at the toys. Honestly.)

Got home to find a crazy world of emails hollering for work. Since getting back I've written one play and pitched for four more - just as well I had that thinking time! The brother/boss also needed a final, final rewrite on our short film, having fixed the location.

Oh yes: we've made a film. Cleaning Up stars Mark Gatiss, Louise Jameson and lots of brilliant people, and was shot the weekend after I got back. I'd been working on the script since 2008 - and intensively over the last year, since Joseph Lidster signed up as script editor - but suddenly it was real, with a whole massive film crew. Mad and exciting, and I'm really rather proud of the brother/boss. He, producer Ben Greenacre and everyone else just worked wonders. I sort of stood in a corner and tried not to get in the way. There'll be plenty more about the film in the new year, sorry.

I also got to see Gatiss in Seasons Greetings - which is magnificently funny and runs til 13 March. And I've seen Harry Potter 7.1 twice. While I appreciate all Jonny's shrewd remarks, I still pretty much loved every second.

And then it's been working and working. The day job, some interviews, a comic strip or three, a magazine feature, a play and a world of pitches... It's feast or famine in this job, but all told, I'm knackered. Whited out on Christmas Day and went to bed with a migraine for most of the afternoon, then spent the next day carefully not doing anything. I start a part-time job in a couple of weeks that I'm hoping will make life slightly less fraught and more orderly.

Meanwhile, the Dr has been slaving away at the paperwork so that we can move house. And once that's done she can have a second cat - one she's already selected. Lots of changes in the air, and lots we have to do, but things are on the up... It's been a hell of a year, and I'm quite glad to see the back of 2010. But 2011 is already looking exciting. Let's see what can go wrong...