Cinders on BBC Look North

The BBC Look North crew came to Sundown Adventure Land to meet some of the cast and crew of Cinders. Here’s the report, in case you missed it.

Lights! Camera! Panto!

After 8 months of production, our concept trailer CINDERS is now ready!!! Unlike a short “normal” trailer, this is a longer proof-of-concept piece. CINDERS has not been made yet, this was a test – a BIG test!  Think of it as a summary of what CINDERS could be…

Every shot in the video is from a scene that was filmed in its entirety. Now we have over 35 scenes to use to evaluate our production, story, shooting style, visual effects and look and feel; after all CINDERS is nothing like any other film!  With the release of this trailer, we can now prepare for the filming of CINDERS taking place in June and July 2010.

But there isn’t JUST this trailer – CINDERS is a musical, we are still finishing off a couple of test songs ready for release… very soon…

Now watch the magic happen!……

10 years since we started TESBY

It is Ten years since we started Filming our first Star Wars spoof, The Empire Strikes Backyard!!! Little Luke was barely nine months old! Our resident Poet Laureate of the Yard recounts the story that was the making of TESBY. We dare you to understand…. [Read more]

Stranger than science fiction… SCI-FI CAPITAL EMBRACES SPOOF

This weekend, some of the TENCLO cast travelled to Cardiff to see it screened at the Chapter Arts Centre, where it was given a rapturous welcome by staff and audience alike.

Being the home of Dr Who and Torchwood, Cardiff is no stranger to science fiction. But this weekend, it saw Backyard Productions’ own spin on the genre, and from the response, it wasn’t quite what they were expecting.

The Chapter Arts Centre showed its modern image was more than just a lick of paint by screening The Emperor’s New Clones as part of their Fan-Tasia season. Many of the cast had driven for hours to see it on the silver screen again, and nervously awaited the response. Luckily for them it was laughter all round from the opening crawl to the end credits. Those that hadn’t seen it before were impressed by the visual effects and original humour.

Afterwards, Darren answered questions on the film regarding matters such as time and costs. Then, before settling down to drinks at the famous bar, the guests were ushered into another cinema. Some youngsters had started playing Lego Star Wars on the big screen! It was surreal, but maybe it will inspire them too.

Backyard Productions thanks Steve Sullivan and everyone at the Chapter Arts Centre for showing such enthusiasm for its work.

TENCLO in Wales

Get your popcorn ready… Backyard Productions’ biggest Star Wars film is showing on the big screen again, at the Chapter Art Centre, Cardiff on 14 November 2009.

CLONYY yng Nghymru

The Chapter Arts Centre in Cardiff, one of the largest and most innovative arts centres in Europe, will be showing our Star Wars-spoof, The Emperor’s New Clones, as part of a series of fan films. And what’s more, to see our fan-film sequel on the big screen again will cost you nothing, but you will still need to book a ticket (click here).

“This is a really excellent opportunity to showcase our work,” says Darren Scales, Backyard Productions’ ‘Bwlio Gweithredol’, “and it is always great to work with people that show such strong commitment to film.”

And you won’t have long to wait – it will be on Saturday 14th November at 3 o’clock in the afternoon. As if that wasn’t all, you’ll get to meet some of the crew that made the film. We at Backyard Productions would like to say a big diolch yn fawr to the folk at Chapter.

Time:    3 pm
Date:     Saturday 14th November
Place:    Chapter Arts Centre, Canton, Cardiff

Links:
Chapter Arts Centre
The Emperor’s New Clones

Cloniau Newydd yr Ymerawdwr

Dreams and Magic at Sundown

If you’ve ever been on Facebook, you’ll have done it; looked through the pictures of someone you haven’t actually met in ages. Nothing unusual in that, but this one had me particularly transfixed. She was standing in front of an olde world sweet shop, waving her arm at her young son who was taking the picture. For me, it was a very strange coincidence. There was no doubt, this was where I was going to be spending the following weekend, and what a weekend it turned out to be.

Of course, the brave and tragic stories were being played out well before I arrived. The Backyard Productions team were busy setting up their very odd devices to start filming at a new location – Sundown Adventureland. This is a theme park in Nottinghamshire aimed at the under tens, and they create such imaginative settings that it seemed the logical choice for our make-believe fairytale world.

This was always going to be one of the greatest challenges we had ever faced. From day one, our small group was having to deal with a large supporting cast to get the right atmosphere of a bustling town. Luckily they are were all willing to get stuck in and join in all the fun, and Caroline was amazing to get them all into the right costumes! We had to set up a scaffolding framework and platform to get a high shot over the castle walls into the courtyard below. At one point they had to put a ladder up against one of the towers, as the Prince clung to it.

Although most of the filming on the first day was done in a little corner away from ride entrances – the theme park was fully open during all this – some of the most complicated scenes had to be filmed with people going in and out of rides around us. Each of us was carefully directed by Dom and Julie, so it looked like a bustling marketplace or a rhythmical dance number. Some of us were yelling out like market traders and some of us were just walking past pretending to buy orange and melons, sometimes even in front of the main action.

The Tractor Ride in the park is one of the most popular ones, but we took over part of the entrance to film Cinders’ house exterior. The little ones wanting to see all the farmyard displays were bemused by the sight of our pantomime dames hanging out their bloomers. One particular scene involving a fight took place in the Robin Hood ride, the pirate ship, the Wild West area as well as the market. If you’ve ever done filming you’ll know how difficult that is, with all the starts and stops and doing it over and over again for different angles.

It was in the market that a lot of the more complex scenes took place, including the opening song. Doing very tiring dance routines over and over couldn’t have been easy for our performers. Even my very mundane bit had me out of breath after the tenth take!

The scene that was the most technically complex and challenging, involving a the same dedicated supporting cast and lots of very sophisticated-looking equipment was another song. To get the right effect, we had to move until we were told to stop and remember exactly where that was, before continuing on cue. We then had to wait for it to get dark, return to the same spot and position and stay perfectly still while the main action was being recorded, with the aid of a huge spotlight. On the cue, we then had to keep going as if nothing had happened. Some people had to stop dead while walking past and stay like that for the whole song. Of course, I had it easy, because my group was just standing around chatting. And where was I standing? Next to the same olde world sweet shop that my friend was posing outside in the Facebook picture.

Apply to take part in Cinders

If you’d like to be involved in the Cinders project download the application form here, fill it in, and email it to the address given in the application. Pre production will be from January to June 2010 with filming in June and July.

Cinders Trailer Cast and Crew

Filming for the Cinders Trailer is all over. We’ve all put in lots of work and produced a mountain of footage for Darren to get through. Thank you, everyone, for making it happen so far. You can all give yourselves a pat on the back, and here’s a big thank you from everyone at Backyard Productions.
[Read more]

“That’s a Wrap” A magical weekend summed up in a fairytale

THE ENCHANTED FOREST

written by Kevin Harper
(film references provided by Nick Long and Mark Scales)

It was just an ordinary marquee, and I was on an ordinary camping chair with little Ben asleep on my chest. The only sounds were the occasional leaves and conkers dropping onto the white plastic roof and the tweeting of birds in the trees. The smell of pine cones and needles wafted in, which Ben savoured with each little breath. Suddenly there was a rustling by the open entrance beside us. A squirrel was creeping up to see if we would stir, fascinated by the array of strange objects on the grass. He was probably more interested in the banana bread half unwrapped from its foil or the flapjacks carefully shut away in their tin, but that was not all that was there. A monitor was protected in a green plastic box tipped on its side, resting on a tea trolley. There were other boxes with a cornucopia of leads spilling over the edges, strange clothes wrapped in plastic on one of the many other camping chairs. From somewhere not far into the forest, the silence was broken by a human voice:

“Cut!”

This was no ordinary forest, this was Pinewood; Pinewood Studios, or more specifically, the location gardens back lot at Pinewood Studios. In another part of this fairytale world the magic was happening once again. There we were, camped within a stone’s throw of The Devil’s Breath from The World is Not Enough; and not far away was the lake along which there was to be a clashing of swords, the forest path where an old woman was to be gathering firewood, the stone overgrown bridge where our heroine was to retrace Connery’s steps in From Russia with Love, running from the man she only just met a few hours before in the woods.

Ben and I needed that nap to save up the energy we needed for the things to come. We were to throw stones into the water with a ‘plop’ from the little wooden bridge many famous steps had crossed. We were to watch the fountain from the water’s edge where many a period-costumed artiste had taken afternoon tea. We were to walk along the manicured yew-hedged avenue featured in The Tudors, into the eclectic building of constantly-changing styles. Firstly it was an art deco conservatory with a back garden we intruded on, next it was a pink modernistic affair before gently turning into a Georgian mansion around the corner. This has been there for years, like the deeply-rooted tree outside, but a wooden door with painted-on brickwork left you wondering which bits had not.

Inside we were to see the domed foyer with awards behind glass screens and pictures lining the corridors from all the best movies from the best epochs of cinema. You got a glimpse of what it must be to have been there; the bulky cameras with canapé-platter reels, puny scaffolding poles supporting solid-looking structures. The stars had engrained their presence here.

But the most fascinating spell had been cast a little way from our encampment. The enchanters had created a fairly simple-looking street scene. Even little Ben could understand that it was two-dimensional and held up by a climbing frame of scaffolding, but there was something more. Each detail of these stone façades had been conjured so perfectly that, as you trod on the stone steps, unevenly weathered by so many boots, it still took you by surprise to hear the hollow clunk of wood under your feet.

And, as something was brewing in the cave, the Backyard team were mixing together their own blend of the real and the fantastical to make our own indelible mark on this surreal place. As the conkers intermittently fell on the roof, the birds sang in the trees and hopped along the fallen leaves in the late September sunshine, we drifted from one dreamland to another, keeping one eye open for the squirrel.

Cinders at Pinewood Studios

As you may already have read in Kevin’s great post, Backyard Productions recently had a great weekend filming at Pinewood Studios for our current production, ‘Cinders’. They have large, well maintained gardens, which you may recognise from such films as ‘From Russia With Love’, ‘The World is Not Enough’ and ‘The Great Train Robbery’. We also filmed in the woodland right to the back of the Pinewood Studios site and in a cave, known as ‘The Grotto’, which featured in ‘The World is Not Enough’ as Renard’s (Robert Carlyle) lair.

Over the course of a full weekend, footage was shot for a number of different scenes, from Cinders and the Prince meeting in the forest, to the witch and her henchman in her dark and smoky cave. Here are a few photos for your viewing pleasure.