You may be wondering why we decided to create a 2 minute long film about a crew of space teddies that mine cake for a living and eventually, and of course inevitably, come across a race of evil space doughnuts that have a taste for our ursidae friends.
Thundermaus began life on Friday, 14th October 2011 as part of the Annual ‘Digital Video 48 Film Challange’. To explain, the 'DV Mission 48 Hour Film Challenge' is a Portsmouth, UK based event where teams enter into a challenge to create a very short film (filmed, edited, rendered and handed back in to DV HQ) within exactly 48 hours. The conditions are that it can be no longer than 2 minutes, and all teams must use the same title, genre and line of dialogue (a sentence that has to be used somewhere in the script) in their film. These three specifications are chosen at random in front of all teams at the challenge opening ceremony just before the 5 pm 'kick off'. This year all teams had to use the following specs:
Title - Thundermaus
Genre - Techno-Horror
Line of Dialogue - 'Let Them Eat Cake'
When I got the phone call from one of the team letting me know what the three specifications were, my first thought was ‘What the 'frick' are we going to make out of that!’ So I started googling ‘Techno Horror’ with the idea that maybe we could make a short about an evil DJ called Thundermaus that used techno as a way of mind control. However when the team got back they had already come up with an interesting idea...why don’t we use puppets?
Stuffed toys no less.
After the rest of the team arrived, much smoking, drinking, scribbling, drawing, googling, shouting, storyboarding and vying for attention commenced and carried on until the early hours of the morning. Eventually, with the basic idea there (teddies in space) it was time to catch some zzzzz’s and prepare for the horror that was shopping for props, making the sets and then filming the bloody thing.
Without giving too much
away, our story drew inspiration from a certain cult classic film set in outer
space. Our teddies would land their ship ‘Thundermaus’ on a planet to mine for
cake (the reason being we had to get the line ‘Let them eat cake’ in there
somewhere). They would then eventually encounter the murderous alien race (that
would be more at home in the baked goods section then space) that inhabited the
planet and would then cause havoc for Cap’n and the crew.
To cut a long story short, after splitting up for half a day and grabbing all the things we needed for the sets, obvious essentials such as fake blood, bagels, teddies, lots and lots of spray paint and shaving cream to name a few (it was a bit like Challenge Annika really) the time came to sit down and start sticking bits of card together, making costumes for teddies out of tin foil and electrical tape, and turning a Chinese latern into a spaceship.
We finished prop building by about 4 pm and I can’t lie, a bit of panic was starting to set in at this point. It was 4 pm which meant we had exactly 25 hours left to film and edit. It sounds a lot, but in reality time flies by at lightning speed, especially when you spend 2 hours alone trying to pop a balloon filled with shaving foam with a pointy stick, hanging it from a mop end over a bath, with a space scene hung up at the ceiling. Here's a little insight into the filming...
By about 12 pm on Sunday we finished filming and the raw footage was left in Jayson the Director's capable hands to edit (with a bit of squawking ‘Hurrryy uuppp!!’ from yours truly in his ear). I think editing finished at about 4 pm and we all gathered round the computer to watch the final cut.....and gaped in horror as the sound played with no picture. Much faffing ensued until somebody remembered that the exact same thing happened last year and could be resolved with a flick of a switch (or something). After that little drama, our film played out in all its glory. We watched it a couple of times and then remembered that we did still have to submit it at some point so half the team drove down to DV HQ and handed it in, whilst the rest of us relaxed. Job done.
At 7 pm it was time to don our glad rags (e.g. something that wasn't covered in fake blood or pizza) and mosey on down to the glamorous venue which was the Gaiety Suite in Clarence Pier. Our team, The Adams Collective, ended up winning the award for ‘Best Inspired Special Effects’. We were also nominated for everything else...except Best Actor.....sorry Jayson....maybe next year you’ll make the cut :)
So, here it is, the final cut. I hope you enjoy watching it as much as we enjoyed making it!
Our teddies turned out to be quite popular so we are currently in the process of prepping to start filming a series of Thundermaus episodes, The new episodes will feature survivors from episode one as well as introducing a few new characters and new baddies to hinder Cap'n and the crew's quest for cake. So stayed tuned to this blog for future updates!
