Thundermaus – The Pepperdine Method – Production Report

Omega Centre - Dv Missio n HQ

A year on and our Thundermaus concept was re-entered once more into the DV Mission 48hr Film Challenge Festival 2012. The main purpose really was to gain audience reaction.

I saw this Thundermaus sequel as the second pilot episode, for the proposed Thundermaus Tv Series. 

This year’s 48hr brief was as follows:

Title : The Pepperdine Method

Genre: Creature Feature

Dialogue: I got 99 Problems...

As usual, it was a monumental task to get the ideas off paper and onto screen
-taking two solid days to formulate a script, construct new sets, build props, film it all, voice over, compose new music and edit it altogether ! 

 Sets under construction:  Professor Pepperdines Laboratory. 

The smaller box is the whole lab, for long distance shots, 
the larger being the acual front door 
for close ups.

Let it be made clear; although the props (such as the space ship, its bridge interior set and Brian the robot) had all been built prior to the festival (for the projected Thundermaus Series) the interior/exterior of the lab set, the jungle sets and the story itself were all made especially for the 48hr film festival. 

 Proffessor Pepperdines table, complete with glowing lab equipment

That Friday evening, after several hours of wrestling out ideas, (based around the given dialogue and a ditch)  Robin suggested a homage to Avatar and Heidi suggested mixing it with Dr Doolittle, which all sounded great. It was then just a question of how to create the Avatar look. We attempted to accomplish this by using ultra violet lighting in somebodies back garden but we simply didn’t have enough to make this fully work. We had insufficient lighting, cameras, and staff but with time against us we thought sod it and gave it go anyway. As it was, we did have a jungle set, mainly the garden at the back of the workshop in Eastney, where the sets and filming were all produced. 

Props ready to go, such as a minature of the Thundermaus Space ship

In fact, this is a market place down on Cromwell Road, known as Shaketrick, Indoor Market and bizarre, where a local community of traders, sell retro clothing, ornaments, handmade jewellery and furniture. In the back is the workshop, where yours truly has set up base to build the sets needed for the Dv Mission and the proposed Thundermaus series. It’s not ideal and most of the time, I am freezing my ass off but it is a space to get these things done. 

  Becky Sadler Working on Avatar creature features  

Damp here is the main concern, which runs havoc with storing the sets. There’s more leaks here than a submarine with screen doors and the bridge set (made of corrugated card) is starting to warp in the intense cold and moister. 
 

 Bridge interior - made from corrugated cardboard 

So not to interfere with the other market traders, I’ve resorted to fixing it high up on a wall out of the way but I still need to address the problem of condensation. 

 Bridge interior - mounted on wall !

 From left to right, Heidi Cook, Tom Mayhem and Robin Shroom

Anyway, beyond the damp workshop is the garden, which technically isn’t part of the property at all but belongs to the derelict café next door. Never the less, we needed to film in a jungle and this discarded overgrown mess of a back yard, was the next best thing. So we added jelly monsters and multi-colour mushrooms and Uv paint on the leaves and made the most of it – Avatar Stylee...

 Heidi Cook with Proffessor Pepperdine, under UV light !

Given longer, we might have attained the proper Avatar look – but with limited resources (we only had one UV light) and filming in absolute darkness; trying to get the trees to glow exactly like Avatar was beyond our means.

 Avatar :  well,  sort of ...

Such a shot would probably have taken much longer than the parameters of the Dv mission would allow, which is part of the incentive of why we want to do a series. Regardless of the limitations, we set our noses to the grind stone and got on with building the sets and props needed for the story.

 Becky Sadler Working on Avatar Butterflies 

This in itself took most of Saturday to complete by heir director, while producer Becky Sadler and actress Heidi Cook worked on the creatures that would feature heavily in this story. Becky and Heidi are both artisans in their own right. Collecting a varied selection of jelly snakes and other nick-nacks to dress our sets with and then adding googly eyes where appropriate. 

 Heidi Cook working on Proffessor Pepperdine

Heidi has many strings to her bow; as an accomplished actress and writer, her talents also included her work on creating Deloris, (particularly those long eyelashes) which gave the bear her character. She is also responsible for creating the look of Professor Pepperdine, who will most likely be a staple character from here on in. 

 Captain Ted - Designed by Becky Sadler and Heidi Cook

 Professor Pepperdine - Designed by Heidi Cook

  Deloris - Designed by Heidi Cook

Meanwhile sound engineer Tom Mayhem got on with the task of making the music, with the help of Robin Shroom, who helped source all the sound effects and got the soundscapes lined up, so I only had to drop them into the editing software later on. 

  Tom Mayhem painting mushrooms with flourescent paint, for our Avatar landscape

Producer,  Becky Sadler

 Actress, Heidi Cook - Supplying the film crew with scotch broth

However, by re-iterating the same idea, we ran the risk  of being disqualified, as the rules are quite strict on this (the whole point of 48 is to make a film in 48 hrs). Technically we did do that. We simply bent a few rules and did what some of the other teams had done time and time again and sourced our own props well in advance. (one of these teams even has access to numerous BBC props).  

 The Thundermaus Ship - made from a chinese lantern and re-enforced with fibre glass

 Thundermaus miniature

 Brian the Robot - Fibre glass with Radio Controll

 Bridge interior - made from corrugated cardboard

 Items such as the space ship, the bridge set and Brian the robot, had been in production for the past year. Even the miniature space ship (seen during landing and take-off) was still being glued together ready for filming, whilst the rest, was all 48. 



Towards the end of this two day marathon however, things took a downward turn. Tensions were running high and words said in haste (mostly by heir director) who had spent the most of that year staring at cardboard and gluing bits of plastic together in a damp and grimy workshop with no central heating, fighting the intense cold, whilst working towards this night and beyond...

Cameraman : Robin Shroom

Sooner or later,  I guess something had to give and it did, when we almost came to blows during editing, literally with only 10 minutes spare before the film had to be handed in ! Heir director had a lot on his mind at that time and lost his temper with his beloved film crew.

 Editing - Stress !

Into the night and fog : Becky Sadler and Robin Shroom

How did such a simple idea such as Thundermaus become such an impossible burden to bear? 

 Dv Mission Awards Ceremony - South Parade Pier 

Please excuse the pun but when it came to Sunday night, my crew were pretty fed up with being directed at and wanted to direct themselves, particularly in the direction of the bar. So when our film finally came up on that big screen at South Parade Pier, the sound was awful, nobody could really follow the story anyway and to top it all, after all the bickering and swearing, we didn’t even win a sodding plastic trophy ! 

 Now I know how Spielburg felt after being passed off an Oscar for the Color Purple..!

I think we all felt it was a bit of a downer when we didn’t win anything (being nominated for one award and not even getting that, was perhaps the final nail in the coffin as far as the future of Thundermaus was concerned).

Heir Director with Suzanne Illidge (right) - Not long before we became an item...

If I could have taken back those hasty words, then maybe I would have but I had a lot on my plate. Afterall,  I had spent an entire year of my life devoted to getting Thundermaus off the ground as a Tv series. I had spent countless hours, days and months re-designing, and re-building the Thundermaus ship, made numerous set designs, written loads of story ideas, sourced materials, created the animatronics for Brian the Robot, was then forced to move from one workshop to another (!) whilst constantly being let down by people who said they would help but invariably never did. All that aside, when it comes to being a sore loser, put it this way: there was absolutely nothing wrong with our entry. It was fast, funny and paced along nicely. Maybe it was too much to cram into two minutes. Maybe our story was way too complex for such a short space of time. Like most sequels, it’s hard to improve on the original, unless one has time and money to make it work. Also, the judges had to plough thru 20 odd films in a very short period of time. 

 Jinxe Prowse (DV Mission Co-ordinator)  

 

As Jinxe Prowse (DV Mission Co-ordinator) observed, ‘…most film competitions spend several weeks after the event to judge their entrees, we only had a couple of hours and the competition was of a very high standard…’

I always like to think that we can learn from our mistakes and try to improve on them but it’s hard to make things work when people don’t toe the line and I so very much needed help over this past year. Perhaps we should have gone for something totally different and maybe gotten a few  more nominations but considering so much work has gone into Thundermaus already, it seems to me, that we should keep pushing the idea forward regardless of whether we get a couple of plastic Oscars or not.

So on goes the series, be it with my current film crew (or whoever still wants to work with the idea) the next step will be to work on the episodes we have, refine the narrative better, restore some of the shots we cut out, improve on what didn’t work, play with the dialogue a bit more, put some of the original music score back in and move beyond the constraints of the Dv Mission to broader horizons etc. If we get this bit right then it will be worth taking it to the next level and start approaching funding bodies, or production companies or Tv Networks with our idea and explore it’s potential...

Think about all those no-budget films that never had enough funding and yet they still became successful. Their ideas were strong enough that eventually they received the monies they were due and were re-made, bigger and better. Look at Evil Dead 2 compared to its original, (it was a remake of Evil Dead 1 but with vastly better production values) Mad Max 2 was vastly superior to Mad Max 1, even Southpark was pretty basic when it first began.

 

 Promo material - The Future of Thundermaus ? Who knows ...

 

 
So I plough on, sticking bits of plastic together, sticking card together and sticking a super-glued finger up to the walls of apathy, wade regardless, across the strong and turbulent currents of failure and keep on doing what I love…

JS ADAMS December 2012

 

View Thundermaus: "The Pepperdine Method"

here 

­Special Thanx to :

Heidi Cook  - voice over (Deloris and Professor Pepperdine), Puppeteer. Writer

Robin Shroom - Cameraman, lighting, dry ice, Key Grip, Dop. Writer

Rebecca Sadler - Producer, Puppeteer, prop designer, prop assistant, grip.

Tom Mayhem - Music, Sound FX, prop assistant,

Eddy Mills - moral support,

Suzanne Illidge - prop assistant, moral support, hugs etc

Jayson Scott Adams – Heir Director, Writer, 

prop design /construction, editing, whips, abuse.

and

Kate Thatcher and the Shaketric Massive for all their support and allowing us to use their indoor market.