Dragons Slain While You Wait

When I think back on the movies that I enjoyed as a teenager, it's clear that my tastes were not sophisticated enough to be very discerning. To me any exciting piece of cinematic razzle dazzle was an afternoon well spent, especially in the company of friends. And yet, when I look back, though I can now recognise a dud when I see it, every one still holds a lot of joy for me.

So amongst such gems as Raiders of the Lost Ark, The Empire Strikes Back, ET, Goonies, and Gremlins, I still hold great affection for Popeye (Robin Williams, RIP), Condorman, Superman III, and today's reviewed movie, Dragonslayer. They each had something that made them resonate.

This post is part of the ongoing saga of reviews of 80s fantasy movies of my youth, also simul-reviewed by my mate Pete aka Jetsimian, and his mate Jamas.

Sir Ralph Richardson's performance definitely raises everyone's game.

After a band of travellers, led by Valerian (Caitlin Clarke) plea for the sorcerer Ulrich (a brief but beautiful performance from Ralph Richardson) to help save their village from the dragon Vermithrax Pejorative, a dickhead, Tyrian, swaggers in and ruins their plans when he somewhat accidentally (it's complicated) kills the sorcerer. Galen, the sorcerer's apprentice, steps in to take his place.

For some reason Peter MacNicol doesn't like to talk about his experiences on the set of Dragonslayer

Galen is earnestly played by Peter MacNicol. You may know him as the quirky maths mentor in Numb3rs, or the quirky lawyer in Ally McBeal, or the quirky gallery owner in Ghostbusters II. Here he is much less quirky, and, though initially cocky when he takes the mantle of Master Sorcerer, he is soon confronted with hard won responsibility, and he grows up fast.

Caitlin Clarke may be responsible for my ongoing affection for tomboyish brunettes

Valerian, a young woman masquerading as a boy to avoid being chosen as a dragon sacrifice, leads the villagers and Galen to Vermithrax's cave, where he causes half a mountain to block the entrance. Celebrations ensue, but we're only a third through the movie, so perhaps they are being a tad premature. Vermithrax soon makes his continuing existence felt. Religion fails to do anything, as a praying priest, a pre-Emperor Palpatine Ian McDiarmid, is the next to be fed upon.

Full scale dragon limbs and heads are also judiciously used by the special effects team

This is where the artistry of ILM comes to the fore, as we catch brief glimpses of Vermithrax's grand figure as he stalks from the cave and glides across the sunset.

The American accents from the two young leads are slightly annoying

When the King's daughter (embarrassingly badly acted by Chloe Salaman) gets her turn at the sacrificial stake, things get critical, and Galen is sent into the cave, though not before he admits his love for Valerian. Though they did only meet a week earlier, and exchanged maybe three sentences together.

The weakest scene in the movie

A rather weak battle with Tyrian at the cave entrance could've been edited out entirely, as it adds very little. It's a notable weak spot in what is otherwise an excellently directed movie. Director Matthew Robbins's strengths do not lie in fight choreography.

Vermithrax moves like a stalking bat in some shots. It's quite intimidating

The imagery from this movie that sticks with me the most, that resonates in my memory the strongest and keeps it listed as one of my favourite ever fantasy films, is the incredible design and stop motion animation work of Vermithrax the dragon. And when I say "stop motion" in fact it was an early iteration of a technique coined as "go-motion" where the moving elements were artificially blurred during each frame to add realistic smoothness to the animation. It is arguably the most effective use of that technique in its history. Coupled with the masterful grasp of the organic motion of animals, it is a tour de force.

There's no more definitive a dragon design than Vermithrax Pejorative

The jeopardy portrayed in this sequence is outstanding. You really feel like Galen is risking his life in every scene, thanks to excellent direction, MacNicol's performance (often entirely against bluescreen), and menacing animation of the dragon, both miniature and full size.

Galen's first volley at the dragon is unsuccessful, and it's only later that he realises his old master was not dead at all, but magically hidden amongst his artifacts, so he could be carried along with them on the journey. And when the old Sorcerer reappears, his plan to defeat Vermithrax at last requires another sacrifice, but this time a true one, freely given. His own.

Though the visual effects are dated, they remain impressive

The storyline of Dragonslayer adheres closely to a fairy tale. Kings, Princesses, Sorcerers, a plucky Apprentice, a fair Maiden, the slaying of a dragon. You can't get more storybook, and the mix is handled as well as might be expected, especially for the time when an epic scale in movies had so recently become the new default standard. This was high adventure, beautifully realised, and taken seriously. The only thing that kept it from greatness was the cynicism of audiences at the time, not ready to view fantasy as a source of genuine drama. If they had, Dragonslayer would be well deserving of fondness and respect.

Krull To Be Kind

After the VCR and video rental boom, and during the sell-through affordable video cassette era of the 90s, I decided that I wanted to have my very own collection of ten Fantasy Films that I had enjoyed during my teenage years. These were, in chronological order of release, Dragonslayer, The Dark Crystal, Krull, The Neverending Story, Ladyhawke, Legend, Labyrinth, The Princess Bride, Willow, and Dragonheart. Most of them were cheesy as all get-out, but I didn't know that at the time. For each one I was the perfect age to fall for them, hook line and sinker. Dragonheart, a 90s movie, was added in to round it up to ten, and a couple of years later I decided it probably shouldn't have been included in that list, I never really felt great love for it.

When DVD came along, I was very excited as one by one each of these movies were released in high(ish) quality widescreen, with copious extras included. By 2005 I had amassed the entire collection I'd dreamed of, and more.

I hadn't seen Krull since it had last been on TV, fifteen years at least, and I eagerly lapped it up. Did it hold up? Holy crap, no it did not. And I've rewatched it again now for this, a more formal review made at the suggestion of and alongside my mate JetSimian, and also in association with his mate Jamas Enright.

It's high fantasy. It has Kings and Princesses and fantastical beasts, in a classic plot carefully following the hero's journey. It has a bombastic score by the appropriately named James Horner (he loves his brass) introduced in a scene with a giant misshapen thing flying towards the planet Krull. This is the Black Fortress, in which lives the Beast. That's about as creative as this movie gets for names.

Prince Colwyn and Princess Lyssa. Not pictured: Lyssa's real voice.

Meanwhile a marriage is to take place between Prince Colwyn and Princess Lyssa. That's a lot of Ys, maybe they're Welsh. Lyssa is played by Lysette Anthony, who I had a little crush on when she was on a British sitcom, but here has been cruelly dubbed with a horrible American accent that is incredibly distracting. Colwyn is played by Ken Marshall, a blandly attractive and charisma-free actor who has done nothing of particular note either before or since.

The Prince and Princess go through a marriage ritual that involves fire on their hands. This is IMPORTANT, though it kind of feels like it was jammed into the final draft of the script a week before shooting.

Slayers. Their single-shot weapons are like muskets with bayonets.

The Beast has sent out his soldiers, Slayers, suitably creepy creatures with an exo-skeletal carapace. They attack the wedding and kill everyone in the castle, and kidnap the princess. Why? It's never really made clear. That's just what baddies do.

But one man survived the slaughter, and no prizes for guessing it's Prince Colwyn. He is discovered by the sage Ynyr (yeah, definitely Welsh) played by Freddie Jones, who plays the role of "wise old man who provides exposition".

Remember to hold it the right way round, to avoid owies.

Colwyn must retrieve the Glaive, the fabled weapon that is in all the promotional materials, the five bladed frisbee star thingamajig, which I very much would like to have a replica of my own one day. Colwyn has to reach into the lava to get it. Why is it there? Don't know. Just is. Because. Cue slow motion, soft focus sparkles, and choral chants.

Alun Armstrong acts circles around everyone else in the movie.

As they travel they pick up a cavalcade of actors, known, unknown, and future stars, including David Battley as Ergo the Magnificent, a wizard who can turn himself into various animals and has a penchant for gooseberries; Robbie Coltrane, Alun Armstrong, Todd Carty, and most famously Liam Neeson, as a band of escaped prisoners; and Rel the Cyclops, played quite brilliantly by tall Carry On actor Bernard Bresslaw and who has more character development than almost anyone else in the whole film. It's a Wizard of Oz kind of enlistment of tag-alongs and cannon fodder.

Bernard Bresslaw couldn't see very well, yet ran full tilt through forests, swamps, and rock strewn deserts.

Because the Black Fortress appears in a different location every day (quite a cool concept, I think), they need to find someone who can tell them where it will be the next morning, so they enlist the help of a blind Seer and his young boy assistant, who take them to the murky Soundstage Swamp.

In quite an impressively spectacular battle, the Slayers attack, and here's where some of the more memorable images, which held 13 year old me transfixed, occur. The Slayers' deaths, with their carapaces cracking open and the squids inside escaping underground, are really cool! The Changeling taking over the Seer and fooling them, only for Rel to race along and save the day, was a really thrilling sequence! By far the scenes in the swamp are the most effective of all.

Not what it looks like. Depending on what you think it looks like.

After the death of the Seer everyone is very sad for about three seconds, then they shake that off and head out of the swamp, happy and laughing.

Let's pause here to count how many women have been in the movie so far: One. And she's held captive, alone, for the majority of the film, with barely any dialogue. Princess Lyssa, with her shock of Nicole Kidman curls, is having a boring time of it living inside something resembling a conch shell, with nowhere comfortable to sit down.

There are only two women of note in this movie. The damsel in distress who needs rescuing...

The Beast, meanwhile, sounds a bit bored by it all, waiting for her to capitulate to his demands that she love him. Not very seductive. Though maybe he's hampered by the fact that he seems to live in a different aspect ratio to everyone else.

"Fear me, for I live in the 4:3 anamorphic dimension!"

Without the Seer they're buggered. Or are they? Conveniently there's another way to find where the Black Fortress will be. A fancy lady, played by Francesca Annis, lives in the middle of a spiderweb, where a giant stop-motion spider guards her. So the second female character with dialogue is also imprisoned, and in her scene they mostly talk about how tragically beautiful she is. Or was. Or something. This movie fails the Bechdel Test quite badly.

...and the self-exiled Nun.

The Widow of the Web sequence has always been the scene I've disliked the most; it's too laboured, the pacing is horrible, it's far too melodramatic (which is really saying something for this film), and it has a big poorly-animated spider in it. This was also about the time I started to get annoyed at stop-motion as being too distracting and outdated (I deliberately didn't watch the original Clash of the Titans because of my attitude towards stop-motion).

The only tension in this sequence is in the threads of the web. (rimshot)

After some overwrought nonsense dialogue, Freddie Jones's character also dies, just after providing the location of the Black Fortress in his last moments. The hero must now go on alone, to the Iron Desert. This leads to the best piece of music in the whole movie: The Ride of the Fire Mares. This is the other key moment in the movie that stood out in my memory, and it is still quite fun indeed, though it also has very poor bluescreen effects.

The Fire Mare sequence probably goes on too long, but it is quite beautiful.

They reach the Black Fortress with moments to spare, where Rel the cyclops dies while holding the door open. Well, of course. Noble sacrifices seem to be two-a-penny in this tale. Robbie Coltrane's character dies in this scene, and then Liam Neeson gets an ignominious death soon after. Most of the deaths in this movie are random, motivated by bad luck. None of the characters have any discernible personality, and their only roles seem to be to fill out the crowd scenes, and be sacrificial lambs during the adventure. Not to mention the numerous anonymous red-shirts who get knocked off in each battle. This movie is very poorly written, on every level. It's one of those films where I'd think "I can write something better than this" and I'd be right, I really could.

In this magical kingdom, all spells are cast with a constipated grimace.

Finally they reach the cell where Princess Lyssa is being held, and Colwyn has a reason to use his Glaive weapon at last. Remember that? The bladed thing he got at the very start, is in all the promotional material, and was seemingly so very important? And do you know how he uses it? As a glorified circular saw, to open the prison cell door.

This is how a hero saves a Princess - with power tools.

He does then use it against the Beast, but that's a double bluff because it doesn't kill him, only wounds. The actual successful way to get him is with the fire. What fire? You remember, the flame, that was part of the marriage ritual! I told you it was important! Colwyn uses that to finally destroy the Beast!

Only a true king can set his hands on fire and not be harmed. I think that's the point of the whole movie.

Wait, Lyssa had that the whole time? She had the means to defeat the Beast, literally in the palm of her hand, and yet she did nothing? What?

The Beast defeated, they race out of the Fortress. Surviving member count: Alun Armstrong, Todd Carty, Ergo the Magnificent, the Seer's boy, the Prince and Princess. Not much to rebuild a kingdom with. But they do all live happily ever after! Probably.

Note how each actor is looking in a different direction.

In a world with no villages or towns, with people who wander about and join any travelling band of wanderers that happen along, where nothing important happens for hundreds of years until the whole planet hangs in the balance over one incident involving an ugly beast who kidnapped a Princess for no clear purpose, and loads of people die quite randomly... I don't think I'd want to live there.

This script needed another couple of drafts. We needed to see some of the Prince and Princess together before the wedding so we cared about them. We needed a better motivation for the Beast to exist and to want to kidnap the Princess. We needed some proper motivation for why the gang of misfits join the quest. Every character had to have clear personalities that motivated their actions and made them lovable so we were affected by their deaths, which needed to be for more than just convenient plot reasons. And we needed a Princess worth fighting for, someone with spunk, intelligence, resourcefulness, and a prettier accent, and she and the Prince needed to defeat the Beast together.

As cheesy fantasy movies go, this is the cheesiest in my list of ten. It does not hold up too well. I once had the idea of getting a hold of all the original footage, including alternative takes, and re-editing it to modern sensibilities, updating the visual effects, adjusting some of the scenes to be more dynamic or improve the storytelling. But it may be that this movie is beyond help. They tried, just not very hard. It's a clumsy, melodramatic, poorly acted, poorly written little adventure of no consequence.

But it's fun, and sometimes that's enough.

Safe At Last. In A Prison. Surrounded By Zombies

In order to dig myself free of this hole I've found myself in, compromises have had to be made. I am in a temporary living arrangement of a boarding house. Only it's not really one at all.

The term "Boarding House" may conjure up images of a large facility with multiple bedrooms and a communal area filled with couches and armchairs and a ping pong table. Or perhaps a multi-storey house with a shared kitchen and big yard. But instead what I'm in is a crappy house, which would ordinarily be listed as "condemned", where the doors don't close properly, the windows don't open properly, the washing machine shakes the building off its foundations, the kitchen is so small it can only fit three people, an outside toilet, and a bathroom with poor drainage.

This is a three bedroom home which has had its living room artificially divided up into two bedrooms, so there is no communal area at all, and its an overcrowded space at the best of times. Each of the residents are equally as damaged and broken as I find myself to be, but in different and more unpredictable ways, which leads to constant confrontation. Nobody here is a listener, they all just talk over each other, and never seem to get anything done. Though I am a listener, I have to count myself just as guilty in the non-achievement ranks, so it's quite a mess here most of the time, both figuratively and literally.

But the part that worries me the most is that every time I step out of my room I see a new stranger, some new visitor or friend or even enemy of one of the other residents. Are they friendly? Are they trustworthy? Are they just as broken as the rest of us? Are they staying for a few days? Will they be wandering around the house randomly while I'm trying to make my lunch? It is utterly horrible, I feel unsafe and insecure, and I want out of this arrangement as quickly as I can.

I have to be here. I am trapped here by my own circumstance. Attempts to get money from Social Welfare (Centrelink) have been a ridiculous rigmarole, horribly stressful, and, because of one single obstacle of not having a particular ID card, so far completely fruitless. Centrelink won't give me any money until I have "100 points of ID" which they arbitrarily assign to various things. Being the person that I am, I only have a few kinds of ID. I don't drive, my name is not on the Rental Agreement of this crappy place nor do I pay any of its utility bills, etc. I do have my Passport, and I do have a Bank Card, but the last sticking point is my Medicare Card. Due to random bad luck, it had expired and I hadn't updated the address, so it got lost in the mail. Now I have had to order a new one, and it should have arrived in the mail last week, but it's now a whole week late and in the meantime I have no money to live on. In fact I have had no money for the past two months; if it wasn't for my family donating funds I would have starved.

It's not entirely doom and gloom. The rent here is really cheap, and I don't have to pay any other bills. I do have internet, though it's borrowed and, due to the age of the wiring, very slow. I am close to public transport and have multiple locations nearby, like parks or walking paths, I can escape to to be alone.

But those are small comfort.

It is ironic that, at a time when safety, security, peace of mind, and reliability is what I need the most in order for me to cope, I have none of them. I've found a safe haven, except it's a prison, and it's surrounded by zombies.

Muddling On Through

An update for those that want to know.

I've found a temporary place to stay, and am working through some of my problems, both financial and personal, with the support of my mate Rob and my Mum who flew over to visit.

I'm past the darkest feelings, but my points of view and feelings about the world are still the same. I'm not happy (and never have been) about anything that's going on around me.

Anyway, I'll sort more stuff out, and then find a more permanent place to live, over the next few weeks. If any of you were still worried, you can relax a bit now.

I'm Okay

Rumours of my demise have been somewhat exaggerated. Mostly by me. I can't even manage to do that properly. What a loser.

I'm sorry if anybody panicked and were worried (if you even were - I've been out of communication), but I'm fine for now. I'm safe in emergency accommodation, and with luck have found some people who can guide me through everything I need to get myself back on track.But then again, I've thought that before.

Still don't have email or a phone, and won't for a while. Until then, know I'm working things out.

Sorry. Again.

Admitting Defeat

I don't fit in. I never have.

From my earliest memory as a child in PlayCentre where I often sat quietly alone in the corner doing my own thing, through Primary School where I was constantly bullied and treated differently because I was good at reading and maths, to High School where I was the funny-looking weird kid who wrote stories and drew cartoons, to adulthood where I have struggled to find a job and where women have never found me even slightly interesting. This world just doesn't seem to have a space for me.

Life just keeps changing its rules, tripping me up with its shifting expectations, and, just when I think I've got a handle on it, pulling the rug out from under me again and again.

I've always been one who thought he knew what he wanted out of life, but didn't know how to get it. I wasn't in the right part of the world, or didn't know the right people, or didn't know how to ingratiate myself in amongst the right crowd. I had humble expectations and simple dreams, really, things that everybody else seemed to be able to achieve without too much problem. Things like having a family, or getting a job, or buying a home. Most people manage those things without too much trouble. Sure they often came with pitfalls and hassles, but they at least got to experience them, work out those issues, and then settle into a reasonably comfortable, if compromised, groove. But I didn't even get that. I occasionally sat back smugly when I saw somebody's life go wrong, thinking I was well out of it, but really I think I was missing out on what makes life worth living. I had nothing to be smug about.

And what does make life worth living? If you were to list the things that make most people happy and that give their lives meaning, I'd say most people would regularly experience seven out of the top ten throughout their lives. Whereas I'd be lucky to experience even three. Things like love, sex, sport, health, family, friends, food and drink, pets, I don't get any pleasure out of those. My happiness only comes from entertainment like TV and movies, a couple of niche nerdy hobbies, and my own solitude. And what sort of life is that?

I don't like socialising, it makes me uncomfortable, be it with strangers, colleagues, or acquaintances. I have had very few friends at any one time, and none have been very close. The only family I have are siblings and my Mother, but I moved away from them long ago and barely communicate except for the very occasional phone call. I have never been in a real relationship, serious or otherwise, apart from a fling so brief it doesn't count (she never cared about me, and subsequently I didn't care much about her - though to be fair we knew that going in).

It's not that people dislike me (I hope), but that I have no charisma, a very quiet demeanour, a sense of humour that's haphazard and quirky at best, and contribute very little to social interaction. I have no discernible personality worth speaking of.

And I have low self-esteem, everything that has happened in my life has only reinforced that. The occasional hints of something potentially working out as a good direction to head, that would ordinarily encourage me to continue down the path to, hopefully, success, fizzles out disappointingly, and I just get more depressed and lost.

I am not clinically diagnosed with any kind of disorder, there's nothing chemically wrong, I just have no self-motivation. I'm someone who needs support and advice and guidance, but yet I choose to live a solitary lonely life. These two things contradict each other, to my eternal detriment, so it's no wonder I am such a mess.

I think I have talent. I think I have skills that make me decent enough to make a mark, however insignificant that mark may be in the grand scheme of things. But my life doesn't seem to reflect that. I don't seem to be quite good enough to get noticed, to be employed, to be taken seriously, so perhaps I'm wrong and I'm just not good enough after all. That's a heavy blow to my self-confidence, and lately it's just been blow after blow after blow.

And the Entertainment Industry has changed a lot in the last couple of years. Job opportunities are drying up at an alarming rate, money is spread thin, and projects are shutting down. The branch that I have always wanted to get involved in, post-production and visual effects, is in the worst state it has ever been. Entire companies are closing permanently, which means there are more very talented people and yet fewer jobs available. Amateurs like myself have no hope.

For a while it seemed like amateur productions would be the new Media, with cheap equipment and software giving everyone opportunities to create high quality entertainment, and the Internet providing a new form of distribution. But almost immediately the lack of funding opportunities has halted its progress. Crowdfunding sounds like a good idea, but unless you have a tangible product to sell, you'll have very little chance of success. Low profile film productions are not succeeding. If you don't have years of professional experience, name-recognised celebrity talent involved, and the luck of high-profile visibility, give up now. The money is all going to projects that can already afford it.

It is thoroughly depressing to see my only hope for having an enjoyable life dry up right before my eyes. People more experienced and talented than I am are struggling to pay their mortgages and feed their families. Their only alternatives are to find non-Industry jobs, but those are few and far between at the best of times. It's a disaster, and I find myself right in the midst of it, with nowhere to turn.

It doesn't help that my ability to find and keep a job seems to be based on luck rather than skill or talent, and even when I am employed I tend to be taken advantage of, by being exploited or marginalised. While others leap up the totem pole of success, I am always at the bottom getting nowhere, and then am eventually forgotten about.

Most often my problems, such as they are, come down to lack of finances. In fact I'm very good with handling money when I actually have any, I tend to use it carefully and frugally, and am quite happy to do so. I have no desire to be wealthy (as nice as that would be) I only wish I could have a reliable source of income, something that would lead to financial security. But that's a daydream at the best of times.

Most people can find a job very easily - they figure out the career they want, make some key decisions about how to gain skills or ingratiate themselves amongst the right people, then things start to tip their way, they find a decent employer, work their way up the ladder, establishing a reliable source of income, allowing them to plan their lives for years ahead, and, barring a few unexpected bumps, they manage to negotiate their lives with relative ease.

While I, on the other hand, struggle to find any employer who will take me seriously, who will pay me what I'm worth, or who will treat me with any respect. Instead I trudge along on the cusp of unemployment at every turn, make poor decisions that haunt me forever, and constantly find myself scraping the bottom of life's barrel, eking out a pathetic existence. Eventually random luck falls in my lap again and something keeps me going for a little while longer, but I can't rely on that.

And now luck has finally run out.

Why not try the Unemployment Benefit? Because I have been down that route twice before, and it is a horrible way to live. Both times I was stuck in a deep rut that required luck rather than effort to get out of, and now we have a new Government who are even less sympathetic to those in my position, making things even more difficult for those with low incomes. And I am sick of it.

It strips you of your dignity, it keeps you below the poverty level, it forces you to do things that are not in your best interests but instead what others insist are where you ought to be, putting you in your place. I do not want to be in that soul destroying position again. That is no life.

I seem to be without any capability of sorting my life out. Too many chances have been repeatedly squandered, and I have achieved nothing. Now I'm too old, apparently lack the talent that employers are looking for, and am too easily exploited. I am wasting my time, the world has no place for me.

I was feeling quite depressed as this crisis solidified. I froze, my brain clouded over, and I couldn't seem to get up and fix things. I had never felt so alone. Then my Mum visited and I started to feel a bit better. One of my close friends got out of his own funk and we had a good chat, and I cheered up and felt a bit more optimistic again. I started to think I could get myself out of this mess I had found myself in.

But now that a few more days have passed, and I can see things a bit clearer, I feel like I am looking at things somewhat more objectively. And when I assess my life, at what it could've been, what it actually was, and what it might be, I see no improvement in store. All I see is struggle and unhappiness.

The world is not a very pleasant place to be at the moment. It's full of hatred, abuse, greed, selfishness, and misery. I can't change it. I'm no better than anyone else in coping with it. I may even be part of the problem, with my lack of motivation. A horrible future is laid out ahead of me. It frightens and worries me.

So here I am, out of money, out of time, out of energy. And I just don't care anymore. I can't see that life has anything for me if all it will be is a constant struggle to keep my head above water. And what would I gain? A low paying job I'd hate? A lonely empty life of no reward? And then one day I'll die, alone and unloved? What sort of future is that?

So I can't afford to keep what I'm doing. But I can't afford to fix things either.

I'm sorry for all the promises unfulfilled and plans unfinished. I'm sorry for anything I've done that hurt or hindered anybody. I'm sorry I wasn't a better organised, more productive person.

Returning Doctors

It's the 50th Anniversary of Doctor Who this year, it originally screened its first episode in 1963, and there are many celebrations planned. Two of particular note are a dramatic recreation of the origins of the show, called An Adventure in Space and Time, starring David Bradley in the role of William Hartnell, the First Doctor; and a special episode of the regular series with the Tenth Doctor, portrayed by David Tennant, returning to dash around with the Eleventh Doctor Matt Smith.

A few years back there was an episode specially created for Comic Relief, where the Fifth Doctor encounters the Tenth Doctor. It was called Time Crash, and also served as a mini-prequel to the Christmas episode, Voyage of the Damned. Peter Davison still had enough youth in him to get away with it, though they were pushing it. But it made me wonder what you would do if you wanted any of the original seven incarnations to return to the modern series.

You can't use the original actors anymore, some are deceased, and the rest are just too old for it to be convincing. The earliest Doctor you can get away with is possibly Sylvester McCoy as the Seventh, but I'd limit it to Paul McGann as the Eighth. That means if you did want to bring any of the earlier Doctors back you'd have to recast.

And that made me wonder just who could portray each of them convincingly. They'd have to resemble them physically, be approximately the same age as the original actors were during their run, and also have a touch of their personality, or at least be good enough actors to do a decent impression. Their voices may also have to be dubbed by impressionists (or by their original actors), though perhaps that's something that doesn't really matter in the end.

David Bradley seems to be ideally suited as William Hartnell. I look forward to seeing his performance in the Special. I am not too familiar with the First Doctor, though, so really you could play fast and loose and I wouldn't notice.

Jason Isaacs may seem an unusual choice for the Second Doctor, but his resemblance to a younger Patrick Troughton is undeniable, so I think if he pretended to be shorter and had a bowl-cut wig, he'd do a fantastic job.

Jon Pertwee is a hard actor to find a double for. The best I could find was Geoffrey Rush, and it's a bit tenuous, but I figure if he had the shock of white hair and frilly sleeved velvet jacket the resemblance would be enough. He has certainly established himself as a great mimic, so can portray Pertwee's mannerisms with aplomb.

Update: My friend Jet Simian suggested versatile Australian actor, and contemporary of Mr Rush, Richard Roxburgh as the Third Doctor, and, by the powers, he's right!

Now this is a very strange choice. Our memory of the Fourth Doctor is of a tall hulking man, with a rictus grin and crazy eyes, a huge fright wig of curly hair, a brimmed hat, and a long scarf. But Tom Baker was not as fat a man as he later became. Frank Woodley is quite a thin lanky man, but is equally tall, has a manic look, and something of a resemblance to Tom Baker. If he put on weight, or at least a muscle suit, the other accoutrements would be enough to paint a convincing similarity.

A youthful blonde cricketer is just about all you need to get a decent resemblance to the Fifth Doctor. All Dan Stevens needs is the floppy hair and I think it'd be a successful transformation.

I struggled with the Sixth Doctor. Colin Baker has a very square head, dominated by his curly blond locks and his garish costume, and there aren't too many actors around that have that face shape. Mark Gatiss, creator of the aforementioned 50th Anniversary Special, and also co-creator and actor in Sherlock, and a regular writer for the current series of Doctor Who itself, is I think a close enough match to work just fine.

Sylvester McCoy got his start as a Music Hall performer, a comedian first and an actor second, and it's still deeply a part of his real world character even now, so what you need is someone with a similar sense of self but with a bird-like face and mannerisms. Milton Jones has a reasonable physical resemblance, but more importantly has a similar character in his comedy performances which makes him a good choice.

In the only instance where recasting occurred (in the story The Five Doctors where Richard Hurndall played the First Doctor), they got away with that because most viewers had no familiarity with the First Doctor, he was from before their time. Despite ubiquitous access to early episodes on DVD, the current audience, especially non-UK and the under 20s, are also not very familiar with the early incarnations of the Doctor. I think that means maybe, just maybe, recasting might work after all.

Eleanor Xandler, Crowdfunded Detective

I have been beavering away on Eleanor Xandler for almost a year, which is way longer than I had anticipated. But then, that's also typical of a personal project - we really can't estimate how long these things take when we don't apply a strict deadline, and we're experimenting with new ideas at every turn.

What I had not realised was how long it would take to render certain shots, and how long it would be before the work started to lose its lustre and be a chore. To be honest, it's not a chore yet, but I do wish it was over already.

Couple that with the fact that I am out of work, and have run short of money, I am a bit worried and stressed, which isn't the best environment to achieve high quality work. I spend my nights sleeplessly worrying about the next day and what my immediate future will bring.

So I have decided to experiment with crowdfunding. One of the biggest problems that my filmmaking mates and I face when we have an idea for a project is where the money will come from. Each one we do is more ambitious and expensive than the last, and we haven't found even one single source of outside money in all that time. We're trapped into the lowest of budgets, and we need to find a way out if we're going to get anywhere with this.

There are two main sites for crowdfunding that most people know about. Kickstarter is mostly American, and has some restrictions for international projects, but it is by far the more well known and more successful, in itself and for the projects it showcases, which include such diverse projects as manufacturing and charities. Whereas IndieGogo is international-friendly, and has a more of a small-time feel to it, with a particular emphasis on art projects like films.

I figure it's worth a try. If it succeeds, and I'm only starting relatively small at $5000, then not only will it encourage us for future projects, but it's a good one to hold up and say "look what we did, look what we want to do" and bring any funders from one along to our others. It could potentially be huge. More likely it will be mediocre. Fingers are crossed for either.

Plotting a Murder

I really like the new Channel TEN comedy/drama series Mr and Mrs Murder. I like the premise, of the crime scene clean-up crew noticing clues that were missed by the Police and figuring out who the killer was. I like the characters, a married couple (Shaun Micallef and Kat Stewart as Charlie and Nicola Buchanan) who adore each other and have fun and silly conversations, and who drag their niece (Jess, played by Lucy Honigman) in to their schemes as their unwitting accomplice. I like the distinctive environments where each murder takes place.

But there is much that I don't like, and those things kind of ruin it for me. So much potential to be a really good original show, that would even work internationally, but they mess it up in too many places.

The biggest problem for me is that there's no sense of jeopardy. When you have two people who are overstepping their bounds in a criminal investigation, there really ought to be consequences. Admittedly the Detective, who has a soft spot for Nicola, and recognises their abilities as amateur sleuths, gives them free rein, carte blanche, all-access pass, but the suspects ought to be somewhat less forthcoming with spilling their guts to strangers who have no right to be where they are, doing what they're doing, questioning who they're talking to. There have been a couple of cursory scenes in two or three episodes where they've been lightly confronted, but they still get the answers they seek too easily.

The murderer has to be engineering it so that they cannot be fingered as the culprit; constructing lies, alibis, and misdirection that puts the Police off their scent, but such that an outsider with a fresh point of view would not be distracted and can see through their web of deceit. Instead we are presented with four suspects, and they just go about their business like nothing happened. They don't seem affected by the murder, don't seem to be afraid for their own lives when there's a killer on the loose, don't seem to be actively trying to deflect the investigation that would reveal their guilt, and instead are just sitting around under the bold assumption that nobody is going to ask them any questions.

Now what the hell are the Police doing while this is going on? They wander around in the background of the crime scene at the very start of each episode, if you're lucky, and they seem to be there to arrest the guilty party at the very end, but apart from that they seem to be completely absent, coming across as lazy, incompetent boobs who aren't doing any groundwork that real investigators do. They need to have some kind of interaction with Charlie and Nicola, an opportunity for them to pick up new clues, overhear conversations, swap information, just enough for it to look like the Police are actually doing some work. Having the Detective, Peter, occasionally appear to moon over Nicola and then tell them lists of stuff isn't enough, it's too cheap and easy an exposition tactic, and feels clumsy at best.

The pacing is all wrong. This is not the fault of the writing, I don't think, which is generally pretty decent, especially the dialogue. Instead I think it's something that can easily be fixed in Post Production, in the editing and the music. When you're dealing with a drama like this, there needs to be stakes. You have to feel that if the murderer isn't found they may strike again, they may even attack the investigators who are getting too close to the truth. The audience has to feel like there may be danger at any turn. You can do this with careful editing, that increases the urgency, builds up tension, shows facts that cause the audience to fear for the protagonists' lives as they go about their amateur investigating. Editing shots faster, lots of close ups not showing faces, shadows and footsteps, a sense of close pursuit, music that builds tension to a climax where they finally discover, and then directly confront, the murderer. Then a short denouement where they tie up the loose ends, explain some of the plot twists, and relax after a job well done.

Too often the pacing was on an even boring keel. No sense of adventure, excitement, or risk. No confrontation. Too often a line of dialogue was something like "I think I know who did it!" and then they cut to a shot of the bad guy being carted away in cuffs. No confronation, no demand for an explanation, no confession. Pathetic.



On an unrelated but equally annoying note, the opening titles really bother me. I like what they're going for, comic book style graphics, with nice plinky-plunk detective type music, but the images don't match to the rhythm of the music, and it really annoys me. All they needed was for title text and comic book frames to appear on the beats, for the animation of the images to be in actual perspective instead of randomly sliding around, and with a sense of storytelling (and maybe if the likenesses of the characters were slightly more accurate) I would be giving them high praise, but what they've actually got is just frustratingly inept and poorly directed.

Now I'm not an especially good writer, and have no real professional experience. And to be perfectly honest I don't think it's the writing that is at fault, it's clever, original, funny, and is expertly performed by the cast, so I can't blame that at all. I think it's a flaw in the directing of the pre- and post-production, establishing how the story should be played out, and how to achieve the best end result with what you've got in the can.

If there's a second series, I hope they pay attention to these factors. They're small, in the grand scheme of things, and easily addressable. And if they're looking for script doctors to help them out, I'm available.

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EDITED TO ADD:
And then the final episode of the season plays and it addresses almost all of my concerns, including pretty much everything I was after: Jeopardy for the main characters, Police involvement, ramping up the exciting pace to a climactic conclusion, and a satisfying denouement. Brilliant stuff! If there's a second series, just do more like that, please.

When I Have An Idea, I Stick To It

There's a risk when you get onto your film set, that you adhere too closely to the ideas you have had churning in your head for so long. Once you've decided that you want, for example, a shot of the actor's feet, a pan up to their waist where they are holding an object, and then up to their head where they have a steely glint in their eye before they exit out of shot, you are determined that you will get that shot by hook or by crook. So you build a rig for your camera that can make the move, you position your actor in just the right angle, you wait for the sunlight to be perfect, your camera operator practices the shot over and over, until finally you film it... and it ends up looking a bit wobbly, out of focus, and you can't even see who it is and what's going on. The shot you thought was going to be so cool turns out to be crap, a waste of time that never makes the final cut.

You have to go onto set with alternative plans, an open mind, be prepared to change everything at the drop of a hat. An idea, perhaps suggested by the location, the time of day, or a whim that your first assistant makes up on the spot, could mean your entire morning is rearranged to accommodate for it. If it's a better idea, then be ready to drop everything and go for it.

A few days before going on set for my Steampunk short film, Eleanor Xandler: Temporal Detective, I drew up some storyboards of about half the shots I had planned. Each one also was intended to have a close up and a wide, and additional shots from the 'B' camera, but broadly the plan was for them to stay the same angle with the same action as I had boarded.

Here are some of the completed shots alongside their storyboard. It just goes to show, when I have a good idea, I stick to it.

Layer Upon Layer Upon Layer

I first saw Photoshop when it came free on a coverdisc on a magazine and my friend Dion installed it on his PC, back in the early 90s. He thought that I, as an artist, would find it useful to create some of the artwork required for our little projects. But after opening it up I was mightily confused. This was probably version 2.0, and it did not come with a manual (before the Internet, before PDFs, physical books were the only way manuals were provided). I was completely lost by the multitude of buttons, tools, menus, and icons. Where do I even begin? So for the first couple of times I scribbled colourful swirls and then just sat there. I couldn't figure out how to do straight lines, the mouse had no easy way to draw like a pen, and so clumsily I moved the pointer around a few times, achieving nothing.

It was about five years before I opened up Photoshop again. I had just been hired as a website designer for the first time, and I was completely new to the specifics of that job. I was hired solely on my artistic abilities and my familiarity with computers, but had no specific experience with HTML or Photoshop graphics. So I was allowed about two months just to familiarise myself with both those things.

Now I had a purpose for using Photoshop. I was given a Wacom drawing tablet, and with a goal in mind could go through all the steps to achieve an image. How do I create a box with round corners and highlighted edges? How do I create a drop shadow, a gradient, or coloured text? This was version 4.0 of Photoshop, so certain things did not exist yet - no multiple Undo, no auto dropshadow and glow (known as Layer Styles), no Batch Actions. But I had a manual, I had a few excellent quality guide books, and a mailing list of Professionals including some Adobe employees, all of whom were really helpful.

And the key to using Photoshop effectively is understanding layers. Unlike drawing or painting, where you're stuck with a single sheet of canvas or paper to just pile stuff on top of itself, with Photoshop you have individual layers which you can move, erase, recolour, distort, fade transparency; an infinite amount of adjustment, for each individual small part that you choose. It's a fantastic way to create.

Over the years I've learned a lot more about Photoshop, that there are multiple ways to achieve the same thing, that each subsequent version adds features that make some jobs a lot easier, it integrates better with Adobe's sister-products, and evolves and adapts to be useful for new technologies.

And one day I had to learn to use another of Adobe's products, called After Effects. When I first used it, I didn't understand just how powerful it could be. It seemed like a fewer-featured Photoshop. But in fact its role, to composite different video elements together for Visual Effects, requires such specific tools that comparing it with Photoshop is futile. After Effects is its own thing, and arguably even more powerful.

But one similarity, that it uses even more effectively than Photoshop, is its use of Layers.

I am slowly working my way through each shot for my Steampunk short film, "Eleanor Xandler: Temporal Detective," mostly in chronological order, and have just completed one of the most complicated shots of them all. And that's because it's a shot I didn't actually film on the shoot day. I realised, after looking at the rough edit, that there were a couple of shots that I really needed in order to transition from one shot to another effectively, and I had not thought ahead enough to have filmed those shots, so I wondered if I could make them up using what I could find amongst the clips I had.

One particular shot was from after I had called "Cut!" and the actress playing Eleanor, Sarah Breen, looked over to me to check if I was happy. That glance was all I needed to convey what was required, so I had now found my missing shot. Simple. But there was another shot I needed that was vastly more epic, and luckily this is where shooting on greenscreen, and having plenty of Behind-The-Scenes photography, each come in handy.

I wanted an Establishing Shot, one that shows the audience the location where the scene takes place, and orients them to where the characters are standing in relation to each other. I hadn't thought to film such a shot, because in my head I knew where everyone was. But that's not good enough, because of course I know, it's my story. I know plenty of things that the audience do not, it's my job to make sure all of those things are conveyed where necessary, be it through dialogue, performances, or editing. So now I had to create a shot that told everyone where my two characters were actually standing.

And where they're standing is in a huge dark smoky warehouse, filled with junk and decorated by 1880s style structural architecture. I had to create an over-the-shoulder shot of Eleanor entering through large doors, pointing her weapon at the Professor who was at the far end of the building, all while showing off how large and beautiful the warehouse was.

The warehouse 3D model had already been built, as an exterior and in preparation for all the interior shots that I was going to composite, but only in a limited fashion. Only build what you need, as anything more is just going to slow down the process. Well, now I had to expand on that, as this additional unplanned angle meant more of the warehouse would now be seen. I added in extra features, including a spiral staircase, an extra wall, a couple of piles of junk, and additional detail on the interior skylight roof.

During the shoot I had a B Camera, which is a second camera recording the shots from different angles and framing, giving me extra footage I can cut to should I need it. One of those shots was almost an over-the-shoulder of Eleanor, except from the wrong side, and that section of it was only 30 frames long. I needed 100 frames at least, but I clipped the shot out, flipped it to match the angle, and then stretched and reversed the shot a couple of times to extend its length. This can sometimes be glaringly obvious, I've seen reversed shots in feature films before and there's a few physics giveaways that you can spot sometimes (a turn or a blink in reverse looks slightly peculiar) so in order to hide the trick I made sure the part of the shot that was Eleanor would be completely out of focus with the depth of field.

In the far distance is the Professor. None of the shots I had of the Professor were full length, they all cut off at his knees or higher. Extremely luckily there was a single photo taken amongst the Behind-The-Scene images which included the Professor's legs, so I grabbed that, flipped and scaled them to match, and then animated them to match his movement, which wasn't much but still had to be done.

Unfortunately the angle of the Professor shot didn't match the perspective I needed, which was most obvious with the Console Panel he was standing at. So I had to replace the console with another BTS photo, which meant I had to cut around the Professor's arm (a technique called Rotoscoping) so that it looked like he was manipulating the controls accurately. The side of the console prop also has no surfacing, so I had to fill in that blank as well.

The warehouse is full of smoke, steam, and dust, because this is Steampunk and that's what the goggles are for, so I had to layer in not just multiple instances of atmosphere, just like if there had been a smoke machine on set, but I also had to include the shafts of sunlight that came through the door and skylight.

Couple all that stuff with the camera move, which is a pan down from skylight to Professor, that I had to track and match, it makes for a very complicated shot that should, in viewing it, go by quickly and seamlessly, and convey exactly what I wanted, that the space of the building is so big, and this where the characters are standing.

Evolution of an Airship

When I decided to make my first short film, Eleanor Xandler: Temporal Detective, I knew immediately I would have to film the entire thing on greenscreen. I wanted to have real locations, but that was just so difficult and complicated to achieve as they had to be so specific in their look, and there was at least one part of the story that had to be on greenscreen anyway, that it made sense to just shoot everything in one place and fill in the backgrounds later.

There are flaws with this approach. When it's been done before in the past it has had a spotty success, and this is from professionals who really know what they're doing. Films like Sky Captain, the Star Wars prequels, Lord of the Rings, and King Kong, all have at least some greenscreen in every single shot, and a few environments that are entirely digital from top to bottom - and yet, to me, it's somehow glaringly obvious. Something about the compositing, the lighting, the staging, the artificiality, I'm not sure what, gives it away, at least to me. Even Avatar was convincing only a few times.

This gives me hope. My compositing skills are not ever going to be at professional level quality, but as, apparently, that can be a bit dodgy at the best of times I am in good company.

The first artificial background I have begun creating is for the opening sequence. I figure chronological order is as good a place to start as any. This means a cloud-filled sky, and a Steampunk Airship called The Wandering Star.

My first image is crude and simplistic. That's because I quickly slapped this model together in less than an hour, as a guide to show the cast and crew what we were filming. It oriented them somewhat, and gave them something to imagine was surrounding them as they stood in an endless sea of green.

After filming was complete I began to model the final version, carefully going through it step by step to include as much detail as I could. My normal approach to 3D modelling is to be a bit slapdash, to save time, cutting corners where things won't be seen, trying to find short-cuts to achieve the look I'm after. But this time I couldn't afford to be so cheap with my attention, and tried to give the model all the detail it needed, even if it meant hours of just pushing points around in a mundanely dull fashion.

The above image is a good start, but notice on the image below that there is an adjustment between the two. The windows are bigger, the railing is thicker and closer spaced. That's because I realised the scale was wrong.

I imagined the Wandering Star as a two-person vessel, that being Eleanor and her robot pilot Gadzooks. Therefore space to move could be minimal. She's not going to be playing Shuffleboard on the Lido Deck, after all, but she might have a passenger. I adjusted the scaling to a more logical size, from 25m down to 16m long. This is not only more realistic a scale, it also means she doesn't get too tiny in the shot when the framing shows the full profile of the airship.

I then added in the water tanks. Being steampunk, there needs to be steam. That means a lot of coppery brassy tanks and pipes and whatnot, so I put in the engines that drive the propellers. I also bought a plugin for Lightwave, a handy automatic rope generator that allows me to concentrate on the placement of the rope in a simple string, and it automatically fills in the twisty detail. The ropes do make the model polygon-heavy, which causes a bit of a slowdown, but it's well worth it. They add a level of realism that brings it to life, especially when twisted around the block-and-tackle.

Texturing is a complicated procedure, something I've never been very good at. You have to adjust so many factors to get things looking right that it gets bogged down in maths and angles and trickery that I frankly struggle under the weight of. Colour, diffusion, specularity, reflectivity, occlusion, transparency...

The brass and deck textures are relatively straight forward. Brass wraps around everything evenly, so it just has to be a golden metallic colour applied on all things I have deemed should be brassy. The deck is flat, and can have the texture projected directly from above. But the rest of the objects all have UV maps.

UV maps are when you unwrap an object, especially one with an unusual shape, so that it lays flat within a square page. That way you can apply the texture as a 2D image and it will apply itself to each individual polygon consistently. If you then subsequently move, rotate, or scale the object the texture remains fixed where you want it. But unwrapping each object into its UV shape is fiddly work. The weird shape of the airship's hull means I have to wrap a wooden plank texture that follows the curvature logically, with no distortion or irregularity. Laboriously adjusting the UV point by point is the only way to achieve that.

As I continued to apply the textures one by one I adjusted the model to fit. I'd suddenly have an idea of what should be wood, what brass, to give it that industrial elegance that steampunk requires. The rudder, for example, I was looking at in its plain wooden state and just thought it looked boring. So I added a brass strip and some bolts. Then another. Then some hinged joints. And some cog gearwheels. Suddenly it looked like it actually operated in a mechanical way, something quite elaborate yet logical. I am now tempted to adjust some of the other parts of the ship to match...

This is the final model of the ship, from the angle it will be seen most often, and in profile as it will rarely be seen at all.

Someone pointed out to me that the placement of the balloon causes an apparent imbalance that would make the rear of the ship topple backwards. But hey, it's science fiction. Technically the balloon isn't big enough to lift the vessel at all. I moved the balloon that far forward to give a sense of speed and dynamism to the design of the ship, though most of the time you won't see the ship from that side and it won't look quite so awkward in motion. But if it makes you feel any better, imagine there's a heavy counterweight in the forward hold.