Troy Dennison's Blog, page 12

Tales From The Lounge #25

Tyres To Typewriters

Judgement Day: A Friday Fun Five

I love Judge Dredd.

There; I said it. I was a wee nipper when Prog 1 of 2000 AD hit the stands and I still remember running to my local newsagents, Jets  to buy a copy for 8p. That first issue was amazing, with some great stories and some gory artwork. It fired my young imagination and I was desperate to get my hands on the next issue. Prog 2 was the one that changed things for me, although I didn’t realise it at the time. That was the first issue to feature Judge Dredd.

Dredd was the hard-hitting, take no shit lawman of the 21st century. He was tough, uncompromising and gritty as hell. The first stories were brilliant and I loved the way Mega-City One was as much a character of those tales as the Judge was. The first mega storyline that really made me sit up and take notice was The Cursed Earth saga, hotly followed by the Day the Law Died. Awesome stuff!

The stories themselves are great, and range across the board from gritty and harsh to surreal parody. The writers over the years have captured the character of Dredd and given him some fantastic stories. But for me it’s the artists that truly bring Dredd’s world to life. There have a lot of great (and some not so great) artists in 2000 AD and the Judge Dredd Megazine – so here’s my top five Dredd artists of the last 30+ years…

Mike McMahon/Henry Flint

This is a bit of a cheat but…

Flint is one of the newer artists whose work I love. He seems to be able to turn his hand to anything and I loved what he did with Nemesis, but it’s his Dredd that really gets me. Great lines, dynamic panels and a brilliant eye for the cityscape of Mega-City One.

 

 

McMahon was the first artist whose work I saw on Dredd in Prog 2 and he’s an interesting guy to watch. His style has changed so dramatically over the years from the lean, sculpted characters of the early days through the rougher look of the Cursed Earth. Then he went crazy with the kneepads and his work on the Judge Child saga was dramatically different. His style constantly evolves but it’s always visually intriguing and never dull.

Ian Gibson

I’ve liked Gibson’s work since the early days of Robo Hunter but he really grew into one of my faves when he illustrated Halo Jones. His Dredd is always a treat to see; fluid with great curves and a distinctive look.

 Cam Kennedy

My absolute favourite Kennedy stories are the Midnight Surfer/Chopper ones. He gave Marlon Shakespeare’s outings a distinctive look that I absolutely fell in love with. He also has a fantastic way with the vehicles and tech that very few other Dredd artists seem to capture. And of course you just have to love his Kenny Who!

 

Brian Bolland

The best damn cover artist in the world – and arguably one of the slowest. Bolland’s work is always worth the wait though. His line work is amazing and he has such a careful and precise control with his inks. Although he’s produced less Dredd than any of the other artists here he’s also produced some of the finest and he gave us the distinctive Judge Death. Any time Bolland turns his hand to the Judge is an absolute treat.

Carlos Ezquerra

Dredd’s co-creator is also my absolute favourite Dredd artist of all time. I think I really noticed Ezquerra’s work on Strontium Dog in Starlord and then in Fiends of the Eastern Front and the Stainless Steel Rat adaptations. But seeing his work on Dredd never fails to bring a smile to my face. Standouts for me are the Apocalypse War and his work on The Pit stories. Ezquerra’s Dredd is lean, mean and simply the finest there is in so many ways. His vision of Mega-City One is delightful and his action is always spot on. There’s never a wasted panel or unnecessary line and even when he’s rushed Ezquerra’s work is still head and shoulders above a lot of other artist’s best.

Tales From The Lounge #24

Merry Melody

Making Movies: Part Six

Checking In

In September 2011 I saw a post on good ole Facebook asking for writers for a comedy script. As my writing was taking off I figured “I can do that” and threw my hat on the table. The film is an anthology piece called Checking In, five stories set in a hotel over a 24 hour period. I was handed the opening story; a piece about a couple struggling to find the spark that has gone from their marriage. Ted & Mary came about quickly with me using a large A2 pad on my wall to throw my ideas at. They were fighters, battling with each other every day in a struggle of one upmanship. My focus fell on the dialogue – I wanted it to zing like volleys in a pro-tennis match.

I had the 20 page script polished and ready in two weeks and baring two small dialogue changes that first version of Ted & Mary was what we shot. I had a lovely surprise though when I was asked to direct my segment of the film. I’ve done some DOP and AD work in the past and worked on enough films to know what works and doesn’t. It helped that I have a very cinematic style when it comes to my graphic stories too. Suddenly though I’d gone from writing to shouldering the responsibility for shooting the opening of the film and making something that had the audience laughing. That was when I made the decision not to do make-up on the film, allowing me to concentrate on giving my directorial debut my best shot.

My first challenge came when the main actors attached to the project had to drop out. Fortunately I found two perfect replacements; Suzanne Kendal-Morgan and Ernest Vernon. Suzanne was cast first and came in to read at Ernest’s audition. The pair read a scene from my screenplay for three of the anthologies other director. From the opening line I knew I had my stars because the “audience” kept smiling and laughing. We cast Ernest on the spot and suddenly I was making a real movie with real actors.

We shot the film out of sequence with stories 2 and 5 being worked on first. My second surprise came when I volunteered to be on set for the filming of story 2 because I was offered a role in it. My sleazy businessman made his appearance, propped against a bar, slightly drunk and eyeing up a singer played by Michelle Rachel Cox. Michelle has an amazing singing voice (which we spotted when I got to her to sing, unprepared and unaccompanied during her audition) and she was brilliant fun to act with. The scene also featured a cameo by one of the actors from story 5 – a thread we would follow with the rest of the film with characters crossing over between each part.

Two weeks before principal photography on Ted & Mary I spent a great day rehearsing with Ernest and Suzanne. We worked through each scene, going over lines, the character’s motivation and reactions. That day gave us an essential head start for when we finally got to the location and I was able to make decisions about how I wanted each scene to play out. I also prepared a series of storyboards for one scene that was a homage to the final standoff in The Good, The Bad and The Ugly! Shot lists for each day and the completion of the production were the final elements and then we were ready to film.

The shoot took 21 hours over two days.

Day one started in a hotel room where we filmed my irate couple cheerily bickering. With a crew of seven and two actors it was a good job that the room was big enough to fit us all in. Unfortunately it turned out to be a scorching hot day outside which just added to the heat generated by our lighting. Poor Ernest was the lucky one because he got to spend the morning in shorts and tee-shirt while the rest of us roasted. On the downside he did have to spend it wearing shaving foam all over his face!

Other than the heat we had another problem to contend with – trying not to laugh as Ernest and Suzanne delivered their dialogue perfectly. It was amazing to watch the characters I had written being brought to life in front of my eyes like that. For the afternoon we moved into the corridors of the hotel to shoot some walking dialogue. It was awkward to light but using a stabilizer on the hi-def camera gave us freedom with how we shot the sequence.

Our second day began in the hotel reception with a stand-off between Ted, Mary and the hotel manager. The storyboarding helped to speed the sequence along and what we covered in rehearsal helped. The physical comedy in the scene was brilliant and Mary racing out of the hotel doors waving a stolen towel like a flag had me grinning like a loon. Our longest scene was set in the hotel restaurant and my sleazy businessman made his second appearance. That was my Hitchcock moment as I cameoed in my own film. Ernest spent hours working his way through a bowl of Cheerios while we filmed the breakfast sequence. We almost melted again because it was another hot day outside, the actors were set in front of a large window and we had to blast them with light from off camera.

The last scene of the day was Ted & Mary’s daring escape and the stabilizer was used to brilliant effect by my DOP Ben Thompson. We captured the frantic energy of the scene perfectly and things flew along until I called a wrap. That’s not the end of the story though; by the time you read this the editing should be completed. I’ve selected a song by local musician Sandy Stanton for the opening of the film and as I write this I’m looking forward to getting my sleaze on again for a brief cameo in story 3.

The cast and crew for Checking In have been amazing. Honourable mentions go out to Dave Hastings, Kaush Patel, Rebecca Harris, Leah Green and Mark Adams; the hard working writer/directors of the five segments. I can’t wait to see the finished film and get it out there onto the festival circuit. I’ve always said that if something isn’t fun then it probably isn’t worth doing. This film has been tremendous fun so far and the Checking In story is only just beginning.

Not the end…

Tales From The Lounge #23

A Night On The Town

Making Movies: Part Five

Furor – Going the Distance 

The second stage of the Furor shoot was in Bristol and once again I was up to my neck in broken bones and corpses. I got the chance to pull double duty again as an FX artist and actor and once again found myself making something up on the spot. In this case someone had got on the wrong side of the thugs in the film and ended up on the receiving end of a baseball bat. I came up with a great way to render the poor actors face into a bloody pulp using cotton wool and gelatine. Out of the kit innovation at its finest.

We hit a stumbling block during this leg of the production when one of the actors couldn’t make it for his own death scene. It had been anticipated during a bizarre phone call while I was in ASDA; Vic had asked me to bring every body part I had…just in case. I had an arm and a leg, a hand, a tongue, lots of intestines, gallons of blood and that notorious penis I’d made for the film that never got finished. We started the scene simply with Zara kneeling on a bed and me in front of her armed with a pair of ketchup bottles. The cheap looking ones you always see on fast food stalls. Both bottles were loaded with blood and as Zara started stabbing and slashing with a big, wicked looking dagger I hit her with both barrels. It was messy but it worked. The cast and crew cleared out for the next few hours as I prepared the room for the aftermath.

I covered the walls in blood – lots of arterial spray! There were severed limbs tangled in the sheets, there was an altar of body parts made its way onto a side table. I wrote a biblical passage in O Neg on one wall above the bed and then nailed the penis to it. We were filming at Rob Ho’s house and he said it was cool to go mad with the room as he was going to re-decorate. Six months and 2 coats of paint later the blood was still showing through! And after we finished filming that night Vic and Zara slept in the room – blood and all.

We also managed to film at three gorgeous churches which made awesome locations to work in. One of them is rather famous and turns up on TV now and then. It’s cool to see a location you filmed in on Skins and Being Human. That was where we filmed the most brutal and traumatic scene for Furor. We’d had a night shoot the day before and finished around 2am, when we got back to Rob’s we stayed up later still talking. Then at 5 Nat came down to us with a bottle of sambucca. Mayhem ensued and some of us were the worse for wear when we started filming at 10 that morning!

I produced some nasty effects that day and once again had the pleasure of acting with my own FX work. The shoot was unusually subdued because of what we were doing and everyone felt the change. We cheered up again later and all agreed that we’d captured some phenomenal footage. The last leg of filming was rapidly approaching and we were heading North across the border into bonnie Scotland.

My first day on set in Glasgow was interesting – a five hour drive to spent less than five minutes putting a bullet hole in someone’s head. Things settled into a nice rhythm after that and we relocated to the home of Total Combat in the heart of the city. We got to see some amazing choreography again as George walked the actors through their fights. I had great fun doing a gag where a rather nasty dude gets his cheek bitten off. The blood was flowing yet again on the Furor shoot.

There was another baseball bat bludgeoning in the offing, some broken necks and another shooting. The pinnacle of the Scotland shoot for me was watching Scott and Zara fight to the death. Scott did a beautiful one-handed cartwheel kick before getting his ass handed to him by a girl half his size. Zara proceeds to break his ankle (it looked sickening on film) before pounding Scott’s face over and over into the floor until she rips off his bottom jaw!

Wrapping was a bittersweet moment. We had an awesome meal and then hit a nightclub but we knew that the cast and crew would only get together one more time – at the film’s premiere. That occurred in Nottingham in December. We had a red carpet and stretch limo to deliver the stars. The cinema was a great place to see the film and I got a buzz out of seeing the trailer for The Clown up on the big screen. Watching Furor with a room full of people laughing, cheering, wincing and clapping was an amazing experience. They reacted brilliantly to the great fight sequences and I loved the gasps as my gory FX work was on screen. The applause when the cast and crew stood up at the end was fantastic.

I’ve done some great work since then including short films and music videos both as an actor and FX artist. They included my first screen kiss – a truly awful experience while I was playing a mummy complete with prosthetics all over my face. That was a buzz in another way though as I got to follow in my make-up artist hero’s footsteps and portray a monster that I had designed on film. The full costume of bandages took me two weeks to hand sew! Somewhere on the way I cut someone’s kidneys out and dumped him in a bath of ice, fought vampires and got killed by Cenobites.

 In Part Six: Sleazy Businessmen and debut directors

Tales From The Lounge #22

Hide And Seek

Making Movies: Part Four

Furor: Rage of the Innocent

I blogged this first part on LiveJournal many years ago…

***

At the weekend – I drove 60 odd miles into Mansfield with the solid intention of being early for the first night shoot on Furor.

“What’s a Furor?” I hear you cry.

Furor is a hard-hitting, take no shit, give no compromise, independent action/horror movie. It’s the story of a brutal loss of innocence, revenge and retribution featuring amazing martial arts and bloody mayhem. The faces on the screen are going to be familiar to any fans of UK martial arts and action and they include Rob Ho, Zara Pythian and Rob Comrie. Some of the nicest (and toughest) people you could ever hope to meet.

Filming across the UK (Bristol, Mansfield, Glasgow) and featuring Fight Choreography by George and Mandy from the Total Combat Team this is a hot, highly anticipated project. So where do I fit into this? I met Zara and writer/director Vic Marke on “Summer of the Massacre” and after reading the script (and banging my head against the wall) I was drafted in to provide the FX for the film.

And DAMN are there some bloody, nasty, horrible (justly deserved) deaths in this film. Most of those are yet to come as we continue filming, but we sure did have fun Saturday night.

I arrived (complete with FOUR different types of blood) just in time to retire to the pub for a meal (how’s THAT for good timing?). Meeting the cast and crew was cool. Some I knew from other projects and some I knew from the internet (Rob Comrie is BLOODY HUGE in real life!). After a short break we retired to the location; an abandoned warehouse that would provide the setting for the films bloody finale!

They were running three cameras (one for a “behind the scenes” feature), had dolly tracks down and the fight co-ordinators on hand (and DAMN were THEY good!!!). It was amazing to watch a fight being filmed and I was really impressed by the professionalism and sheer stamina of Rob Ho and Zara and they performed the same fluid fight moves again and again and again! As the night wore on they NEVER flagged, giving it 100% and then some.

Having seen some of the playback from the fight it’s brutal, vicious, nasty and bloody. A truly triumphant finale for the feature. We wrapped at just after 4 AM Sunday morning! Got home at 5:30, crawled onto the sofa to “sleep” and spent the day looking like a zombie. It was worth it though, I lacerated feet, broke a nose, beat someone up, gouged some eyes and then…nah…watch the movie when it’s finished to see what I used all that blood for!!

(beat THAT for an evenings entertainment! lol))

***

Highlights from that first night included Rob Ho eating KFC with his intestines hanging in his lap. Poor Rob ended up having his eyes gouged out, getting disembowelled on a samurai sword and being hung from the rafters! The cool thing was that I’d agreed to play the role of DC Steve Dench in the film and that gave me the opportunity to act opposite my own make-up FX work. I had a delightful conversation with Natalie Cellino about how I made mint flavoured blood. She thought I said “meat” and was grossed out when I started tasting it! We ran a great scene brandishing Desert Eagle handguns and doing dialogue in front of Rob’s hanging corpse.

Another day in Mansfield had me dismembering an actor and tearing his lips off. One of my running jokes during Furor was that whenever I was on the phone talking to Vic the director I sounded like some kind of hitman. I kept giving rundowns of who I was going to kill next and how I was going to do it. All good, creative fun but it must have been damn weird for anyone that overheard me.

One of the nicest things about the film were the talented martial artist working on the project. We had another champion kickboxer in the shape of Lee Charles, MMA professional Scott Clist and the brilliant George Johnson as fight choreographer. George was a joy to watch as he walked the actors through the intricate fight routines and yet another example of how humble some of the best martial artist are. The KCFM fights were brutal and on a par with anything in a big budget action flick.

I had another great opportunity to act in front of my FX work when we Killed Lee Charles character. Poor lee spent a few miserable hours in the cold, wearing just his boxers, covered in blood. I nailed him to a barn, put a crown of barbed wire on his head and flayed his chest open. The ribcage was a custom piece I made and when it was dressed with blood it looked awesome on screen. Poor lee spent a few miserable hours in the cold, wearing just his boxers, covered in blood. Another scene we shot in Mansfield had my character brining a prisoner in for questioning. He gets out of hand and I hit him a few times with my baton. During the one take I slipped and sort of accidentally hit the poor actor. – oopsie!

This part of the shoot was just the warm up though; the best and more complicated scenes were still to come. We were heading to Bristol and then Glasgow as the trail of blood and bodies covered the country…

In Part Five: Blood, bodies and broken bones

One Froggy Night – a Dragon Days tale

 

 

 

Tales From The Lounge #21

P.O.N.G.