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| Reptile
Day began with the visual style. The technique of putting actors
into a cartoon world with the use of bluescreen (chromakey) allows
the filmmaker to make a fantasy film on a low budget. Tom had
already made one short using the technique way back in 1996, now
he wanted to take it a step further. |
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in today’s fantasy films, a realistic visual style is dominant.
Minimalist
theatre and Lars Von Trier’s |
Dogville had
showed that you don’t need realism to
keep an audience’s attention. Tom wanted to break away from realism,
to go back to Méliès and to make an advantage of the rough
edges of his technique. And this was also a perfect fit for a low-budget
production. |
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Next
came the plot line, which had to be absurdist to get the most from
the visuals. Tom knew he wanted to do some sort of fantastic thriller.
Why not a conspiracy thriller? And what’s the most absurdist
conspiracy out there? The one pedalled by a certain British former
soccer player and sports commentator who has written tome after
tome suggesting that alien reptiles rule the World. Tom read a couple
of his books and used them as a jumping-off point. There are actually
quite a few sci-fi movies about reptile aliens, ‘V’
and ‘The Arrival’ being a couple of notable ones, but
hey it’s a genre movie. Originality is not the point.
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| After
writing the feature script, Tom decided to make a short, both to help
sell the feature and also to test out the various techniques. Reptile
Day the short was scripted – a sequel to the feature film that in
under twelve minutes introduces the main characters and in a series of
flashbacks tells the main elements of the story of the feature. |
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script was illustrated with a detailed storyboard. This was very useful
for shooting as most of the scenery is virtual. |
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One
technique to make the film cartoon-like was to have one set of actors
to voice the parts and another mime on screen to the voices. A mismatch
of voice and face was chosen to give the characters an “other”
quality.
We made a short test clip with one set of actors miming to the voices
of another which demonstrated that the viewer would have no difficulty
accepting the mis-match after the first few moments. Consequently,
the more we could stretch the mis-match the better the effect. |
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advantage of this technique is that you can use name actors sparingly
- adding to the marketability of the film with relatively small expenditure.
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| Next
came casting. Tom remembered way back in the 80’s hearing
Scots actor David Rintoul do a knock-out reading of Goldfinger
on BBC Radio 4. David was approached and agreed to be the voice
of Colin. A
native Spanish voice was sought for the part of Tina and Monserrat
Gili was cast. Finally, Brighton actor, Rob Maloney brilliantly
voiced both the Stranger and Skink (both played on screen by women).
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The
plan was for the screen actors to mime to the pre-recorded playback
on camera. This unorthodox technique was chosen for two reasons:
firstly it freed up the physical performances and gave them a strange
quality and secondly it enabled us to film in fast motion by slowing
down the playback. When the footage is later sped-up the result
is lip-synch along with a strange feel to the motion of the players.
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Casting
of the physical actors involved the candidates miming to the slowed-down
playback, which also served as an initial test of the technique.
Next, the
voice track was edited along with some initial sound effects. The images
from the storyboard were cut to this soundtrack to create an animatic.
This was used to communicate the vision to the cast and crew. |
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Tom
looked at a lot of comic book art and decided that an artist called
Matt Brooker, who worked under the pen name of D’Israeli
was his first choice to do the design and backgrounds. After
a search of a couple of weeks to make contact with the man, he
spoke to D’sraeli and was overwhelmed to receive a positive
response.
Now
onboard, D’sraeli drew a series of character and prop designs,
plus sketches for the main locations giving us a guide for the
lighting. |
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Costume
designer Svetlana Prodanic created the costumes from D’sraeli’s
vision. |
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| Production
designer Jonathan Swain began work to bring D’Israeli’s
visions to life, which included creating an “orgasm chair”
featuring pulsating rubber gloves. |
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Some
of the action would be in response to music, so composer Rory Cameron
produced some initial versions of the tracks for playback on set.
We used them in a one-day rehearsal session with the actors which
involved work on the characters, practicing the miming technique
and blocking.
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Given
the fast/slow motion aspects of the film a camera test was essential,
and we received excellent support from Doug Urquart at Electra who
also gave us a favourable rate for the Panasonic Varicam. At the
time, the Varicam was probably
the only camera on the market that could shoot high-definition video
at a range of frame-rates. |
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One
of the great things about chromakey is that to some extent filming
is quick because the space is virtual and the sets are in your
head. You are unhindered by the physical reality, so you can schedule
your filming more efficiently.
In
reality it’s not that simple, because we did have some sets
and we worked in a small studio. |
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| The
offline edit was done by Jake Harris in Brighton. As far as possible
we tried to use analogue effects, but the short did have a couple
of basic animations in there which Jake created with After Effects |
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Meantime,
190 miles away in Nottingham, D’Israeli was beavering away,
emailing us images for the backgrounds, which Jake slotted in to
the edit. Composer Rory Cameron was finishing off the music and
sound designer John Thursfield creating a soundscape. Ideally, the
edit would have been completed before the music and effects were
done, but we wanted to get the film ready for Cannes, so this was
not possible.
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Finally
the on-line. Rollo Hollins of FLETCHERWILSON put together music
and effects and polished the finer technical points
of the edit, especially the keying. |
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