"Is it feasible?"
As I write this, I'm currently neck-deep in post-production on Lush Town: Episode Two, and it seems like a million years ago that that question was asked, not only back in March. It was a question that, though I didn't know it at the time, would be leading to many, many months of trials, tribulations and trenchcoats.
The question was being asked by Jack Constantine, Lush's online marketeer (like a musketeer but with a laptop) and son of owner Mark. Lush had decided to re-launch their 'Retro' brand, and the image they were playing with was that of classic Film Noir. Jack showed me an incredible comic that a Lush fan, Sarah Taylor, had sent him. From the Chinatown-riffing title, Lushtown, to the fantastic artwork, it really was something special. The comic told the story of the story of 'B', a dame who walks into a detective's office looking for her lost 'Gentil Lentil', and from within the depths of his curly hair Jack had pulled the idea that it might be nice to do a short film for the re-branding that was based on Sarah's comic. The only problem was, he was telling me this on the 1st March, and the Launch was due for the start of April. Was it feasible?
"Lushtown" by Sarah Taylor
*Paul, our CG effects artist and behind-the-scenes filmmaker makes a brief cameo as the 'Lush Town Scalper'. (Watch out for Paul in Episode 3...)
dastardly felons...
But that's what it's like in Lush Town..."
The final stage of filming was for myself and Pixie to travel down to Poole to film the full-scale Lush Town model, which had been specially created by the incredible Jo Evans of Lush UK for the film. Standing at over two metres square, it really was something to behold. We wanted to do justice to such a brilliant model, and so much of our time was spent simply working out how best to light it, to give it the sense of scale and depth that it needed. With Pixie working her magic in that department, and me sprinkling the scene with flour-snow using a complex bit of filming equipment that we called a 'sieve', Jack suggested that it might be a good idea to get the little soap cars moving in a lo-fi way by standing at the sides and pulling them with strings - it looked fantastic on camera, giving life to the model whilst still keeping that home-made effects feel to it. So when you see the opening titles, do bear in mind that just out of shot on the left and right are Pixie and Jack, frantically pulling the strings attached to the cars!
It's not something people generally consider, but shooting the film is only half the battle in getting it complete. The post-production stage of editing, audio mixing, effects work, internet optimisation and so on is a very long, detailed process during which the film is literally put together like a jigsaw from its component parts and then polished like a big soapy apple. Unfortunately, most of this process involves me sitting at a computer and so makes for less dramatic behind-the-scenes photos. I've just taken one now though to give you a full feel for it:
One person that I do have to mention in this section though is Alex Cornish, our composer. Alex's ability to create fantastically evocative themes at superhuman speeds (I suspect he may be in possession of a flux capacitor) really saved our bacon on Episode One. (I don't know if you have the expression 'to save one's bacon' in America or Canada but it derives from a porcine superhero who used to be on British TV called Superpig - each week other pigs would get into trouble and Superpig would wave his magic trotters and save them from the clutches of Future Duck. The theme tune went 'SUPERPIG! YEAH!'. You don't know what you're missing.)
Music is such an important part of film, and one that is often overlooked when you're watching it - It really is worth giving the first episode another watch just to listen to Alex's work. We talked long and hard about pretty much every note that's in the film - from Honey's violin theme, to Pineapple Grunt's timpanis, the Sicilian's Italian plucked guitar sounds... the list goes on.
Another thing that did unexpectedly become a difficult choice was that the film looked just as good in colour as it did in black and white - making the decision to go with our initial instincts and stay true to the Film Noir monochrome look was a surprisingly tough one (one day maybe we'll release an alternate technicolour edition so people can make up their own minds).
The question was being asked by Jack Constantine, Lush's online marketeer (like a musketeer but with a laptop) and son of owner Mark. Lush had decided to re-launch their 'Retro' brand, and the image they were playing with was that of classic Film Noir. Jack showed me an incredible comic that a Lush fan, Sarah Taylor, had sent him. From the Chinatown-riffing title, Lushtown, to the fantastic artwork, it really was something special. The comic told the story of the story of 'B', a dame who walks into a detective's office looking for her lost 'Gentil Lentil', and from within the depths of his curly hair Jack had pulled the idea that it might be nice to do a short film for the re-branding that was based on Sarah's comic. The only problem was, he was telling me this on the 1st March, and the Launch was due for the start of April. Was it feasible?
"Lushtown" by Sarah Taylor
"EXT. CITYSCAPE - NIGHT.
The city of Lush Town looms ominously in the darkness..."
If 'Lush Town' was going to be a reality, we had to move quickly. Making a film can be a very long, slow process, and time was not on our side. After tossing the idea around with Jack, I wrote the script for Episode One during a (for once, thankfully delayed - kudos British Rail) train journey from London to Bournemouth.
Without wanting to get too film-studenty, I often find genre film at its most interesting at the point where the audience and filmmakers recognise the conventions enough to really be able to play with the expectations - for example, everyone knows what a Western is meant to be, which is what makes something like Back To The Future Part III (or, on the serious side, Once Upon A Time In The West) so entertaining. With Lush Town, it was very much a case of entering that world of 'neo-noir' inhabited by the likes of Who Framed Roger Rabbit? - a fun play on what a Film Noir detective story should be.
I've just read that paragraph back and realised it's just an incredibly pretentious way of writing 'I like parodies'. Damn.
(Quick sidenote, the first of many... An example of a film-noir convention we had to consider was that in these sorts of films (and indeed in the comic), pretty much every character smokes. I had a funny feeling that might not quite fit in with the healthy Lush MO, so I think in Lush Town all the characters have found that cigarettes made of soap just made them cough up bubbles or something and they all quit some time ago.)
One of my previous short films, Dick Dobson P.I. and the Case of the Kidnapped Cookies had done a similar play on Film Noir storyline convention (in that film, the dame was searching for the titular cookies, rather than her lost Lentil!) - and whilst Dick Dobson differed from Lush Town in that all the characters were played by children (no, I hadn't seen Bugsy Malone), it did mean that I was no stranger to the world of the gumshoe. (In the first of many asides about in-jokes in the film, we ended up featuring on Retro's desk a birthday card which has a still of Dick Dobson on the front, with 'To A Great Dad' written underneath... Because it's like... he's a kid version of Retro... and... you're not interested, are you.) On Dick Dobson, as indeed with most of my short films, I had worked with Lisette 'Pixie' Lawrie, a lady who I try and work with whenever possible because she has a cool nickname and dreadlocks and so by proxy makes me look cooler if I stand nearby. We'd usually work in a bit of a tag team - I would handle the writing, directing, editing and producing, and she would handle the cinematography, lighting design, production design and camera operation. We decided that Lush Town would work the same way, with the addition of Jack acting as an Executive Producer/Evil Blofeld-style Mastermind.
So, getting back on track to the train (ah, puns...) and writing the script... Taking the impetus ideas from the comic and running with it, I thought I'd see how far I could take the idea of a Lush storyworld. What if the characters were not only called after the products, but their environments, their speech, everything, contained references to Lush names? The idea wasn't actually to make the film a competition from the start, but this lent itself so strongly to that form that it just seemed like a natural fit. (Like Dick Dobson P.I, and much classic Film Noir, the narrative would all be told through the detective's voice over. Any dialogue would still be voice over, with lip-synching from the characters - a technique last used in the innovative masterpiece Trapped In The Closet by R. Kelly).
So, after seeing just how many names I could fit into the script before it burst at its soapy seams (a touch over 60), I pitched the idea to Jack, who then laid the killing blow of placing the whole thing in a city that was literally built out of soap. We now had our Lush Town.
The city of Lush Town looms ominously in the darkness..."
If 'Lush Town' was going to be a reality, we had to move quickly. Making a film can be a very long, slow process, and time was not on our side. After tossing the idea around with Jack, I wrote the script for Episode One during a (for once, thankfully delayed - kudos British Rail) train journey from London to Bournemouth.
Without wanting to get too film-studenty, I often find genre film at its most interesting at the point where the audience and filmmakers recognise the conventions enough to really be able to play with the expectations - for example, everyone knows what a Western is meant to be, which is what makes something like Back To The Future Part III (or, on the serious side, Once Upon A Time In The West) so entertaining. With Lush Town, it was very much a case of entering that world of 'neo-noir' inhabited by the likes of Who Framed Roger Rabbit? - a fun play on what a Film Noir detective story should be.
I've just read that paragraph back and realised it's just an incredibly pretentious way of writing 'I like parodies'. Damn.
(Quick sidenote, the first of many... An example of a film-noir convention we had to consider was that in these sorts of films (and indeed in the comic), pretty much every character smokes. I had a funny feeling that might not quite fit in with the healthy Lush MO, so I think in Lush Town all the characters have found that cigarettes made of soap just made them cough up bubbles or something and they all quit some time ago.)
One of my previous short films, Dick Dobson P.I. and the Case of the Kidnapped Cookies had done a similar play on Film Noir storyline convention (in that film, the dame was searching for the titular cookies, rather than her lost Lentil!) - and whilst Dick Dobson differed from Lush Town in that all the characters were played by children (no, I hadn't seen Bugsy Malone), it did mean that I was no stranger to the world of the gumshoe. (In the first of many asides about in-jokes in the film, we ended up featuring on Retro's desk a birthday card which has a still of Dick Dobson on the front, with 'To A Great Dad' written underneath... Because it's like... he's a kid version of Retro... and... you're not interested, are you.) On Dick Dobson, as indeed with most of my short films, I had worked with Lisette 'Pixie' Lawrie, a lady who I try and work with whenever possible because she has a cool nickname and dreadlocks and so by proxy makes me look cooler if I stand nearby. We'd usually work in a bit of a tag team - I would handle the writing, directing, editing and producing, and she would handle the cinematography, lighting design, production design and camera operation. We decided that Lush Town would work the same way, with the addition of Jack acting as an Executive Producer/Evil Blofeld-style Mastermind.
So, getting back on track to the train (ah, puns...) and writing the script... Taking the impetus ideas from the comic and running with it, I thought I'd see how far I could take the idea of a Lush storyworld. What if the characters were not only called after the products, but their environments, their speech, everything, contained references to Lush names? The idea wasn't actually to make the film a competition from the start, but this lent itself so strongly to that form that it just seemed like a natural fit. (Like Dick Dobson P.I, and much classic Film Noir, the narrative would all be told through the detective's voice over. Any dialogue would still be voice over, with lip-synching from the characters - a technique last used in the innovative masterpiece Trapped In The Closet by R. Kelly).
So, after seeing just how many names I could fit into the script before it burst at its soapy seams (a touch over 60), I pitched the idea to Jack, who then laid the killing blow of placing the whole thing in a city that was literally built out of soap. We now had our Lush Town.
"INT. OFFICE - NIGHT.
The DETECTIVE sits. Trenchcoat, fedora, grizzled – a man who’s greased too many goons and guzzled too much grease...."
When your roots are in Son of Rambow-style no-budget student film, you quickly work out that the only way to make something that works well with limited resources is to make sure that you write the script within your means. ie, if you don't have a helicopter (we didn't), don't write in a helicopter chase. If you're ugly as sin (I was), don't make an erotic thriller. When you've got limited time as well, it helps to form relationships with a pool of talented actors so you can easily have someone in mind when writing a character - and in this case, talent scouting, auditions and so on would take up more time than we had to spare.
When writing the character of Detective Retro, I had Sam Devereaux in mind from the start. Both Sam and Karl (Sedgwick, who was cast as Gentil Lentil) had played parts in films that I had previously been involved in, and both had great natural comic skills, as well as looking right for the parts (Although the comic had depicted someone from the Humphrey Bogart school of chisel-jawed leading men, I wanted our detective to have a bit more of a feel of that New York laconic wryness, even if it meant going closer towards Orson Welles in Touch of Evil than Charlton Heston.)
Plus, Sam was able to supply his own hat, which frankly swung the deal.
(A little side note about Sam's hat:
Sam is an enormous, almost certifiable Indiana Jones fan. And I don't say that lightly - his Indiana Jones costume, of which Detective Retro's hat and boots were supplied from, is formed from either the real deal historical items (the WW2 gun belt etc) or genuine movie props. He also has a frighteningly encyclopaedic knowledge of James Bond, Batman, and manly man's whiskey. I hope to one day use him as a testosterone donor.)
Onc
e Sam was cast, I asked him, as you do, if he happened to know any beautiful femme fatales. Being the international playboy that he is, he immediately suggested Kate (Somerset How, Honey Waffle), an actress that he'd been friends with for some time, showing me the photo that you can see at the top of the chapter. What a brilliant suggestion it was - apart from being absolutely stunning, Kate immediately made the character her own, turning what could have been a standard 'damsel in distress' role into something really memorable. My initial image of Honey Waffle was to go down the Kim Basinger, L.A. Confidential route, but when we first met with Kate, we found that unlike in the photo I'd seen, she now had short, neck-length hair. Rather than fuss about with a wig, we decided to restyle the character in more of a 'Renne Zellwegger in Chicago ' look, so that Honey's hair would literally be a wavy waffle on her head, only one that was lacking in nutrition.
We had to photograph the slides that appear in the film several weeks before the shoot itself in order to have them ready to be projected when shooting. Jack suggested that it would be a good idea for these smaller roles in the film to use actual Lush employees, and so for The Sicilian and Pineapple Grunt, we got in Jason (UK factory manager) and Gary up from the Lush HQ in Poole - hopefully they didn't mind our lo-fi photo shoot at my flat and struggling into their ill-fitting costumes too much! The 'Senator Potion' role was slightly tougher to cast in such a short amount of time, but at the last minute, Pixie's dad stepped in to save the day, taking the role he was clearly born to play and chomping on a cigar with gusto!
With casting done, the next stage in the pre-production process was to storyboard the film. With 'making ofs' on pretty much every DVD you can buy these days, most people are aware of what a storyboard is, but just in case you aren't, it's like a comic strip that basically tells the story of the film, enabling you to think out where you're going to put the camera, and also to show the crew what you have in mind. They are also, usually, a lot, lot better drawn than mine. For Episode One, as our crew was so small, I knew that any storyboarding would just be a mental reference for me to use, and so... well, I didn't exactly try to stretch any artistic ability...
...I don't think I've got Kate's nose quite right.
Lush Town was quite new territory for Lush - making a film in this way was not something that they had tried before. In many senses, Episode One was a bit like making a pilot for a television show - as it was high risk, it had to be low cost; delivering a high-quality product with the lowest amount of e
xpenditure. The feeling was a bit like making a student film again - a very
small, very close-knit crew banding together, begging, borrowing (thankfully not stealing!) whatever we could to try and bring this vision to life. There were just four of us in the crew in all - myself and Pixie as previously mentioned, Kirsty Bailey our makeup artist, who made Sam look as grizzled and Kate look as fantastic as they do, and Lissy Snook, our runner (who was also our runner on Dick Dobson P.I, coincidentally. A runner, in case you don't do all this hip film lingo, is someone who looks after the actors by supplying hot-and-cold running mochachinos directly into their veins 24/7. Lissy also bravely tackled Central London rush-hour traffic for us every morning with the film kit. She's never spoken about it since, shaking and whimpering whenever the subject comes up).
Something that proved to be our main hurdle with Episode One was finding the right location for Detective Retro's office. As culturally varied as London is, there just aren't that many buildings that are in the style of a 1950s New York detective's office, for some reason. The few that there are are so in-demand by major motion pictures that they were, shall we say, a little north of our financial means (we spent some time hoping to film in the building that was used for the police headquarters scenes in Batman Begins, only to be told that it would set us back a cool £12,000. By the time we'd regained consciousness, they'd hung up.). In the end, with just days to go before we needed to start shooting, we came across a wonderful old building in Brick Lane that would not only do us a fantastic rate, but looked more the part than anything else we'd seen. Who needs Batman, anyway...
The fact that Episode One looks as good as it does is solely down to the efforts of Lisette 'Pixie' Lawrie. As I've said already, Pix acted as cinematographer, lighting designer, production designer and camera operator on the shoot, meaning that everything that you see in frame - from Detective Retro's case files, to the shadows of the venetian blinds
in the office - is visually designed or physically made by her. It's a little scary actually; she's a bit like a one-woman A Team. You suspect that if she was trapped in a room with a piece of blue tack and a drinking straw she'd be able to make you a fully armoured battle-tank. (If there's any rich Hollywood film producers reading this because their wives really like soap, then please, hire her immediately).
(Another long-winded side note.... one of the nice things about doing a film with as much visual detail as Episode One is that you can hide all sorts of sad little in-jokes in the film that no-one in their right mind is going to see, but will still make you chuckle like the big geek you are... As well as Jack contributing some great vintage Lush Times and Cosmetics To Go catalogues, there were a few sillier ones, which mainly cropped up on Retro's noticeboard - I thought I'd include a few of my favourites below:
* Jack has a few cameos in the photographs on the desk/noticeboard, but this one is a beauty.The DETECTIVE sits. Trenchcoat, fedora, grizzled – a man who’s greased too many goons and guzzled too much grease...."
When your roots are in Son of Rambow-style no-budget student film, you quickly work out that the only way to make something that works well with limited resources is to make sure that you write the script within your means. ie, if you don't have a helicopter (we didn't), don't write in a helicopter chase. If you're ugly as sin (I was), don't make an erotic thriller. When you've got limited time as well, it helps to form relationships with a pool of talented actors so you can easily have someone in mind when writing a character - and in this case, talent scouting, auditions and so on would take up more time than we had to spare.
When writing the character of Detective Retro, I had Sam Devereaux in mind from the start. Both Sam and Karl (Sedgwick, who was cast as Gentil Lentil) had played parts in films that I had previously been involved in, and both had great natural comic skills, as well as looking right for the parts (Although the comic had depicted someone from the Humphrey Bogart school of chisel-jawed leading men, I wanted our detective to have a bit more of a feel of that New York laconic wryness, even if it meant going closer towards Orson Welles in Touch of Evil than Charlton Heston.)
Plus, Sam was able to supply his own hat, which frankly swung the deal.
(A little side note about Sam's hat:Sam is an enormous, almost certifiable Indiana Jones fan. And I don't say that lightly - his Indiana Jones costume, of which Detective Retro's hat and boots were supplied from, is formed from either the real deal historical items (the WW2 gun belt etc) or genuine movie props. He also has a frighteningly encyclopaedic knowledge of James Bond, Batman, and manly man's whiskey. I hope to one day use him as a testosterone donor.)
Onc
e Sam was cast, I asked him, as you do, if he happened to know any beautiful femme fatales. Being the international playboy that he is, he immediately suggested Kate (Somerset How, Honey Waffle), an actress that he'd been friends with for some time, showing me the photo that you can see at the top of the chapter. What a brilliant suggestion it was - apart from being absolutely stunning, Kate immediately made the character her own, turning what could have been a standard 'damsel in distress' role into something really memorable. My initial image of Honey Waffle was to go down the Kim Basinger, L.A. Confidential route, but when we first met with Kate, we found that unlike in the photo I'd seen, she now had short, neck-length hair. Rather than fuss about with a wig, we decided to restyle the character in more of a 'Renne Zellwegger in Chicago ' look, so that Honey's hair would literally be a wavy waffle on her head, only one that was lacking in nutrition.
We had to photograph the slides that appear in the film several weeks before the shoot itself in order to have them ready to be projected when shooting. Jack suggested that it would be a good idea for these smaller roles in the film to use actual Lush employees, and so for The Sicilian and Pineapple Grunt, we got in Jason (UK factory manager) and Gary up from the Lush HQ in Poole - hopefully they didn't mind our lo-fi photo shoot at my flat and struggling into their ill-fitting costumes too much! The 'Senator Potion' role was slightly tougher to cast in such a short amount of time, but at the last minute, Pixie's dad stepped in to save the day, taking the role he was clearly born to play and chomping on a cigar with gusto!With casting done, the next stage in the pre-production process was to storyboard the film. With 'making ofs' on pretty much every DVD you can buy these days, most people are aware of what a storyboard is, but just in case you aren't, it's like a comic strip that basically tells the story of the film, enabling you to think out where you're going to put the camera, and also to show the crew what you have in mind. They are also, usually, a lot, lot better drawn than mine. For Episode One, as our crew was so small, I knew that any storyboarding would just be a mental reference for me to use, and so... well, I didn't exactly try to stretch any artistic ability...
...I don't think I've got Kate's nose quite right.
"INT. OFFICE - NIGHT.
A classic Film Noir detective’s office.
Venetian blinds cast tigers' stripes on the wall..."
Venetian blinds cast tigers' stripes on the wall..."
Lush Town was quite new territory for Lush - making a film in this way was not something that they had tried before. In many senses, Episode One was a bit like making a pilot for a television show - as it was high risk, it had to be low cost; delivering a high-quality product with the lowest amount of e
xpenditure. The feeling was a bit like making a student film again - a very
small, very close-knit crew banding together, begging, borrowing (thankfully not stealing!) whatever we could to try and bring this vision to life. There were just four of us in the crew in all - myself and Pixie as previously mentioned, Kirsty Bailey our makeup artist, who made Sam look as grizzled and Kate look as fantastic as they do, and Lissy Snook, our runner (who was also our runner on Dick Dobson P.I, coincidentally. A runner, in case you don't do all this hip film lingo, is someone who looks after the actors by supplying hot-and-cold running mochachinos directly into their veins 24/7. Lissy also bravely tackled Central London rush-hour traffic for us every morning with the film kit. She's never spoken about it since, shaking and whimpering whenever the subject comes up).Something that proved to be our main hurdle with Episode One was finding the right location for Detective Retro's office. As culturally varied as London is, there just aren't that many buildings that are in the style of a 1950s New York detective's office, for some reason. The few that there are are so in-demand by major motion pictures that they were, shall we say, a little north of our financial means (we spent some time hoping to film in the building that was used for the police headquarters scenes in Batman Begins, only to be told that it would set us back a cool £12,000. By the time we'd regained consciousness, they'd hung up.). In the end, with just days to go before we needed to start shooting, we came across a wonderful old building in Brick Lane that would not only do us a fantastic rate, but looked more the part than anything else we'd seen. Who needs Batman, anyway...
The fact that Episode One looks as good as it does is solely down to the efforts of Lisette 'Pixie' Lawrie. As I've said already, Pix acted as cinematographer, lighting designer, production designer and camera operator on the shoot, meaning that everything that you see in frame - from Detective Retro's case files, to the shadows of the venetian blinds
in the office - is visually designed or physically made by her. It's a little scary actually; she's a bit like a one-woman A Team. You suspect that if she was trapped in a room with a piece of blue tack and a drinking straw she'd be able to make you a fully armoured battle-tank. (If there's any rich Hollywood film producers reading this because their wives really like soap, then please, hire her immediately).(Another long-winded side note.... one of the nice things about doing a film with as much visual detail as Episode One is that you can hide all sorts of sad little in-jokes in the film that no-one in their right mind is going to see, but will still make you chuckle like the big geek you are... As well as Jack contributing some great vintage Lush Times and Cosmetics To Go catalogues, there were a few sillier ones, which mainly cropped up on Retro's noticeboard - I thought I'd include a few of my favourites below:
*Paul, our CG effects artist and behind-the-scenes filmmaker makes a brief cameo as the 'Lush Town Scalper'. (Watch out for Paul in Episode 3...)
*And last but not least, Pixie
and myself make cameos asdastardly felons...
"EXT. CITYSCAPE - NIGHT.
DETECTIVE (VO)But that's what it's like in Lush Town..."
The final stage of filming was for myself and Pixie to travel down to Poole to film the full-scale Lush Town model, which had been specially created by the incredible Jo Evans of Lush UK for the film. Standing at over two metres square, it really was something to behold. We wanted to do justice to such a brilliant model, and so much of our time was spent simply working out how best to light it, to give it the sense of scale and depth that it needed. With Pixie working her magic in that department, and me sprinkling the scene with flour-snow using a complex bit of filming equipment that we called a 'sieve', Jack suggested that it might be a good idea to get the little soap cars moving in a lo-fi way by standing at the sides and pulling them with strings - it looked fantastic on camera, giving life to the model whilst still keeping that home-made effects feel to it. So when you see the opening titles, do bear in mind that just out of shot on the left and right are Pixie and Jack, frantically pulling the strings attached to the cars!
"BAAAAAAAAA! DA-DAAAAHHHH! Daaaah, dah dah
DAAAAAAHHH!!"
DAAAAAAHHH!!"
(impression of Lush Town music)
It's not something people generally consider, but shooting the film is only half the battle in getting it complete. The post-production stage of editing, audio mixing, effects work, internet optimisation and so on is a very long, detailed process during which the film is literally put together like a jigsaw from its component parts and then polished like a big soapy apple. Unfortunately, most of this process involves me sitting at a computer and so makes for less dramatic behind-the-scenes photos. I've just taken one now though to give you a full feel for it:
One person that I do have to mention in this section though is Alex Cornish, our composer. Alex's ability to create fantastically evocative themes at superhuman speeds (I suspect he may be in possession of a flux capacitor) really saved our bacon on Episode One. (I don't know if you have the expression 'to save one's bacon' in America or Canada but it derives from a porcine superhero who used to be on British TV called Superpig - each week other pigs would get into trouble and Superpig would wave his magic trotters and save them from the clutches of Future Duck. The theme tune went 'SUPERPIG! YEAH!'. You don't know what you're missing.)
Music is such an important part of film, and one that is often overlooked when you're watching it - It really is worth giving the first episode another watch just to listen to Alex's work. We talked long and hard about pretty much every note that's in the film - from Honey's violin theme, to Pineapple Grunt's timpanis, the Sicilian's Italian plucked guitar sounds... the list goes on.
Another thing that did unexpectedly become a difficult choice was that the film looked just as good in colour as it did in black and white - making the decision to go with our initial instincts and stay true to the Film Noir monochrome look was a surprisingly tough one (one day maybe we'll release an alternate technicolour edition so people can make up their own minds).
"EXT. CITYSCAPE - NIGHT.
As Retro walks out into the snow, we pull out, up
and away over the soap skyscrapers as the title appears...
TO BE CONTINUED
The UK release for Episode One was on April 12th, 2008, with Lush shops and staff across the country dressing up for a Lush Town theme and the 'bloody brilliant' Hannah Dymond designing miniature (well, relatively!) versions of the Lush Town soap cityscape in every shop window. It really was amazing to go to the Covent Garden store in London, stand outside with Sam (Detective Retro) and Pixie, looking at the crowds around their window display and realising that just over a month previously, none of it had even been conceived.
In the time between, as I said at the start of this long-winded account, we've been on full-tilt putting together Episode Two (and even Episode Three), and preparing for the international launch (I've never had to put French subtitles onto one of my films before!). I can't wait for the Episode Two release - it's definitely upped the ante for all of us!
I hope that you enjoy Lush Town: Episode One as much as we enjoyed making it, and if you didn't, please do pretend that you did.
(And my very last little side note... for those hardcore forumites in the US and Canada who did the competition at the UK release, do please excuse this re-cap, and take it as a chance to finally claim your well deserved prizes! Episode Two is on its way...)
Henry Dalton
14th June, 2008
As Retro walks out into the snow, we pull out, up
and away over the soap skyscrapers as the title appears...
TO BE CONTINUED
The UK release for Episode One was on April 12th, 2008, with Lush shops and staff across the country dressing up for a Lush Town theme and the 'bloody brilliant' Hannah Dymond designing miniature (well, relatively!) versions of the Lush Town soap cityscape in every shop window. It really was amazing to go to the Covent Garden store in London, stand outside with Sam (Detective Retro) and Pixie, looking at the crowds around their window display and realising that just over a month previously, none of it had even been conceived.
In the time between, as I said at the start of this long-winded account, we've been on full-tilt putting together Episode Two (and even Episode Three), and preparing for the international launch (I've never had to put French subtitles onto one of my films before!). I can't wait for the Episode Two release - it's definitely upped the ante for all of us!
I hope that you enjoy Lush Town: Episode One as much as we enjoyed making it, and if you didn't, please do pretend that you did.
(And my very last little side note... for those hardcore forumites in the US and Canada who did the competition at the UK release, do please excuse this re-cap, and take it as a chance to finally claim your well deserved prizes! Episode Two is on its way...)
Henry Dalton
14th June, 2008
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