Some of the most important developments in the Hopeless Maine project as a whole have been due to what Tom does on Facebook. It shouldn’t work, and yet somehow, it does. I put it down to how alluring he is. I say this based on having been entirely lured, back before Facebook existed, when Tom was in the habit of doing his thing in yahoo groups.

Having decided that a Hopeless Maine silent movie would be a cool thing, Tom posted on Facebook to see who wanted to make that happen. I don’t think there are many people for whom this would be a viable way of developing a project, but there it is, this is his super-power.

In a very short time frame, two key people stepped up to say that yes, they would be up for that.

One was Gregg McNeil – who I have blogged about here. https://druidlife.wordpress.com/2020/01/04/the-glorious-work-of-gregg-mcneil/ we met him through Steampunk events, and were smitten with his tintype photography. Gregg knows about period film and cameras and was keen to get involved.

The other person to step forward was Walter Sickert, of the Army of Broken Toys, offering to do the soundtrack. We love Walter’s work. Further, this is someone with experience doing scores. It’s Walter’s music that you hear in the background to this video –

A vote of confidence from two people who know what they’re doing far better than we do. It was a powerful moment. It took us from ‘this is a lovely idea’ to ‘this could work’. We started talking to each other a lot more seriously, and Tom spent a lot of time talking to Gregg. It was around this point that we realised a hand wound camera would be the heart of the project. This would be our key magical item, moving forward. All we had to do was find one that works…