Hopeless Film

Film Studies with Gregg McNeill

3 Comments

Having spent a lot of time at Steampunks in Space talking about early films with Gregg McNeill, we clearly had homework to do. Film is not a medium I’ve ever worked in and I don’t have a very visual mind. I have written scripts – for the comics, and also for mumming sides, so I knew just enough to know I was out of my depth. We set out on a process to steep me in old films in the hopes that this would enable me to write a viable script.

Some of it was a bit random, as Tom and I wandered about on youtube and online archives. Some of it was very deliberate as Gregg steered us towards things, and alerted us to details we should be considering. How the text boards are done. How the sets are put together. The lighting and mood. I would have to write for period appropriate technology, one camera that can’t move much, a small budget… there was a lot to think about.

Several period films became key to us during this process. One was Nosferatu – the way the lighting and shadows work there. The one that most impacted on me was The Cabinet of Dr Caligari because of the way in which the sets are painted. I realised this was the kind of look I wanted for us, and after consulting with Gregg it became apparent that this might be the most realistically affordable approach for us.

Having started this whole venture from the observation that there are parallels between silent films and comics, it because vital to dig in on those mechanics. A silent film needs a script for the actors to work from, and it also needs text cards to support that and guide the viewer. Gregg directed us to early Buster Keaten films for the most effective and minimal use of text cards. That became a bit of an obsession all by itself and there is a part of me that wants to make that kind of film. This may be a story for another day…

So much would depend on finding a team of people for the human characters who could embody what’s going on and get it across. The acting style in silent films is not the same as modern films. I admit that I love the more overblown acting approaches, and for several of our characters – Durosimi and Melisandra – that would make a lot of sense. The more we looked at films, the more aware I became that I needed to know who I was writing for. It wouldn’t work for us to have a script and try to cast it.

There was only ever one person I wanted to have playing Annamarie Nightshade. There is only one person I could imagine playing Melisandra. But would they be up for it? And who else should be in that team?

Check back next week for the next instalment of how we did all the crazy things…

And do have a look at Gregg McNeill’s patreon page – https://www.patreon.com/DarkboxImages

Uncategorized

Hopeless Folklore

Leave a comment

Hello people! (and others) The esteemed Jeffrey Tolbert (Editor and co author of -The Folkloresque: Reframing Folklore in a Popular Culture World, has decided to look at Hopeless, Maine and its growing tribe of participants as a topic of study. “an ongoing conversation on the role of folklore and the folkloresque in Hopeless, Maine.” Your participation would be much appreciated.

Topics of interest include the nature/definition of folklore, its connections to place, and the role of digital media in the creation and performance of contemporary folk cultures. We invite you to come and join him and become part of the conversation here- https://folkloresque.net/community/folklore-and-folkloresque/hopeless-maine-folklore-and-the-folkloresque/ You do need to create a log in and password to participate. If you do not get see a confirmation email, check your spam folder (personal experience) This should be very interesting indeed!

Jeffrey happened to us on Twitter last year, we very much like his folkloresque book and he’s been delightful to communicate with. We’ve found his ideas about folklore really interesting and engaging. He’s interested in what people do – in folklore as living tradition, not dusty museum piece. So, very much our sort of chap!

Hopeless Film

Steampunks in Space

2 Comments

Back in November, Tom and I went to Steampunks in Space, in Leicester. It turned out to be another key point in the development of the film. We were a few tables along from Gregg McNeill, so were able to spend a lot of time talking about what had happened, what could happen, and the sorts of things we needed to think about. Being in the same place is powerful, creatively, but with Gregg in Scotland and us in Gloucestershire, we hadn’t had much scope.

Also at Steampunks in Space, was John Naylor, who is an absolute powerhouse when it comes to all things Steampunk. He was there selling hats. John is the man with the vision behind Asylum and the Ministry of Steampunk. Thanks to him, Abbey Masahiro was in Lincoln last summer and we were able to get a book to him (see this post for more backstory). So, I took the opportunity to update John on how this had all gone, and to thank him for once again being a source of magic. He has a rare talent for creating spaces in which amazing things happen.

After that conversation I had one of those double take moments of realising I had made a serious mistake. I went back and asked John if he wanted to be in the film project, and he very generously said yes. It’s all too easy to lose track of what people do in their day jobs. John does film and television work professionally, with more knowledge and skills than you might want to try and shake a stick at. He can also do fight choreography.

That weekend felt like a tremendous consolidation of the project. Adding John Naylor to the team massively expanded the capabilities in the mix. It continues to amaze and delight me that all these highly talented, dedicated, serious and professional people are looking at this madcap thing and wanting in. Thanks to their amazingness, we get to turn a bit of lunatic ‘what if’ into something that really could work.

Hopeless Film

More monsters and Matt

Leave a comment

I blogged a few weeks ago about how Matt Inkel first got involved with the film project – https://hopelessvendetta.wordpress.com/2020/03/06/monsters-matt-and-muppets/

As things started to get moving in the autumn, we went back to him to talk in more detail, establishing that yes, he really was up for this. We talked a lot about different kinds of puppets, how they might be deployed to interact with actors, and what we would need puppets of.

At this point it became clear that child Salamandra would have to be a puppet. Those of you who have read The Blind Fisherman will likely know why, for the rest of you, here come the spoilers…

The central action in the story involves Sal as a baby being thrown into the sea by her father, encountering agents of change, and then being rescued by the fisherman. Clearly we could not throw a small child into water to make this film. Further none of the team has a small child to whom they are not overly attached and people don’t often rent them out on these terms. So, our child character would have to be a puppet.

On the plus side, that means an adult who knows what they are doing is entirely in charge of making that child character do stuff. On the downside, this character is key emotionally and evoking complex emotions with puppets needs thinking about. It’s been a consideration while writing the script.

At some point, when we have funding, Matt will be building both a child Sal, and a sea monster to fight with Seth. How many puppets he makes is probably going to be dictated by funding. There’s scope to have puppets of the same thing at different scales to allow different kinds of scenes to be more easily filmed. Basically, we can go utterly mad with this if the money is there to enable it…

Hopeless

Social Distancing, Hopeless Maine Style

1 Comment

On social media of late we’ve been sharing images from the island and adding a social distancing commentary. It turns out that Hopeless rather lends itself to this. It’s rare that our characters touch each other. Some of this is a period issue – it is a sort of Victorian setting and people were less demonstrative. Some of it is that you never know who will turn out to be an eldritch horror, so it is best not to get too close.

Mistrust of each other keeps our islanders at arm’s length. The grim realities of life have made a lot of the citizens emotionally unavailable. They cope by pretending there’s nothing to cope with. It sort-of works, but Hopeless is seldom a happy place, as the name suggests.

Hopeless residents have the fear of catching consumption, vampirism, lycanthropy and extra tentacles. No one really understands the mechanics for any of these things. It is hard to form, or sustain any kind of involved relationship when you are afraid of the people around you. Being afraid saves lives, for sure, but it also blights lives. There are questions of balance.

In the meantime, we are not recommending you carry a hand of glory as an aid to social distancing, even though it would likely work rather well.

Hopeless Film

Dr Abbey casts a spell

1 Comment

In the summer of 2019, Dr Abbey Masahiro was at the big steampunk gathering in Lincoln. For a whole host of reasons, we weren’t. Tom had one of his moments (not unlike the stuff he gets up to on Facebook) and arranged to get a copy to Dr Abbey via the fabulous Lyssa Lopez Wain (who we later killed in this blog post).

Much to our delight, Dr Abbey was rather taken with Hopeless, Maine and started talking to us about what we do, and might do. The film project had been languishing on a back burner for some time at this point because none of us knew how to proceed.

As luck would have it, cameraman Gregg O’Neill was at an event with Dr Abbey a few weeks later and it gave them a chance to talk about all things film. There was a conversation about the Blind Fisherman project. Then, later in autumn, Dr Abbey took some Hopeless Maine posters and books to the Tokyo Film Festival to see if there might be a potential market for us. People involved with film festivals around the world had a look at us, and the response was positive.

It lit a fire under us, simply. Dr Abbey cast a spell on the project and we knew we were willing to invest a lot more energy and resources to make it work. The whole tone of the conversation changed, from largely daydreaming to entirely serious. We started thinking a lot more seriously about what and who would be needed to make it work, and everything stepped up a gear.

Art of the island

The Hopeless Maine Scientific Society

Leave a comment

Those of you who followed the kickstarter obituaries last autumn may have noticed the presence of The Hopeless Maine Scientific Society. Membership of this organisation is generally a death sentence, and this picture, of the four key members, gives you some sense as to why!

This is a two page spread from the next Hopeless Maine graphic novel, and like most of our two page spreads it has nothing to do with the rest of the story. It is a peek into island life. What we’re doing in addition with these two page spreads, is to feature actual people who have played a key role in the Hopeless Maine project. And while these dodgy scientists may be the kiss of death on the fictional island, in real life they are hugely important to us.

Going left to right…

The young man setting fire to the tablecloth is my son and heir, James Weaselgrease (his steampunk name, not his real name). James is central to our song-based performances, and this is his second time in a comic. If you look closely, there’s a much younger him on a two page spread in The Gathering.

The gentleman holding the tablecloth is Robin Treefellow Collins, who is responsible for the hairy coffee, and who has written a number of ‘Daphne’ stories for this blog.

Next up, a justifiably worried Keith of Mystery, aka Keith Errington, who is responsible for Hopeless Maine prose novel The Oddatsea and without whom we would never have managed a kickstarter. He is an organisational force to reckon with. He’s also performed with us, and is responsible for the Hopeless Maine Home Companion, without which there would never have been a Spidermilk Biscuit song!

Finally, breaking the fourth wall to stare at you from the right of the image, is Keith Healing (whose title I won’t mention as he didn’t get the most dignified nickname). Keith is responsible for the Hopeless Maine roleplay game – an epic attempt at taking the madness of Hopeless and turning it into a coherent and playable system without sacrificing anything much of the magic and mystery.

Hopeless Film

What Tom does on Facebook

2 Comments

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…

Hopeless Music

Shipwrecking on Hopeless, Maine

Leave a comment

The fog by night is darker, deeper, shrouding everything. No stars shine through, no moonlight glimmers. All sounds are muted, colours dim, here is no hope here. No hope at all. Only cold and damp malevolence.

On the mist shrouded, grave dark sea, a boat shatters its hull against the malice of rocks. Hungry water sucks the living down, until only one remains, kept afloat by a large tea chest and drifting towards dawn and the shore.

James Weaselgrease shipwrecks on the shores of Hopeless, Maine. A man of science, he is in no way prepared to deal with all the folklore and songs of the supernatural. He’s even less prepared for the island’s ghosts, and other uncanny residents!

We’re shipwrecking at Festival at the Edge this summer, all being well, with a new Hopeless Maine project and an hour long performance. More about the festival here – https://www.festivalattheedge.org/

News for the residents of Hopeless, Maine