Stormhouse: The BAFTA Screening

Well, I'm still recovering from that.  Have quite the headache.  Still, if I keeled over and perished right now, then last night wouldn't have been the worst one to go out on.

It was great!  BAFTA's lovely Princess Anne Theatre was 90% full - and thankfully, the reaction to our Stormhouse film was overwhelmingly positive.

You can't help but have your heart somewhere uncomfortably close to your mouth, as lights go down.  Thankfully, one shock-jump moment in the first 10 minutes genuinely sent a jolt through the theatre, followed by that lovely shared laughter you get at the cinema, when a moment properly grabs the audience.  After that, hopefully both audience and film-makers relaxed a little.  But not too much in the audience's case, since we wanted to scare the hell out of them.

Working on a film, especially over a long period of time, is a funny business.  It's easy to lose objectivity about how effective the thing is - and also what its true nature is.  Watching Stormhouse alongside 200 other people really opened my eyes and ears as to how nasty and brutal it is.  This is a pretty uncompromising film and I'm really proud of that.  Director Dan Turner is not a man for compromise, and so this isn't just another saccharine borderline-horror film aiming for a '12A' certificate.  This is about atmosphere, scares, darkness, uncomfortable moments, wince-making moments and pure, raw horror.

After the screening, Dan, producer Dean Fisher and I kidnapped our lovely test-screener crowd, who we'd positioned in the first three rows for ease of access.  They kindly filled in our questionnaires, designed to find out what they liked least and most about the film.  Then we informally quizzed them for a while.  It was a very useful session indeed.  I quickly learnt one thing: you're looking for that moment of forest-fire consensus.  Someone asks a question and pretty much everyone makes a noise and nods.  That's when you know the point really needs to be considered.  Great stuff, which will genuinely allow us to strengthen Stormhouse in small but very important ways.

After the Q&A, we headed over to join cast, crew and industry guests at this really lovely bar...

... the Jewel in Piccadilly.  What a lovely place - especially if you like spirits and are rich.  It was great to see the cast and crew members again.  Backs were slapped and plenty of compliments on the film came from guests.  You can tell when someone didn't really like something, because they don't say any more than they need to.  People generally hate lying.  So they'll say something generic but encouraging, like "Well done!".  But when they start breaking out the "Amazing"s and the "I loved it"s, you know there's more likelihood of sincerity.  So that was nice.


And already, the buzz was starting to spread out through the Twittersphere.  People saying stuff like this:

hedwig_thegreat Lisa McLisa 
Just back home from @JasonArnopp's #stormhouse - congrats to all concerned - I really enjoyed it! :D I likes my horror super creepy :)

Joeymuz1 Joanna Murray 
@JasonArnopp Totally loved @stormhouse_film tonight. Can't wait til release so I can bore my mates that I've already seen it. Brilliant!

WorksWithWords Lisa Holdsworth 
Just had the bejesus and several other things scared out of me by @JasonArnopp 's film Stormhouse. Amazing new British horror movie.

Lisa_Moranio Lisa Moran 
Home from @stormhouse_film Dunno why I'm bothering,I'll probably never sleep again anyway.Not without my bejaysus which was scared out of me

I swear these folks received no money from us.  Incidentally, they were unaware that Dan has recently returned to Twitter (follow him here) - and this film is certainly far from being just my baby.

Thank you, again, to everyone who came to the screening and gave such valuable feedback.  You've really helped to give us the courage of our convictions.  

Hopefully, in the next month, we'll be able to make the Stormhouse announcement we've been dying to make for a few weeks now.  Stay tuned.  Do not adjust your set.

Stormhouse on Twitter

Stormhouse on Facebook

Stormhouse hits BAFTA tonight

So, er, yes.  Good God!  Christ in a bowl!  Etc.

In May 2010, Dan Turner and I sat in a Soho boozer, talking about Stormhouse.

Tonight, in April 2011, we'll sit among a BAFTA audience (in the theatre pictured above) and watch it.

Time flies when you're making films.  Even when, in the UK, received wisdom suggests it's impossible to get them made.  (It's only impossible to get things done when you decide it's impossible.)

Tonight is mainly two things: a test-screening event (in which horror fans with no connection to us will give feedback, via anonymous questionnaire forms, after the screening) and a cast-and-crew shindig for all the amazing people who worked themselves silly for this film.  We'll have some industry folk along for good measure.

I'd be a liar if I said my stomach isn't rivalling an Olympic gymnastics team for impressive cartwheels and flips.

Let's go and break some legs.

Sarah Jane Composer Enters Stormhouse

Hello!  I'm more than delighted to announce that Sam Watts is our composer on the feature film Stormhouse.

Sam is, of course, the composer on hit BBC show The Sarah Jane Adventures.  Besides being an undeniably lovely man, he is a superb creative talent and we couldn't be more pleased to have him working on this film.  Tremendously exciting.

And here's the poster, for your delectation...

Stormhouse: The Halloween Unveiling

I've been waiting for this for some time. Halloween is, needless to say, the best possible time to raise the curtain - partly, at least - about me and Dan Turner's forthcoming horror feature. Here are some facts about it:

It's called Stormhouse.

Set in 2002, it sees the Military capturing and imprisoning a supernatural entity at England's secret base Stormhouse. The Government send 'ghost whisperer' Hayley Sands in to try and communicate with the entity. Then everything goes seriously ghost-shaped.

Hayley Sands is played by Katie Flynn (the daughter of Jane Seymour), who delivers a remarkable performance - as do Patrick Flynn, Grant Masters, Munir Khairdin, Grahame Fox and the rest of our awesome ensemble cast.

Dan has brilliantly directed it, with a luscious cinematography aided and abetted by our DOP Richard Swingle. Dan and I created the story, from his original idea (those five words I mentioned in a previous blogpost were "The military capture a ghost"). I wrote the script and executive-produced. Dean Fisher at Scanner-Rhodes is our ingenious, tireless producer.

That's all for now, except to say that as we move into post-production I couldn't possibly be more thrilled about this film.

                                                                       

            * * *

My horror novella Beast In The Basement is a dark, twisted tale of obsession, revenge, censorship, blame culture and parental responsibility.  In a big house in the countryside, an increasingly unstable author toils over a new hotly-anticipated novel which will close the best-selling trilogy of Jade Nexus books.  A violent incident tips him into a downward spiral with horrific consequences.  Read it before someone spoilers you!  Beast is available for Kindle (which can be read on most devices) at Amazon UK, Amazon US and more.  More details here.

My Amazon-acclaimed non-fiction ebook How To Interview Doctor Who, Ozzy Osbourne And Everyone Else is out now on Amazon UK, Amazon US and Amazon Germany, among others.  You can also buy it direct from me, in a Triple Pack of all three major file-types (PDF, ePub, Kindle), via PayPal.  Full details here, you splendid individual.

Release Schedule For The Rest Of 2010 & Beyond

Hello my little bowl of magic,

I haven't had material in a physical book for a fair while, since the Doctor Who story Christmas Every Day in Big Finish's Winter 2008 collection Short Trips: Christmas Around The World.  So it's nice that two actual-world, papery books have come along at once.  Namely...

THE BRILLIANT BOOK OF DOCTOR WHO 2011

A brand new official BBC tome!  It's like the Doctor Who annual you always wanted, full of fun and proper content for all ages.  I've written a smidgeon of fiction for it, in the shape of The Stone Totems.  This consists of a curator's plaque in The National Museum, attempting to explain what its Stone Dalek exhibits might actually be.  Oh dear lord, that was fun to write.  On top of that, I wrote a few articles about Daleks, Silurians, the TARDIS and all sorts.  Ridiculously exciting to work on a book edited by my former Doctor Who Magazine editor Clayton Hickman and designed by Doctor Who Adventures' equally super-talented Paul Lang.  Buy it for Christmas, or better still, get someone to buy it for you.

BERNICE SUMMERFIELD: PRESENT DANGER

Bernice, for the uninitiated, is a former Doctor Who companion from various novels and audios.  She was created by that splendid fellow, Paul Cornell, and is a tad like a female Indiana Jones, being a feisty archaeologist.

I previously wrote the short story Prime Five for 2007's Bernice Summerfield: Missing Adventures hardback collection, so it was nice to return to the fold with a war story.  Edited by the excellent Eddie Robson, Bernice Summerfield: Present Danger is a collection of stories which document a one-sided war between mankind and the Deindum, who are a bunch of aggressive, paranoid, floaty lizard-headed bastards from the future.  

Rather than going for a full-blown war epic, out on the frontlines, I wanted to make the conflict more claustrophobic and personal.  So my story, The War Of Art, sees Bernice trapped in a crashed freighter with a bunch of refugees, menaced by a single Deindum.  There's fire, death, revenge, time travel and a 150-foot-high head.  Surely I can't say fairer than that.

THE REST OF 2010

Brilliantly, I seem to have to have something of a release schedule for the rest of the year. (A release schedule!  Loving those apples.) The two books already mentioned are available right now, and then I have one release per month until January.  Here's what's in store for the rest of the year...

TEMPTING FATES

Red Eye Pictures' teen web drama series, which I worked on last year, receives its full launch on November 1.  Three rather beguiling Fates arrive on a university campus, with a demented X Factor style mission to kill various people.  Professor Morgan Node is the poor bastard chosen to chaperone the Fates and make sure they don't misinterpret the various clues provided to them by the gods, and bump off the wrong target.  It's splendid black comedy fun, with some strong performances from the cast and more energy than you can shake a power generator at.  

SARAH JANE ADVENTURES: DEADLY DOWNLOAD

Wooo!  Especially now that The Sarah Jane Adventures' Series Four has kicked off (you can see the concluding part of Joe Lidster's The Nightmare Man story today on CBBC), it feels great to have this original audio story set for release on November 4 through BBC Audio.  Read by Elisabeth Sladen, it sees an alien attack on Earth, via the internet.  And good heavens, it's only £4.49 at Amazon UK!  I have yet to hear the finished recorded product, but can say I had a great time writing it and working with my great editor John Ainsworth, who really pushed for every last drop of value from the story.

DOCTOR WHO: THE DEMONS OF RED LODGE

Christ, what a way to end the year.  The Big Finish release The Demons Of Red Lodge & Other Stories will be issued on December 31!  Rest assured that I shall be partying with added vigour.  This is a release which I'm proud to share with three other writers, the first two of whom are good friends (I haven't had the pleasure of meeting the third): William Gallagher (who writes the story Doing Time), John Dorney (Special Features) and Rick Briggs (The Entropy Composition).  Four stories, starting with my own The Demons Of Red Lodge, and each featuring Peter Davison as The Doctor and Sarah Sutton as Nyssa.  Yes!

2011: THE PLAN

Next year will see the release of me and Dan Turner's supernatural horror feature film, which was shot in August.  It does now have a title, but not one which we're going to reveal just yet.  Editing and post-production are coming along apace, and I couldn't be more excited about that.  Elsewhere in featuresville, I have two new horror specs written, which need honing before I can lead them to market with bells in their noses.

There's one Doctor Who-related release scheduled for next year, which I've already written but can't announce yet.  Can't bloody wait to do so, mind.  The already-announced Short Trips Big Finish audio-story The Lions Of Trafalgar (read by Peter Davison and starring his Doctor along with Nyssa and Tegan) will be released on one of the Short Trips CD collections, to be decided.  I'm working on at least two more things in that expansive Who universe, with a great deal of work in store between now and Christmas.  Feels like I'm building up the head of steam I've always wanted. 

You can't see this, but I'm doing a celebratory dance.  And thank God you can't see it.  Far too arousing.  Shouldn't have mentioned it at all, really.

Good day to you.

After The Storm

You know that feature film I told you about in my last blogpost? We finished shooting it yesterday. The raw footage exists, which is a source of great joy, tinged with sadness that the filming experience is over.

I'm sitting on a sofa in the communal living area which cast and crew have shared for the duration of the shoot. Since we had our wrap party last night (complete with live rock covers band!), the place looks like a bomb hit it.  A booze bomb.  The majority of us have lived together for these weeks, in the middle of nowhere with the weakest internet and phone signals known to man, as well as the most persistently hardcore flies on the planet. It's been one of the greatest experiences of my life.

The shoot has taught me so much about film-making, not least in terms of directing. It's been great to sit at the monitors with director Dan Turner, learning from every single decision he makes. The story has evolved as we filmed, too, so it's been a thrilling challenge to solve issues along the way, ensure that everything makes sense and is the best that it can possibly be.

We've been helped by a brilliantly dedicated crew and a fantastic ensemble cast, all of whom went beyond the call of duty on a regular basis. I'm really going to miss waking up each day on an airbed on the floor of one of our sets, knowing that a full day of shooting lies ahead, with good, professional folk. And the catering.

Of course, the film still has a long road ahead of it. Effects, editing, the grade... that's all to come. For now, I'm going to take a little time to reflect on the whole giddy experience. Oh, and, er, catch up with all the writing and story creation that I should have been doing over the last fortnight...

UPDATE: You can catch up with some of my hashtagged tweets during the shoot here: http://twitter.com/#search?q=%23horrorfilmdiary