The Road to Midnight Oil

Hello, and welcome to the very first Handmade Rockets blog! In this blog I’d like to talk about how Handmade Rockets came about and the making of our first film, Midnight Oil.

First off, it’s important to start at the beginning, and our beginning was, of all things, with a Doctor Who fan film. Don’t laugh, you’re a genre fan or you wouldn’t be here, and believe it or not those were some of the best things I, personally, have ever been part of.

And so Handmade Rockets was formed to make our very own brand of epic space adventures, horror stories, sci-fi tales and quirky comedies.

The ambition was to move on from short films and start producing feature length movies, but we didn’t have the budget for that. Heck, we didn’t have a budget! But that never stopped us before and so we came up with a story and I began writing a script. At this point Jed had moved to a different area so meeting in person was difficult, but we’d always developed our scripts by email so I sent Jed new pages for him to review as we went and we soon had a script for Dire Gryke. The only question now was how to get it made?

This was now 2017 and crowdfunding had become a thing (if only we’d had that back in our Lungbarrow Brothers days - we might’ve had a Dalek!) and we figured it was worth giving it a shot. Now, we’re no experts in crowdfunders, but we know you need a prototype or something to show potential investors what it is they’re investing in. We’re in the business of making films, so it seemed reasonable to us to make a short film that would (a) demonstrate our technical proficiency as filmmakers and (b) give a glimpse as to what Dire Gryke would actually be - Midnight Oil was intended to be that prototype.

Dire Gryke revolves around several characters, and part of the strength of the script is in their dialogue and interactions with each other. To demonstrate that, the original version of Midnight Oil had two characters living in the house, so we could have them bounce off each other. With Jed now living on the other side of the planet (well, Hull) we asked our good friend and occasional Lungbarrow Brother collaborator Jack Anderson to play the lead part of Nicolas Harding and I would play his housemate, Freddy. I really can’t stress enough how much Jack contributed to development of the script too, especially to the character of Harding.

A long time ago, two sci-fi fans, one of whom was also an aspiring filmmaker, decided it would be a fun idea to make a Doctor Who fan film. Actually, it started out as a Doctor Who prose series (these being in vogue at the time), but honestly, the film stuff was more fun 😁. The first episode, Encounter, came out waaaaaaaaaay back in May 2011, and despite being a little clunky round the edges, was a fun experience. From there, we decided to go whole hog, and pretty soon the “Lungbarrow Brothers” fan films (the name being a fandom in-joke of sorts) took off for us.

When we released the final Lungbarrow Brothers film, Cold Hearted Observers, had been such a leap from the quality from our first fan film, and that in the space of four years we had made epic space adventures, horror stories, sci-fi tales and quirky comedies, why not take the lessons we’d learned and try our hands at making our own original work going forward? 

Unfortunately with full-time jobs and family responsibilities, finding time to shoot was difficult, and as we wanted to get filming done to start crowdfunding we had a self-imposed deadline looming. As we were unable to schedule a date for filming with Jack before that deadline, Jed stepped in to play the part of Harding. That introduced another set of problems, with Jed living in Narnia: he could only get over to film for one night, and Midnight oil was clearly a two night project. We were going to have to do a lot of prep work for this.

Dire Gryke revolves around several characters, and part of the strength of the script is in their dialogue and interactions with each other. To demonstrate that, the original version of Midnight Oil had two characters living in the house, so we could have them bounce off each other. With Jed now living on the other side of the planet (well, Hull) we asked our good friend and occasional Lungbarrow Brother collaborator Jack Anderson to play the lead part of Nicolas Harding and I would play his housemate, Freddy. I really can’t stress enough how much Jack contributed to development of the script too, especially to the character of Harding.

We actually filmed a portion of this script, however it soon became apparent that the camcorder we’d used to make the Lungbarrow Brothers films was, not only outdated technology, but on its last legs and the footage we’d filmed that night was, unfortunately, unusable. If we were going to take this seriously then we were going to have to upgrade to a new camera. Then a gift from the Gods (well, the HMRC) arrived in the form of a tax rebate in the post - a whopping £400 cheque! I know, time to live the high-life, right? I did some research into what was in my price range (after paying off some bills and splashing out on groceries) and invested in a Canon 700D and a 50mm lens. We were good to go.

It was also obvious that filming a ‘proper’ film was a little more complicated than a Doctor Who fan film, and that I would have to focus my attention a little more on the directing side of things. As such I wouldn’t be able to play the part of Freddy. We looked at the script again and decided to remove the character all together (although a reference to him remains in the finished film).

Unfortunately with full-time jobs and family responsibilities, finding time to shoot was difficult, and as we wanted to get filming done to start crowdfunding we had a self-imposed deadline looming. As we were unable to schedule a date for filming with Jack before that deadline, Jed stepped in to play the part of Harding. That introduced another set of problems, with Jed living in Narnia: he could only get over to film for one night, and Midnight oil was clearly a two night project. We were going to have to do a lot of prep work for this.

The night of filming came around and we were prepped and ready to go. I’d like to say we got through it without any issues, and that would almost be the truth, but a number of things did go wrong that night. For example, the mysterious creepy woman, played by my wife Amelia Addams, was originally intended to have ‘mystic symbols’ tattooed on her face. Obviously we weren’t going to tattoo Amelia’s face for the film, but I did speak to a tattooist friend of mine (Al Redbeard Richardson, if you’re interested in getting some ink done) and he told me what I’d need to apply a transfer like he would in the studio when applying a design onto a customer, and the tests we’d done beforehand came out perfect. Not on the night though. To this day I don’t know if Amelia had some residual make up or moisturiser on her face, but the transfer just would not take. We only had the one night to film, remember, so a decision had to be made and we ditched the make up design. Another example is the batch fake blood I’d made came out kinda thinner than I would’ve liked, but it was nearly 2am and we’d been filming since sundown and it just didn’t seem an issue in the grand scheme. 

With filming in the bag I began editing. Sometimes, no matter how many drafts of the script you do, and how long you rehearse for, it’s only when you come to edit a thing that you see it’s not quite complete. In the case of Midnight Oil the ending seemed kind of abrupt and, well, not very satisfying. It wasn’t too much of an issue, as this was only meant to showcase our ability to make a film for the crowdfunding, and the ending might work as a cliffhanger to grab the attention of potential investors, right? Maybe. But the storyteller in me just couldn’t leave it like that. In the script for Dire Gryke there is an institution known as Morgadyne, and the idea came to me to have a representative of that company appear during the end credits. This would not only make for a more satisfying end to Midnight Oil, but also tease the wider world of Morgadyne to be seen in Dire Gryke.

I asked Amelia’s best friend, Rachel Angus, to play the part of Victoria Gladstone. By this time Amelia and I had moved house, so whereas the majority of Midnight Oil was filmed in the living room of the old house, the Morgadyne section was filmed in the living room of the new house. With the final scene filmed Jed began composing the music score. Did I mention that Jed composed the music for all of our Lungbarrow Brothers films? When we first began making films he asked if we could use his own music for it. I’ll be honest, I was a little hesitant at first because I hadn’t heard him play; I was worried he might be overestimating his abilities and I didn’t want to hurt his feelings. Luckily it was I that was underestimating his abilities as he’s a fantastic musician!

With Midnight Oil completed we released it on our YouTube channel in 2018 and began planning our crowdfunder campaign. We wanted to get together to make a pitch video, and this time it was I that went to Jed to film. I’ve visited Jed in Hull a number of times, and we always end up discussing story ideas as we walk the streets of the city, and because of this the place feels like creative space to me. Filming the pitch video in Hull I remember feeling optimistic about the crowdfunder, after all, look at what Jed and I had created together over the years and we have so many ideas for the future. Back home in the Shire, things didn’t seem so certain.

Okay, it’s easy to get caught up in an idea and be blind to the realities of the real world, but when you sit down to look at things objectively you begin to see the situation with a little more clarity. In the case of our crowdfunder, what did we actually have as Handmade Rockets? One short film. It’s a film that I’m genuinely proud of (especially as it was mostly shot in one night), but to ask people to back us, financially, to make a feature film based on that? Well that seemed a bit of a stretch. 

After discussing things with Jed, we decided to hold off on the crowdfunding and concentrate on making a few more short films to build our portfolio. With that in mind, Handmade Rockets became more than just a creative outlet, it’s a showcase for what Jed and I can achieve together. 

~ A.K. Treasure

Watch Lungbarrow Brothers on YouTube