Electric Manley

It's been a week of new arrivals! First onboard was Graham Manley, a comic artist known for his work on Near Myths, Dice Man and his contributions to the Judge Dredd Megazine. Dave Barras and I met up with him at Deadhead before heading up to The Elephant House for a chat and a cuppa. The Elephant House is famous for having been one of the places that JK Rowling hung out while she wrote the first Harry Potter book, which is perhaps why our chat with Graham ranged from the juvenile to the fantastic, but we all had a lot of fun and so persuaded him to join the team and do some sketches for the Electric Man backstory (something which will form the basis of a VERY limited edition comic, and crucially, the opening titles sequence for the film). Graham showed us a few examples of his artwork, including some great fantasy comic book covers he'd drawn for the Dandy Annual and we showed him the draft comic script that tells the story of how Electric Man came to be the superhero you will all soon know and love! This bit of plot is top secret - if I told ya I'd have to zap ya - unless of course you want to sign up for one of our great sponsorship packages and help get this movie made.

The second new arrival was a week early... baby Navena Mackay! Congratulations to Scott (co-writer) and Morgane.

Buzzing the Airwaves

On Monday, Dave Barras (director and co-writer)and me (producer) were invited to hang out on the radio and tell the good people of Leith all about the film of Electric Man. The big gig was Stephen Young's show in the afternoon and we thought we'd just get a 10 minutes slot to plug the film, and try and persuade a few people to sign up for sponsorship packages or contact us to get involved. In the end we monopolised Leith FM with our sparky conversation for a whole hour. We even got to pick some eclectic and electric tracks including: Are Friends Electric?, She's Electric and something that went on and on by ELO (Dave's choice!)Despite Stephen's best efforts to talk a lot about why he loves to lick batteries (don't ask), Dave kept the chat on track, pointing the listeners towards the Electric Man Movie website and explaining why we want to make a film set in Edinburgh that isn't all about misery, drugs and deprivation, but is all about murder, mystery and mayhem. We needed Scott (co-writer) to really get going on the comic zingers, but I was on fire when it came to fantasy casting and put a big shout out to FRANKIE BOYLE, who I think would make a scarily hilarious Jimmy - Glasgow heavy and all round bad guy. C'mon on Frankie - you know you'd love zap some good guys - come join the Electric Man Movie fun!

Happy New Year!

2010 is a big year for Electric Man - the script's ready, key people are all on board, the publicity campaign is underway and as long as we can raise the funds, we're getting set towards shooting in the late spring. It's a tricky time to ask people for money, no one knows how long the credit crunch will last, it's freezing cold outside and backing our film may seem like a shot in the dark. But I'm hoping that we can persuade people to give us just a little to get the snowball rolling. C'mon, spread a little sunshine! Although that might adversely affect the snow...
In the meantime, we're starting some important production planning. Just before Christmas, Dave, Scott, our DOP, Rich and I all went to have a look at our main location - the comic shop, Deadheads. It's a fantastic place and looks just like a comic shop. I mean exactly like the kind of comic shop you'd get in a movie. Gaf (who runs the place) had re-painted the front of the shop, so it's all bright and shiny on the outside. The inside is a different story - it's just the sort of place our loser heroes, Jazz and Wolf, might hang out. But, sometimes reality is just too real, so we'll need to do some set dressing and we're thinking of rigging up a frame so Rick can put the lights exactly where he wants and we can build displays around the vertical struts, conveniently giving our mysterious femme fatale a place to hide when the boys think the shop is empty.

We're also planning to recce a few more of our outdoor locations just as soon as the snow melts and we're looking for places that show a different side of Edinburgh, so feel free to make suggestions!