The Stars Of Moon Launch 2

It’s 11pm the day after Moon Launch and I’m just about getting over the hangover. Suffice it to say it was an amazing night and I feel very proud to have played a small part in it. We shall endeavour to post up some photos as soon as possible but in the mean time I thought I’d chuck up some details of the real stars of the show, the acts.

We opened the night with Patsy & Tim, also known as master puppeteer Laura Bacon and musician Tim Berryman. Their cover of the Pokemon theme was easily one of the highlights of the entire night and they had everyone in hysterics for their entire set.

You can find out more about Laura’s puppet work on her facebook fan page.

We kept the comedy going with a barnstorming performance by musical comedy duo, Cold Callers. Ryan and Paul played at the first Moon Launch and were good enough to dust off the official Moon theme song one more time.

You can follow the boys on twitter, listen to some of their songs again on myspace and you should most certainly check out their podcast on itunes.

 For me one of the real highlights of the night turned out to be blues singer, JD Smith whose set caused me to dash outside and demand all the smokers drop their fags and come listen. If I can find a good quality youtube video then I’ll sling one up on the site but for now you can listen to some of his fantastic music on his myspace.

He likes Garth Ennis too which is always a plus.

 The night was rounded off by the reggae sounds of John Blood and the Highlys. The band were good enough to step in on very short notice and were superb from start to finish. The perfect end to an eclectic night of music.

If you want to catch more of John Blood and the Highlys then you can do so on their website.

And just to round it off, here’s one of their videos:

Thanks again to everyone who came, we hope you had a fantastic time and that you enjoy the comic. If you weren’t able to make it then don’t fret, the book will be available to buy on line in the next few days.

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The Mad Tree – A Ghost Story In Ten Silly Minutes

 

Those of you who follow me on twitter will know that my writing partner, Jim Eaton and I have been working on a new short film over the past couple of months. Well here it is.

The Mad Tree is our homage to the ghost stories of M. R. James, with a little bit of our own silliness plugged in for good measure. It is the story of Mr Darcy Woodwind, a writer from London who falls afoul of a malevolent shrub. No real departure from our usual brand of daftness then.

The film is our latest attempt to inflict ourselves upon the 2 Days Later Horror festival. It’s the 10th anniversary of the event so it’d be really lovely if we get picked for the screening. I shall keep you posted on how things go.

As is often the way the edit was a total pain in the bum and after blowing a firewire port and having to run all over London, searching for someone who could capture the footage, I finally wrapped the edit up at 6AM the following morning. As a reward we’ve taken this week off from writing but we’ll be back into it after the weekend. The subject of the new project…radio. More soon.

As a final side note. It’s worth mentioning that Jack Gavin (who plays the lead role in this film as well as several of our other projects) is getting married today. Our best Bunker wishes to him and his lovely wife-to-be.

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The Solar System is Doomed and so are you

XKCD’s Randall Munroe’s piece on the utter futility of getting up in the morning (or indeed watching fatuous entertainment news shows) really gets into the guts of what it’s like in the endless velvet nothingness of existence. In a universe made almost entirely of the absence of something, punctuated with violent and cataclysmic birthing pools of giant Hydrogen atomic balls, firing deadly radiation everywhere and nuturing only a very tiny number of miniscule globules of detritus, all of which are unlikely to be able to sustain the absurdly specific requirements of our fragile and ultimately rapidly aging forms, frankly the end (while maybe not nigh) is bloody obvious.Best to simply shrug and resign your ancestors to the cold and lonely death in open space or the fiery annihaltion of a Supernova.

Remember: Between the sky and the ground and sea is our Fishbowl. We are the fish. Good luck out there people.

(Unless we redesign ourselves like the first Guardians of the Galaxy – that’d be awesome).

The Lady In The Grove – A Ghost Story

Jim Eaton and I are heading off to Reading in a couple of days to shoot our latest short. It’s a ghost story spoof about…well I won’t spoil it but it’ll probably be fairly silly. The film’s been written for this year’s 2 Days Later competition and will be (including competition’s comedic sister 2 Days Laughter) our 8th film for the festival!

It’s been fun working on a ghost story as they’re a particular passion of Jim’s and he has a far better eye than me for them. To help prove that I thought I’d throw up a ghost story that Jim did with Griff Jameson a few years back. It’s a “proper” ghost story rather than one infused with silliness and it’s very good. If you’re a fan of the old M. R. James TV adaptations from the 70s then you’ll dig this.

Enjoy!

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Moon’s Song of the Week: The Fight by Krispy Kreme

 

My buddy Josh (who you’ll remember from all of our more recent films) has been trying to get me to check out Krispy Kreme for weeks now. I finally got around to it and am now set to loose a lot of time catching up on his hilarious back catalogue. Krispy Kreme is a rapper and youtube star who produces low budget videos on a regular basis. They are very funny and surprisingly well written, plus how can you not love a guy who dresses like John Cena just because he wants to.

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If Batman Were Voiced by the Cookie Monster

 

I swear something has broken in my brain as of late. First the cat singing Game of Thrones has me laughing like a child and now this. Turns out that if you take Christian Bale’s bonkers Bat-voice out of the movies and replace it with the only-slightly-less-bonkers Cookiee Monster voice, the result is something so stupid it deserves a nobel prize.

Wonderful.

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BTB Film – [Box] Fresh

[Box] Fresh is a parody of youth TV and is pretty much the first short film I ever made. A few friends and I (including Paul Wade and my then-girlfriend-now-wife)  got together in Canterbury and decided to shoot a few sketches that we’d been kicking around. This was the final result and I’m still pretty proud of it. It comes from that awkward time before I realised I needed to keep my own daft face behind the camera rather than in front of it but the blind freerunning skit is still a joke that I’m very pleased to have written.

The movie won us a Best Editor award and led to us going on to make loads of other things, so Box will always hold a special place in my heart.

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Moon Launch 2: The Build-up

We are very quickly moving towards Moon Launch 2. Final touches to the book still need to be completed, extra material, colours, graphics, bit of lettering and effects but as soon as those are complete Moon Launch 2 is a go. Currently scouts are moving through the underbelly of central London, trying to find the perfect location for just such an event Music license, music equipment, fine bar, good atmosphere, reasonably priced alcohol and a door from which the good Moon fans can pick up their brand new spanking copy of Moon 2.

This is the point at which the pressure is greatest, as the finished product forms right in front of our disbelieving eyes. The strange things is seeing how these things develop as each layer is put on. From the first panel of Moon 1 to the last page of Moon 2, little has changed in terms of story, humour and style, but slight tweaks and improvements to Moon 2 mean that it will most likely be a much more slick affair. No typos for starters – though one was indentified in 1 that neither me nor Dan had ever noticed and that no fan has ever commented upon. First to write the typo in the comments below gets a free copy of Moon 2.

BTB Film – Wild Watch

Jim Eaton and I made this Springwatch parody back in 2011. It’s another 2 Days Laughter Festival entry and as such is a 5 min comedy film that was produced in 48 hours. It stars the wonderfully funny, rubber faced stylings of Paul Teeling and Rosie Owen who were, as ever, a total joy to work with. Camera work and special effects were done by Paul Wade and he deserves a lot of the overall credit for being the one that badgered Jim and I into doing the film when we really had a lot of other work we should have been doing.
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The 1st Red Dwarf X Trailer – Return to the Dwarf

Even following the gaps and uneven nature of recent series of the Dwarf, we are, here at Bunker HQ, absolute Dwarf fans. During filming of the second Moon film we were lucky enough to catch episodes of the last outing of the Dwarfers. This trailer shows a very real move back towards the cheerful, more immediate laddishness and humour of Red Dwarf V AND VI, hopefully with a dash of the production values of VII, VIII, IX. While they’re looking older (with the exception of Llewelyn’s Kryten) we here at the Bunker will no doubt be tuning in to see Rimmer get lost in a card game.