tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-92036557764876641972023-11-16T07:45:33.868-08:00Sherlock Holmes vs FrankensteinA film by Gautier Cazenave with Shane Briant, Clement von Franckenstein, Angèle Vivier, Eric Godon, John Lebar and Nicolas RobinAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07865633111309195626noreply@blogger.comBlogger23125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9203655776487664197.post-6694333762028832672017-01-24T14:14:00.003-08:002017-01-24T14:15:51.540-08:00Versus, crossovers and shared universes<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
With Marvel's impressive wave of
success in theaters, it seems everyone wants to jump on the "shared
universe" bandwagon, as if it was some kind of new thing. DC of
course launched a <i>Batman v Superman</i> movie, followed by bigger
<b>crossover </b>stories like <i>Justice League</i>. Universal announced a
slate of monster movies set in the same universe, starting with a Tom
Cruise-starring <i>Mummy</i>, and we even get a new King Kong movie
as an introduction to an upcoming <i>King Kong vs Godzilla</i>. Hell,
rumor has it that we will also see a <b><i>Men in Black / 21 Jump Street</i>
</b>crossover in the near future!</div>
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But none of this
is really groundbreaking. At all. The original <i>King Kong vs
Godzilla</i> was made in 1962, and was only the <b>third episode in the
Godzilla saga</b>. Universal Monsters practically invented the concept of
a shared cinematic universe in the 1940s, starting with the amazing
crossover <i>Frankenstein meets the Wolf Man</i>. And even Marvel
tried its hand at it as early as the 1980s, with the special episodes
of the <b><i>Incredible Hulk</i></b>, co-starring Daredevil and Thor.</div>
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TV series have also been doing this for
a long time: long before Flash and Arrow teamed up, viewers could
watch <i>The Pretender</i>'s Jarod visiting the <i>Profiler</i>
squad, or Chuck Norris lending a hand to Sammo Hung in a <i>Martial
Law / Walker Texas Ranger</i> crossover. And in the 60s, Batman and
Robin crossed paths on-screen with the Green Hornet and Kato!</div>
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In fact, you don’t even have to be
very old to remember a couple of relatively high-profile crossovers
that hit the screens in the 2000s. <b><i>Freddy vs Jason</i> </b>had been
announced for a few years when it was finally released in 2003, and
the clash of boogeymen was an entertaining revival for both
franchises at once. Then in 2004, we got <i>Alien vs Predator</i>,
followed three years later by its sequel <i>Requiem</i>. They kept
the <i>Aliens</i> and <i>Predator</i> sagas alive during the long
gaps between their respective official episodes.</div>
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But crossovers were invented way before
film and TV entered our lives. Readers have seen <b>Arsène Lupin </b>meet
Sherlock Holmes, or rather Herlock Sholmes (the name was slightly
changed at Conan Doyle's request) in a couple of Maurice Leblanc’s
novels. The encounter was brought to the screen in a German film
serial as early as 1910, where the detective became Sherlock Holmes
again.</div>
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Long before that, Ivanhoe joined forces
with Robin Hood in Walter Scott’s novel <i>Ivanhoe</i>, and we can
trace back the idea of crossovers to Homer’s tales of Gods and
Heroes. Greek mythology was one of the first known cases of shared
universes, with Zeus and Hera showing up in all kinds of stories –
so it should come to no surprise that Italy would come up with a
movie called <i>Hercules, Samson and Ulysses</i> in the 1960s!</div>
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Of course, Sherlock Holmes and
Frankenstein have also had their share of cinematic crossovers: the
detective met Jack the Ripper on screen twice, and Frankenstein was
confronted to Dracula, Santos, Jesse James and numerous other
characters. But <i>Sherlock Holmes vs Frankenstein</i>? Not yet.
We're working on it, remember?</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07865633111309195626noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9203655776487664197.post-36959785637564926352016-10-21T18:38:00.000-07:002016-10-23T02:00:59.214-07:00Screen versions of Frankenstein<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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With <b>Daniel Radcliffe</b> and James McAvoy teaming up on the big screen, Bernard Rose winning awards with his indie modern version, and <i>The Frankenstein Chronicles </i>unfolding on TV, it's fair to assume that audiences are still interested in the character of Frankenstein. Like Sherlock Holmes, it has been adapted on all types of media and with various tones, and there seems to be no limit to what can be done with the name and the concept behind it. Mary Shelley's original book, however, has rarely been directly adapted, and almost never faithfully. Whereas <i>The Hound of the Baskervilles</i> and <i>The Sign of Four</i> have been done many times on film and TV.<br />
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My favourite Frankenstein movies, by far, are the <b>Hammer </b>ones. I discovered the first,<i> The Curse of Frankenstein (</i>1957), when I was 13, and watched the others in no particular order, as it wasn't particularly easy to put your hands on these movies on VHS in the 90s. I would be hard pressed to say which one I prefer, so I would simply point out that <i>Evil of Frankenstein</i>, the third in the series, is my least favourite. The others are all gems, even the underappreciated comedy <i>Horror of Frankenstein</i>, the only one without Peter Cushing. Cushing is fascinating as the Baron in all six films in which he plays him, and one can only wonder what would have happened if <b><a href="http://holmesvfrank.blogspot.fr/2015/12/shane-briant-hammer-films.html">Shane Briant</a> </b>had been allowed to take up his mantle after the last outing, <b><i>Frankenstein and the Monster From Hell</i></b>. Well, at least he is given a new opportunity to shine in the world of Frankenstein, with his role of Burgermeister Simon Helder in <a href="http://igg.me/at/holmes-vs-frank" target="_blank"><i>Sherlock Holmes vs Frankenstein</i></a>.<br />
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This is not to say that I don't enjoy the <b>Universal </b>Frankensteins. James Whale's movies are the first versions I saw, at age 9 or 10, and there's no argument that they're both classics. But unlike Hammer, where the quality has been constant and the storylines creative, the Universal saga has an almost systematic decrease in quality (both in production values and script), to the point where the last movie is a pathetic farce with Abott and Costello, the poor man's Laurel and Hardy. I know this last <br />
film is often considered a good comedy, but I've never understood
why, and I'd rather rewatch the cheesy but straightforward previous
mashups <i>House of Dracula </i>and <i>House of Frankenstein</i>. One of the most
interesting thing about watching the whole saga is to see how they
reflect the careers of certain actors: <a href="http://holmesvfrank.blogspot.fr/2015/05/may-2d-st-boriss-day.html" target="_blank"><b>Boris Karloff</b></a> plays the monster
in the first three movies, then leaves the role, and shows up later as a
scientist in <i>House of Frankenstein</i>. <b>Bela Lugosi</b> however, who turned
down the part of the monster in the first film, plays <a href="http://holmesvfrank.blogspot.fr/2015/12/igor-pull-switch.html">Igor</a> in <i>Son of
Frankenstein</i> and <i>Ghost of Frankenstein</i>, then gets "downgraded" to the
part of the monster, and finally comes back as Count Dracula in the
Abbott and Costello movie. Finally, Lon Chaney Jr. was the first to
reprise the part of the monster after Karloff, and then gets stuck as
the Wolfman Larry Talbot in all subsequent outings.<br />
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Son of Frankenstein</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
1973 was not only the year Hammer released its final Frankenstein (<i>Monster From Hell</i>), but also the year of two major Frankenstein films: Mel Brooks' <i>Young Frankenstein </i>and Andy Warhol's (or rather Paul Morrissey's) <i>Flesh for Frankenstein</i>. Both refreshing, but both were simply paying a homage to one of the established traditions: <i>Young Frankenstein </i>was a comedic remake of 1931 Frankenstein combined with Son of Frankenstein, and <i>Flesh</i> was little more than a trashy Hammer film, with the Baron being portrayed by Udo Kier as an immoral nobleman who likes to stack body parts in his lab. It was also in 1973 that the overlong TV movie <i>Frankenstein: the True Story </i>tried to adapt Mary Shelley's novel for the first time.<br />
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But it wasn't until the 1990s that such attempts occured again. Of course there was the 1994 blockbuster with <b>Robert de Niro</b> and Kenneth Branagh (and John Cleese!), but it came off as a bit pretentious, and not all that faithful to the book. I much preferred the TV movie produced two years earlier by David Wickes, with Patrick Bergin as Baron Frankenstein. Still not the most faithful version, as this honour goes to the 2004 mini-series directed by <b>Kevin Connor</b> (who happens to support our film!)<br />
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Connor's version came out the same year as <i><b>Van Helsing</b></i>, which was a fun throwback at the old Universal mashups with Dracula, a werewolf and Frankenstein's monster going at each other's throats.<br />
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And in recent years, the most enjoyable Frankenstein movie I've seen was... <b>Tim Burton's <i>Frankenweenie</i></b>! You just can't beat a black and white stop-motion gothic extravaganza.<br />
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<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07865633111309195626noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9203655776487664197.post-72745350496751936542016-09-29T11:33:00.000-07:002016-09-29T11:33:01.193-07:00Memorable versions of Sherlock Holmes<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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With the announcement of yet a new Sherlock Holmes film, starring Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly, which will coexist with Cumberbatch's <i>Sherlock</i>, Jonny Lee Miller's <i>Elementary</i> and possibly a third Robert Downey Jr movie, some might think that the world might get an overdose of Arthur Conan Doyle's character (not to mention the recent movie with Ian McKellen). In other terms, who needs <a href="http://marteau.film/sherlock" target="_blank"><b><i>Sherlock Holmes vs Frankenstein</i></b></a>? The answer is simple: Sherlock Holmes being everywhere is not a recent trend. In fact, Sherlock Holmes NOT being everywhere is just an anomaly that lasted about a decade (roughly, 1999-2009). Otherwise, the character has been seen in countless movies, stage plays, books and comic books, and the thirst for new iterations and variants seems to be inextinguishable.<br />
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I won't try to list every film and TV version ever produced, nor will I respect chronological order. I would just<span id="goog_1357397503"></span><span id="goog_1357397504"></span> like to share which versions affected me most, and are most likely to influence my take on Holmes and Watson (besides, of course, the original stories by Conan Doyle.<br />
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<a href="http://holmesvfrank.blogspot.fr/2014/07/sherlock-holmes-vs-frankenstein-early-years.html" target="_blank">As I mentioned earlier</a>, one of my very first contacts with the world of Sherlock Holmes was through Disney's cartoon <b><i>The Great Mouse Detective</i></b>. At the same time, TV was also showing the Japanese anime <i>Sherlock Hound</i>, which I also enjoyed a lot. Basil and the Japanese Holmes had the same kind of personality: clever, bold and youthful, with a physical energy propelled by their mental agitation. Both were a good introduction to the "real" Holmes.<br />
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Not long after, I discovered Granada's series with <b>Jeremy Brett</b>, which was probably showing for the first time in France. I had recorded <b><i>The Sign of Four</i></b> on VHS, and probably watched it hundreds of times. I started reading the books then, and in my mind, Brett was definitely the Sherlock Holmes described in these pages. At 8 years old, I saw the "other" <i>Sign of Four</i> of the 80s, where Holmes was played by Ian Richardson: the actor was definitely appropriate for the part, but the productions he was in didn't stand a chance in front of Granada's.<br />
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Other cinematic encounters I had at a young age with Holmes were <i>The Seven-per-cent Solution</i> and the Spielberg production <i>Young Sherlock Holmes</i>. Both were surprising takes on the character, and I found it refreshing that filmmakers could take the liberty of pairing Holmes with Sigmund Freud, or to make up an early encounter with John Watson in high school. I never thought that Nicol Williamson was fit to play Sherlock Holmes, but he did a good job of playing a coke-head detective who falls in love while following a therapy.<br />
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When I started watching <b>Hammer movies</b>, I particularly enjoyed <i>The Hound of the Baskervilles</i> with the great <b>Peter Cushing</b> playing the Baker Street sleuth. I think the only complain I had with the film, when I first saw it, was that Holmes was shorter than Henry Baskerville (played by Christopher Lee). I've moved past this detail, especially since I've seen Cushing in other Holmes productions (the BBC series and the TV special <i>Masks of Death</i>): even when the quality was a bit flimsy, he embodied the character perfectly.<br />
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I also loved <i>A Study in Terror</i>, where John Neville played Sherlock Holmes on the trail of <b>Jack the Ripper</b>. Probably my favorite non-canonical Holmes movies. There were numerous stories revolving around Holmes investigating the Ripper murders, one of the best in my opinion being Michael Dibdin's novel <i>The Last Sherlock Holmes Story</i>. It was turned into a terrific <a href="http://bd.krinein.com/ultime-defi-sherlock-holmes-l-/" target="_blank">comic book</a> in 2010. Holmes has the face of Jeremy Brett in this fine piece of work by French authors Olivier Cotte and Jules Stromboni.<br />
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<i>Sherlock in New York</i> is a guilty pleasure: the plot is weak and the production values are far from epic, but the casting is extremely entertaining: <b>Roger Moore</b> as Sherlock Holmes (what an odd choice)! Patrick Macnee as Watson! John Huston as Moriarty! Charlotte Rampling as Irene Adler!<br />
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The last iteration of the character that really impressed me was <i>Sherlock </i>with <b>Benedict Cumberbatch </b>and Martin Freeman. I wasn't too sure about the idea of moving the stories to our time, but it works perfectly, and the scripts are as enjoyable as the performances. <i>Elementary</i>, on the other hand, did nothing for me, as I felt it was just another American procedural show ala <i>Bones</i>, <i>Mentalist</i> or <i>Castle</i>.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi720Opr4HmJJyKmOoPZWvmIUwxoUIpxJtQOFk5XHXahpbOVAELZyX4XNt6bL3M2VFFpTroOTIPH811ZT-BUcHlwJEWLC8bjhzXu9f569paXSvfzXN2-iAtTUY7efI00WMhMqhiDcZivtEH/s1600/getImage.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi720Opr4HmJJyKmOoPZWvmIUwxoUIpxJtQOFk5XHXahpbOVAELZyX4XNt6bL3M2VFFpTroOTIPH811ZT-BUcHlwJEWLC8bjhzXu9f569paXSvfzXN2-iAtTUY7efI00WMhMqhiDcZivtEH/s400/getImage.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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And yes, I love Christopher Lee of course, but I don't think he really fits the part of Holmes, even when paired with a good Watson played by Patrick Macnee.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07865633111309195626noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9203655776487664197.post-43579246078846666802016-09-22T14:56:00.002-07:002016-09-22T14:56:59.312-07:00Teaser unleashed!<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHCmeXa_r8DVeKBdbW9BI1w-QbAi9dn9qPij5RpLOSp101oC-7cuFWDDIyk-5NP80Bw9S6-nEOFea7qwaLw5vMz2h8ebg-yNjJMPVqIySmX9aX4nzaCdefpOF-F43GRflMWQSJQmEDJM0Q/s1600/mix-shf.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHCmeXa_r8DVeKBdbW9BI1w-QbAi9dn9qPij5RpLOSp101oC-7cuFWDDIyk-5NP80Bw9S6-nEOFea7qwaLw5vMz2h8ebg-yNjJMPVqIySmX9aX4nzaCdefpOF-F43GRflMWQSJQmEDJM0Q/s200/mix-shf.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
This summer, we finally put the last touch to the film's first five minutes, by doing the 5.1 sound mix with Matthieu Tibi and completing color-grading. So now you can watch a teaser of these first scenes of <b>Sherlock Holmes vs Frankenstein</b> at the end of the video below, and if you like what you see, remember that the Indiegogo crowdfunding video is still open: <a href="http://igg.me/at/holmes-vs-frank">igg.me/at/holmes-vs-frank</a> <br />
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While you wait for this film to be completed, you can take a look at my first film, which is now out on DVD in Australia and New Zealand under its original title <a href="http://bountyentertainment.com.au/shop/all/comedy/house-of-vhs/" target="_blank"><b>House of VHS</b></a>. In the United States and the UK, it will come out as <b>Ghosts in the Machine</b>, and the DVD can be <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Ghosts-Machine-Ewen-Blumenstein/dp/B01HDHA9G2" target="_blank">pre-ordered from Amazon</a>.<br />
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We are also working on distribution for our other feature film called <b>The Girl With Two Faces</b>, directed by Romain Serir, which is now touring film festivals (already 5 selections!)<br />
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And more surprises coming soon from Marteau Films! <br />
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<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07865633111309195626noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9203655776487664197.post-6185682599850145902016-05-24T15:53:00.002-07:002016-05-24T15:55:16.571-07:00Cannes 2016<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvskFtsjNWvVUdTv-SAs5WWRW1bCx7TC-VPwQF3fyEeKqUCwLCWMVvVdaPLiQzQXgly1ZVISBDyVzU2Ab-X0Yn_AdJX5mkDe0Wd1gFVLbfsynHn6zpgqH4awkv62dgV5aLC3jRNOFhAsjp/s1600/1322680.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvskFtsjNWvVUdTv-SAs5WWRW1bCx7TC-VPwQF3fyEeKqUCwLCWMVvVdaPLiQzQXgly1ZVISBDyVzU2Ab-X0Yn_AdJX5mkDe0Wd1gFVLbfsynHn6zpgqH4awkv62dgV5aLC3jRNOFhAsjp/s400/1322680.jpg" width="220" /></a></div>
Now that we're back from Cannes, it's time to debrief. What happened there? First, we got a lot of exposure on Parkland's booth: the poster was attracting people's attention, and we were able to show them the first few minutes of the film, which were not quite finished (sound mix is still a few days away) but were good enough to start a conversation.<br />
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Usually at the film market, sensational posters are used to promote very cheap movies with low production values. In our case, the footage always surprised the viewers because... well, it looked good. <b>Shane Briant </b>is very classy, <b>John Lebar </b>is menacing, <b>Stephanie Campion </b>is a perfectly british Mrs Hudson... Those of you who pledged for the DVD on the crowdfunding campaign should be able to check for yourself when you receive it in a few weeks. As for the others, the campaign is still open, you can join the project right now if you want to be a part of it: <a href="http://igg.me/at/holmes-vs-frank">igg.me/at/holmes-vs-frank</a><br />
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What else happened there? Lots of meetings regarding possible coproductions, sales of our movies <a href="http://marteaufilmsproduction.com/site/6-REV/rev-main-en.htm" target="_blank"><b>Revenge</b></a>, <a href="https://www.facebook.com/girl.2faces/" target="_blank"><b>The Girl with Two Faces</b></a> and <a href="https://www.facebook.com/house.vhs/" target="_blank"><b>House of VHS</b></a> (which will be on DVD in the UK in September, under the title <b>Ghosts in the Machine</b>) and of Ian Powell's <b>Razors </b>(which will also be released in the UK in a few months)...<br />
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But of course, the film we all want to see come to life is <b>Sherlock Holmes vs Frankenstein</b>. Any good news on this side? Probably, yes. We still can't announce who will play Holmes and Watson, but the financing part is progressing nicely, and we're still looking at shooting in Belgium soon. Keep supporting the movie by joining the <a href="https://www.facebook.com/holmes.frankenstein/" target="_blank">Facebook</a> page and the <a href="https://twitter.com/holmesVfrank" target="_blank">Twitter</a> account, by getting the <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Sherlock-Holmes-Frankenstein-David-Whitehead" target="_blank">book from Amazon</a> (version française disponible bientôt !), and by mentioning it to everyone around you. Needless to say, we would rather be filming right now than wait a few more months!<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgToPSNCjDz037S4uUHHwEFsChuwH1Ogsmax2ADql2S8B8Q5kp3duCtKbAF3ZetBf0b6vZZcAazWgdhKiiT4WlzxqU2mRhC0D51JMpEe0LaPlpBXHaqbK5UBYJgF7jGbQHbTWy7dI4QVSem/s1600/IMGP9003.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgToPSNCjDz037S4uUHHwEFsChuwH1Ogsmax2ADql2S8B8Q5kp3duCtKbAF3ZetBf0b6vZZcAazWgdhKiiT4WlzxqU2mRhC0D51JMpEe0LaPlpBXHaqbK5UBYJgF7jGbQHbTWy7dI4QVSem/s400/IMGP9003.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Favourite titles and posters from Cannes film market</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07865633111309195626noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9203655776487664197.post-1760145834969751392016-01-25T03:27:00.000-08:002016-01-25T13:50:45.537-08:00Sherlock Holmes vs Frankenstein: off to phase 2<b>Three days</b> of filming! That's how far we've gone to this day. Which is really exciting, and at the same time incredibly frustrating, because there's so much to tell and we have to hold back until the budget is assembled.<br />
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOPz116BtUb4VJNsyfMs18BB7fX7RDbHXqMesfJFkjkrO7G883ylBtzhB7ONdtGCjWXCopoe7ANYVbxD7zGB81UlMHQuKUHRglgEA-ObBUXc4cQ0ahixcdAtCqRHLnVtvplNEWtOFZZQaK/s1600/4Z7A5225.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOPz116BtUb4VJNsyfMs18BB7fX7RDbHXqMesfJFkjkrO7G883ylBtzhB7ONdtGCjWXCopoe7ANYVbxD7zGB81UlMHQuKUHRglgEA-ObBUXc4cQ0ahixcdAtCqRHLnVtvplNEWtOFZZQaK/s320/4Z7A5225.jpg" width="213" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">photo by Alex Pixelle</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
But still, we have a few nice scenes in the can, including footage with the awesome <b>Shane Briant</b>, who had no problem returning to the world of gothic horror 42 years after <i>Frankenstein and the Monster From Hell</i>. I think the conditions were a little more extreme last weekend than they were on the set of Hammer Films, with a temperature culminating at zero degrees! (celsius of course) Shane was so dedicated that he suggested putting ice in his mouth to avoid making breath vapor when saying his lines.<br />
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What are the next steps for <i>Sherlock Holmes vs Frankenstein</i>, you might ask? Of course, completing post-production on what we've shot so far (roughly 5 minutes of film). And then, finding the first real chunk of the budget, the one that will allow us to secure the <b>actors for Holmes and Watson</b>, and set the<b> filming dates</b> later in 2016. Fan support can be provided on <a href="http://igg.me/at/holmes-vs-frank" target="_blank">Indiegogo</a> as always (and helps a lot), but we're also welcoming private investments: if you're interested in that, you should contact us at <span style="color: #999999;">marteau at marteaufilmsproduction.com</span> , and we will send you details about the investment opportunities.<br />
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Let us know what you think of the first images by leaving messages on <a href="http://www.facebook.com/holmes.frankenstein" target="_blank">Facebook</a> & <a href="http://twitter.com/holmesVfrank" target="_blank">Twitter</a>!<br />
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07865633111309195626noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9203655776487664197.post-42571160892997112592015-12-15T09:22:00.000-08:002016-10-06T13:43:10.701-07:00Igor, pull the switch!<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
In the recent <b><i>Victor Frankenstein</i></b> with
James McAvoy in the title role, we have seen <b>Daniel </b></div>
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<b><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjR3RhpGFsSeTcsCAkS6NwpsOcwvF_BsmVReEFQopt25AbrNShRjHZuZuNDncytVaAobzHtYs7uPmQwUiNYJ9-RnlH6YtIyAdR9GlrmFJgXa2Rcx0x9ebEjIxiUKMmjTNUZ9n9PHPqQu4x4/s1600/sans-titre.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="214" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjR3RhpGFsSeTcsCAkS6NwpsOcwvF_BsmVReEFQopt25AbrNShRjHZuZuNDncytVaAobzHtYs7uPmQwUiNYJ9-RnlH6YtIyAdR9GlrmFJgXa2Rcx0x9ebEjIxiUKMmjTNUZ9n9PHPqQu4x4/s320/sans-titre.png" width="320" /></a></b></div>
<b>Radcliffe</b> as his
handsome but hunch backed assistant, <b>Igor</b>. To many, it seems that
Frankenstein has ALWAYS been assisted by a hunchback called Igor. But in fact, it's one of those urban legends like Sherlock Holmes stating <i>“Elementary my dear Watson” </i>(not once does he utter these words in the original Canon) or Johnny Weissmuller's Tarzan saying <i>"Me Tarzan you Jane”</i> (he only says “Tarzan... Jane... Tarzan...”)<br />
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<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
So no, there isn't a single trace of an
Igor in Mary Shelley's novel, nor is there any character who could
have inspired the deformed valet pulling switches in the popular
imagery. No Igor either in any of the theater plays that have been
staged throughout the 19<sup>th</sup> century. No Igor in the first
film version of Frankenstein in 1910.</div>
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<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Could we date the creation of this
character with the release of James Whale's <i>Frankenstein </i>in 1931?
Everyone remembers <b>Boris Karloff</b> being persecuted by a hunchback
holding a torch, played by Dwight Frye... Unfortunately, the guy
isn't called Igor, but Fritz. Damn. In fact, Dwight Frye appeared in
most of Universal Frankenstein films, as a different character each
time, but he never played an Igor. J. Carrol Naish plays another hunchback in <i>House of Frankenstein</i>, but his character is called
Daniel!</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVpGderWal1REKxitQeAsoH9wbj8epPzwRMtMD4PfgJdaEa1OzXLDNU2y_vtjTNNCSDCGWkpVwz0ykZyMu58hUXy6_C0DdrDzEfqv5on9H-5r_o2H-LjdZIoro5dZOp-ObBNreBaQvdoT1/s1600/07_-_Ygor.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="275" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVpGderWal1REKxitQeAsoH9wbj8epPzwRMtMD4PfgJdaEa1OzXLDNU2y_vtjTNNCSDCGWkpVwz0ykZyMu58hUXy6_C0DdrDzEfqv5on9H-5r_o2H-LjdZIoro5dZOp-ObBNreBaQvdoT1/s320/07_-_Ygor.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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The first time a Frankenstein met an
Ygor (with an Y) was in 1939 <b><i>Son of Frankenstein</i></b>, the third entry in the Universal saga. Played by none other than <b>Bela Lugosi</b>, this Ygor
introduces himself to Wolf von Frankenstein (Basil Rathbone), and
says he used to be his father's assistant – which is rather dubious
since we haven't seen him in previous movies. Besides, he's not a
hunchback at all, he simply has a broken neck due to his attempted
hanging by the townspeople. Lugosi's Ygor returne in the sequel <i><b>Ghost
of Frankenstein</b></i>, then lived on as the Monster's brain in <i>Frankenstein
meets the Wolf Man</i>.</div>
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There was no character called Igor in
the Frankenstein movies produced by Hammer Films, and the only
occurrence that can be spotted in the 60s is the western schlock
<i>Jesse James meets Frankenstein's Daughter</i>, where said daughter
renames her creature Igor for unknown reasons.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEikeVYuKKlbvtkClORRxK45pYD_vGFLoGoDcH4wawcUSFM-gNLe-EwZLE9Zjv6uhWsu1JrS8g_uys9GCVPTKE5CBE00ZWySZzWgsu3x-CKGXUaWypB_TuIn2GS7VpznOrKe9Z-RTteEHF-O/s1600/Igor_Stravinsky.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEikeVYuKKlbvtkClORRxK45pYD_vGFLoGoDcH4wawcUSFM-gNLe-EwZLE9Zjv6uhWsu1JrS8g_uys9GCVPTKE5CBE00ZWySZzWgsu3x-CKGXUaWypB_TuIn2GS7VpznOrKe9Z-RTteEHF-O/s200/Igor_Stravinsky.jpg" width="160" /></a></div>
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By the time Mel Brooks made his <i><b>Young
Frankenstein</b></i> in 1973, the hunchback assistant Igor was a given in
most people's minds, probably because of a confusion between Dwight
Frye and Bela Lugosi's characters. However, <i>Young Frankenstein</i>'s Igor
played by <b>Marty Feldman</b> marks his real screen debut. Innumerable
other Igors would follow, in movies such as <i>Mistress Frankenstein</i>,
<i>The Nightmare before Christmas</i>, <i>Frankenstein Italian Style</i>, <i>Return of
the Killer Tomatoes</i>, <i>Van Helsing</i>, <i>Crazy Dracula Spring Break Weekend</i>,
<i>Christmas at Draculas</i> and even... wait for it... <i>Daughter of
Werebitch Meets Skankenstein</i>.</div>
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<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
In 2008, there was even a feature
animated film starring <b>Igor</b>, with the voice talents of John Cusack as
Igor and John Cleese as Dr Glickenstein. In this (dark) comedy, Igors
are a race of slaves doomed to assist crazy scientists in their
experiments. But our hero has higher ambitions!</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEib9GgfiF2baW8xLLIwOInh-lb0Q_yr8kB8gNQnmHXjylrtEd-MtjR0aAYS2dL_L98ZQ32ESM_gHJp9lRuNQKQgHLyC7Iu0LYHnW5AocX6toFDLXplKaE1ELMtA-nIF_f2ptY6h3MXq-aTV/s1600/igor-igor-17-12-2008-19-09-2008-9-g.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEib9GgfiF2baW8xLLIwOInh-lb0Q_yr8kB8gNQnmHXjylrtEd-MtjR0aAYS2dL_L98ZQ32ESM_gHJp9lRuNQKQgHLyC7Iu0LYHnW5AocX6toFDLXplKaE1ELMtA-nIF_f2ptY6h3MXq-aTV/s400/igor-igor-17-12-2008-19-09-2008-9-g.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
There is no character called Igor in
<a href="http://igg.me/at/holmes-vs-frank" target="_blank"><i>Sherlock Holmes vs Frankenstein</i></a>.</div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07865633111309195626noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9203655776487664197.post-74957942672529101032015-12-09T15:00:00.000-08:002015-12-10T01:29:22.373-08:00Shane Briant's Hammer films<b>Shane Briant</b>, who was recently seen in the series <i>Serangoon Road</i> and in Roland Joffé's <i>The Lovers</i>, will play the Burgermeister of Darmstadt in our movie <b><i>Sherlock Holmes vs Frankenstein</i></b>. Fourty years ago, he starred in several <b>Hammer </b>films before the company sadly went out of business.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiVjapaR7jNkbfDWbeWyfnkqdS9K9_usg0ubKfqFAnq7V3zb4H4X95L7DIyidMNmHzzUdmyZj4Rn1IcQOKyHP0THcGdQlZBgQl8E69u92M5mukgPDPsxHvkQ7yP-BnDH2e9f9RhOLddSfl0/s1600/Shane+Briant.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="140" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiVjapaR7jNkbfDWbeWyfnkqdS9K9_usg0ubKfqFAnq7V3zb4H4X95L7DIyidMNmHzzUdmyZj4Rn1IcQOKyHP0THcGdQlZBgQl8E69u92M5mukgPDPsxHvkQ7yP-BnDH2e9f9RhOLddSfl0/s200/Shane+Briant.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
Shane started his screen career at the age of 25. After a bit part in <i>Von Richthofen and Brown</i>, directed by Roger Corman, he landed a key role in Hammer's <b><i>Demons of the Mind</i></b> (1972), which can be considered as his true screen debut. Oddly enough, his face is proeminently featured on the original poster, even though his name does not among the main actors. Directed by Peter Sykes, who would later direct Christopher Lee in the famous <i>To the Devil A Daughter</i>, <i>Demons of the Mind</i> is not one of the most successful films produced by Hammer. Still, Shane's performance was so remarkable that the studio offered him the lead in their next production.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNskbQ9BImkdCybuChQq5aoJDnDXxuct0loRK9CgDkxP8Tzkp5uLOyWDjyBJmIFT5qz1xM6un4IcK_-tIxEsejNEkqW1N_6Or3k07ZfR9YHeyk-fIb8GA-K9l62MWHvWCcmDLAlLTDpi_J/s1600/MPW-54948.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="252" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNskbQ9BImkdCybuChQq5aoJDnDXxuct0loRK9CgDkxP8Tzkp5uLOyWDjyBJmIFT5qz1xM6un4IcK_-tIxEsejNEkqW1N_6Or3k07ZfR9YHeyk-fIb8GA-K9l62MWHvWCcmDLAlLTDpi_J/s320/MPW-54948.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<i><b>Straight on Till Morning</b></i> is a dark thriller directed by Peter Collinson (<i>The Italian Job</i> with Michael Caine). Shane Briant co-stars with Rita Tushingham, who becomes his victim when he reveals himself to be a vicious serial killer. Cruel but handsome, cold but elegant, the young actor came across as a perfect fit for one of Hammer's most famous franchises...<br />
<br />
Logically, in 1973, Shane is cast as <b>Peter Cushing</b>'s co-star in the new installment in Frankenstein's saga. Playing the immoral young Simon Helder, he becomes the doctor's assistant in <i><b>Frankenstein and the Monster From Hell</b></i>, directed by the legendary Terence Fisher.<br />
<br />
The infamous baron and his new assistant team up to create a new monster, played by David Prowse (Cushing and Prowse would eventually meet again in <i>Star Wars</i>, where the former plays Grand Moff Tarkin and the latter Darth Vader!). Madeline Smith, Bernard Lee and ex-Doctor Who <b>Patrick Troughton</b> complete the wonderful cast of this incredibly atmospheric entry. Unfortunately,<i> Monster From Hell</i> would end up being both Hammer's last Frankenstein and Fisher's last film, which prevented Helder from ever returning.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifxh5YoJjeku-tttWUxF5MzR6uxf-pgyPJ9YCkFQEyO1Hd3oZ9H8VI8pvbO-mjcDuLjjygg_KLcEP_aXK3Tye7Ug9br03MmOPXORzPT4tgyDTlveVwwL3DmN2IJU34hnyMzoC4wyuwq-KE/s1600/hellmonster.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifxh5YoJjeku-tttWUxF5MzR6uxf-pgyPJ9YCkFQEyO1Hd3oZ9H8VI8pvbO-mjcDuLjjygg_KLcEP_aXK3Tye7Ug9br03MmOPXORzPT4tgyDTlveVwwL3DmN2IJU34hnyMzoC4wyuwq-KE/s640/hellmonster.jpg" width="532" /></a></div>
<br />
The next and last Hammer film for Shane Briant would be <b><i>Captain Kronos Vampire Hunter</i></b>, a pre-Buffy vampire caper written and directed by Brian Clemens, showrunner of the BBC Avengers. Shane plays the decadent Paul Durward, and shares the screen with Horst Janson, scream queen <b>Caroline Munro</b> and ex-Avenger Ian Hendry. Captain Kronos could have been a great TV series or movie franchise, but Hammer's reign was about to end, along with an era of gothic horror that had started with <i>Curse of Frankenstein</i> in 1957.<br />
<br />
Now, Shane Briant is set to return to the world of Frankenstein, where he will also meet Holmes and Watson. You can be a part of this adventure by joining the ongoing <b>crowdfunding campaign </b>on Indiegogo, which is now collecting funds for the January shoot with Shane. If you want his costume and the set to be gorgeous, contribute now: <a href="http://igg.me/at/holmes-vs-frank">http://igg.me/at/holmes-vs-frank</a><br />
<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07865633111309195626noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9203655776487664197.post-87706443793894710242015-11-26T03:04:00.001-08:002015-11-26T03:04:33.167-08:00Sherlock Holmes vs Frankenstein - November 2015 Indiegogo video<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="270" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/MAL9Jw6Xgs0" width="480"></iframe><br /><br />
<br /><br />
In case you missed it, here is the updated Indiegogo video. If you like the project, support 'Sherlock Holmes vs Frankenstein' NOW!Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07865633111309195626noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9203655776487664197.post-21866806417848820512015-11-23T03:48:00.000-08:002015-11-23T14:21:46.881-08:00The game is afoot<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
It is now official: <i><b>Sherlock Holmes vs
Frankenstein</b></i> has finally started filming. A gravedigger and a monster
in a cemetery! Mrs Hudson in her kitchen! The mad scientist in his
lab! Everyone is in place, waiting for Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson
to be cast...<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiM6ebxHRRd5PudFyv9H_jgQ5rnSmjqCGMMqPJkJu_4_X4luMjSLEhawAv4P5l83n2waIW2-MPw1F6AnY8xa0MOSeoYubON8iHzQZVmukuoQUtec3qO9yt3J80t7X80Kkr_BhdyC1zfjc9x/s1600/shf-game-foot.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiM6ebxHRRd5PudFyv9H_jgQ5rnSmjqCGMMqPJkJu_4_X4luMjSLEhawAv4P5l83n2waIW2-MPw1F6AnY8xa0MOSeoYubON8iHzQZVmukuoQUtec3qO9yt3J80t7X80Kkr_BhdyC1zfjc9x/s640/shf-game-foot.jpg" width="433" /></a></div>
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Our actors <b>John Lebar</b>, Stephanie
Campion, Stéphane Roquet and Adèle Cazenave brought to life the
film's first characters, with the help of a wonderful and dedicated
crew. Director of photography <b>Jérôme Alméras</b> has been involved in
the project from the start, and production designer Pascal <br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihB81zrMBljPlt2Y2PTAaOx2prg57t97uDSdis0STnC5oY7xwnLel9VV38eh3vKtGuPeLU2hd1RFW-HSmm8IBbPqyv-2DtBudfUBPJrc-1WByF3Kwdbbq78c-V2O5ESjLGe8JxyhtC14Np/s1600/fille.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="171" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihB81zrMBljPlt2Y2PTAaOx2prg57t97uDSdis0STnC5oY7xwnLel9VV38eh3vKtGuPeLU2hd1RFW-HSmm8IBbPqyv-2DtBudfUBPJrc-1WByF3Kwdbbq78c-V2O5ESjLGe8JxyhtC14Np/s200/fille.png" width="200" /></a></div>
Chatton
joined us last month, with his experience and passion. Costume
designer Charlotte Courboules will eventually team up with
Pierre-Jean Larroque, and hyperactive special effects artist David
Scherer jumped at the opportunity of working on a Hammer-like film. I
also had the pleasure of working with my wife <a href="https://luzcargot.com/" target="_blank">Lucie</a>, who made the
storyboard for the scenes.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Photos and videos will be unveiled
during the next two months, as we work on post-production and on
phase 2 of the crowdfunding campaign. When January comes, we will be
filming scenes with none other than <b>Shane Briant</b>, Burgermeister Simon
Helder himself. So we need the <a href="http://igg.me/at/holmes-vs-frank" target="_blank">Indiegogo page</a> to become active again,
in order to give Shane the best costume and the most lavishly
furnished office.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsOyw2vCg59fvhE1c3dpAU1aM6s_4Bjn8ksya4MTXRdKeiF7XEwLoLCByDi2Y8aK7g9UdYHpi26dK1zkSAk3xTbHP00ejLmARy1u3-dNJIuWlzZP_r23x-ogX7hn4q350vhhc3qiwaw9O6/s1600/4Z7A9821.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsOyw2vCg59fvhE1c3dpAU1aM6s_4Bjn8ksya4MTXRdKeiF7XEwLoLCByDi2Y8aK7g9UdYHpi26dK1zkSAk3xTbHP00ejLmARy1u3-dNJIuWlzZP_r23x-ogX7hn4q350vhhc3qiwaw9O6/s320/4Z7A9821.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Stéphane Roquet - photo: facebook.com/pixellephoto</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Most of the original perks are still
available: from the film's poster to a full producer package, you can
get unique collectible items or the film's script itself. In a very
near future, we should be able to add signed copies of the film's
<b>novelization, written by David Whitehead</b> (known to many by his other
pen name Ben Bridges). Those who can't wait are welcome to purchase
it from <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Sherlock-Holmes-Frankenstein-David-Whitehead/dp/0692568514" target="_blank">Amazon</a> – which also helps production indirectly!</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Joining the crowdfunding campaign for
<i>Sherlock Holmes vs Frankenstein</i> will help us complete an ensemble of
scenes that will define the movie's tone, and give the project the
energy it needs to reach completion. In the meantime, you can feast
your eyes on the images taken from the set by our set photographer <a href="http://www.facebook.com/pixellephoto" target="_blank">AlexPixelle</a>!</div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Lost the link to Indiegogo? Here it is: <b><a href="http://igg.me/at/holmes-vs-frank">http://igg.me/at/holmes-vs-frank</a> </b><br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkwrurQDqcLjO5AM_L5hItSnBK-hUXauSxWQd2JQvlMIYnkjTL8W21LhK24Lx2jHDNG_0m85yJHx4CAF_XJGnNCt7yML2bARns8Ptsz9AA-C6wYbUAIpijKWveSukJIAlxOE8-7n12hLQH/s1600/4Z7A0652.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkwrurQDqcLjO5AM_L5hItSnBK-hUXauSxWQd2JQvlMIYnkjTL8W21LhK24Lx2jHDNG_0m85yJHx4CAF_XJGnNCt7yML2bARns8Ptsz9AA-C6wYbUAIpijKWveSukJIAlxOE8-7n12hLQH/s400/4Z7A0652.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<br /></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07865633111309195626noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9203655776487664197.post-9762653095328783592015-09-02T08:33:00.000-07:002015-09-03T01:17:04.817-07:00Getting ready<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
All right, now that we're through the
first phase of crowdfunding, with more than 30,000€ already raised,
the time has come for <b>filming <i>Sherlock Holmes vs Frankenstein</i></b>. Yay! Which means assembling the cast and
crew, sorting out the dates, prepping costumes, sets and special
effects, storyboarding the scenes... And we're only talking about the
first few scenes of the film, the ones that we will be able to shoot
thanks to the crowdfunding campaign.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Phase two will include securing
the rest of the budget, and hopefully getting some additional help
from the crowd in doing so. If we can get the numbers to 40,000 by
the end of December, we will film a few scenes with <b>Shane Briant</b>
himself in early 2016. Then the main shoot will be in May 2016, if
everything goes smoothly (which will be the case, right?)</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
If you haven't contributed yet, or feel
like returning in order to take the campaign to the next level,
you're very welcome to join now: <a href="http://igg.me/at/holmes-vs-frank"><b>http://igg.me/at/holmes-vs-frank</b></a></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Remember you can watch the original
test film on the page, and also listen to a few <b>excerpts from the
script</b>, recorded during a public reading in Paris:</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<iframe allowfullscreen="" class="YOUTUBE-iframe-video" data-thumbnail-src="https://i.ytimg.com/vi/wpyHL_f6rQo/0.jpg" frameborder="0" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/wpyHL_f6rQo?feature=player_embedded" width="320"></iframe></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<iframe allowfullscreen="" class="YOUTUBE-iframe-video" data-thumbnail-src="https://i.ytimg.com/vi/LuVLyePK170/0.jpg" frameborder="0" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/LuVLyePK170?feature=player_embedded" width="320"></iframe></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<iframe allowfullscreen="" class="YOUTUBE-iframe-video" data-thumbnail-src="https://i.ytimg.com/vi/wIQwQdgLGUI/0.jpg" frameborder="0" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/wIQwQdgLGUI?feature=player_embedded" width="320"></iframe></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiH7JdOJEW3ZBf0AlqdMG0mso5nIDsAuvOa6RjvRWj96wOgAylZ6nmzO_RvsfMENmIazk-23XjpgpZPqR7WyKoww7xL_Bsus0zuX4tATiZSWD0wnf-MhCtZsHHMgPNqmMntTW3Na7VacE_3/s1600/sherlockfrankweb.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiH7JdOJEW3ZBf0AlqdMG0mso5nIDsAuvOa6RjvRWj96wOgAylZ6nmzO_RvsfMENmIazk-23XjpgpZPqR7WyKoww7xL_Bsus0zuX4tATiZSWD0wnf-MhCtZsHHMgPNqmMntTW3Na7VacE_3/s320/sherlockfrankweb.jpg" width="226" /></a></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
If you want a taste of the story before
the film even hits the screens, prepare yourself for the script's
novelization, which is currently being written by British author
<b>David Whitehead</b>. Readers already know him under his pen name <a href="http://www.benbridges.co.uk/whatsnew.html" target="_blank">Ben Bridges</a>, which he has been using for an impressive number of westerns. He recently wrote the novelization of the movie <i>Day of the Gun </i>with Eric Roberts.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
The great detective is no
stranger to David, who has already written several original Sherlock Holmes stories, and is also an avid Hammer Horror fan, which makes him the perfect match for a story called "Sherlock Holmes vs Frankenstein".</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
As if prepping a shoot and financing a
feature wasn't enough, we are also in the process of finding
distribution for my first film <i><b>House of VHS</b></i>. Festivals, video release... Stay tuned for a few
announcements and surprises very soon on these subjects too.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07865633111309195626noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9203655776487664197.post-15032013660942297022015-06-21T17:05:00.000-07:002015-06-21T17:05:27.510-07:00Crowdfunding<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Crowdfunding is not a walk in the park.
If you just set up a page and leave it there for a month, you can't
expect people to show up and contribute out of nowhere. So you have
to work constantly on your campaign, sharpen your communication
skills... and unless you have a whole team working with you, you will
probably get behind schedule. I wanted to keep posting on this blog
throughout the campaign, sharing thoughts and updates, talking about
Sherlock Holmes and Frankenstein films in general, etc. But here we
are, 4 days to the end, and this is the first article I write!</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Let's share the Indiegogo link right
here, because we don't want to forget that piece of information:
<a href="http://igg.me/at/holmes-vs-frank">http://igg.me/at/holmes-vs-frank</a>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvZHupBoRfQMTmynV4A6MXe7vYiXjYCHL0_Qz2_nvUeCyOz_KO5OakZrF96g590W1XNmOyxlntBtQdJUTWG2d-q2dZz5nq4bX5y_cVpJVuhbwNquTpeG0yS5Qa8ILu93PbE0AuUSZi7070/s1600/46231_o.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="250" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvZHupBoRfQMTmynV4A6MXe7vYiXjYCHL0_Qz2_nvUeCyOz_KO5OakZrF96g590W1XNmOyxlntBtQdJUTWG2d-q2dZz5nq4bX5y_cVpJVuhbwNquTpeG0yS5Qa8ILu93PbE0AuUSZi7070/s400/46231_o.png" width="400" /></a></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
The campaign has been very rewarding so far:
the goal has been met with time to spare, and now we've raised the
bar to €40,000. A lot of people have shown support, sometimes
unexpectedly. Many people from the French Sherlock Holmes Society
<b>(SSHF</b>) have contributed, and Belgian Sherlockian artist Jean-Claude
Mornard has been extremely enthusiastic and generous. Other supports
have included famed Sherlock Holmes specialists Roger Johnson, Leslie
Klinger, Howard Ostrom and the Baker Street Babes (sounds like a
band), Charles Prepolec, David Whitehead - some of them are also
Frankenstein or Hammer fans. My first feature film <i>House of VHS</i> has
been screened for the first time three days ago, and several people
contributed to the campaign after watching it – sometimes with a
big sum, which can be considered a good sign!</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
People have different reasons for
contributing – some of them want to see <b>Shane Briant</b>'s return as
Simon Helder, others want <b>Ben Syder</b> in a Holmes movie again, and
others just like what they've seen of the project so far. Once the
campaign is over, it will be my responsibility to make everyone
happy, and deliver a movie that is entertaining, respectful and
unique. And hopefully it will be able to please even the ones who
have been snarling at the mere sight of the title.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
In four days the campaign will be over,
and the amount raised at that date will determine the leverage we
will have to raise additional funds and make the film. So the higher
it is, the easier it will be to get a big budget and an exciting
movie. And it's important to have a list of names to show when
financiers ask: “WHO WANTS TO SEE <i>SHERLOCK HOLMES VS FRANKENSTEIN</i>?” Well,
do you?</div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07865633111309195626noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9203655776487664197.post-61816381091364007072015-05-19T09:29:00.001-07:002015-05-19T09:33:14.055-07:00The other side of Cannes: film markets<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
While most people see Cannes or Berlin
as posh festivals where a bunch of stars drink champagne and rub
their feet on a prestigious red carpet, there is also a whole other
side that is mostly known to industry professionals: <b>film
markets</b>.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Getting a film made and seen is not
only a creative process involving preparation, shooting and
post-production. It's also a business, as is evident when you walk
the corridors of one of the major film markets. There are only a
fistful of them: Berlin EFM (European Film Market) in February, Cannes in May, the Los Angeles
AFM (American Film Market) in November, and a few others in Hong
Kong, Dubai, and now in Montreal and Bruxelles for horror and fantasy
movies.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvAfeHoFa0_rceIfvhMh2o5QTJgkei0Jx4t9uPhO9FuGqMTpvYiITjzf2-mMAhFBlg0hC4VFA4MkW4ydurymKHWjVgdXskqeBue5qEU1qC6Y6UbVsDiMp-9i0zxJo1Jxuq97qBO08MpQJN/s1600/IMGP2660b.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="287" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvAfeHoFa0_rceIfvhMh2o5QTJgkei0Jx4t9uPhO9FuGqMTpvYiITjzf2-mMAhFBlg0hC4VFA4MkW4ydurymKHWjVgdXskqeBue5qEU1qC6Y6UbVsDiMp-9i0zxJo1Jxuq97qBO08MpQJN/s400/IMGP2660b.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
The innocent passersby will have a hard
time sorting out which film is already completed (and sometimes
available in some territories), and which film is still only a title
and a poster, waiting for filming or still looking for funding. A
quick look at the projects reveals that even today, 40 years after
the release of <i>Jaws</i>, there is still an incredible amount of love for
shark movies: <b><i>Sharknado</i></b> comes to mind, of course, but the market also
bears titles such as <i>Sky Sharks</i>, <i>Sharktopus</i>, <i>Atomic Shark</i>, <i>2-Headed
Shark Attack</i>, <i>3-Headed Shark Attack</i> or even the incredible <i>Raiders of
the Lost Shark</i>. If you don't have sharks in the film, you probably
should attach a strategic actor to your cast: <b>Steven Seagal</b> and <b>Dolph
Lundgren</b> are still incredibly popular on an international level, as
are Gary Daniels, Eric Robert, Danny Trejo and Michael Madsen. Of
course, having a film with both Dolph Lundgren and a shark is a
double win, as the producers of <i>Shark Lake</i> obviously know.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWn9HRhqsKQb8RJ9eSe4WZTpD6_mJnYt5QjsgepTs7TBYeqScI9xWrJjkJIx-mpNOJwzkgdK9ZQkN2JtuFVc2IQYK3BzcA2TLESch7luleuCNIXfvQAzfZBpJz38-zoveS5U_RnK387P_e/s1600/DSC02372b.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWn9HRhqsKQb8RJ9eSe4WZTpD6_mJnYt5QjsgepTs7TBYeqScI9xWrJjkJIx-mpNOJwzkgdK9ZQkN2JtuFVc2IQYK3BzcA2TLESch7luleuCNIXfvQAzfZBpJz38-zoveS5U_RnK387P_e/s320/DSC02372b.jpg" width="293" /></a></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
In a market overflooded with very low budget movies and prefinanced action flicks, it is really hard to secure
funding for an ambitious movie like <b><i>Sherlock Holmes vs Frankenstein</i></b>.
Until there's a strategic name on the poster, or an indisputable wave
of interest for the project, our film remains one of the many posters
waiting in line for money. In order to speed things up, we will be
running a big crowdfunding campaign starting next Monday, to raise
25,000€ and begin filming a few scenes. If we can pull off this
stunt, the rest of the budget will be much easier to assemble – and
you will finally get to see <b>Shane Briant</b>, Clement von Franckenstein
and a few other familiar faces in an exciting gothic mystery.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Join the effort on Indiegogo next week
if you want to watch <i>Sherlock Holmes vs Frankenstein</i> in the near future and
see your name in the credits!</div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07865633111309195626noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9203655776487664197.post-11448699264753740402015-05-04T08:49:00.000-07:002015-05-04T08:51:42.528-07:00Not dead! Alive!<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAI2yIgmpRCoWGv8Lw6ANry_j-UZ2zV-_EC8GB62B0gkMvCLLzMsxVRxd5IpZc0c4BmDaLSBEplAr7CMDH1YJo7U-ZquoxX_coxpvDe7qbVeqUtw4Z-M6pNyjXvnY7tS2ywvjWCLnNIqPQ/s1600/fin1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAI2yIgmpRCoWGv8Lw6ANry_j-UZ2zV-_EC8GB62B0gkMvCLLzMsxVRxd5IpZc0c4BmDaLSBEplAr7CMDH1YJo7U-ZquoxX_coxpvDe7qbVeqUtw4Z-M6pNyjXvnY7tS2ywvjWCLnNIqPQ/s320/fin1.jpg" width="202" /></a></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">On this day in 1891, Sherlock Holmes
met his doom at Reichenbach Fall... Or did he? Everyone thought him
dead for several years, after his battle against Professor Moriarty.
But he returned, as if brought back to life by a mad scientist <i>à
la</i> Frankenstein.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">In a very similar way, the project
“<i>Sherlock Holmes vs Frankenstein</i>” was thought dead for a while.
But there's no way I would throw in the towel on this story. There
are too many people involved, too many wanting to see it, and hell,
even I want to see it more than anyone else!</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Finishing my first feature film <i><b><a href="http://www.facebook.com/house.vhs" target="_blank">Houseof VHS</a></b></i> took forever, partly because I had to fight off my business
partner and say goodbye to a 20-year-old friendship. Also because
there was less and less money available, for a movie that barely had
any budget to begin with. Also, on a much lighter side, because I had
my second child last year. All of this took up a lot of time and
energy, and sometimes it seemed that my hair would turn white before
the movie would be finished. Fortunately, I was lucky enough to meet
a bunch of people who were passionate, creative and talented enough
to bring the project to its completion.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<iframe allowfullscreen="" class="YOUTUBE-iframe-video" data-thumbnail-src="https://i.ytimg.com/vi/divItatLdDw/0.jpg" frameborder="0" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/divItatLdDw?feature=player_embedded" width="320"></iframe></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Now it's time for <i><b>Sherlock Holmes vs
Frankenstein</b> </i>to make its comeback. So far, financiers have asked
“have you ever made a feature film before?” and “who wants to
see a movie called <i>Sherlock Holmes vs Frankenstein</i>?”. The answer to
the first question is now “Yes”, and I hope to prove that the
answer to the second is “A lot of people”. In order to do that,
we will run a crowdfunding campaign <b>on indiegogo from May 25<sup>th</sup>
to June 25<sup>th</sup></b>, and try to raise the first chunk of the
budget.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">So if you wish to see the movie come to
life, you can have a hand in that by supporting the campaign, not
only by donating on May 25<sup>th</sup>, but also by posting
messages, videos or pictures and by stating loud and clear <b>“I want
to see <i>Sherlock Holmes vs Frankenstein</i>!”</b></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">To be continued...</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07865633111309195626noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9203655776487664197.post-7561775147814464852015-05-02T03:39:00.001-07:002015-05-02T03:41:52.987-07:00May 2d: St. Boris's Day<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Today, we celebrate people with the
name Boris. But isn't it ironic that the most famous Boris of all is
actually called... William?! <b>Boris Karloff</b>, whom we all know for his
portrayal of Frankenstein's monster in the first three Universal
movies, was born William Henry Pratt in 1887, and there was nothing
russian about him. A bit indian on his paternal grandmother's side,
but no reason for him to choose Boris Karloff as his stage name.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZZJYT4fXGK00lyiFCrYhOQyIIAVxlswVAH9XxzFu7s8bRnNkE_AaQP5AcPUDmmlVyWRNZ9PwTDGnvKm8PintWPLdMaSEJxqiT7PKw4lTxni7YN5EfYay3_D7m1abdZ6GNa7i0VZ-mJUXa/s1600/Boris-Karloff-boris-karloff-36971886-500-679.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZZJYT4fXGK00lyiFCrYhOQyIIAVxlswVAH9XxzFu7s8bRnNkE_AaQP5AcPUDmmlVyWRNZ9PwTDGnvKm8PintWPLdMaSEJxqiT7PKw4lTxni7YN5EfYay3_D7m1abdZ6GNa7i0VZ-mJUXa/s1600/Boris-Karloff-boris-karloff-36971886-500-679.jpg" height="320" width="235" /></a></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Before he became an icon of horror, he
was an intimidating supporting actor in stage plays and a truckload
of silent films. He was already 32 when he first appeared on screen.
Finding these early performances can be a bit tricky, but you should
be able to find a copy of <i>Tarzan and the Golden Lion</i> (1927)
somewhere.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">In 1931, James Whale directed a lavish
screen version of <i><b>Frankenstein</b></i>, which was not adapted from the
book but from a successful stage play. The scientist was played by
Colin Clive, but the creature was embodied by an mysterious
uncredited actor, whose name was only revealed in the closing
credits. Boris Karloff became a star overnight, and returned of
course in <i>The Bride of Frankenstein </i>(1935), <i>Son of
Frankenstein</i> with <b>Basil Rathbone and Bela Lugosi </b>(1939), <i>House
of Frankenstein</i> (1944, where Karloff didn't play the
monster but a Dr Gustav Niemann), but also played Fu Manchu, Mr Wong
(a Fu Manchu ripoff), the Mummy Imhotep, various mad scientists and a
bunch of villains who antagonize Dick Tracy and Charlie Chan.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">In 1953, the golden age of black &
white horror was almost over, and Karloff only played Dr Jekyll and
Mr Hyde for laughs, opposite Abbott & Costello. In 1958, at a
time where Hammer Films was taking over gothic horror, he played
Baron Frankenstein himself in a weak movie called <i>Frankenstein
1970</i>, where he used body parts from a film crew to create his
monster.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">In the 60s, he became mostly a guest
star in TV shows like <i>I Spy </i>and <i>The Wild Wild West</i>, but
he also returned to Frankenstein in a weird little movie called <i><b>Mad
Monster Party</b></i>, where he provided the voice of Baron Boris von Frankenstein (!)</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Boris Karloff died in 1971, but he's
very fondly remembered by classic horror fans, along with Bela Lugosi
and Lon Chaney Jr. However, it seems that these three never shared
the same bond as their successors Peter Cushing, Christopher Lee and
Vincent Price.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Boris is the name of the dog in
<i>Sherlock Holmes vs Frankenstein</i>, and I admit to it being a
not-so-subtle wink to Karloff!</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;"><br />
</span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07865633111309195626noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9203655776487664197.post-86695538199432434102014-08-26T06:20:00.000-07:002014-08-26T08:14:33.009-07:002013-2014: House of VHS<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"></span>
</div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVkfjNFxpy3zH9axrPMWmybWKU23a7MEHsNxGVkdFCCpPr8NzB6gSGwBOXf1I_kKb1LMCgOq3e1cDR-GvoBR6aoN2BviJWPybF4uLmiV0hV7r51nR2kpeUL-MWEjJIfjV5XDFXPDV6e6rH/s1600/20130929-afm+copy2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVkfjNFxpy3zH9axrPMWmybWKU23a7MEHsNxGVkdFCCpPr8NzB6gSGwBOXf1I_kKb1LMCgOq3e1cDR-GvoBR6aoN2BviJWPybF4uLmiV0hV7r51nR2kpeUL-MWEjJIfjV5XDFXPDV6e6rH/s1600/20130929-afm+copy2.jpg" height="200" width="143" /></a></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Trying to produce and direct a film
like <i>Sherlock Holmes vs Frankenstein</i>, when you don't have the
money, the experience or the reputation, is a bit hot-headed. The
first step, I had been told by financiers, was to go <b>microbudget </b>for a first
feature directorial effort. I couldn't really make Sherlock Holmes on a
microbudget, so I concentrated on a script that would use as few
resources as possible. <b><i>House of VHS</i></b>: a haunted house movie, with six characters and
a supernatural element. Writing it was a blast, and we decided to
film in a house owned by Jean-Noël and his family, located in the
Center of France. We set filming dates in August 2013, and started
working on pre-production and financing simultaneously... in March. Fast-tracking the project was a good way to make it happen, but
also a gamble: what would happen if we couldn't pull it off? Five
months before filming, we had zero cast and crew, very little money,
and a script that was still a bit deliberately loose (it was designed
to be adapted to the actors in due time).</span></div>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgC6H-J8YQIBbETnXFozHnZBLE1OjGlCTMrchbK1yMCFvTh6tfVvFWU2JQq06brdQgdqrT29v2sIef1_gJqzuBxTEMkgMFThXcs4z6UN-dOLCJ3ruC-oVRZ9vFYu7ljnyvdDCHxEMdUafRC/s1600/DSC03382b.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgC6H-J8YQIBbETnXFozHnZBLE1OjGlCTMrchbK1yMCFvTh6tfVvFWU2JQq06brdQgdqrT29v2sIef1_gJqzuBxTEMkgMFThXcs4z6UN-dOLCJ3ruC-oVRZ9vFYu7ljnyvdDCHxEMdUafRC/s1600/DSC03382b.jpg" height="320" width="258" /></a></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">In April, we travelled to the house and
took a lot of pictures. I had never seen it before, and being there
allowed me to make a few changes in the script, in order to take advantage of
what the location had to offer. Then we started casting: in June, we
had our first casting call, where we met thirty actors and actresses (out
of 270 applications, which was way more than we had expected!). Four actors stood out: <b>Isabel McCann</b>, <b>Delphine Lanniel</b>,
<b>Morgan Lamorté</b> and <b>Nafees Hamid</b>. However, we still had a few people
to meet, and we needed to cast the last two characters. Two weeks
later, we had this second round of casting for <i>House of VHS</i>, with the four actors
above and a few new faces, among which Florie Vialens (now called
<b>Florie Auclerc-Vialens</b>) and Ruy (who calls himself <b>Ewen Blumenstein</b>).
We had found six talented actors who worked really well with each other, and
were all very excited to be a part of this project.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Then we gathered the crew. A small
one, to be honest: the budget and the house only allowed us to have
a full crew of six people, including Jean-Noël and me. We shoehorned in the planning
the presence of an SFX makeup artist for two days, but the rest of the
gang was only comprised of:</span></div>
<br />
<ul>
<li>
director of photography
<li>his assistant
<li>sound recordist
<li>unit manager
</ul>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjX45lW-tg0704Lh_3fpdMAp67k6ri9N3iasVDW0nDVIpHgnvziDrhONLQjtr_FLq16Cre0914gFtGFVkQo32B2WDVRptb33XwGn9G9kCNTy1zsvFH1444yrfrQz5L7CLbzR1tIc1A2iiSv/s1600/vhs-shoot.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjX45lW-tg0704Lh_3fpdMAp67k6ri9N3iasVDW0nDVIpHgnvziDrhONLQjtr_FLq16Cre0914gFtGFVkQo32B2WDVRptb33XwGn9G9kCNTy1zsvFH1444yrfrQz5L7CLbzR1tIc1A2iiSv/s1600/vhs-shoot.jpg" height="200" width="200" /></a></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">To be fair, we would have needed twice
as many people and twice as much time, but complaining would have led
us nowhere. We were lucky enough to enlist<b> François Reumont</b> as
director of photography – an experienced TV professional, he had
shot a few short films like <i>Zombinladen </i>and <b><i>Paris by Night of the
Living Dead</i></b>, as well as feature film <i>The Black Door</i>.<br /><br />Less than two weeks before filming began, Nafees had to drop out due to visa issues (he was a US student
living in France), and we had to figure out how to replace him. You
would think that the replacement would have been found among the actors
we auditioned in June... but in fact, we chose an Icelandic actor
called <b>Pétur Sigurðsson</b>, who was recommended by Ewen Blumenstein. He
turned out to be great, showing up at the last minute and taking
immediately the mantle of his character.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEju_9VafABcbo6jIa6LQc8VcliB5dMlG6kQiHSLY6h2P_d2sJViZPnt4y2UQWfWUb5YH-CtcrV1Mxcu0rOzapd2GFDAGHIRr_Ub2mq8174Cm7j6E-GqjEGTX_8_VzCNMpybub1qC2C5fnUN/s1600/vhs-poster-201403-750.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEju_9VafABcbo6jIa6LQc8VcliB5dMlG6kQiHSLY6h2P_d2sJViZPnt4y2UQWfWUb5YH-CtcrV1Mxcu0rOzapd2GFDAGHIRr_Ub2mq8174Cm7j6E-GqjEGTX_8_VzCNMpybub1qC2C5fnUN/s1600/vhs-poster-201403-750.png" height="320" width="256" /></a></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">So there we were, twelve people in a house
for two weeks, trying to follow a crazy schedule that involved
action, special effects... until we realized that the SFX makeup
artist had no intention of showing up. After having said that she had
prepared and tested everything, she simply stopped returning
phone calls. We suddenly had to handle the
fact that there was not going to be any on-set special effects in our
supernatural/horror film! A heavy rewrite was made on the spot, and I
left space for a few SFX shots to be added afterwards. When we got
back, we ran a small crowdfunding campaign, and managed to craft a
cool gory shot with the people who had made the monster eye for the
'Frankenstein' teaser. After having drawn a few FX scenes and concept sketches that never made it to the screen, Lucie finally storyboarded a new one that we were able to put in the can.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /><br /><b>2014 </b></span>
<br><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br>Post-production on <i>House of VHS</i> has been forever, it seems. We are now in the second half of 2014, and
it's not yet 100% completed. But we're almost there, thanks to all
the people who joined and supported the project. It was not an easy
one, but if we can survive this kind of <b>hardcore filmmaking</b> and turn
over a satisfying movie, it should be no problem to handle <i>Sherlock
Holmes vs Frankenstein</i> with a decent budget.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEikSjxWcX8l1g6qDp6swDMSJ2VFL20XWoQlKKwJyj8q8oZWI1mCmZRhbGLNgA0j5ERmukbywqiaAxKd5LCzRkgRpgfHIGr5eVb0mZq8N4npfhdexTokLXooTF4kCR_2lZBoZHGhzZW3am_k/s1600/banner20130823.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEikSjxWcX8l1g6qDp6swDMSJ2VFL20XWoQlKKwJyj8q8oZWI1mCmZRhbGLNgA0j5ERmukbywqiaAxKd5LCzRkgRpgfHIGr5eVb0mZq8N4npfhdexTokLXooTF4kCR_2lZBoZHGhzZW3am_k/s1600/banner20130823.jpg" height="240" width="640" /></a></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07865633111309195626noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9203655776487664197.post-85944212232520759242014-08-19T06:30:00.000-07:002014-08-19T06:30:00.595-07:002012-2013: Doubting, waiting, rewriting<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhEpj9tH11Q3Ugcjg_XajLBTNSk_o1rnJI9WClxL3GFnc0RmtYlGOJAAn3fEDt7LcbgB1e5wAN5GD-NIIS_V7NwLI27j0n1RSqxMVOmD2D1IcMEsBHInQ5dP3YfEhmFOaI0mAheuxOGgAyd/s1600/anubis1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhEpj9tH11Q3Ugcjg_XajLBTNSk_o1rnJI9WClxL3GFnc0RmtYlGOJAAn3fEDt7LcbgB1e5wAN5GD-NIIS_V7NwLI27j0n1RSqxMVOmD2D1IcMEsBHInQ5dP3YfEhmFOaI0mAheuxOGgAyd/s1600/anubis1.jpg" height="108" width="400" /></a></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">At the end of the summer 2012, things
were starting to slow down. We were getting messages from very interesting people wondering about the project, like Oscar-winning makeup artist <b>Dave Elsey</b> (<i>Star Wars ep III</i>, <i>Mission Impossible</i>, <i>X-Men First Class</i> - he won the Oscar for <i>Wolfman</i>, together with Rick Baker), who said he would love to be involved. But what more was there to do for <i>Sherlock
Holmes vs Frankenstein</i>, until funding would come together? So I
took some time for other projects. First, I wrote a script called <b><i>The Werewolf Mummy</i></b>, an adventure/horror story set during the
crusades. Jean-Noël and I also had a pet project: a film version of
Franz Kafka's<b> <i>The Metamorphosis</i></b>, so I worked on developing that
script too. And of course, I started working on Jane Clark's movie <b><i>Slate & Kelly</i></b>, a buddy cop story set in Paris.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">By the end of 2012, I was worried to
realize that the company had been in existence for one year, and <i>Sherlock Holmes vs Frankenstein </i>was still not happening. I started
to think that maybe we had aimed too high, too fast, and maybe a
microbudget film would be a good way to climb our way up to a serious
budget. So I put the first hand to a script called <b><i>House of VHS</i></b>,
which was designed to use only one location (a house), a supernatural
menace (VHS) and a total cast of no more than six characters.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
<h3>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">2013</span>
</h3>
</div>
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYLaHGN6g7JsOmBxYtlbFIKPqWtrbEEGWBw13PzM6_6O4MEwfMR7d9VvaCmN-IAZtowhbQg19SKS2-O6T3_SdmlATCe2mpuyF6s2jNiFSab8CFFk4LIP3GhgAcNLLApku2FRPtBA4eOgkI/s1600/792146_422390571174233_637044828_o.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYLaHGN6g7JsOmBxYtlbFIKPqWtrbEEGWBw13PzM6_6O4MEwfMR7d9VvaCmN-IAZtowhbQg19SKS2-O6T3_SdmlATCe2mpuyF6s2jNiFSab8CFFk4LIP3GhgAcNLLApku2FRPtBA4eOgkI/s1600/792146_422390571174233_637044828_o.jpg" height="240" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Berlin 2013</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">During that time, Parkland Pictures and
I were discussing the script for <i>Sherlock Holmes vs Frankenstein</i>,
and it became clear that it could use a real rewrite. To work on it,
producer John Cairns brought in a seasoned writer called <b>Stephen Marians</b>, who
used to be a production and writing partner of actor Simon Ward
(Peter Cushing's reluctant assistant in Hammer's <i>Frankenstein must be
destroyed</i>). Stephen came up with his own version of the script, that
I was able to read right after the <b>Berlin Film Market</b>, in March 2013.
Then we spent a weekend in London, with Stephen and the Parkland
people, examining page by page his version and mine, and sorting out
what to keep in each – and what to add, change, etc. I went home
with a pile of notes, and assembled the new and improved version of
the script.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">The <b>final version </b>came together during Cannes, in May.
During that same festival, I had a few good meetings about the
project, and in June, I went on to pitch it to finance people thanks
to a selective program run by a group called Peacefulfish. What I
heard there could be summarized as: <i>“sounds great, but what have you done before, where's your first feature film?”</i> Well, luckily enough, my first feature happened to be on its
way.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhV_oiDWJ23e5-HQSSjPBKSN6tVW21G1IXmqdMHwpAjIIthhRNrvlNj7DA_02QMrbKJwnrtWsSCJ8uAJ8Yvt382LLEc2mIFdkro6hvZI7hvSR9lEfRcD6NS23l1GtvpWGZ5XYTTpGrM4qES/s1600/IMGP1381.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhV_oiDWJ23e5-HQSSjPBKSN6tVW21G1IXmqdMHwpAjIIthhRNrvlNj7DA_02QMrbKJwnrtWsSCJ8uAJ8Yvt382LLEc2mIFdkro6hvZI7hvSR9lEfRcD6NS23l1GtvpWGZ5XYTTpGrM4qES/s1600/IMGP1381.jpg" height="400" width="355" /></a></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07865633111309195626noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9203655776487664197.post-57828702981321955792014-08-12T06:27:00.000-07:002014-08-13T11:32:42.707-07:002012: Marteau<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><b>Marteau Films Production</b> was
incorporated in December 2011, the same month I quit my day job. The
plan was simple, and at the same time incredibly ambitious: to figure
out <span id="goog_1375290228"></span><span id="goog_1375290229"></span>how to produce <i>Sherlock Holmes vs Frankenstein </i>as a
French/English genre film, then move on to other projects. At first,
things went smoother than I would have thought: talented actors
and award-winning crew members were easy to contact, and responded
very positively to the script. Within four months, we had a
commitment from UK sales company <b>Parkland Pictures</b> to handle the
movie. But then came the hard part: financing the project. It took a
while to realize that the initial plan wouldn't work. I didn't give
up right away on getting French funding, which was a mistake. People
wouldn't understand why I wanted to film both in French and English,
and French TV channels wouldn't follow us on a genre film. I
eventually gave up on the idea of filming in French, which was
foolish from the start. But hey, one needs to learn from his
mistakes!</span><br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNphI6siv7VlZ0SdKdBXRh9ncBaKS42g0vLCHmaOsi0ZPGgkymy__4jQTVH1_d_47yUISzQT1lr03ckseLketJWf-QupkZpDMI7-rTbTW8ntDj1kUEtrsCotg8deOjPfGdBtG4yQmnXCEK/s1600/sherlock.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNphI6siv7VlZ0SdKdBXRh9ncBaKS42g0vLCHmaOsi0ZPGgkymy__4jQTVH1_d_47yUISzQT1lr03ckseLketJWf-QupkZpDMI7-rTbTW8ntDj1kUEtrsCotg8deOjPfGdBtG4yQmnXCEK/s1600/sherlock.jpg" height="320" width="211" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Among the first people I met was
director of photography <b>Jérôme Alméras</b>. He suggested we shot a
short test film, to show as proof of concept. We decided it had to be
ready in time for Cannes 2012, and got down to work. The location
would be an underground place which used to be owned by monks. The
actors would be Dario Costa as Sherlock Holmes (remember, he played
the part in the public reading a year before), and <b>Angèle Vivier </b>as
a screaming victim of the monster (she will play Christina, the
innkeeper's mute daughter, in the movie). Costumes would be designed
by <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0488658" target="_blank">Pierre-Jean Larroque</a>, an Emmy and César winner with a taste for
period pieces. And we hoped to have a great monster with crazy
prosthetics... until we realized how little time and money we had. We
had almost none of either. So we settled for a close-up of the
monster's eye, which ended up being quite effective. We had a cold
sweat a few days before filming, when Jérôme learned that he
couldn't be there due to an important meeting for the film he was
about to make with Pierce Brosnan and Emma Thompson (<i>Love Punch</i>). But
his assistant Simon Blanchard prepped the shots with him beforehand, using the storyboard drawn by my wife Lucie,
and everything went smoothly on set. In fact, I was happy to keep the
crew as small as possible, because it felt strange to have so many
people working around me: two makeup artists, the costume designer,
two unit managers, a propmaster, and four people for the photography
(we used an Alexa camera). They were all intrigued by the fact that I
didn't have at least one assistant director, but I told them I never
had any!<b> <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0108470" target="_blank">Shane Briant</a> </b>provided a deep voice over, <b>Matthieu Huvelin</b>
crafted a great music, and the teaser turned out to be pretty
acceptable, eventually making it into two festivals (which wasn't the
initial plan at all!)</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.youtube.com/embed/brkSuqmWCNw?feature=player_embedded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><b>Cannes 2012</b> was interesting, but
Jean-Noël and I went there unprepared, having made no appointment
beforehand, and kind of hoping meetings would happen spontaneously.
We were partly right, because we met American director Jane Clark,
who told us about a film she wanted to make in France – and we're
working on it with her now. But we didn't find a pile of money
waiting for us, or anyone ready to finance with their eyes closed an
expensive film from a first-time director.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihBinuXoZVD1I1IGcdIxkpG-lpmhgmbzIiUvFvaIZpzWOsv5zBc401uh1Z7lt0ERAcofpC04V90YNOvXENY543YYDvakisCnUd5Sa6wDZmYouSDQv1U_Ta2QT_V6PybJoqOChQ2Wv40thp/s1600/IMGP0330_essai.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihBinuXoZVD1I1IGcdIxkpG-lpmhgmbzIiUvFvaIZpzWOsv5zBc401uh1Z7lt0ERAcofpC04V90YNOvXENY543YYDvakisCnUd5Sa6wDZmYouSDQv1U_Ta2QT_V6PybJoqOChQ2Wv40thp/s1600/IMGP0330_essai.jpg" height="240" width="320" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />After Cannes, I went location scouting
in Belgium. I had the best guide in the world: actor <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1101713" target="_blank"><b>Eric Godon</b></a>, who
will play innkeeper Johann Klein in our film. We visited <b>castle
Reinhardstein</b>, near the German border, and found all the places we
needed in the area: the forest, the village, the inn, the
Burgermeister's office... I came back with a good idea of what the
film would look like. We were supported by the <a href="http://www.sshf.com/" target="_blank">French Sherlock Holmes Society</a> and its president Thierry Saint-Joanis, who said he would lend all the furnishing and props needed for the Baker Street set. At that moment, we were pretty confident that
the film was about to get made, to the point where we issued a
press release in June, right before I left for Belgium. When I
returned, numerous websites had spread the info, and a few magazines
had mentioned <i>Sherlock Holmes vs Frankenstein</i> with our <b>promotional
poster </b>(by Gil Jouin, who had designed with his father Michel the
French posters for <i>Return of the Jedi</i>, <i>Young Sherlock Holmes</i>, etc). A
lot of people thought that filming was imminent. Well, it turned out
it wasn't. Two years later, we haven't even started. Is everything
ready? Yes. What happened since then? Wait till next entry!</span><br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEicWX8i5v9oOQVUjEcH7ehCV_LIxO1p0fuoYPyNKc9lu6x9kBzBksOU0xV0Ny9gwolgpO63gPOQdhVrhHSrTrQPjj3KWdKkHTLxdRHDTtPoXv2upZUmwnK94vj-w_Xx7jSp3GOeIwmRa-0c/s1600/IMGP0708.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEicWX8i5v9oOQVUjEcH7ehCV_LIxO1p0fuoYPyNKc9lu6x9kBzBksOU0xV0Ny9gwolgpO63gPOQdhVrhHSrTrQPjj3KWdKkHTLxdRHDTtPoXv2upZUmwnK94vj-w_Xx7jSp3GOeIwmRa-0c/s1600/IMGP0708.JPG" height="480" width="640" /></a></div>
</div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07865633111309195626noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9203655776487664197.post-4578921325696810882014-08-05T06:33:00.000-07:002014-08-05T06:33:00.548-07:002010-2011: The script!<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Once I had my mind set on writing
<b><i>Sherlock Holmes vs Frankenstein</i></b>, I went through documentation
again. I looked up more Holmes books, comic books and movies, re-read
<b>Mary Shelley's <i>Frankenstein</i></b> of course, and also went through
countless Frankenstein films (although I can't say I learned a lot
from watching <i>Blackenstein</i>).</span><br />
<br /></div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbNILnP3oiW60bvc129aBsTp3nOjO3LTVDwFrvqGrf2jqnfqTD3XhKRx1JwPlgvR-UOcb4IItvptoY9fW1_ndOseo1kDgoDTTb9OakT_IftMYy6epeDPwCU6p6WiAS1N1bgZAHUobTE1Uv/s1600/MaryShelley.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbNILnP3oiW60bvc129aBsTp3nOjO3LTVDwFrvqGrf2jqnfqTD3XhKRx1JwPlgvR-UOcb4IItvptoY9fW1_ndOseo1kDgoDTTb9OakT_IftMYy6epeDPwCU6p6WiAS1N1bgZAHUobTE1Uv/s1600/MaryShelley.jpg" height="320" width="258" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">One of the things that came out of my
research was the existence of a real Franckenstein family. That's
right, with a “c”. Their name is not a coincidence: Mary Shelley
was visiting Europe with her husband and Lord Byron when she wrote
the book, and they had been near <b>Castle Franckenstein</b> not long
before. In the book, they're a Swiss family, whereas the real family
is German.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">The current Baron is Clement von und zu
Franckenstein, who happens to be... an actor! Starting as a bit
player in Mel Brooks' <i>Young Frankenstein </i>(of course), he went
on to play bigger parts, with Jean-Claude Van Damme in <i>Full
Contact</i>, Bruce Willis in <i>Death Becomes Her</i> or Michael
Douglas in <i>The American President</i> (where Clement plays the
French president, despite being a German raised in the UK!). He was
also in another Mel Brooks film: <i>Robin Hood, Men in Tights.</i>
My script features characters based on his father Georg, his uncle
Clemens and his grandfather Karl. More on this matter later!</span><br />
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">The
script came together easily enough: I had a map of the characters,
their relationships, the main plot and the subplots, and defining the
sequence of events was a natural process. Oddly enough, several
elements from </span><i>Zorro vs Sherlock Holmes</i><span style="font-style: normal;">
ended up in this story: two antagonist brothers (something that
derived from </span><i>The Sign of Four</i><span style="font-style: normal;">,
my favorite Holmes adventure)</span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYUqWG6ZhGnieFRDYjl0d9XENYW7WpdfweMG1WflxAD-xCVhVibgy67ogsIOCepESAjy0GMIHQNQaJ8DQuNeMOrf-wBYt4j57CUbMx2RkirIQTZ8mBfKuPc_RwUN10rPe4AleRyIflZUzR/s1600/sherlock+holmes.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYUqWG6ZhGnieFRDYjl0d9XENYW7WpdfweMG1WflxAD-xCVhVibgy67ogsIOCepESAjy0GMIHQNQaJ8DQuNeMOrf-wBYt4j57CUbMx2RkirIQTZ8mBfKuPc_RwUN10rPe4AleRyIflZUzR/s1600/sherlock+holmes.jpg" height="320" width="205" /></a></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">I had
a<b> first draft in June 2010</b> (the same month my first child was born,
would you call it a coincidence?), and I handed it to my wife and to
Jean-Noël. With their notes and a few new
ideas I had come up with, I made corrections and invited ten friends
to a group reading in September. We had a good talk afterwards,
especially about the ending – it was almost unchanged since the
time I was working on </span><i>Zorro vs Sherlock Holmes</i><span style="font-style: normal;">,
and it didn't feel quite right. The rest of the script everyone
liked, but the ending was putting most people off. I came up with a
new version within two weeks, and had another reading in October,
with a group made of both people who knew the story, and people
who hadn't read any version yet. This time around, the reactions were very
positive, and it felt like the script was in the right place.</span></span><br />
<br />
<h4>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">2011 </span></span></h4>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><br />Time
had come to think of how it could be brought to the screen. I had
written the script in French (the exact title then was </span><i>Sherlock
Holmes contre Frankenstein</i><span style="font-style: normal;">!),
but when I was scanning casting ideas in my head, a lot of them were
English-speaking actors – which of course made sense, Holmes and
Watson being <b>British </b>characters. So I decided I should translate the
script into English. I was familiar with the language, but writing
19th century dialogue is different from writing an e-mail or even a
term paper. So I took my time, enlisted the help of a fat English
dictionary and<b> Conan Doyle's full Canon</b>, and came up with a version
that sounded English enough to me. A friend of mine introduced me to
a charming British lady called Stephanie Campion, who made a lot of
corrections and set up a public reading of the scripts with
professional English-speaking actors. The reading took place in
February 2011, in the parisian pub Carr's: it was a regular informal
event where the small audience would discuss a play or a script with the
author. The feedback was good there too, and it was great to have
real actors read the script out loud. I felt the relationship between
Holmes and Watson worked quite well, which was important to me –
Dario Costa and Damian Corcoran played the detective and the doctor.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><br /></span></span></div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7plDXFFiHx8ESE-L48gZPtF2dj3jy7aBd1dhuCvFRf7u11QUoLglyyfv-9hWqsWPTcGOUlbBwwt4sJY44DLsR2XVA5tVLcv2pLfKkXuojB82uEGNJUpTXlVp6JnF1wkknaDd-kVfBOY0f/s1600/Instantan%25C3%25A90000032.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7plDXFFiHx8ESE-L48gZPtF2dj3jy7aBd1dhuCvFRf7u11QUoLglyyfv-9hWqsWPTcGOUlbBwwt4sJY44DLsR2XVA5tVLcv2pLfKkXuojB82uEGNJUpTXlVp6JnF1wkknaDd-kVfBOY0f/s1600/Instantan%25C3%25A90000032.png" height="180" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Damian Corcoran & Dario Costa</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">The next step was to reach out to
actors, production companies, and put the project on tracks. Or so I
thought. Remember, at that time I had no real idea of how the filmmaking
industry worked, and I knew absolutely no one there. So I sent out letters,
e-mails, to a few agents and French production companies. It took me
some time to realize that no French producer would touch in a
thousand years a project called <i>'Sherlock Holmes vs Frankenstein'</i>.
There are barely any genre movies made in France, and the few that
are produced have a contemporary setting, or at least take place in
France. A film with British characters investigating a supernatural
matter in 19<sup>th</sup> century Germany is not something that the
French financing system will support. But I was more lucky with my
messages to agents: the first actor to express interest in the script
was<b> Shane Briant</b>. I was leaping with joy when I heard back from him,
and he said he would meet me (he lives in Australia, but was headed
to London and we saw each other in Paris). Hammer fans remember him
of course as Peter Cushing's assistant in Terence Fisher's <b><i>Frankenstein and
the Monster From Hell</i></b>, and I had named the Burgermeister in my
script after his character: Simon Helder. When we had this meeting in
August 2011, we discussed the script, Hammer films, etc., and he said
he would be happy to play the part and support the project. Not long
later, <b>Clement von Franckenstein</b> also said he really liked the
script, and wanted to be in the movie. It turned out nobody had ever
asked him to play Baron Frankenstein before me – I guess I'm more
candid than most!</span><br />
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">At that point, I thought the best way
to move things forward was to create the means to produce the film
myself. But flying solo is a scary thing. So I contacted Jean-Noël, and asked him whether he would create a
production company with me. He said yes, and in a way, this is where
the story really begins!</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXgm3Q464YTZr00AVp0sLXrnucIy_TN_GyHCevsQFBMtgl9GQqG7q9xzrpV3xBqOhFr8ouXF2CsjiJc8J8MHIBhW7dzdWTq37vsBcBAxZ_hLgatVHyKRZr7PSqsrGK8qsLaub85xDeH5i1/s1600/Frankenstein-book-1831.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXgm3Q464YTZr00AVp0sLXrnucIy_TN_GyHCevsQFBMtgl9GQqG7q9xzrpV3xBqOhFr8ouXF2CsjiJc8J8MHIBhW7dzdWTq37vsBcBAxZ_hLgatVHyKRZr7PSqsrGK8qsLaub85xDeH5i1/s1600/Frankenstein-book-1831.jpg" height="450" width="640" /></a></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07865633111309195626noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9203655776487664197.post-1036243468133908292014-07-29T06:24:00.000-07:002014-08-04T14:24:56.429-07:002009: Zorro vs Sherlock Holmes<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">While filming the last William Boquet,
two major things happened: I moved in with the woman whom I would
eventually marry, and I decided to write a new ambitious script about
two iconic characters. <i>Sherlock Holmes vs Frankenstein</i>? Nope,
I wasn't there yet. The initial project was <b><i>Zorro vs Sherlock
Holmes</i></b>.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">I've always been fond of time-defying characters: <b>Robin
Hood, Dracula, the Three Musketeers</b>... And Zorro of course. Before I
even thought of being a writer-director, I wanted to be an actor. To
play Zorro. And before that, I wanted to be Zorro himself. So the
concept of having him and Holmes meet and fight seemed exciting. Both
swordsmen, one of them cultivating mysteries, the other solving them.
Of course the timeframe wouldn't allow Sherlock Holmes to meet Don
Diego de la Vega in his prime, but he could easily meet his grandson – which was
the setup for this script.</span><br />
</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrmPuYqCklAAmQt0iYAvRCEH9F5OuMhbySbTRi2IS9uv7lh_BHquNbg8rUQ3pRSWCUTvDR0BcJdXY_T8qZXeuPydSfrDk_knXJoXbFIC7EMmI7ktbxvOruZAkfMehDPWaVCtf-3pj2AC6P/s1600/The_Mark_of_Zorro.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrmPuYqCklAAmQt0iYAvRCEH9F5OuMhbySbTRi2IS9uv7lh_BHquNbg8rUQ3pRSWCUTvDR0BcJdXY_T8qZXeuPydSfrDk_knXJoXbFIC7EMmI7ktbxvOruZAkfMehDPWaVCtf-3pj2AC6P/s1600/The_Mark_of_Zorro.jpg" /></a></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><b>Holmes and Watson</b>, in their early years
(not long after <i>A Study a Scarlet</i>), travel to California in
order to unmask a dangerous criminal who calls himself Zorro. Of
course, they eventually find out that he's fighting the good fight,
against a corrupt local government. Together, they retrieve a treasure
that had been unfairly confiscated from the Indian people, and they
bring down the evil military in an epic final swordfight. Or
something like that. I was really excited about this project. I had
re-read the whole Sherlock Holmes Canon, as well as Johnston
McCulley's original Zorro novel. I had spent hours watching films about
both characters, in order to sort out what made them interesting.</span><br />
</div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">But despite having a beginning and an
end, the story was hard to put together. Why would the evil military
call Sherlock Holmes to help them? Why would Zorro need him to
overpower the bad guys? How could the viewer be excited by Holmes
unmasking Zorro, when his identity would already be known to him? And
if we hide it from him, by having several “potential Zorros”,
then how will the viewer care for this character? And most of all:
how is there going to be a foe charismatic enough to stand in front
of two legends? </span><br />
</div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGoN74f2ROQQEJArc5koUCiV_hgx3n53ANElccKFUIgwSGZ5z08sZDS5P7suPyWl8MvGMCocWIRGWp_Bb-lOI1eMv0iFHWfCoPL8LRScmtg8pKNZ9aZakpUj_0v3S2hsV_IetKU7NHAjPj/s1600/Sans+titre.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGoN74f2ROQQEJArc5koUCiV_hgx3n53ANElccKFUIgwSGZ5z08sZDS5P7suPyWl8MvGMCocWIRGWp_Bb-lOI1eMv0iFHWfCoPL8LRScmtg8pKNZ9aZakpUj_0v3S2hsV_IetKU7NHAjPj/s1600/Sans+titre.png" height="283" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">John Neville as Holmes</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">A lot of those questions derived from
the fact that Holmes and Zorro are both positive characters, who
can't really be opposed unless one of them loses the audience's
sympathy. It's like having a movie called <i>Batman vs Superman</i>
(oh wait!), you know that they will eventually join forces. So unless
you have a great villain, someone that the viewer already knows, it
kind of falls flat because your heroes won't be fighting a big
threat. I didn't want to bring Moriarty into the plot, it was against
my rules – which rules, you might ask? Watching and reading
non-canonical Holmes stories, I have observed that most of them (if
not all!) featured one or more of the following characters: <b>Irene
Adler, Mycroft Holmes and/or Professor Moriarty</b>. I ended up finding
it very annoying, since these characters are only featured once or
twice over the course of 60 stories written by Conan Doyle. Hell,
Moriarty is often believed to be Sherlock's recurring nemesis, when
he's only the main antagonist in one short story (and one that seems
to have been hastily written by Conan Doyle in order to kill off his
detective). Watson doesn't even get to meet him in person! As for
Irene Adler, a lot of versions want us to believe that Holmes and her
have been romantically involved, to the point where they're sometimes
supposed to have a child together. But in <i>A Scandal in Bohemia</i>,
Watson clearly states: <i>“It was not that he felt any emotion akin to
love for Irene Adler. All emotions, and that one particularly, were
abhorrent to his cold, precise, but admirably balanced mind.”</i> In
fact, several stories have Holmes fall in love, with Adler or someone
else, when that goes against all 60 canonical adventures! Bottom line
is: I decided that if I was to write a Sherlock Holmes story, I
wouldn't use Irene Adler, Mycroft or Moriarty.</span><br />
</div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKwgozGhQUyLpkt6nZUcxYABGEEOEeFC1jmMDbC6PreM12c7rUTavIO82V39zNNn9Dwi899D-tCqyWpkMN5vaJPg18SJAUgY0fN1-RwBWJPmeNkfcNkebn9kuxkFSmyGoV8PAYQAXps4ei/s1600/Zorro_and_the_Three_Musketeers_AKA_Mask_of_the_Musketeers-388739190-large.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKwgozGhQUyLpkt6nZUcxYABGEEOEeFC1jmMDbC6PreM12c7rUTavIO82V39zNNn9Dwi899D-tCqyWpkMN5vaJPg18SJAUgY0fN1-RwBWJPmeNkfcNkebn9kuxkFSmyGoV8PAYQAXps4ei/s1600/Zorro_and_the_Three_Musketeers_AKA_Mask_of_the_Musketeers-388739190-large.jpg" height="320" width="226" /></a></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">While I was struggling with the plot,
looking for a way to make it worthwhile (without letting Holmes or
Zorro become the other's supporting character), I stumbled upon the
information that Zorro wasn't public domain property. It belonged to
the Zorro Estate, who probably wouldn't allow the character to be
used in a crossover with another hero. In the 60s, Zorro had been
confronted to <b>Maciste</b>, the Three Musketeers, and even naked women in a
few soft-porn movies, but the copyright-holders had straightened the
line in the 90s with “mainstream” productions such as the Antonio
Banderas movies, the book by Isabel Allende or the recent musical
show. So here I was, stuck with a story that didn't quite work and a
character that possibly could be an obstacle to making the film even
if I sorted out the plot. So I started toying around with the idea of
replacing him with another mysterious avenger, probably the Scarlet
Pimpernel – which would have moved the plot to France.</span><br />
</div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">But one day, lightning struck. It was
the end of February, 2010. I was sitting in a movie theater, in front
of a French comedy that didn't have my full attention. Suddenly, I
thought of <b><i>Sherlock Holmes vs Frankenstein</i></b>. It didn't have
anything to do with what I was watching. It was just a title that
popped up. During the last 30 minutes of the screening, the main
elements of the script came together in my head. When the credits hit
the screen, I left the theater (which I usually don't do, I like to
stay until the very end – even for movies I don't like!) and rushed
home, where my 6-month pregnant wife saw me go straight to my desk,
take a pen and paper, and write down the outline for this new script.
It all felt so obvious, that I couldn't understand why it hadn't
occurred to me earlier: Sherlock Holmes and Watson would travel to
<b>Germany</b>, not California or France. And they would have to unmask a
mad scientist, one who would have created a giant monster. It made
perfect sense: Holmes was the hero, the monster was a menace and the
identity of the mad scientist was the mystery to solve. Now I knew
the direction I was headed. I just didn't realize how long the
journey would be.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07865633111309195626noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9203655776487664197.post-52289659240461159892014-07-22T06:29:00.000-07:002014-07-22T07:27:09.427-07:002003-2009: William Boquet (2)<h4 style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
</h4>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"></span>
</div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Four years later, I graduated from a French/American school with </span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4UxbyCWA9yhTgkG3o4vE6gvuPpFdE73UX501pMbm8BKA7t3yEjb2vIe_2NCVAOlKE8SA8tRWq8wLTvHBl65SZK2i0EVyaFp14X3vIWGH5LrNcVGkDMr1iY-nvTzlY7kF4Kn4J3swKPJhF/s1600/William+Boquet+3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4UxbyCWA9yhTgkG3o4vE6gvuPpFdE73UX501pMbm8BKA7t3yEjb2vIe_2NCVAOlKE8SA8tRWq8wLTvHBl65SZK2i0EVyaFp14X3vIWGH5LrNcVGkDMr1iY-nvTzlY7kF4Kn4J3swKPJhF/s1600/William+Boquet+3.jpg" height="163" width="200" /></a></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">a BA in
management and finance. And William Boquet came back. Instead of
looking for a regular job, I went on to work on a new episode for my
detective, entitled <i><b>William Boquet dans la quatrième dimension</b>
</i><span style="font-style: normal;">(</span><i>William Boquet in the
Fourth Dimension</i><span style="font-style: normal;">)</span>. This
one would be a silent movie, shot in black & white (or rather in
an intense sepia monochrome), and would focus on everyone BUT William
Boquet. He would only show up in the last scene and kick the shit out
of the bad guys. This last idea came from the fact that I initially
thought I would play the character myself... which I ultimately
didn't. The part went to a friend called Pierre, who would later
return for two installments of the franchise. In a small but very
funny part, <b>Matthieu Huvelin</b> was being beaten up by two thugs; he would
eventually become a composer on a lot of my movies, including the
upcoming <i><span style="font-weight: normal;">Sherlock Holmes vs
Frankenstein</span></i>!</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">The first three films were shot on Hi-8
and VHS-C, this one was the first for which we used DV. It was also
the first episode to be edited on a computer, and not with a VCR
connected to the camcorder or to a Hi-Fi (no kidding, this is how the
others were edited and mixed). Apparently, it was entertaining enough
to be selected in a short film festival in Grenoble. Only two amateur
movies had made it into the selection, and we were running against 18
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiV2JvYALGrvcNjeU1W1_3QtUcVadfLvkv3w634tQUkN_VGmkL_sPrWfcvDbaS2tDo3KhG9VrVP9uIwAr9zatIcCX5LUMLQMqyskB-NnLkUDi0jUbgxb2hnngKPwBeHlq_btYk_vavp97Sv/s1600/storyboard+1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiV2JvYALGrvcNjeU1W1_3QtUcVadfLvkv3w634tQUkN_VGmkL_sPrWfcvDbaS2tDo3KhG9VrVP9uIwAr9zatIcCX5LUMLQMqyskB-NnLkUDi0jUbgxb2hnngKPwBeHlq_btYk_vavp97Sv/s1600/storyboard+1.jpg" height="320" width="213" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">sketches for <i>Avant-Garde</i></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
films made with professional means. <i>William Boquet 4</i> was very
fun to to make, and a lot of people seemed to like it. To this day,
it's still the best of the bunch, because things went a bit downhill
afterwards. This is one time in my life where I probably should have
stopped amateur filmmaking and started doing things properly. But I
went the lazy and cowardly route for a few years, paying my bills
with jobs I didn't care for, and sticking to making films with no crew, no budget and zero technical equipment.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">That same summer, I made a short film
called <b><i>Avant-Garde</i></b>, about.... Frankenstein. So you might say
2003 was the first time I pitted “Sherlock Holmes” (a version of
him, at least) against Frankenstein, in a way. <i>Avant-Garde</i>
told the story of <b>Victor Frankenstein </b>creating his monster, then
dreaming that it survived through the 1930s, 60s, 90s and beyond. The
film was 12 minutes long, which is about half of an average William
Boquet, but there was an effort on costumes and lighting. It was also
the first time I used the name <b>Marteau Films</b>, as a mere joke: Marteau
is French for Hammer, and my favorite Frankenstein movies are the
Hammer productions with Peter Cushing.</span><br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
<h3>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">2004-2007</span></h3>
</div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"></span>
</div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">One year later, I made a fifth William
Boquet, the only episode that would be shot outside of Paris and its
surroundings. <b><i>L'Amour aux trousses</i></b> (a pun spoofing the french
title for <i>North by Northwest</i>, where I replaced Death with
Love). We spent four days in Normandy, filming scenes on the beach
and in town, where the detective was being chased mostly by women who
wanted to rape him – and a few individuals who wanted to kill him
or mutilate him. We had a blast, but the film was another of these
no-budget, private-joke efforts that couldn't appeal to a lot of
people outside a small circle of friends.</span></div>
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgoUR9BEdcz0ud7niv4yEclr_zs7sZDtHGzTUP6_bLhjzQ7St0IM4myHwVwq1QSLDQnQViCqdBAaFe5Z9G6QFf9aTmG5dgg0IAsGuOEcF_wPh4Eu-umcL1IGSJ9EIBW3G18lOKn74KCk8Ap/s1600/courirsurlaplage.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgoUR9BEdcz0ud7niv4yEclr_zs7sZDtHGzTUP6_bLhjzQ7St0IM4myHwVwq1QSLDQnQViCqdBAaFe5Z9G6QFf9aTmG5dgg0IAsGuOEcF_wPh4Eu-umcL1IGSJ9EIBW3G18lOKn74KCk8Ap/s1600/courirsurlaplage.jpg" height="320" width="300" /></a><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">After I spent almost two years on a
more ambitious film called <b><i>Freudy</i> </b>(but again, without
professional means or a real crew), William Boquet returned for his weirdest adventure in 2006: <b><i>Fax Bulle-d'O²</i></b>. Pierre was
playing the character for the third time, and I was directing, but
for the first time it wasn't from a script that I had written: it was
one of three episodes penned by <b>Jean-Noël Georgel</b> (the other two
were never filmed). It was a very strange story, where the world was
losing its colors around the FBI agent, who had made an enemy out of
his own subconscious double. It could have been exciting, but I
underestimated the complexity of making the final product
intelligible, and it ended up being quite a mess – my favorite
parts are the opening and closing credits! It was the second time
Matthieu was scoring one of my films (the first having been <i>Freudy</i>).</span><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"> </span><br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">After that, another episode called
<i>Repas Eternel</i> (which had Boquet track down a cannibal) was
planned, with a friend directing and me playing the lead again –
eight years after <i>Seven-Up</i>. We started shooting a few scenes,
but the whole thing rapidly fell apart. Which is when I started
concentrating on writing something that could be made into a REAL
film. Not a 20-minute selfish surreal trip, but a feature film that a
normal movie-goer would be interested in! <i>Sherlock Holmes vs
Frankenstein</i>? Not yet, folks! I know, this is beginning to sound
like <i>How I met your mother</i>, but remember we're barely in 2008
at this point...</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"></span>
</div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<h3>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">2008-2009 </span></h3>
<br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">I called Jean-Noël and asked him if he
would write something really ambitious with me. He said yes, and we
got down to work. So here was the plan: to write a 100-page script
loosely based on a french comic book character, then send it to the author
and hope that he likes it. It was a very silly plan, for two reasons:
first, having the author approve your script would not be a guarantee
that it will make it to the screen; second, you could have the
problem we ended up having: when Jean-Noël and I contacted the author's agent,
we learned that the rights had already been optioned, and there was
no way our script would be read. They didn't even want to know the
pitch or anything, we just had to put our work in a drawer and move
on to the next project. It was the second feature-long script I'd
worked on, the first was called <i>Old-Up</i> and had gone through several versions from 2000 to
2003, and had ultimately been shelved (too expensive, too many
characters, too hard to keep the three writers focused on a same
project). Jean-Noël had already written and directed a no-budget
80-minute film a few years before. But this particular script could
have been our key to “real” filmmaking, if only we had chosen our
subject more wisely. There we were, having worked for almost a year
on a script (we had also made a short test-film which wasn't too bad –
but had very poor special effects!), and </span><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">having no real plan for the
foreseeable future – apart from sticking to our day jobs.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"></span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJy3HkUnWq8erg_r-zSwwz-h7sgo8NO_KQtcJ7X53XCNvcTuoXOT349tPAVzeruZ_8aBl4O-tRVHy_I8EI0Wv3Z0jl1OX-38gIauzrrrSXhQK9_lCRz1k2yOvI0cR5XlB6tP6vbgJfLKSj/s1600/wbflou160.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJy3HkUnWq8erg_r-zSwwz-h7sgo8NO_KQtcJ7X53XCNvcTuoXOT349tPAVzeruZ_8aBl4O-tRVHy_I8EI0Wv3Z0jl1OX-38gIauzrrrSXhQK9_lCRz1k2yOvI0cR5XlB6tP6vbgJfLKSj/s1600/wbflou160.jpg" height="221" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">The frustration that arose from this
situation drove me to my usual fix: William Boquet. I took the unused
footage for <i>Repas Eternel</i> and used it to spawn a seventh episode, <b><i>Flou
</i></b>(<i>Blur</i>). I played the detective once again, and put the
character in an uncomfortable situation: he wakes up one day almost
blind, his entire environment reduced to a blur. He starts picturing
everyone with his own face, and wonders how he's gonna solve the case
of missing person he's dealing with. Matthieu Huvelin scored this one
as well, and Jean-Noël plays a new FBI agent (one who had been
introduced in the previous installment), but the film is unlike any
of the previous entries. William Boquet has always been my double in
a way, and each film had mirrored something of my life at the point
it was made: <i>Teddy</i> was about leaving childhood, <i>WB4</i> was
filled with the feeling of liberty I had when exiting business
school... but it was never deliberate. This seventh episode ended up
being too personal, and while it reflects one of the dearest periods
in my life (basically, how I realized that I had met my soulmate), it
doesn't make for a very good movie – except for my wife and I!<i> </i></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><i>Flou </i>was filmed in 2009,
completed in 2010, and remains to this day William Boquet's last
episode. I don't see the character returning any time soon, but if he
does, he won't be sporting a deerstalker hat. Days of dealing with a
Sherlock Holmes wannabe are long gone now.</span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07865633111309195626noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9203655776487664197.post-67040728468823135782014-07-15T06:22:00.000-07:002014-07-15T07:10:38.944-07:001997-1999: William Boquet (1)<h4 style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
</h4>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbmeilrMwearNqISCEk98BMFhpUcbt6Tw1_mDeJG9JNZViempB7NiL2DGQvWYf7MZW_CRewDfvMCChi-3iJtj6sUNDUhEzHRFuGyWCZKkWolXgXF5Hi7iiI9lX9PXk1-iALI6Da0bdlJ3_/s1600/WB1+-+teddy.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbmeilrMwearNqISCEk98BMFhpUcbt6Tw1_mDeJG9JNZViempB7NiL2DGQvWYf7MZW_CRewDfvMCChi-3iJtj6sUNDUhEzHRFuGyWCZKkWolXgXF5Hi7iiI9lX9PXk1-iALI6Da0bdlJ3_/s1600/WB1+-+teddy.jpg" height="320" width="268" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">In 1997, I was floating through high
school with no real assiduity, except in theater class. I</span><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"> was 15 and
in the equivalent of Junior Year. The year before, I had made a short
film with a classmate named <b>Jean-Noël Georgel</b>. We first intended it
to be a <i>“Tale from the Crypt”</i>, but then it became an odd story of
nightmares and surreal humor, shot with a camcorder and left
unfinished after one of the actresses went missing (this was before
cell phones and e-mails, it was hard to find someone when he wasn't in
the phone book).</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Jean-Noël had then moved to Lyons with
his family, so I found a new bunch of people to make movies with. One of them
started writing a script about a <b>private detective </b>and the murder of
a teddy bear. It wasn't going anywhere, so he dropped it. I asked
Emmanuel if I could take the premice and write my own script from it,
and he had no problem with that – he even went on to play the
detective. It was the start of a saga that would last 13 years.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br>I had to come up with a name and
personality for the hero: my love for puns drove me to chose<b> William
Boquet</b> ('bilboquet' is the french word for cup-and-ball game), and he
took elements from various iconic sleuths: he was an untidy bachelor,
acted cynical, wore a trenchcoat and yes, a deerstalker hat. Which
pretty much established him as a modern-day Sherlock Holmes wannabe.
The movie was logically titled <b><i>Teddy</i></b>, and had William Boquet
inteviewing the inhabitants of the building where the teddy bear was
murdered. Again, it was a surreal murder comedy, probably influenced
by the TV series <i>The Avengers</i> (John Steed and his women, not
Iron Man and his pals). We shot it in three afternoons with two
camcorders, and it looks pretty awful. There was only one copy of the
script, which was hand-written on a notebook, and we managed to
misplace it halfway through the shoot. I had to tell the actors what
their lines were before each scene (the script was recovered a few
days later under my bed, and I realized then that I had forgotten a
few lines and jokes in the process). Beside William Boquet, the film
introduced a character called Fax Bulle-d'Air, a paranoid FBI agent
inspired by Fox Mulder; I realized a few years later, when I
discovered <table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrzb967GIEdK_cXpBiLxwuHyJlB6Prd6xEeuamkkXKqxXthMtE2Pi5_eL9EhsT3V70mzAjWQG_F4xEa7irj4jgRAD2ve-D9nULq03NKMZKHjDwNZ8H-ILBh8v9GgPw74Mg9IjQyfFYdbTp/s1600/WB2+-+viande+froide+b.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrzb967GIEdK_cXpBiLxwuHyJlB6Prd6xEeuamkkXKqxXthMtE2Pi5_eL9EhsT3V70mzAjWQG_F4xEa7irj4jgRAD2ve-D9nULq03NKMZKHjDwNZ8H-ILBh8v9GgPw74Mg9IjQyfFYdbTp/s1600/WB2+-+viande+froide+b.jpg" height="251" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">16-year-old me as William Boquet</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
the series <i>Get Smart</i>, that Fax Bulle-d'Air was
actually very similar to Maxwell Smart!</span><br />
<h4>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br>1998 </span></h4>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">A year later, a friend of mine called
Bastien encouraged me to write a sequel. He knew I had a few ideas
for a 'William Boquet universe', with a gallery of supporting
characters that had yet to be developed. I wrote this sequel under
the title <b><i>Viande Froide</i></b> (<i>Cold Meat</i>), and introduced
police commissioner Lacroûte, who behaved a bit like the
commissioner Gordon from the 60s Batman series: each time a case was
brought to his attention, he instantly called William Boquet to solve
it for him. The guy only spent his day reading books and drinking
beers. FBI agent Fax Bulle-d'Air was also returning, and was revealed
to have a caring wife, who hired Boquet to protect her husband.
<i>Viande Froide</i> was directed by Bastien, who had me play William
Boquet in place of Emmanuel, who wasn't interested in returning.
Again, three days of shooting, horrible camcorder image and cheesy
lines delivered by teenage amateur actors. Hey, what did you expect?</span><br />
<h4>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br>1999 </span></h4>
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</span>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Another year later, I was finally
finishing high school, and decided to shoot a final William Boquet
episode (or so I thought) called <b><i>Seven-up</i></b>. I was playing the
detective again, and directing myself (which I found very
uncomfortable, even on such a light, no-budget production). The story
was a spoof of David Fincher's <i>Seven</i>, with a mysterious killer making up his
own list of deadly sins: Ugliness, Bad Taste, etc. In the last
scene, we understood he had been killing people who had annoyed
William Boquet at some point, and then he shot </span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhy71qlegc61a2V4Qyb-LElU4ZpjqQ0AbgdZ1oUg9gCcDvHV86HcZXNdjHWMouGAb278hLILTRWHh2PoYCpO5RHijKbuFGteOkjqMuQBBrJ8UfgVMPpBLQvmhi4XovVv4ms_zxhN0FCFOXf/s1600/schtounks.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhy71qlegc61a2V4Qyb-LElU4ZpjqQ0AbgdZ1oUg9gCcDvHV86HcZXNdjHWMouGAb278hLILTRWHh2PoYCpO5RHijKbuFGteOkjqMuQBBrJ8UfgVMPpBLQvmhi4XovVv4ms_zxhN0FCFOXf/s1600/schtounks.jpg" height="200" width="196" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">himself for being
the embodiment of the seventh “sin”: intolerance. <i>Seven-up</i>
was shot in July 1999, and probably required 9 or 10 days of filming.
It was a bit better than the two previous ones, I think, and was a
lot more graphic: there were several violent murder scenes, one rape,
and Boquet ended with the blood of the murderer all over his face and
clothes.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhy71qlegc61a2V4Qyb-LElU4ZpjqQ0AbgdZ1oUg9gCcDvHV86HcZXNdjHWMouGAb278hLILTRWHh2PoYCpO5RHijKbuFGteOkjqMuQBBrJ8UfgVMPpBLQvmhi4XovVv4ms_zxhN0FCFOXf/s1600/schtounks.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"></a>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">During high school, I also spent some
time writing and drawing a comic book called <b><i>Schtounks</i></b>. It was
about a war between two people called the Schtounks and the Schtonks
(confusing, I know). One of the characters was a detective called
Scherloc Tounk, inspired by... you know who. There was also a
scientist called Professor Von Chlok, who used body parts to create a
monster called Alioun. For his lab, I drew inspiration from the
promotional stills for Hammer's <b><i>Curse of Frankenstein</i></b>.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07865633111309195626noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9203655776487664197.post-43318216612573364372014-07-08T06:27:00.000-07:002014-07-08T06:54:33.446-07:00The early years<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">Sherlock Holmes. Frankenstein. Sherlock Holmes <b>VERSUS</b> Frankenstein. The film project has been floating around for some time now, and there have been questions lately about whether it's still alive. The answer is: it's been around for much longer than one might think, and yes,<b> it's ALIVE... ALIIIIVE</b>. But assembling a budget for a film is very comparable to piecing together a body from the right elements: you need to dig up coffins at night, with the risks that go with it. Risk of not having the strength or the tools to dig. Risk of being stopped in your endeavour. Risk of not finding the right body parts in the coffin you spent hours unearthing. Risk of having one part rot while you unearth the next. Finally, risk of not succeeding in breathing life in the body you manage to assemble in your secret lab.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">
But before you even start digging, you need a plan. And even before that, you need to be seized by the urge to devise this plan. Let me tell you the whole story, the path that led from watching films as a kid to trying to make them as an adult. It's a long and bumpy road, and it's still under construction.</span><br />
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<h3>
</h3>
<h4>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">1986-1989</span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjB3btae0KSCvZdKIKDOGwa7CfGU1KKDsAsKhKxM4jzoqzYsJrmubnJiIjRiwMPq-QDMKQaoAi6U5iP3vPYqftPf67e8OG134oUQWro1RAP2WeOP3q_RTJJR6bPnxmIQ9DA7p1iRErK475Y/s1600/smilec10.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjB3btae0KSCvZdKIKDOGwa7CfGU1KKDsAsKhKxM4jzoqzYsJrmubnJiIjRiwMPq-QDMKQaoAi6U5iP3vPYqftPf67e8OG134oUQWro1RAP2WeOP3q_RTJJR6bPnxmIQ9DA7p1iRErK475Y/s1600/smilec10.jpg" /></a></h4>
<br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">It all begun in kindergarten. I had been watching Miyazake's cartoon <i>Sherlock Hound</i> on TV for some time, and I enjoyed it more than most other cartoons of that time (except <i>Thundercats</i>!), but nothing had prepared me for <b><i>The Great Mouse Detective</i></b>. I saw it in a theater when it first came out, which might have been for my 5th birthday – since the film was released in France in late November 1986, and my birthday is in early December. The setting (Victorian England!), the exciting music and the unforgettable characters (the evil Ratigan had an amazing song that ended with one of his henchmen being fed to a huge cat) stuck with me, to the point where I wanted to set up a show at school, where we would have recreated the streets of London in the hall, and disguised the children as mice and rats. It didn't go farther than a few talks with my parents because, let's face it, I didn't have the chops to stage a theater play at the age of 5.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">Fast forward: this time I know it was a birthday, my 8th. I must have been a Sherlock Holmes geek by then, because my presents were a deerstalker hat and a VHS tape of <b><i>The Sign of Four</i></b> (the one with Ian Richardson). I was able to compare it to Granada's version of the story, which I had already watched countless times. I loved the Holmes series with <b>Jeremy Brett</b>, <table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBy-VvBuVH9LmV5EzXMlAgHu-1NKckH5qNjyt74MYCgeqdP_-vHNvAEfb-7fEzqW30xCieURciWsqfVmldpZE9QK6GwxTJ6PuQTBV4oxL9bh500iBm0EO_FSfX8nxJXj1HFTRBBLm7PSln/s1600/1989.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBy-VvBuVH9LmV5EzXMlAgHu-1NKckH5qNjyt74MYCgeqdP_-vHNvAEfb-7fEzqW30xCieURciWsqfVmldpZE9QK6GwxTJ6PuQTBV4oxL9bh500iBm0EO_FSfX8nxJXj1HFTRBBLm7PSln/s1600/1989.jpg" height="320" width="197" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">8-year-old me</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
even though I found it extremely scary and disturbing at time (I remember<i> The Greek Interpreter </i>as being a source of nightmares). I probably didn't understand everything, but the character of Sherlock Holmes as played by Brett was one I could relate to – distant and centered on his own vision, yet keen on doing the right thing and on helping his fellow men, even when it meant ignoring the law. He also went into disguise on numerous occasions, which was one of my favourite hobbies at that time.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">
Less than three weeks after that birthday, Christmas came along. I must have had a number of presents, but there's only one I can remember to this day: a pocket edition of <b>Mary Shelley's </b><i><b>Frankenstein</b> </i>(a French translation of course, and one that might have been simplified a bit). The story was compelling, and much more complex than I thought it would be: the name Frankenstein was known to me from its presence in everyday's culture, as a generic speechless monster with a flat head, and I was surprised to learn that Frankenstein was actually the creator's name – and the creature was more of a man than a monster. The questions of identity and loneliness resonated in me at that time, and I remember being partial to the Creature, who had a revenge to take on a world who didn't understand him. Victor Frankenstein, in my eyes, was an irresponsible asshole who should have thought twice before giving life to a being he wasn't ready to care for. Growing up, I became more interested in Victor's character, who goes through a tough journey: driven by passion, he makes a mistake as a young man, practically a teenager, and then realizes that he will never be free from his mistake. Not until he dies. There are so many ways to interpret Frankenstein, as a story of fatherhood, creation, life, love and death, that you could read it every year and see a new side to it each time.</span><br />
<br />
<h4>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">1991-1994 </span></h4>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6plScTXU9R76mvbs2M-EsDrKzgtBbbRuheHuHswBigbk6uE2nF2TJP2pfKSAi372uKKEoXCBAT-f6yryiMX2DCjD6eUdfytZD3Pe25eQEGblEjzxRhyphenhyphenJosivx4c1jx1AB5de3J_YpNmB9/s1600/Boris-Karloff-as-Frankens-001.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6plScTXU9R76mvbs2M-EsDrKzgtBbbRuheHuHswBigbk6uE2nF2TJP2pfKSAi372uKKEoXCBAT-f6yryiMX2DCjD6eUdfytZD3Pe25eQEGblEjzxRhyphenhyphenJosivx4c1jx1AB5de3J_YpNmB9/s1600/Boris-Karloff-as-Frankens-001.jpg" height="192" width="320" /></a></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">It was not until I was 10 that I saw my first Frankenstein film. It was of course the 1931 classic with <b>Boris Karloff</b>, and I finally met the flat-headed monster that I had been aware of before even reading the novel. I enjoyed the movie for what it was – a dry, expressionist version of the story that focused on a few aspects while discarding a lot of the book's elements for entertainment's sake. At that time, I felt it was oversimplifying the monster's story by making him speechless. Then a week later, I saw <i>Bride of Frankenstein</i> and although I loved that they introduced the blind violin player, I revised my idea that the Monster had to speak – Karloff chatting with Ernest Thesiger in a vault was too comedic for my serious 10-year-old self. Now I enjoy all of Universal's Frankenstein movies, and I get the humor and greatness in <i>Bride </i>– but the first entry still holds a special place in my heart.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">
In November 1994, my father took me to a theater play called <i>La Nuit du Crime</i>, where the audience had to sort out who the murderer was. It was sponsored by the newly created '<b>Société Sherlock Holmes de France</b>', and my solving the case earned me a diploma that made me a “honorary member”. Maybe this is when it all started!..</span>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07865633111309195626noreply@blogger.com0