The Birth of Helmetface

After the neverending shoot of Hero, this video was filmed in less than an hour and edited within a week.

Background

There were rumours of a giant chair on a moor in Devon. A 20 foot thing made of oak which someone had decided to build because...well, I guess they were a bit bored and couldn't think of anything else to do. Obviously, this seemed like something I ought to be seeing and taking lots of photos of.

Trip 1

The Hooksies like walking, and so they didn't really need an excuse to go wander about on the moor trying to find it. They failed (due to snow).

A rapid plot development

I wasn't expecting to do any filming on this trip to Devon. I almost didn't take my costume, and it was only a last minute 'oh, I might as well' that resulted in me doing so. I certainly didn't bother taking the axe. I arrived at the Hooksie house and was given a schedule of what lay in store for my for the following week. Day 2 was 'go see the chair' day. Fair enough. Then Thomas Hooks decided that as well as 'seeing' the chair we would also be filming another video.

Ah. Story. Didn't have one.

I basically spent Sunday morning trying to think up something. Every idea I did come up with was rejected by the PTB (ie Thomas) as he thought up something else. His ideas were fine, but I had to try and rein in his ideas to something we could a) shoot, and b) get done in the very short time we had.

Still, his costume was pretty darn amazing. Loved the helmet, even though he couldn't see.

In the car on the way to the chair, I still had nothing. I was having trouble fitting in the constant changes. First he wanted to be evil, then he wanted to turn good at the end, then he wanted to start good turn evil and then turn good again, then he didn't want to be evil at all.

I gave up and hoped I'd come up with something when we reached the location.

I for some reason thought they the Hooksies knew where this giant chair was when I went with them on this trip. Silly me. They had a vague idea, but didn't know the precise location. We began walking down a path, and after a while we faced the decision of carrying on, or turning back and trying the other path.

Luckily, we made the right choice.

The chair is oddly located was that when you're right on top of it, you can't see it, but if you're miles away it's really obvious.

Shooting

Filming time. Still no story. Despite this we started filming anyway (just think of all those great films which have done this in the past!). Since we had no ending (or middle, for that matter), everything was shot in order. The beginning of Thomas running down towards the chair was great and we were just about to move onto the (necessary) fight scene when I realised that in nothing we'd shot was it obvious what Tom was running into.

The fightscene was filmed and Thomas appeared to be getting a bit bored. We were still arguing over the ending, and I attempted to hurry things up before my co-star quit. The ending was rushed (and so had to be redone because what we'd filmed was complete rubbish). Thomas, after apparently agreeing with my ending of turning him back to 'normal' at the end (we even got as far as filming that), decided that he wanted to stay evil after all. Then he decided he not only wanted to live, he wanted to win the fight too.

This is the point I handed him the camera and just did what he said.

Post

Editing had to be fitted round theis-writing, but this was no where near as difficult as having a little boy coming up to me each evening, demanding to see the finished product and then when it wasn't done, decide he'd like to change lots of parts. Grrr.

Advancement

I like to make each video a progression on the first. This one wasn't really any different than Movie, the first one we did. Yes, I had found lots more things to play with in editing, but this didn't seem that fantastic. Then I thought about voices. Never done it before, and due to our limited filming time there was a lot of things going on in the plot which didn't make any sense. So I gave in and attempted to do some voices. Was I successful? Um, not particularly. But it'll have to do.

- Damian, May 2007

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