Geneticide

Going through my notes the other day, I found this draft recording of the pitch presentation I put together explaining the idea behind Geneticide and the budgets .. interesting viewing – especially when you realise that despite the numbers, we eventually brought the proof of concept short film in for less than £500 actual spend.

This was a student short film, shot as part of the HND Programme at the Raindance Film School. As such, we were working with pretty much every constraint you could imagine. Self funded, shot with students – many of whom were shooting on their first film project.

We had an awful lot of fun making the short, and to this day I still look back with fond memories. Amazingly, we had a cast/crew of over 28 people on set!

The most expensive items were van hire for 2 days (£200), breakfast, lunch, dinner and refreshments for 28 people over 2 days (£150 of sandwiches and drinks).

Camera hire was factored in at £0 as all the equipment was already owned by Jon Morby (EVA1, Sound Devices Mix-Pre 6, Rode microphones, etc)

We managed to blag 3m² flooring from one of the local carpet shops in Watford (vinyl floor covering for the end scene to stop the fake blood from damaging the location)

The location was donated free of charge by The Studio, who were absolutely amazing and a real help to us in the lead up to and on the actual days of shooting. They even allowed us to use (and I think break!) their bean to cup coffee machine – which I think just simply wore out due to the constant abuse it received over the 2 days as everyone was kept caffeinated by our team of runners and assistant producers – a special mention here goes to Coralina Kin who had actually volunteered as an understudy and was possibly the best runner I’ve ever had on set!

When we wrote Geneticide in early 2019, we based the idea of everyone being forced to have these implants due to some sort of global health disaster, and the need to vaccinate the population quickly “both now, and in the future”.

From there we took the view that as with anything mandated by the Government “for the good of the people” that it would eventually be subverted for negative / nefarious purposes (as we’re already seeing data surveillance, encryption back doors, etc, etc)

Little did we think that less than 12 months later we would already be seeing the start of our story happening in real life!

Stay safe guys, and #stayhome! The virus doesn’t move, people move the virus. Stop movement and the virus will die out naturally.

Principal photography has now completed and we are busy in post production!

To whet your appetite, here are a few shots from the upcoming short film

Due to a last minute drop out …. 

I need a volunteer (unpaid) for a short Green Screen session tomorrow (Wednesday) afternoon

Ideally female, athletic build, clear spoken American / Canadian or Australian accent 

Or ( Plan B )

Athletic and able to speak Mandarin (and translate a few lines from an English script) 

This is for a film school project (SciFi) with Raindance as part of the 2nd year HND course

Location near Charing Cross Station 

From 13:00 to about 16:00

The character is the head of the World Medical Council and will appear briefly in a short SciFi film about genetic screening being completed later this year.  

Please comment below if interested and available Wednesday 3rd April 

Many Thanks and apologies for the short notice