Blasted Angels

Blasted Angels is a tricky film for me to talk about. To date I’ve been happy to push the film out there and get it seen in various places without having to ever say more than a few words about the film and the experience of making it. I liked it that way. And then Alterati.com comes along and, rightly so, wants perspective on the piece in return for showing it to all you fine folk. Bugger.

Let’s start with the diluted version. Blasted Angels is the product of a UK Film Council scheme called Digital Shorts which aims to produce “innovative shorts using digital technology.” The criteria is that the film must cost no more than £10,000, be under ten minutes in length and, obviously, made using digital technology. It’s a great scheme and a wonderful opportunity for people like me to get the funding to make a film. As you can imagine, I was pretty damn proud to have my pitch accepted… long harbored dreams were coming to fruition.

And that’s where I’d normally leave the tale if anyone asks. I’ll show them the film, as you are seeing it today, and most people have something positive to say.

You see where I’m going with this right? Yeah… I actually don’t care all that much for the film.

The problems started very early in production. The pitch specified that the visual style was to be heavily influenced by Japanese anime. Make no mistake, the reason it doesn’t look that way is my own fault, my own naive misinterpretation of what a small budget can achieve. Of course the film was never going to look exactly how I imagined. Get over it.

However, more problems were to come. The script, just under the requisite ten minutes had to be cut down. A lot. The fact that this film clocks in at over five is a minor miracle. Our budget of somewhere around £7000 did not buy ten minutes of animation, and the five month production window wouldn’t have been enough time even if we could afford it.

So, a few weeks in to production and my anime style ten minute film is… well, not that. Damn, if movie making wasn’t turning out as glamorous as I anticipated.

I can moan on. I can complain about the voice acting being so stubbornly British that I want to cry (Americans – we really, really, really don’t all talk like that anymore). I can gripe about the score, oh boy could I gripe about the score, which could have been provided by… well, it no longer matters.

But most of all, and the thing that I absolutely feel compelled to rant about once I get going, is the ending. I don’t know how you reacted to the end but I suspect you drew the inevitable conclusion, which is that poor Lucy has an unfortunate encounter with the pavement (Americans – sidewalk!). And that’s the real sore point. The original ending was the money shot. Lucy hits the ground alright, but the surface is like water, stone and earth splashing up around her, engulfing her, and finally, as the last ripples of the effect become still, the intrusive enhancements she was “gifted” rise to the surface. She is free.

I’d chew off an arm to remake the film with that ending (ideally not my own arm).

The money shot was obviously the last thing we could afford and the first thing to get cut at the story boarding stage. I can quite honestly say that, had I been given the choice at that stage, the film would never have been made.

It’s now approaching a year since I saw the final cut of the film and, over time, I’ve come to appreciate it for what it is, hence why you are seeing it today. Original intentions aside, it’s not all bad. So forgive me if I come across as an arty pretentious prick (well, maybe you wouldn’t be too far off the mark with that assumption…) but Blasted Angels was supposed to be my calling card, it’s a story I’d carried with me for a few years before the scheme and one I cared a lot about. Now, save the opportunity to remake it, I’ll never see it the same way and you’ll never see it how it should have been.

But you know what… if things had gone perfectly, and the film looked, sounded and ended as I desired, would I have gained much from the experience? Sure there would have been festivals, and nominations and maybe even awards. At least I’ve been taught a stark lesson about the reality of low budget filmmaking that I won’t soon forget.