Maybe a month before we shot the sizzle for Slingers I was in the pub with Steve, Arran and Corran discussing among other things the kind of music we wanted for the short. This was going to be such a huge part of the puzzle that it was vital we got it right. When the Brownlee’s finished the first set of storyboards I (very roughly) cut them to Dean Martin’s ‘Ain’t That A Kick in the Head’. It worked well in that we were very much riffing on the 60′s Rat Pack, but it lacked the contemporary feel we needed and we didn’t really want a cover version.

It was Steve who suggested The Mummers.

I hadn’t heard of them at the time, but I downloaded the album from iTunes while we were chatting and listened to it for the first time on the way home. By the next meeting at Steve’s I was head over heels in love with the album. We gave it another listen and we were sold. Steve then reached out to the band to see if they’d be interested in recording something for us.

On the second day of shooting the sizzle the band popped down to see what we were up to. The timing was perfect as we had a casino full of people and DM and Frank doing their thing for the first time. I took a moment to chat with the band, talk about what we were aiming to do and what we hoped they could do for us.

And wouldn’t you know they knocked it out of the park for us on the first go. At the time the track was called ‘Mistaken Identity in the 23rd Century’ – I have a copy of the demo version and it’s bloody brilliant. It works beautifully on the finished sizzle and floors viewers whenever I show it to someone for the first time. Everyone asks about the music…

Slingers was always intended to be a 60s show that just happened to be set in space and the future. The science fiction was, of course, very important, but first and foremost we wanted to lift the rat pack vibe and concentrate on the characters. By the time we had the sizzle cast and crew I felt there was very little for me to do because they all understood the concept and worked their hearts out to bring it to life.

The Mummers’ track was the icing on the cake. Perfect. Or ‘cherry’ as Marti would have put it.

I was shocked when I heard of Mark’s death.

This evening I read a moving interview in The Guardian with Raissa and it was with a mixture of melancholy and happiness that I see that the song, now called ‘Cherry Heart’, has made it on to their new album.

I can’t wait to hear the final version and the rest of the tracks. I’ve been working ‘Tale to Tell’ very hard since grabbing it that evening with the guys. It’s a great album to write to and I’d like to think there’s something of it in the scripts I’ve written since.

Another Mike, a friend of mine, caught the Mummers live a while back and upped part of a live version of the song to YouTube:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=UxXFYoPIIuo

Brilliant.

Do buy the album if you get the chance – it’s released on Monday. And thanks to Haruka (Marti) for pointing me in the direction of the Guardian article.

“The Mummers are an adventure, with all sorts of ups and downs and twists and turns. We’re a dysfunctional, disparate family, and normal things don’t happen to us,” she exclaims. Suddenly, her face brightens. “But that just makes us want to carry on and see what happens.”

Photo credit: The Mummers by Julio Enriquez (CC license)

That’s the first ever concept sketch of Junior (December 2008). I did have it as a Twitter background for a while until I started getting emails asking me about his metal penis.

Seriously.

I just finished putting a new board together for one of several projects I’ve got up on the wall at the moment. Busy year this. I’ll break some of this down and let you know what’s filling my days over the next couple of posts.

Last week over at Sleepydog HQ we had the first development meeting on the project that’s taking shape in the wake of Slingers. No idea how much I can tell you about that at this stage, although we will be blogging from the development room from time to time so stuff is bound to leak a little. I guess it’s safe to say that it’s sci fi (sort of) and police procedural (kinda). But only in the same way that Slingers is a sci fi heist show – we tend to build on those basics pretty fast and as ever are being outrageously ambitious. Hope to introduce you to the show as soon as possible but for now I can’t even tell you where it’s set…

Another meeting on this tomorrow so I’ll tweet when I can. And Toby seems to be in Canada. No idea why…

I really wasn’t prepared for this. Check out the latest Downfall parody care of Nik.

If you don’t know what the hell’s going on here then check out this comment from the director of the scene.

Now we just need to be rickrolled…

JT of MZP has been busy with both Jeannie and Marti. Very, very cool.

Always nice to pull this stuff out in meetings…

UPDATE: Frank and GUN:

A couple of days ago I got a DM from Haruka asking me if I’d seen the “cute stuff” going on over on LiveJournal. I had not. So I’m sat on the bus listening to ‘Astronaut’ by Amanda Palmer suddenly looking at a set of Slingers LJ icons created by deepfishy.

Of course I missed my stop.

After I left a thank you comment over on Things Deep and Shallow deepfishy replied:

icons are a cornerstone of livejournal fandom, and it’s such a pretty trailer. I’m only sad the current clips of JUNIOR didn’t translate very well to 100×100 pixels.

Also, I think this is the earliest in a fandom’s life I’ve seen an lj community spring up (swinging_2263) – the only other one I can think of is Dr Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog, which had the force of the Joss Whedon fanbase already.

Swinging 2263? How cool is that…

I’ll see what I can do about some better Junior images. Having been involved in social media for a while now I know how important fan access is and once we have everything green-lit I’ll be pushing for us to be as open as possible in every aspect of the show. Sleepydog and I have been talking about this for years now and luckily there are trailblazers like the Leverage and Eureka teams making some of our ideas going forward seem less insane.

Check out the Eureka Unscripted blog if you haven’t already. We’re so stealing that idea.

So again – THANK YOU for all the support. We’ll try and pay you back by blowing shit up in an interesting way.

He was also very happy to do a little extra voice over work for us a few weeks later. Professional and delightful, working with Sean was one of the highlights of last year. Go watch Dog Soldiers again – as Sean said, “It’s still got legs…”

Unleash the Clicken to embiggen. And a big hello to all the SFX readers. We’ve had a lot of online love, but I think that may be out first print article outside of the industry trades. Correct me if I’m wrong.

And we have some fan art:

Cheers to Richard and SFX for taking an interest so early on and to Craig over at The Establishing Shot for the above.

Warms the cockles on such a winter’s day.

Check out the Sleepydog blog for a little GUN-love. It is Valentine’s Day after all…

No real meat to talk about this side of the new year, but rest assured that SLINGERS continues to move forwards.

I did remember a video I shot of Sean Pertwee on the set of the sizzle reel (in which he talks about why he thought it’d be a good idea to pitch in with us and a little bit about 2000AD). I’ve now left that in the more than capable hands of Sleepydog HQ. Speaking of which…

I’ve been very lucky to get to play front-of-house during all this interest in SLINGERS (64,000 views!), but every step of the way I’ve been supported by aone of a kind behind the scenes team. Mark Hilton, Neal Clark and Paul Long have put a lot of time and effort into getting our almost-a-TV-show this far and each of them utilises a skill-set I’m utterly lacking. Thanks guys!

So we’ll have that video up soonish and probably on the Sleepydog website.

I did a quick (probably sweary) interview with both Live for Films and Geek Syndicate. And other bits and pieces have continued to pop up all over the web. I’ve had a few more interview requests, but right now it’s just a question of finding the time. Please bear with me if I still owe you email…

SLINGERS aside, I’ve had an interesting few weeks. It’s one thing for people I admire to tell me they love what they’ve seen of the show, but it’s something else when they suggest we work together at some point. My email has been insane and I’ve had some lovely conversations with the great and good out in LA. The first few weeks in January are now scheduled and I’ll be helping get something I’m very excited about (and not allowed to talk about) off the ground before my next flight to LAX.

I think I’m right in saying that AVATAR is here. I was lucky enough to be invited to the world premiere last week and Todd kindly published my review up on Twitch. You can read it here. Because of a silly UK embargo and my intolerance to sleep we managed to get one of the first reviews up. Be interested to see how many people agree with me now it’s been released. I’m off to see it with a real audience on Boxing Day and in IMAX. Can. Hardly. Wait.

Few things in that movie I wanna talk about. Also had a post in draft form on mythology from before the sizzle excitement so will work on that – hopefully before the new CLASH OF THE TITANS gets here.

I’m slowly moving into Christmas mode here in SE1. Been a mad month and there’s been a lot to do and a lot to think about. Now I have a little more time again I’ll slip back into blogging mode I think.

Enough. Go watch the IRON MAN 2 trailer a few more times…

You can’t tell from that photo, but Junior’s smiling*.

Since Warren‘s triple-slap of blog post, tweet and Bad Signal, the sizzle reel up on Vimeo has had some 36,000 views. I haven’t checked with Steve yet to see how much attention his website has had over the last few days, but I think we’re safe in saying our snippet of the SLINGERS universe has had over 50,000 views at this point.

Not too shabby.

We were picked up by Slash Film, Twitch, Topless Robot, i09 and Sci Fi Wire to name five. I tried keeping track of all the blog embeds and comments, but it was slowly turning into a full time job. I’m still wading through email, messages and phone calls. And so far everything has been overwhelmingly supportive.

Ghasts have been flabbered.

I’ll post any news when I have it right here and hope to have some fun stuff up on the Sleepydog website by the end of the week too. In the meantime there’s always Twitter. God help you.

Tomorrow we start moving a little further up the court – I’m guessing we’ll be moving a little faster thanks to everyone reading this.

Bottom line – we’re determined to get this fucker made so it’s a bloody good job we have an audience.

Thank you!

*What? You thought he was CGI?