Filming 'Theo the Mouse'

"How's Hollywood?" That's what my former colleagues ask me every time I return to a Certain Retail Outlet to pick up a carton of milk. I left my former employer in October of this year so that I could film Theo the Mouse's first DVD. Not to rub shoulders with James Cameron. So I politely tell them I don't know anybody named Holly...

In any case, I think Hollywood would be pretty horrific, don't you? Theo the Mouse doesn't live anywhere near there. Nor do his friends Wink and Wendy. And it's because of this able trio that I had the courage to take a gamble and walk away from Regular Income, because the reality was I couldn't work in a shop and produce a miniseries. Any DVD is an enormous undertaking, and Theo was no exception. Filmed in 3 days, edited in 12. Myself, Theo, Wink and Wendy have one thing in common: we're all slightly insane!


Theo the Mouse - forgetting a line!

For example, on the first day we canned 156 takes, which took about 12 hours. Edited down, this amounts to about 10 minutes - 1 complete episode. And we repeated the process over the course of the weekend. Going at this break-neck pace, it's crucial that everyone is 100% behind the project, or the whole thing will come tumbling down like a house of cards.

Fortunately, Theo T. Mouse had amassed a reliable army of recruits. Wink (and his brother Ween) and Wendy hit the ground running at 9am and continued to groove until the 9pm wrap. Props, costumes, lamps - all there, all being monitored, with every problem having a solution. All I had to do was point the camera! They made my life very easy.

Of course, there are some issues you can never predict. Theo was one of them. His eyes are, erm, quite different to human eyes...! Getting them to look down the barrel of the lense proved very time-consuming, and ate through takes like a toddler in a sweetshop. Then there was the infamous towel scene, (or Towelgate, as it shall henceforth be known.) Theo had to throw towels onto Wendy's head, but we just couldn't shoot it without catching the shadow of Theo's assistant in frame. After 45 minutes, some bright spark suggested moving the camera. (It had been a long day.)

Wendy gives us some on-set dancing!

Despite these moments of minor infuriation, I can honestly say that no part of the filming was stressful. Yes, it was tiring - very much so - but it was manageable. The levels of multi-tasking were reasonable, and the levels of adrenalin were reasonable, and the whole team were reasonable, (actually, that's an understatement - they were lovely.) I have learnt that hard work only punishes you when you try to do too much. Theo knew what we could realistically expect to achieve, and we did!

Looking at the DVD now, I can't quite believe that we went from nothing to a finished disc - packaging, menus and special features - in just 3 and a half weeks. It just goes to show, if you have the right people on it, who know what they're doing, and actually want to be there, then the sky is truly the limit. Thank you Theo!

Have a gander at our incredibly catchy theme tune and title sequence, and order your copies now!