Former Doctor Who joins 'Menston Green'

Chums of mine will know that I am a little bit of a sci-fi fan, so I must say I am hugely excited to announce that actor Colin Baker will be joining us for our first Skerratt Media radio offering, Menston Green.

We're going to be working with Doctor Who!

It's a radio comedy - about a TV soap! - that, in our fictitious world, has been running since the 1950s. But it's in trouble. The ratings are in free-fall and there hasn't been a cast change since the programme started. Colin will be playing the officious Mr Cutler, the newly-appointed Head of Soaps, Serials and Rodeos.

He is perhaps best known for his role as the sixth Doctor Who (1984-1986), while other credits include The Brothers, Blake's 7 and Jonathan Creek, to name a few.

Colin will be joined by actor, writer and mimick Wink Taylor, with whom I work on Sooty. Wink is known in theatrical circles as being the former voice of Basil Brush, as well the celebrity impersonator in a wide selection of greetings cards.

Wink's stage partner Wendy Abrahams will also be lending us her vocal skills. An established performer, she may also be known to Sooty fans as being the teddy bear's one and only make-up artist!

And now let me present to you the rest of the cast, (in order of equal loveliness!)

Vicki Glover will be playing Apple, the committed script writer.

Warwick St. John plays Cliff Bowfinger - embittered director!

Sam Chipman plays an actor, playing a character!

Bob Mallow takes on the role of Maurice, a respected Shakesperian thesp.

Hannah Robson is the soap's make-up artist, only she's often unaware of the fact!

Jenna Skerratt - my sister - comes out of acting retirement to play Christina St. Argentina the Eighteenth, the show's biggest name!

Anne Newton plays Daphne, who has been in Menston Green since it started.

And Gillian Barge plays another victim of the new producer's axe!

Menston Green will be recording in Leeds throughout June and July, and will be available as a free download via skerratt-media.co.uk before the end of the year. A snazzy CD, with a shiny jacket and everything, will follow if there is sufficient demand.

I will leave you with a compilation of Colin Baker's highlights from Doctor Who, (courtesy of the amazing Babelcolour channel on YouTube.) If you've never seen the sixth Doctor in action before now, you've missed a treat. Take a look!

Co-distribution: WOTR Good Idea

Skerratt Media has joined forces with the Leeds-based film company Water on the Rock Ltd. in an exciting co-distribution venture! This means you can now buy my latest film, Life on Earth Retold, from the WOTR shop, where you can also view trailers, DVD stills, production subtitles and the original screenplay as a PDF document. Check it out here: http://bit.ly/JLeKt5 (Life on Earth Retold is of course available from the Skerratt Media homepage as well!)

And, in the coming months, you will also be able to purchase WOTR titles via my website, skerratt-media.co.uk. I'm not sure which ones yet, but suffice to say that some of Kenneth D. Barker's (the creative director's) biggest titles involve dragons, sorcery, cross-dressing superheroes and jetpacks, so it'll be a pleasure to showcase his work.

In the meantime, why not check out the interview I gave for Kenneth's site? In it I discuss my writing techniques, budgeting tips, and my mum! Plus lots of other stuff.

See if you can spot the cat ;)

Retold! Review?

Life on Earth Retold is available on DVD now! Get yours here: http://www.skerratt-media.co.uk/life-on-earth-retold.html

Or - you can have a copy for FREE!

Like this picture? No? Why not?? Tell me and get a free disc!

Well, five of you can. I'm a struggling artist in a perpetual quest for perfection, and I need feedback from people! So, email me at alex@skerratt-media.co.uk if you fancy writing a review of The Oldest Life on Earth and / or Life on Earth Retold to put on your blog / Facebook, and you can have a nicy shiny spine or two to jazz up your DVD library! All I ask is that you watch, tell me what you think, tell me what you like, what you don't like, and that's it!

This is a limited time offer though. Just the first five responses to this blog! So get emailing!

And thanks in advance :)

On the Shoulders of Giants

 

Change everything you know about the future...

The trailer from Water on the Rock's latest SF feature On the Shoulders of Giants went online yesterday, and what a corker it is. Obviously I'm biased, because I act in the thing, but as a hardcore sci-fi fan this stuff really tickles my inner geek.

I play Navigator Hyatt on board a super-advanced spaceship in the 23rd century, on its maiden voyage to test out the new Einstein-Rosen Drive. Several things about this role excited me. First, I'd get a laser gun. Second, I'd get a jetpack. Third, it would likely be the closest thing to Blake's 7 I'd ever to act in, (one of my all-time favourite TV shows.) Plus there's a talking computer called CAARN, and I happen to think that talking computers are cool...

We filmed this in the Spring of 2010, over the course of six or seven weeks, inside a derelict church in the centre of Leeds. But you wouldn't know this to look at the film, which has every appearance of being shot in a professional studio. And this recording space served us so faithfully, realising everything from Zepethar's quarters on the Leviathan to the barren wastelands of Theta-25L. Our director, 'Captain' Kenneth D. Barker, put his colour key skills to good use by shooting many of these impressive vistas against a green screen, allowing for many of the breathtaking visuals to be painted in later.

So it had been two years since I last donned Navvy Hyatt's Doc Martens, but I was chuffed and excited when Kenneth asked me to return to the role in February to record some extra voices for the project. And as if that wasn't exciting enough, I soon discovered that Hannah Rosbon, Vicki Glover and Waleed Khalid - actors from my upcoming film Life on Earth Retold - had also been offered voice-over roles! Brilliant! (See the video below.)

On the Shoulders of Giants is due for release in the Summer of 2012 via www.wotr.co.uk. Everybody involved in the project worked with relentless friendliness and enthusiasm, and if only 1% of that love ends up on screen, it'll still be one of the finest and most honest features out there.

*Hyatt over and out*

5 Years Later... 'Life on Earth Retold' Theatrical Trailer

Mark your diaries, circle your calendars, take the day off work... on Monday 9th April 2012, Life on Earth Retold will arrive on DVD at skerratt-media.co.uk. Check out the all-new trailer above for a taste of what's to come. And see if you can crack the Hidden Code...

The very first shot of LOE 2007: Spike giving a Palaeontology
Lecture!

As you will know if you've been following my blog, I didn't plan the release to fall at this time, and yet it's worked out rather well. Come the 9th April, it will have been one year, (though not quite to the day), since I started writing the script, meaning the whole production process has taken a neat and tidy twelve months.

More signifcant - and wholly more deliberate - is the fact that the 9th April, (to the day, this time), marks the fifth anniversary of the Life on Earth series. Yep, on that day in 2007, (which was also a Monday!) Spike Ombre, along with Mack the faithful laptop and his digital friends, went online with Episode One: Fiends Reunited, in which a demon-possessed Ezra Lord attempted to raise a long lost civilisation fom the ashes, which just happened to be buried beneath the cathedral city of Lincoln!

LOE 2007: Spike chats to his laptop, Mack, as he strolls home
through Lincoln.

It all started because, frankly, I was bored at university. I was doing a Drama degree, (and yes it's a solid, proper academic subject, before I get letters), but I was only in lectures for about nine hours a week. I felt like I was losing my mind.

And then one evening - I remember it vividly - I was telling Richard Cooper (Ezra Lord) how I was desperate to get back into filmmaking, but I didn't know how to do it! I'd need a cast, a crew... I couldn't have Spike Ombre alone in his flat, just talking to himself, and fighting off... himself! At which point Rich laughed and coyly remarked, "knowing you, he'd probably just talk to his computer!"

The preverbial lightbulb lit up, my eyes widened, the penny dropped (further than ever before), and I grinned widely... "That's it! That's perfect!!"

LOE 2007: The mysterious Ezra Lord arrives at Spike's flat...

I never imagined, five years on, I'd still be doing it. But then, I love all the characters so much. It's a cliche, but they really are like best friends, or relatives. Sometimes I go a while without speaking to them, and yet when I do, it's like we've never been apart.

So do watch the trailer for Life on Earth Retold, and if you enjoy it, please could you share with / pass on to your friends, because I made this stuff to be seen, and I can't afford an aggressive billboard campaign just yet, (I'm saving that for the tenth anniversary.)

And on that note - see you in 2017, for Life on Earth: The Hoverboard Invasion. 

The Frustrated Musician

Being a kid was very frustrating. I was desperate to write stories, but at 3 years of age my grasp of written English was non-existent. So, I used to scribble colourful masses of nonsense onto A4 paper, give them a good staple, and present this to my parents as A Book, which I'd then translate as we flicked through.

If only I could get away with that now! I don't think my teddy bear friend would be amused...

Today, I'm at the same stage with music. I can't play an instrument for toffee, except perhaps the Triangle, but I wouldn't boast too loudly about that if interviewed. I have a whole album of material in my head, words and tunes all fully formed and ready to go, but I can't do anything with them! I couldn't even write them down as music! Now, I know that Every Good Boy Deserves Football, (or at least I thought I did), but then, what is this??

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/68/Bachlut1.gif

I'm told, on good authority, that this is hand-written musical notation by J.S. Bach no less, (co author of A Whiter Shade of Pale! *eh eh, Matthew Fisher!*) But just look at what he's done! Far from Every Good Boy Deserving Football, this Bach character has seen fit to draw in extra lines (?!), meaning that not only does Every Good Boy Deserve Football, but Every Good Boy Deserves Football Because Bach Can Add Extra Dots And Dashes That Carry On For All Eternity Up Up And Off The Page Making No Sense Whatsoever And Thus Thwarting My Plans Of Ever Grasping The Language of the Dietonic Scale, (and yes, T, O, U, P, M, N, S, W and L are now officially notes.)

So in 2007, I met up with my friend Ian, waving the above at him, maroon-faced and in a fluster. No sooner had I proven that the Good Boys Deserving (of) Football are then followed by a FULL STOP, he smiled symapthetically, and volunteered to make music on my behalf.

The end result is the above video. The music and lyrics are my own, as is the singing, (did you know my mouth could make TWO kinds of sound??) And Ian played the drums, guitar and mixed the thing. Do give me a grade, because I value your feedback, but remember, no lower than a G, (refer back to my rant.)

And also, an informal request. If there are any musicians out there, preferably with half decent recording equipment, interested in working on tracks of a similar ilk to 'Brother,' then please make yourself be known to me! alex@skerratt-media.co.uk Just don't get me started on the Diuretic Scale.  



Sooty at the Garrick, London

Back in November of this year, Richard Cadell asked me to do something I've never done before: write a theatre script. For Sooty. For the West End! This was scary for two reasons. One - it's the West End. And two - I've never written a proper play before. I would class myself as a TV scriptwriter, who can't bare ('bear' haha!) to have a scene more than a page long. The Oldest Life on Earth for example, (one of my films), had about 70 scenes in 30 minutes. That's some pace! The thought of penning an hour-long stage venture, (effectively, one looooooooooong long scene), didn't, ahum, 'play' to my strengths...!

I don't have a picture of Sooty at the Garrick, so here's a totally fake
one of me doing some writing. Courtesy of Ken Boyter, (left, with
a moustache.)

Only once have I attempted this kind of writing - whilst at University, as part of my degree. Luckily for me, Richard Cadell failed to research this. Admittedly it would have been tricky, given that all copies of Dislocation! Dislocation! had been burnt, with anyone directly related to the project having been hunted down and retconned. So - after a quick phone call one wet Monday afternoon, in the pub of all places, the 'scene was set' for my return to that most 'closet' and clandestine of worlds, where people start sentences with "darling...", where 'Stage Left' and 'Stage Right' are ALWAYS the wrong way round, and where 'Codding' has absolutely nothing to do with fish, (go on though - 'haddock' a guess...!)

Luckily, I wasn't alone in The Creative Process. Once again, like old times, me and that fellow from Doctor Who: A Natural History of Fear gathered around Richard's notepad in Cheltenham and told awful jokes about Mo from t'market and choux pastry, (okay - I told awful jokes.) And after eight hours, Mr C handed me a dozen pages of scribblings and officially commissioned me to tranform them into an hour-long theatre script. "Darling, thank you!"

Credit where credit's due - most of the ideas in it aren't mine. Richard normally comes to me and Wink with a rough idea of what he wants and we help him to 'flesh it out' with meat, bones and, yes, cod. I suppose my main contribution is to the dialogue, ('cracking' word jokes, yep, and bad ones), and I help to give the thing some structure and pace. Yes, this play will move, but hopefully the audience won't. Oh and there are songs too. Original songs 'what we wrote'! See you at Christmas Number One, Mr Cowell, the Facebook campaign starts here.

So, if you find yourselves anywhere near the Garrick Theatre in London this Christmas, do drop in and see our mutual teddy bear friend. There's a present for every child apparently, with Norman Barrett, (the bird man: http://sooty.wikia.com/wiki/Norman_Barrett), Father Christmas, (http://bit.ly/sLMcZs) and a surprise, (http://bit.ly/u5CIAo)!

There are more details on performance dates / times here: http://www.thesootyshow.com/live.php But for now, so long, and thanks for, umm, all the fish...