MODIPHIUS ADVENT CALENDAR - 22nd DECEMBER
Back in 2000 I got together with friends Yan Miles and Anthony Potter to form the Digital Film Assassins. We wanted to make a film or TV series and were frustrated at how hard it was to get projects funded so we decided to just do it ourselves and the DFA were born, but what to make? Well Hollywood has the glitz of Hollywood right? So we decided to use London and clubland as our backdrop.
I'd been working in clubland for ten years and Yan was editing a lot of pop promos and making a music TV show with a lot of bands. We knew the owners of great clubs that would use as locations, and so Newblood was born - filmed on location in some of London's top clubs and featuring music by cutting edge dance music artists. "We are Newblood, third generation vampires charged with keeping the peace between bloodkind and human kind". In the show, a group of people known as Newblood, infected with the vampire virus, keep themselves from turning in to vampires and losing their humanity by taking a daily hit of fresh flood from silver syringes. When one of their numbers crosses-over, becomes a vampire they hunt him or her down. A groundbreaking web TV series, Newblood was the first of it's kind in the UK, about a 5mb download in the days of 48k dialups. Our 3 minute weekly episodes were usually scripted in the week, shot on friday and saturday with a cast and crew all working for free, edited and compressed on sunday and uploaded every monday night at 7pm. In fact we never charged anthing for it, the point was to show you could make a TV series without the help of the BBC or Channel 4 and in the end we churned out an insane 36 episodes. At one point we got talking to DJ Roger Sanchez who is a big sci-fi fan and he ageed to cameo in a few of the episodes, then unbelievably ended up producing his video 'I Never Knew' in New York in which Roger plays one of the Newblood hosting vampire parties whilst his best friend get's hung up on a human girl. By the end of the series we had around 50,000 viewers and we got the attention of the producers of the Blair Witch project and then Brothers in Arms who were all interested in how we were doing this new type of 'web show'. |
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So you can see I had production in my..err blood, and a movie for Achtung! Cthulhu had never been far behind. In fact I resisted the idea for a year as we were so busy and I wanted to focus on getting the bulk of the Achtung! Cthulhu products finished. Dirk Vanderekyen a script writer, gamer and journalist had been nagging me about what a great project A!C could be for film. Finally he pitched me the storyline that I thought would work and a director that wanted to get on board. Suddently we had the makings of a project.
So why do a film? I've always envisaged Modiphius as an entertainment business, not just limited to games - sure my real passion is games, but I like to dream big and I know we can achieve anything if we set our minds to it. We're not desperate for Hollywood recognition and we're keeping our sights low so we can ensure it's the movie WE want made. So there's no rush, it will get made when the right people are involved - I see it as a multi-film project that tells the full story of our heroes right from the beginning in 1939. You can expect to see a young Ariane joining Professor Deadman on these first adventures. It's just the right mix of action, investigation and terror... and not a Nazi zombie in sight!
If you'd like to know more about our movie when it's announced you can sign up on this page (and read the full story).
To celebrate how the world of Achtung! Cthulhu has grown we're giving a 20% discount on all Achtung Cthulhu PDF's just use the code: WPKP3ZSWBESK at checkout.
So why do a film? I've always envisaged Modiphius as an entertainment business, not just limited to games - sure my real passion is games, but I like to dream big and I know we can achieve anything if we set our minds to it. We're not desperate for Hollywood recognition and we're keeping our sights low so we can ensure it's the movie WE want made. So there's no rush, it will get made when the right people are involved - I see it as a multi-film project that tells the full story of our heroes right from the beginning in 1939. You can expect to see a young Ariane joining Professor Deadman on these first adventures. It's just the right mix of action, investigation and terror... and not a Nazi zombie in sight!
If you'd like to know more about our movie when it's announced you can sign up on this page (and read the full story).
To celebrate how the world of Achtung! Cthulhu has grown we're giving a 20% discount on all Achtung Cthulhu PDF's just use the code: WPKP3ZSWBESK at checkout.