Mortus Illumina 1st Incarnation

Next Tuesday evening, at Temple Works is something called BettaKultcha and I have my name down to be one of the presenters.  As my film Mortus Illumina is now showing signs of finally finishing,(click here to see some of the VFX progress) I am getting a bit more confident about talking about it and drumming up some interest in my film. As such, my five minutes will be about the making of Mortus illumina, or how not to make a feature film.

Mortus illumina, is the bastard child that has been growing up with me for the last nine years, its fair to say, it's been a love hate relationship, with many a frayed nerve.

Preparing for next Tuesday, I have started to go through my archives and I came across a making of diary, kept in the first six months of production (so nine years ago), which has made an interesting read over my morning coffee and kicked off this post.

Mortus illumina as in the film itself, has had three reincarnations, The first incarnation was the hammer horror.

I had finished shooting my first short film Deadlights and was filled with over enthusiasm and cockiness. Reading through the original diary, I proudly boast of getting drunk at the Lemon tree pub in Convent Garden whilst realming through my head the story elements that would make up "Nunning Things" - The working title for Mortus illumina. I then proudly boast of the 48 page script I wrote in one night and how I had visions of lesbians vampire nuns, ridiculously low budget and lots of blood.

Mortus illumina, in its Hammer Horror stage was going to be a salute to the old hammer film, and feature lots of Nuns, or all shapes and sizes. Below is a very early piece of concept art I came up with, so I could get the mood when pitching the script across. 

Over the next six months, it was a wonderfully enthusiastic, but utterly sham attempt at pre-production. We had decided that the first shoot would be  in April 2001 no matter what. From a very hung over wrap (fire escapes and smoke grenades anyone?) party from deadlights and ad-astra(short film by britmic)  I pulled together the initial crew and cast and began to add to that. In fact, by the time April came, the number was about 40, with 27 people going onto the first shoot. Phrases such as "Kick arse Nun" and "Nun-Steaming" were becoming apart of everyday vocabulary.

One thing that was woefully neglected during this incarnation was the script, which went up from 48 pages to 76 - and that is about it.  Oh it did get its name changed from Nunning things to Mortus illumina (for the record; Mortus:Translates as dead, taken from the past participle of Old French Latin Mortuus - to die, illumina - Lights, from vulgar latin) . I was actually searching my hard drive for the original script, to post up an example, and I came across instead, the first email I sent out for the project. I think this captures not only the  tone  of the first incarnartion, but also my attitude at the time as well.

This trailer consists mostly of the footage from the first shoot, which did indeed take place in April as planned. Whilst the beach footage is more second carnation. The above should give you an idea of what I was originally intending Mortus illumina to be.

For those of you, who are going to be at the event at BettaKultcha event next Tuesday, I will be mentioning what changed (and what went wrong!). Those of you not attending, you can wait till I write up the Mortus illumina the 2nd incarnation this blog

Click the Read more below, to see the original email