The Making
Firstly, Ed, Cam and Dave had made a 5 track punk EP with Alan Rose
(former Phatfish guitarist) in 2000/2001. This finally gave me what
I needed, a movie plot with some raw craziness attached to it, and
the obvious bonus of a pre made sound track.
I wrote the story outline on the back of council tax memos when
I was working as a Housing and Council tax benefit telephone advisor.
As you can kinda tell from the dialog we had no actual pre-rehearsed
lines, this was partly a time issue, and partly we wanted it to
be raw and add to the ridiculous storyline.
I agreed with the legendary Tom Eaton to borrow his mini dv camcorder
whenever we were due to shoot. I also borrowed a camera stand
from my Church (CCK).
Filming started at the Paul
Oakley concert at Stoneleigh Bible week in Coventry in 2001.
The very first shot is of Ape walking into the battle of the bands
gig and the camera panning onto the crowd, this appears towards
the end of the movie. I also had to blag my way into the gig as
I didn’t have tickets!
We all soon learnt that although Cameron has on screen humour
he has off screen irritations. During the scene featuring the
legendary Steve Horne playing the role of the gig organiser, and
whilst the camera battery light was flashing red, Cameron still
couldn’t or wouldn’t get his lines right! If you haven’t
seen it check the outtakes.
Also, during this first part of filming, we gained access to
the Revive concert stage to act out some of the vital gig shots.
After the band where supposed to leave the stage, in a rush to
save the ape, Cameron remains on stage for a bit of glory. This
was not in the original story but was a piece of quick thinking
after Cameron hadn’t turned up for shooting that day.
Filming however mainly ran as planned. I hired a monkey suit
for a weekend and we managed to get all the ape scenes done. Filming
the gun scenes got us into some trouble. An elderly lady called
the police, who responded by sending out armed units to “Eliminate
us” as they later told me. I recall having a poo, obviously
in the toilet, at our church office in Clarendon Villas and receiving
a phone call on my mobile phone from a policeman wanting to know
my location. Later on I found out that my brother had given the
police my number.
This however did not deter us. That day we carried on filming
and finished the scenes with the Mad Professor, played by the
legendary Mike Cooper. Mike was by far the best actor in the movie.
He had actually done drama. Not only did he add to the movie his
craziness, but he also turned up with a flare! And I’m not
talking about personality! I had reservations about using it,
as I didn’t want to get the fire brigade out on the same
day as getting the police out. I had visions of billowing smoke
pouring from our Church basement and out of the windows of the
sports hall. But however, all was well, and we added another quality
element to the film thanks to Mike and his flare.
As the filming part ended later on in 2001, Cam and I started
the editing process. We had filmed on mini dv so we knew we could
get it onto computer and edit it, but we didn’t know how.
Some extra memory, another hard drive, Premier 6, a firewire PC
card and another borrowed dv camera we started capturing and editing
the movie. I don’t actually remember how long the whole process
took. Maybe a couple of months, maybe more.
We finally launched the movie with a showing, which was surprisingly
better attended than we had thought. Even the skateboard kids
turned up. Christmas 2001 we had an audience who laughed, applauded
and yawned at the fight sequences. We had done it. We had made
APE THE MOVIE.
- Matt
Sweetman