Hi from Survivor Films!

Hi everyone!

My name's Andrew and with my Producer, Crystal we've just set up a production company - Survivors Films - in London to make our first feature: H.P. Lovecraft's Arkham Sanitarium.

I've been looking for a good independent filmmaking forum to hang out on and swap ideas/advice and this looks like my kinda place :)

Arkham Sanitarium is my first feature and I'm writing/directing it so no doubt I'll be asking lots of questions - in the meantime, thanks for having us and I'll see you on the forums!
 
Hey fellow Brit! Welcome!

Arkham Sanitarium? Is it a Batman spoof?

Hey there!

Actually no - the name 'Arkham' was lifted from the cult horror stories of 1930's author Howard Phillips Lovecraft - the asylum in Batman was named after the fictional New England town Lovecraft set many of his stories in and around.

Arkham Sanitarium is the insane asylum Lovecraft wrote about in his 1936 story 'The Thing on the Doorstep' (one of the stories we're adapting) - Long before Arkham Asylum appeared in the Batman stories in 1974.
 
Hey there!

Actually no - the name 'Arkham' was lifted from the cult horror stories of 1930's author Howard Phillips Lovecraft - the asylum in Batman was named after the fictional New England town Lovecraft set many of his stories in and around.

Arkham Sanitarium is the insane asylum Lovecraft wrote about in his 1936 story 'The Thing on the Doorstep' (one of the stories we're adapting) - Long before Arkham Asylum appeared in the Batman stories in 1974.

Yep, should probably have checked the your website before making that poorly educated comment! :lol:

Anyhow i was intrigued by what it said about using green screen and CGI to create all the locations. It got me to wondering how you were going to pull that off and whether there are practical reasons for working that way...?

Anywho, looks sick as...
 
Anyhow i was intrigued by what it said about using green screen and CGI to create all the locations. It got me to wondering how you were going to pull that off and whether there are practical reasons for working that way

Green screen is going to be used in a number of ways - firstly set extensions - we're only partially building sets (in a modular fashion) in order to keep costs under control - most ceilings and some walls/backgrounds will be digital.

Secondly, as we're keen to stay as faithful to the source material as possible - most exteriors will be digital - this includes a couple of old, colonial style houses, a ruined church and the sanitarium itself.

Lastly, the practicalities of what we have available to us means that we have to shoot stuff like car interiors green screen - we have access to some vintage cars appropriate to the period (1930's) but we can't take them out on the road (too valuable).

As to how we're going to do it - I have a background in film and TV computer-generated VFX - this kind of digital work makes the most sense on a feature like this - it's comparatively fast to get high-quality results and doesn't have the technical complexities of something like character animation. Building the 3D models, texturing, lighting and rendering them is all stuff I can do myself pretty quickly - of course, I've got a few friends that work in TV/Film/Games and Architectural graphics that I'm planning on roping in too ;)
 
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