The Silent Scream

Against all expectations, it's something new from me - and it moves! If you like Doctor Who, or watching things, then here's The Silent Scream...

And since this is a blog, I thought I'd say a bit about the making of it:

It's not your normal Doctor Who episode - really, it's an experimental short film. (Intentionally, kinda, there's no theme music, or familiar TARDIS groaning) It started off as me filming something on my new camera, and naturally that led to a seven minute short, with lots of voices, mixing different styles of filmmaking!

This is my first thing I've filmed that uses HD video (ie, video where you can actually make out what's happening). Before, I've used the simpler method of still images being animated by moving subtly across the screen, or a bit of basic stop motion and animation. Simpler when it comes to filming (and a far smaller file-size) but also special effects - you can greenscreen in backgrounds far easier when the camera doesn't move.

Colour! Before editing, at least...

But actually filming video requires totally different approach. It's an inferior method to the others, really - you've got a bunch of things that don't move, after all! Trying this out meant I needed a situation where the characters didn't move much - no running! - and no effects. The set, the action figures, had to be what I'd got with me - and this was zero budget stuff!

The intention was to make a scary black and white movie from the start, and that meant featuring William Hartnell. The action figure of him, about six inches tall, looks amazing. None of his companions have got figures of them, but I had two others that looked vaguely like Ian and Barbara (Ben Miller and Elisabeth Sladen!), who would be great for conversations - you can't have the Doctor talking to himself, can you?

The storyline - and whole idea, really - came from the idea of the Silence. This was back in 2011 (before all the 50th anniversary stuff with the show's origins and ), when we'd just seen The Impossible Astronaut and The Wedding of River Song, and they made a great impression. And they made amazing figures out of them! Fun speculation by other people had these monsters tracking earlier Doctors... what if they tried to kill him back then?
Of course, this requires a bit of dialogue - unless it was the other kind of silent film! It's the same technique I used in previous videos - ie, nicking bits of dialogue here and there from the TV episodes. The germ of inspiration came from a line that ends up appearing in the Doctor's final video message (that plot device came from The Beast Below, I later realised - but hey, it fits the Silence too!) - originally from the story The Chase. In a particularly bizarre twist, a robot Doctor Who tries to convince his companions that "[Ian] Chesterton is dead... the creatures got him, I could do nothing..." Told in Hartnell's voice, I immediately thought it perfect to use! But a story where the Doctor and his companions conceivably die? Welll.. it's a short film, it doesn't have to count!

In the end, as you'll have seen, I featured a couple of minutes of walking and moving around at the start, as the TARDIS crew land and investigate. This required far more greenscreen and animation than the rest. The later sequence - basically one long scene, which was tricky to plan out - relied on the shakiness of my hands holding the camera, and the angle at which I shone the battery powered torches! It's very tough, at this scale, getting the focus right, panning the camera smoothly on the tripod... but I did love doing it, especially when you achieve results like the blurry Silents lurking in the background!

Obligatory behind the scenes shot.

Something that I filmed but didn't quite work was an ambitious shot where the camera went round the characters, a 360 view. Which is impossible when you've only got half a set - so I had to stitch three or four bits together... it looked a little ropey, and didn't add anything to the atmosphere, so I had to cut it.

How to achieve circular motion at this scale - train tracks!

Black and white helps things immensely when it comes to lighting - though I've not much clue about proper film noir. In fact, I filmed it all in low yellow torchlight, and added a moody desaturated effect in camera - which doesn't relate to black and white at all, but hey!

One of the more closer views... "they're moving!"

In the end - after finally getting round to completing the editing of it all - it should be a cool, scary short. The scariness is mostly down to the delights of Tristram Cary, actually. I wanted to use appropriate music, and whilst I didn't actually manage to use any of the things he produced especially for Doctor Who, I found other, crazy sounds that formed the soundscape of the mysterious building the characters find themselves in.

I hope you enjoy it!