MCS takes another step forward 12 Apr 2009 Once upon a time there was an expectation this film was going to take 18 months to practically make. From commencement of pre-production through to delivery for distribution, about a year and a half. Nine years later, this expectation hasn't wavered. Of course, the start point for that 18 months has yet to arrive, but the way through to that point has never looked clearer. Nine years ago, MCS was a short film, a seven minute exposé of 'archival' footage from a vanished time that never really existed. Not long after that, and with some nudging and support from unexpected sources, it became what it has remained since - a feature-length documentary from a parallel universe. To realise that vision takes a great deal of resources and financial undertaking, and it is this step - the biggest of any film - that is being undertaken at this time. The website is about to be revamped in a pretty serious way. The galleries, background information and so on will be completely overhauled, and the whole site given a new look. How long that takes is not something that can be given a time at this point, but it will happen in due course. Much appreciation goes to those who maintain their support, enthusiasm and words of encouragement ... and patience. While the 'day job' must take priority, it does - in a way - also ensure continued ability to work on MCS. MCS Moves FORWARD 21 Dec 2008 In short, MCS has been greenlighted as a practical project! The Cannes trip paved the way to meeting all sorts of people and developing a better understanding of the mechanisms of the international film making community, but it was a chance meeting and fresh professional association that really made the difference and paved a new road. As for a schedule, the current expectation is MCS will officially enter pre-production in middle to late 2009, after the completion of "Ghosts of War" (a project created as a testing ground for the production and crew infrastructure of MCS). Given the amount of material already created to date, the process of production should take a bit less time than if starting from scratch, so *conceivably* MCS could have a completion date somewhere around the middle of 2010. There will me more information as it comes to hand, and it looks like the whole MCS website will be overhauled, too. Cannes 18 Jul 2008 MCS went to Cannes. Well ... the MCS pitch went to Cannes. the Marché du Film ("Film Market") proved to be more an exercise in frustration than anything else. Clearly what is needed is a stand at the Marché, to attract the interest of distributors, rather than going up to them cold turkey and trying to speak with them. Quite simply, nobody wanted to discuss 'unsolicited' projects, regardless of their value or merit. Politics once again gets in the way of practicalities. Cannes itself was not a wasted trip - many valuable lessons were learnt, new contacts were made and a new appreciation for the industry mechanics was forged - but the primary goal was not reached. Instead, halfway through the time spent there, a change of tactics was initiated, searching instead for a hot-shot producer. Many were met, few could barely rise to the challenge, none were found who could really see MCS through. The true value of Cannes has proven to be what eventuated in its wake. With new dedication, resolution and confidence, including a clearer picture on the makeup of a good percentage of the motion picture industry, new career paths have been explored, and in the process a new network of contacts created. This new network has within it the seeds of greatness, and the right combination of people who could genuinely bring MCS to fruition. Once again the screenplay has had some minor revision, accommodating concerns and reservations expressed by those at Cannes who actually took the time to read it. The package now is a stronger, fitter, more streamlined model, and the new network certainly feels stronger, more vibrant and is a source of greater confidence in the welfare and success of MCS than any time in the past. What has become abundantly clear however is that in order for MCS to be realised properly, some precedents need to be established first. To this end, the production of a low-budget feature has been recommended to come before MCS, to prove the directing, writing and production credibility and credentials of all involved (the budget for MCS is not a trivial sum and won't be handed to a bunch of seeming novices). In order to reach that goal, a short film is needed to be made first. This small first step has been started on, a trailer cut and the principal photography to commence in a few short weeks away. In essence this means the wheels are set in motion production-wise, despite the seeming irrelevancies of these interim, preliminary projects. Onward and upward, as they say. The short film webpage can be seen here: http://web.mac.com/surfren Parlez-vous Française? 08 May 2008 After what seems an epic tale in its own right, circumstances have finally fallen into place permitting MCS to go to Cannes. Despite seeming colossal costs and insurmountable obstacles, creative director/co-writer Boyd Britton and myself will be at Cannes for a good 10 or so days, meeting people, displaying MCS in as many ways possible, and generally pushing as hard as we can to get recognised. Wish us well, wish us God speed, wish us 'bonne chance!'. YouTube 22 Feb 2008 SOMEONE, and I don't know who (well, they didn't ask me), has added all the clips from this website to YouTube. Whether this, or something else, is responsible for the spike in site hits remains to be seen. To that SOMEONE, a "thanks" is in order Cannes 22 Feb 2008 Preparations are under way for Cannes in May of this year. At Cannes it is planned to meet with a diversity of representatives with the idea of securing distribution deals. With those deals, it will then be possible to raise the production budget, and proceed with completing the project. At this time, it is estimated production and post production will take somewhere around 12-14 months, quicker if more funds are made available. It has been observed that one of the charms of MCS is its audacity - building a rocket's cockpit in one's backyard, under cover of tarpaulins when it rains, appears NOT how to make a film, but when a project such as this is self funded and there are no other resources to hand, there are few alternatives. The audacity lies in that it was achieved anyway. Having taken MCS as far as it can go with what resources have been available, it didn't reach anywhere near where it needed to go, which is why bigger funding is required. Add to that paying those people who are involved (instead of simply asking for volunteers), purchasing materials to make rocketships and spacesuits and a plethora of other materials, and it all adds up. The idea however is to remain somewhat audacious, to continue to hand craft the film so it ends up with a certain charm, a certain feel, and lots of love. All that is sadly still going to need money, and for what is in the script that equates to quite a bit of money, hence the trip to Cannes. April will therefore be the month of final preparations, the time to streamline the documentation, possible produce a few more choice sequences - if finances permit - and package it all up for presentation. And to learn a little French, too... Sad News 31 Aug 2007 Eric Deeby was a talented musician who came into the world of MCS by assisting in developing some of the musical landscape. Eric was a warm, passionate human being with overflowing generosity and boundless talent. His abilities led him to work on projects such as Brett Leonard's "Man Thing" (2005), and he even wrote and performed with the short-lived band Ten-1 an unreleased song called "Fly", which was dedicated to and inspired by MCS. On Wednesday, 29th August 2007, at age 37, a congenital heart defect claimed him, and snatched from the world a true rising talent. His passing has left an irreparable hole in MCS, but while his abilities and work will be missed, this is but a tiny fraction as much as missing the gentle, dear, sweet man himself. At last! 13 Aug 2007 After too long a time, a new site update in the MOVIE GALLERY. MCS in its embryonic form appears destined to be taken to Cannes in May of 2008. This is to promote it to the various individuals, corporations, studios and investment bodies who trawl Cannes looking for new projects to back. Doing this will mean that the full target budget will be made more attainable permitting full time and full scale production to commence. This is not 100% in the can - there are many hurdles to face before May, but the sacrifices made recently of time and expertise on other projects has provided the means to get to Cannes and therefore improve the chances of MCS reaching its full potential. Meanwhile, please enjoy Teaser III Making Haste Slowly... 09 Apr 2007 For some time now there has been steady progress, but little that can be shown on a website. The progress that CAN be shown can't currently be seen because it's being held up by legal negotiations. Suffice to say efforts are still very much under way to alleviate that concern at the earliest available opportunity, but the wait is on. Meanwhile, a new range of material is being prepared to pep up the website a bit, AND to reassure everyone that simply because little happens in this diary or elsewhere on the website, it doesn't mean nothing is happening elsewhere. Being a handcrafted film means it takes longer. And it should wind up being better all round, too ... ;-) Milestone 10 Jul 2006 After much writing, rewriting, tweaking, adjusting and rethinking, the "MCS Screenplay" is done. Here's the thing: the MCS screenplay has in one form or another been around for quite some time now. The background structure, characters, circumstances and story arcs were all formulated over the space of eighteen months starting in 2001. The problem has been all that work is unrecognisable to most film executives and financial support individuals and institutions. With the MCS production budget estimated to be where it is now, the film's executive producers have insisted on having a screenplay in conventional form to use to approach the various financiers they wish to approach, hence the need to go back and write down everything in conventional form. The butterfly has finally been hammered to the wall. It won't fly any more but it can now be closely inspected by others... It has been a while, I know... 31 Dec 2005 An unrelated medium-term contract emerged in August 2005, which has kept MCS development effectively in stasis - hey ... gotta live - but this contract wound up in November, permitting a resumption of development over December and early January 2006. Another unrelated medium-term contract will commence in mid January, and carry through for quite a few weeks. Weekends and weeknights remain the domain for MCS development, and current events space-wise continue to serve as inspiration for events that transpire in MCS. During contract work time however, contact has proven difficult, as the work becomes almost all consuming and quite exhausting. It is planned that finance raised from the coming contract will serve to position the MCS development phase on a more solid footing for the medium and long term. The current phase of MCS development is scheduled to conclude by May 2006; potentially sooner depending on contractual circumstances. Major MCS Landmark Reached 06 Jul 2005 After a lengthy process of searching and lobbying for development funding, a single investor has come forward and supplied an amount which covers the full amount required. This now means MCS can finally - after nine months of fits and starts - get under way with its second last phase of development. This is a major leap forward and so for the next six weeks it will be *very* busy here... Updates, updates, updates... 12 May 2005 Orson Welles once said that his career was 2% film making, 98% hustling. I know how he felt. The latest news is that a screenplay development application has been made with an Australian government film funding body. This comparatively small sum of money will go to myself, a co-writer and a screenplay editor to cover our time to thrash out a draft screenplay (up to now the film has a structure fully mapped out, with characters, scenes and even finished sequences). This will represent the first time in the 5 years of MCS production that I would actually get any pay out of MCS! With a draft screenplay, it will be then possible to hustle (sigh) in order to get the target production budget for the film. We'll know whether we get this grant some time towards the end of June 2005. MCS Website Changes 18 Jan 2005 Thanks to the amazing efforts of Chuck Stewart, the MCS website has been shifted to a new, faster server, and its organisation has improved immensely permitting better maintenance. In other news, the MCS pitching process continues, with one party dropping away and another party coming on board. The hardest part about the pitching process is explaining how and what the film is aiming to achieve - the story and format are far from ordinary, making it difficult for some people to comprehend while they're looking at bits of paper and the movie files you can find in this website's gallery. Nevertheless, the process continues.

	December 03, 2004	Negotiations continue to drag on, so no progress on that front - alas. It has been over four years since starting producing footage. Given most of the time spent has been ouside normal work hours, it's amazing there's as much produced as there is. One of the problems with working on the project while negotiations continue is constant delays, which become increasingly frustrating, sometimes leading to depression and lack of work (and thus progress on any level). I receive quite a lot of emails from people who stumble across this site, or who learn of it from other sites or sources. I try to respond, but sometimes there are so many that it becomes impossible to respond to them all. The support and encouragement is amazing and often counters getting down about the constant frustrations. Thanks to you all.
	July 20, 2004	Finally got the MPGs up on the Movie Clips page for those who prefer MPG-1 ("normal" MPG) format. Three clips have also been added just in Windows Media Player format, and quite small (but file size is economical). Have a bit of fun exploring!
	July 16, 2004	BRACE YOURSELF. HUGE update has arrived. Go to the Gallery and go to Movie Clips. There you will see the MCS Cinema Sequence in both Quicktime and Windows Media Player format (MPGs coming soon). Yes, this is the legendary 4-and-a-bit minute sample sequence sneak peeked at TORCON last year. It's not going to actually be in the final version of MCS, rather being a demonstration of the way MCS is envisaged to look and feel (first created for TORCON and more recently used to show prospective investors). The music is original, composed and performed especially for this short by Valley Forge, and the clip stars Ben Maclaine as an anonymous astronaut, guiding us through the events leading up and during the launch of a Saturn-I ferry rocket. The movie files are of a decent size, as it is over 4 minutes long, but varying file sizes are on offer for the sake of those on different bandwidths. Any technical difficulties with the files, please email me. Just to clarify - this is the clip mentioned in June 24 entry below. The new Trailer still awaits its original soundtrack. As soon as that is done, it will be added to this website.
	June 24, 2004	Okay - so updates are here. Nothing as grand as was originally planned, but certainly better than nothing. A new teaser/trailer is in the works, too - it has been cut, and just needs its soundtrack. In addition, a sample clip is in the works, more on that when the details are clarified...
	May 19, 2004	What the-? December and then MAY??? How SLACK! Well, not really. It has been a long time, but there have been a great deal of things going on. Sadly none of them are the 'here is product' kind, being mostly behind-the-scenes meetings, talking, begging, inspiring, despairing etc - the normal process of raising interest with the right people so that MCS can live and breathe the way it deserves. This does NOT mean there has not been material generated - quite the contrary. So ... what's going to happen? A gallery revision is in the works, with all new images. In addition, there will hopefully be news at some point in the near future being a result of the past months of effort. A huge THANK YOU to everyone who has expressed their appreciation, enthusiasm and support. Here's hoping all the effort finally pays off.
	December 7, 2003	Well, it has been a little while since the loss of the drive, and I have to thank EVERYONE who sent their offer of support. It has been quite overwhelming and quite humbling - the offers of money, replacement hardware, etc etc... At this time, the drive is well and truly deceased - beyond even the most capable rescue. So ... what to do. The next few weeks will be devoted to reconstructing exactly what was lost and finding anything related in whatever backups and duplicates are around. The rest will be redone - simple. The silver lining is that in the process of re-doing, the results may very well be better than the original. On the immediately negative side, the big bid document that I had been working on - the very document needed to take MCS to the studios - is gone. Portions of it have survived as email attachments after being sent out to consultants to be proof-read, which is one saving grace. It's no great drama in rewriting the rest of it, but having to do so has thrown the already tentative schedule into disarray. One problem being faced at this time is that very little is being updated on the website itself, since most work being done is background writing - the very writing that has suffered this setback. An increasing number of enquiries about progress shows continuing interest, but there have also been complaints about the visible lack of progress. For that I'm sorry, but without the writing, the film can't progress the way it needs to.
	November 22, 2003	DEVASTATING NEWS: When I first purchased my first Mac, I thought it had enough hard drive space with its native 40Gb hard drive. How foolishly naive I was! So I bought a second drive. This was touted as one of the best drives on the market at that time: an IBM Deskstar 61.5Gb. The native drive became work space for applications, fonts, scratch-disk space etc, and the new drive became the home of MCS. With the purchase of the new Mac, I swapped the Deskstar drive over to it, as the new machine was ostensibly for MCS only. The native drive on the new machine was used for essentially the same as the older machine, and the Deskstar remained being the MCS hard drive. Files got moved about, stuff got archived onto DVD-ROM, some MCS files even found their way to the native drives on each machine, but the guts of MCS remained on that Deskstar. The same Deskstar that this morning failed to boot, instead punctuating the air with a dull click-scrape-click-scrape noise. A noise - which a quick web search has shown - is the sign of years worth of work and irreplaceable files now irretrievably lost. The same web search also showed just how disastrous the Deskstar drives have been. IBM doesn't do drives now, leaving that side of things to Hitachi. This won't stop the class action against them, methinks. The giant MCS bid, which as you can read below has been going for quite a while, is all gone. All the MCS accounts ... are gone. All the MCS research ... is gone. It's Saturday, and I've spoken briefly with a tech guru mate of mine, and the prognosis isn't good. There remains a faint glimmer of hope, that either a) a replacement controller board can be secured and used to retrieve the data, or b) I pay the vast sums required to get the drive's data extracted using the clean-room-swap that I've read about. On a slightly lighter note, the website archive, along with many of the project files and renders are actually on other drives, to say nothing of other documentation which exists in email form having been shared with producers and advisors. And I have the CD and DVD-ROM archived files to fall back to, though I haven't done a serious backup in over a year. Either way, I'm still shaking. It has been like a death in the family, and its cost to MCS is something I really don't want to start calculating yet, Rest assured, it might be a blow, but it's far from fatal.
	November 2, 2003	Writing, writing, writing. Basically, the past few months have been dedicated to the delicate balancing act of day-job and writing the voluminous documentation required for MCS' transportation from back yard production to cinematic epic. During the last few months there has also been a lot of research and development, with all sorts of systems designed and dreamed of during the Golden Age of Space being brought out of their cold storage, dusted off, and perused. Some very exciting stuff out there. If anything, MCS will be thoroughly full of marvellous machines. A short sample sequence was screened at TORCON3 - the World Science Fiction Convention held this year in Toronto. It was reportedly well received, and in due course a link will be posted to a downloadable version of the 4 minute sequence on the Movie Clips page in the Gallery. The website remains comparatively untouched simply because I haven't the time with everything going on. Rest assured, lots of things are happening.
	July 05, 2003	Well, after a long time away from this website, I've finally got myself organised well enough to return and do some serious updating. There are changes throughout this website, so have a browse, and discover all the new goodies here - which may perhaps go some way to explaining my lengthy absence from here...
	February 24, 2003	MCS has concluded its process of accepting Contributor payments. This is due to changes in the administrative structure and consequent legal requirements. In other news, changes are being made to the cockpit of the Saturn Shuttle prop, to make it far more 'authentic', plus a whole new range of model building is taking place. There's a lot else, but to divulge too much will spoil the surprises...
	February 01, 2003	New link for a rather lengthy interview conducted recently. Also, three photos added to the stills gallery.
	January 03, 2003	New splash on the MCS Homepage, reflecting a certain place visited...
	January 02, 2003	Mike Whybark conducted a discrete little interview with me a short time ago and then WHAM! "Cinescape" magazine features just a tiny portion of that interview on page 19 of issue #68, complete with an image from this website. Responses to emails have been taking a little while since I've been inundated with messages from all over the world. It's very encouraging, but gosh!

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