The dead have highways...

...And with those words, Clive Barker launched himself upon an unsuspecting audience. First published in 1984 and 1985, the ground-breaking series of six volumes of short stories in the Books of Blood have currently spawned three movie adaptations in the forms of Rawhead Rex, Candyman and Lord of Illusions and two TV adaptations of The Body Politic and The Yattering and Jack. A movie of The Midnight Meat Train is scheduled for release on 16 May 2008 and Dread is set to shoot in summer 2008 but next on the shooting slate is the opening and closing wraparound story of The Book of Blood / On Jerusalem Street.
We're delighted that Joe Daley, the film's producer and Clive's right hand man at Seraphim Films has agreed to write a production blog for us here on Revelations!
We hope to chart the ins and outs of the production process here over the next several weeks and to have a front row seat in this "making of" documentary. Enough from us - over to Joe...

13 March 2008

Not an entry from Joe or the crew this time, but something to mark the occasion of our set visit earlier today - our thanks to all on set who made us so welcome...!
Here's something that we've dug out of Clive's archive, just for fun... We love to see ideas in their earliest form, so here's an example of that - page one of the first handwritten draft of On Jerusalem Street, the postscript to the six Books of Blood and the conclusion of the wraparound story of Simon McNeal, the original Book of Blood...

Phil and Sarah

On Jerusalem Street, page 1, © Clive Barker

11 February 2008

Dear Revelations -

Hope all is well. Things are continuing to go very well on BOOK OF BLOOD. Here is another blog entry from one of our amazing crew. Enjoy and promise more to come. Joe.

Alan Ballany - Stand-by Art Director BOOK OF BLOOD

It was never my goal to be an Art Director, I fell into it rather by accident.

I studied Fine Art at Dundee University's Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design from 1998 to 2003 after realising at high school that the only subject I excelled at was Art. I could have done a lot better at school in any subject had I applied myself more, but I didn't, Art was the only lesson that I could lose myself in and not care how long I spent doing it.

Although my degree is in Fine Art, my specialization was Time Based Art, a course that concentrated on video art and installation. Throughout high school I'd been using photography to record research for my studies and this continued onto college and onto using video cameras and editing software and ultimately to my interest in film.

Shortly after I graduated, a movie was shooting in St Andrews, 'Bobby Jones - Stroke of Genius'. Through a friend I landed a job as Art Department Runner. From there I did another job with the same crew and then applied to Scottish Screen's NETS training programme. I won a place and trained with them for 18 months to be an Art Department assistant. I've now worked my way up to Stand-by Art Director and enjoy it hugely.

As Stand-by Art Director, I stand by the camera making sure all of the Art Department's responsibilities are carried out on the day. This includes the set (either a build or a location), props and vehicles. My main aim is to make each individual shot aesthetically pleasing while managing continuity. I also do most of the Art Department photo shoots for any graphics we need to produce.

In my own time, photography is my main creative interest and my surroundings the main subject matter.

16 January 2008

Dear Revelations!

Hope you are all well. Here is our first entry from our crew - and many more to follow. I think it's very appropriate that we start this off with Phil - our most hardcore Clive Barker fan on set. We are sad to lose him to school - but that is much more important!!! Phil did some amazing detective work to track us down in town - and not to be a downer - but all our jobs are filled. The production would have my head if they get bombarded by emails and phone calls asking for a job on the film! LOL!!! Please take this in the fun I mean it - but...you know what I'm saying with love. There will be many more BOOKS OF BLOOD FILMS TO COME!!! YEAH!

A DAY (WELL, TEN DAYS REALLY) IN THE LIFE OF A RUNNER

by: Phil Robinson

Okay, so where do I begin? Who am I may be a good start. I'm Phil Robinson, I'm at university here in Scotland doing film and media, I have big dreams of becoming a writer/director and I am quite obsessed with the work of Mr. Clive Barker.

It started with the viewing of a film you may have heard of, the film was Hellraiser, and what I saw that night changed my life. I loved the rawness of Skinless Frank, the mystery of the puzzle box and, of coure, the man with the pins ( I think you know who I mean...)

Since then, I've been reading and watching in wonder at the work of Clive; the man who has inspired me to expand my creativity more than anyone else. I have even created my own tribute, so to speak, to HELLRAISER by adapting the comic story of Wordsworth (written by Neil Gaiman - a must read!) into a short film I made with my friends. If you want to check it out, it can be found here:

You Tube link

I can remember reading THE BOOKS OF BLOOD for the first time; I got a beautiful hardback copy of the first three volumes, and spent the next few days of my life religiously reading them cover to cover. The stand out stories for me had to be "Rawhead Rex" (just a pity about the film...) and "The Yattering and Jack."

But how did I get to work on the new Clive Barker movie? Well, I have this very website to thank. After they let the cat out of the bag (don't worry, no cats have been hurt in the making of this film...yet) that the film would be made in Edinburgh, I simply had to get on set. So using my detective skills, I tracked down the production company and asked very nicely for a job.....and here I am!

It has been a fabulous few days, and between the coffee runs and photocopying, I've seen some wonderful things and learnt so much. The cast and crew have been wonderful to me, and I'm going out and saying that (from what I've seen at least) THE BOOK OF BLOOD is going to be a must see for horror fans, and will be talked about as one of the classics like HELLRAISER and CANDYMAN.

And so, as my ten days on set draw to an end, so does this blog entry. I hope that all you guys and girls out there enjoy the film as much as I've enjoyed working on it, and let's hope that some day soon you can be checking out one of my films on the big screen!

Phil Robinson

14 January 2008

Dear Revelations!

Happy New Year! I hope everyone is great. I have some great entries coming from the BOOK OF BLOOD crew soon.

We would like to make an exclusive announcement on Revelations that Simon Bamford (Butterball Cenobite/HELLRAISER and Ohnaka/NIGHTBREED) is part of the cast of BOOK OF BLOOD. Simon has already finished filming and we were thrilled to have him on board.

There are many familiar faces on this production from Clive's past films. Having Doug Bradley and Simon Bamford part of BOOK OF BLOOD has been wonderful and felt just right.

Speak soon, Joe

Bringing Simon on board the Book of Blood project is especially apt as, over twenty years ago, Clive based the character Simon McNeal on his good friend Simon Bamford..!

17 December 2007

Dear Revelations!!!

Happy Holidays to everyone. Sorry that my update emails have been non-existent. Its amazing how you make all these grand plans for production until you are brutally reminded how overwhelming production schedules are! In short - you have no life beyond the film and unfortunately that leaves no time to do anything else - except sleep!! LOL. All is going very well though.

I had a better idea for the BOOK OF BLOOD page that I will be able to keep consistant during production and beyond - I hope this idea will give you an unique peek into our production. Since I have been working with Clive, I think my favorite part of working on horror films is the amount of true artists that work behind the scenes helping make the films. Almost in every department - the individuals that work at their specific jobs - all come from a passion of art and an artistic background. Musicians, painters, photographers, sculptors, writers, etc - make up all our departments. It's from their natural passion for art that makes them brilliant at what they do on BOOK OF BLOOD. That to me makes horror a genre in film that should be celebrated more for the artists that work behind the scenes.

So I thought long and hard about how we can celebrate this and share this unique behind the scenes look at our BOOK OF BLOOD crew. I'm going to ask (ones that are interested...LOL....I'm a nice producer not a demanding one! LOL) to give us a profile of their artistic backgrounds and how it has led them to get to the place they are in our production. I have asked them to include their art that we will post so you guys will get to hear/see their journeys.

I hope this sounds interesting to you. We will post the first BOOK OF BLOOD "exhibit" in the new year. The crew like me - have no life at the moment - except in the pages of THE BOOKS OF BLOOD. So my hope is that over our Christmas break we will return with some cool things to share.

Again, I want to wish all of you a happy holiday and hope you have a great NEW YEARS!!! Yeah!! 08!

All the best, Joe

4 December 2007

hello all -

I find it a bit embarassing that this is my first formal blog entry into Revelations even though I have worked with Clive since LORD OF ILLUSIONS in various jobs. (I was actually one of Nix's cult members in the film! lol ) But right now we are currently in pre-production on the film THE BOOK OF BLOOD - which is a combination of the stories "The Book of Blood" and "On Jerusalem Street" from Clive's collection BOOKS OF BLOOD. I'm here with Jorge Saralegui, our producing partner on our MIDNIGHT PICTURE SHOW film label that will be producing as many of the BOB stories (and maybe a few original ideas thrown in) as we are able to do. Fingers crossed we will get through them all!! Get ready for MIDNIGHT MEAT TRAIN which will be the first out of the gate from MPS, slated to come out May 16, 2008!!!!!!

THE BOOK OF BLOOD script was written by John Harrison (our director) and Darin Silverman. They both did an amazing job on the script and we are so thrilled to be finally making this film. Clive and I met John after we watched the first part of DUNE on the SciFi Channel. Clive and I were blown away by what he had done on that mini-series and that was the beginning of our friendship. John also wrote a draft of ABARAT when the project was set up at Disney. (just a little trivia)

We are producing BOOK OF BLOOD with a company called Matador Pictures (among many other great companies) but I mention Matador since they are the reason we have come to Edinburgh to shoot this film. They are a UK based film company and once the idea of shooting in Scotland came up - we jumped at the opportunity. Edinburgh is an AMAZING city! Every location we are using elevates this story to such an incredible level - I wish I had thought of it from the start - LOL - should I just take credit for that? lol.

We have been in pre-production for several weeks now and our first day of principle photography starts this Thursday. We will be shooting to the beginning of February (with a christmas break in there). I can't reveal too much here - so forgive me for anyone that may be tortured by that! But hopefully through this blog I will be able to give you a taste of how we are approaching this production.

We have an amazing production team in place. Clive has been brilliant by giving us tons and tons of sketches, designs and reference material. We are working very hard to stay true to the original stories while bringing them to film.

Ok, I gotta get back to work and make sure we are all prepared for Thursday. Speak soon, Joe