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In many ways the enigmatic 17-part 60's TV series The Prisoner was quite derivative. Who could be better than 007 than 006? Too obvious - drop the 00. An obsession with nameless, faceless 'villains', atomic paranoia, the growth of global superpowers, the power of technology. All themes seen in much thriller/action films, TV and written fiction of the time. However, it's how those elements were brought together which has energised this classic programme with an enduring mystique. Adding the loss of individuality, alienation from society and 'Big Brother' manipulation by the state brought layers to what, under producer, writer and actor Patrick McGoohan's direction, had become an eccentric, dogmatic, whimsical cake. Making the hero a man without name, job (he's often called a spy, but this is never made explicit in the series. It's been said he's a scientist unhappy with military involvement in his work) or strong links to the 'outside' world (bar the Do Not Forsake Me Oh My Darling episode, which is at odds with much of the rest of the series - only adding to debate) he's a 'no one' - and thus be becomes an everyman, which is also the name of the production company - Everyman Films. Filming some of The Prisoner in Clough Williams-Ellis' Portmeirion hotel/village in North Wales was a stroke of genius too. Here's something and somewhere 'concrete' to anchor its legacy to. The extended 'folly' (although it's quite practical, there is much of the quirkiness of British garden ornamentation about the place) of Portmeirion (sometimes spelt Port Meirion, or misspelt several other ways) actually only appears 'seriously' in a handful of episodes. Others use repeated footage, series 'stock' shots or studio mock-ups, which can be variable in quality. By leaving this miss-matched, inconsistent, underdog of a series as an enigma, it guaranteed an interested following to this day. While I enjoy watching the series -well, most of it- I'm a long way from being a fanatical fan. I might struggle to name all the episodes, and certainly couldn't in the correct order. i.e. broadcast. There are other 'correct' orders. Now I do sound like a geek. Moving on... For my spoof, I wanted to revisit the series, but with a 21st century 'obsessed with celebrity', PC, Health&Safety, cultural-soup sort of approach. The Prisonbear was originally envisaged as a spoof of the 67-68 ITC show, but done with Internet Flash animation software in a 'South Park' style. Then I had a chance meeting with a 'The Best of The Adam & Joe Show' DVD. This cult programme was shown from 1997 to 2000 in a late night slot on Channel 4 in the UK. One of its key features was TV spoofs with Star Wars figures, and film spoofs using soft toys, fluffy teddy bears, dolls, etc. Titles include 'Toytrainspotting', 'Furends' and 'Toytanic'. I put two and (the new number) two together and came up with the core idea for The Prisonbear. The bonus here was I could shoot lots of stuff and come up with lines of dialogue later - No lip-synch problems to worry about! I also wanted to make a proper story, with actual jokes so it'd still be accessible to folks not so familiar with The Prisoner. I began filming in January 2006 and finished principle photography (sorry. You can tell I've really got into this, can't you?) six weeks later. Then there was editing with Roxio VideoWave 5 - Power Edition. It couldn't handle the large files I was making so I spit the film into eight chunks and worked on each one as a scene. Outputting them as DV-quality clips, I reedited them together, with scene-spanning audio... I could go on, but I see I have already. :-) If you've not seen my film, I suggest you click a link below to watch it (it's 12 minutes long, and may take some time to download depending on your connection speed) before reading on, as there are spoilers below. Original 5 second trailer, released in January 2006: Prisonbear-teaser. 861Kb MPG : Prisonbear-teaser. 67.5Kb WMV Full 12 minute versions of The Prisonbear - Revival: (For wmv files, right click the link and select 'Save Target As...') SUPER Prisonbear. 107Mb(!) MPG LARGE Prisonbear-512. 43.8Mb WMV SMALL Prisonbear-256. 21.7Mb WMV MICRO Prisonbear-100. 8.6Mb WMV GOOGLE The Prisonbear - Revival at Google Video. YouTube The Prisonbear - Revival at YouTube. March 18th 2006 News! Prisonbear 2 is being filmed and edited. Stay tuned for more info. In the meantime... Prisonbear-2 7 second trailer, released in March 2006: PB2-teaser. 1.1Mb MPG : PB2-teaser. 243Kb WMV Full 13 minute versions of The Prisonbear - Stalemate: (For wmv files, right click the link and select 'Save Target As...') SUPER Prisonbear2. 115Mb(!) MPG LARGE Prisonbear2-512. 47.9Mb WMV SMALL Prisonbear2-256. 23.6Mb WMV MICRO Prisonbear2-100. 9.29Mb WMV GOOGLE The Prisonbear - Stalemate at Google Video. YouTube The Prisonbear - Stalemate at YouTube. September 1st 2006 News! Prisonbear 'Dance of the Ted' is being filmed and edited. Stay tuned for more info. In the meantime... Prisonbear-DOTT 9 second trailer, released in September 2006: Dance-of-the-Ted-Teaser. 1.4Mb MPG : Dance-of-the-Ted-Teaser. 483Kb WMV I'd love to hear your feedback: So please email me your thoughts. Or, if you have a friend who you think would enjoy this page, Click here. Below there ARE spoilers. Read on at your own risk!
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The Prisonbear Story. The tragic tale of one man and his teddy obsession. Starting traditionally, I have some extra thanks to express to: My posh, horsey friend Tamara, for being the uncredited 'Village Voice' PA announcer. Peter Organ, manager of Friars Square Shopping Centre in Aylesbury, Bucks, for his kind permission to film there. Rick Davy of The Unmutual web site for encouragement and feedback. Fellow geocacher Lester Wellington, for 'The Village' sign he photographed for me on his travels. My mum, etc. Opening Credits: As iconic as the series itself, in many ways, the opening credits are actually pivotal to telling the Prisoner's (and Prisonbear's!) story. They set up his resignation and its consequences perfectly. I watched the first three minutes of The Prisoner episode one -Arrival- many times, making notes, before I knew what I wanted to do for my spoof. I decided to drop the undertakers and hearse to keep the pace high, while keeping as much flavour of the original as possible. For example, I dug an old typewriter out of my garage for a few quick shots, making several thousand spiders homeless in the process. After a quick shot of the real 'resignation corridor' in London, I cut back to an underpass in Aylesbury. It's right next to the one Kubrick filmed the Tramp Beating scene for A Clockwork Orange in. I wanted to film there, but the walls weren't right for what I'd envisaged so I relocated 'next door'. The 'You don't have to be mad to Resign here, but it helps' office, which is only seen very briefly, has a wealth of stuff in it. 'The Wrong Trousers' on top of the 'X-Filing cabinet' are a reference to Nick Park and Aardman Animations' wonderful stop-motion animated films, ads and shorts. Next to them is a Tardis, not just because Dr Who was contemporary with The Prisoner, or featured many of the same actors. No, it's there because I never got over how big Six's village home was on the inside, compared to the outside. Damn TV trickery! On the desk there's my business cards, a cup to jump when the table's thumped (didn't make it into shot) and a GeoCaching Volunteer's GeoCoin. The Buddha is a nod to the one at Portmeirion, which was given to the village after part of the Inn of the Sixth Happiness was shot around Clough's outlook tower at Plas Brondanw in 1958. It's in the scene where Ingrid Bergman flees through a Chinese cemetery, pursued by Japanese soldiers. The map at back of shot was supposed to be one of the world. When I couldn't find one I liked, I bought the UK one as I felt its bright colours would look good. While working in London for two days, I was able to use the locations listed on The Unmutual web site to visit them, and video more material. The purchase of a 1/32 model of a Lotus 7 in the right colours via eBay was the final piece of the puzzle I needed to finish this section of the film. • Some screen shots of the opening sequence With some spurious end credit and main feature bits in there too. • Looking down the access ramp into Abingdon St. car park. The grassy area to the right is where MPs are always being filmed for the TV news. • Your way is barred at the Cumberland Gate entrance. Not used in my film. But I did shoot a ticket machine and barrier in two Aylesbury car parks. • I filmed a few frames in the same 'Resignation Corridor' which was used in The Prisoner. But this might not be it... • The office seen just for a moment in The Prisonbear. Every object's in there for a reason... • Way Out sign seen at one of the London underground car parks I videoed in. I felt it has a 'Prisonery' look. • The exit from Abingdon Street car park, close to the Houses of Parliament, is seen down the bonnet of Six's Lotus as he roars off. • No. 1 Buckingham Place was Six's London home. As you can see from this early 2006 shot, it's hardly changed at all. FULL LIST OF GENUINE PRISONER LOCATIONS HERE Discovery: When our hero awakes in his new environment after being gassed, it's natural he wants to explore it and find out where he is. Some of this short segment was videoed in my kitchen and lounge, my mum's house, in the Sagrada Familia cathedral/building site in Barcelona, at Temple del Sagrat Cor, Tibidabo, 542m above the Spanish city and the rest at Friars Square Shopping Centre in Aylesbury, Bucks, UK. • This little figure is our first introduction to the Prisonbear's new home (from home). • A spiral staircase in the stunning Sagrada Familia. A view from one of the bridges between its towers is also in my film. • The Bell at the Temple del Cagrat Cor in Tibidabo, a few miles outside Barcelona. [More Barcelona] • Seen in The Prisonbear, but not being used, this bath tub was actually a bidet in a Barcelona (Bearcelona? Maybe not) hotel. I was in town covering the 3GSM mobile phone show for a magazine I write for. Real Village Views: To create the images used as backgrounds in The Prisonbear I printed some photos I'd taken at Portmeirion in September 2004 on my Epson 1270 A3 printer. Using B3 paper (bigger than A3) I was then able to use them as simple backdrops to film the action in front of. One's also used as the 'view beyond the door' in several scenes. For more ambitious (and crisp) shots, such as the view of The Village Two shows Six on their walk, I used Macromedia Flash5 software to animate a still shot, and output it as a suitable-sized AVI file. It's all very technical... • The Village shot from close to the Camera Obscura. • Empty Village. A classic view of Portmeirion, taken on a quiet day. • Quiet Village. Used in the film, after the digital removal of visitors from this September 2004 photo, and addition of a sign. The Shop: Second major scene I filmed, on my lounge floor, with many meaningful props. The Thunderbird 2's (I collect them -and only them- from the series and film) are a rather obvious nod to Gerry Anderson's puppet series of the 60's and beyond. The little bottles are from hotels - don't ask why I collect them, I'm as bald as a coot. But I figured a shop for teddy bears would have to sell shampoo, as they'd be keen on fur-care. The 'Giant Garden Chess' isn't giant or for the garden. Spot the 'Collector's Edition Rover' if you can. The signs are a mix of Prisoner-based-stuff, a few choice phrases from contemporary culture and, for the keen-eyed, there's a bit of The Local Shop from The League of Gentlemen in there too. • The shop, showing the lighting rig I slapped together. Usually there were 3 or 4 lamps on, to try to keep this scene bright. Meeting No. 2: The first scene I shot, after 'nearly' finishing the opening and closing credits. I built the set from cardboard liberated from a big bin outside Pizzahut, some parcel tape, paint (tester pot from Tesco) and black marker pen. The original plan was to build a semicircle of set, but it became clear that to make one big enough to shoot in as I wanted to, I'd need more cardboard than I had. So I scaled it down and put the curved room at the end of a 'shaped corridor' to get the size I needed. I could also remove this addition or drop a side to film 'into' the 'set'. The addition of a small part of my Mathmos Lava Lamp collection, and the 15" screen of my Toshiba laptop helped make it a more 'Prisoneresque' environment. The ultimate prop was Number 2's bowl-shaped seat, which I made from... a breakfast cereal bowl, naturally. It was originally blue, which is what I wanted for its inside, so it was easy to just spray the back with satin black car paint and stick some black insulation tape on the bottom to act as a foot. Probably the first joke I came up with for the Prisonbear was that Number Two would be a poo. It's obvious, but I like it. I bought Mr Hanky (The Christmas Poo from South Park) on eBay for £3.60 to star. Money well spent I'd say. • Six stands by the squeaky (a noise I made with a wooden foot massager) automatic doors. The doors are aluminium foil over cardboard. • Who's going to fill 'The Big Chair'? You can just feel the power vacuum. • Frozen image from the film. These (there are several) were used in the film to extend scenes shot too short, or when no suitable video was available. • Number 2 relaxes. Part of the reason I introduced No.2 in the seat was because he fitted 'just so perfectly'. 2's Slide-show. "We've had you under observation... Lights!" To add more movement and a bit of a back story (Back story? It's 12 minutes of bear-based fun! What was I thinking?!) I used my laptop to show a black and white slide-show of Six's adventures before he was bearnapped. • Curly on top of Ben Nevis as used in the 'Meeting No.2' scene. [See more from Scotland] • Curly with Jessica Drake. Jessica is an actress in specialist films. I met her when I was interviewing Wicked Pictures. • Curly with Stormy Daniels. Stormy is a writer, director and performer in adult movies too. She's also in The 40 Year Old Virgin. • Curly 'passed out' on my bed. Another image used in No.2's 'Slideshow' - which was made with MS Powerpoint. Signs of the Times: A fun feature of The Prisoner are the signs and posters littering The Village. I took them, added my own spin and, with the aid of some double-sided tape and the 'Village' font I downloaded from t'internet, dotted them about my film too. • Lord Kitchener style poster, originally seen in the A Change Of Mind episode, I think. • An unused 'Smile, you are on CCTV' poster. I made and printed lots of signs, but not all of them made it into the final video. • A sign used in the 'Dolls' Hospital' scene. It's a mixture of cheap gags and political satire. • Playing on Magritte's 'This is not a Pipe' painting, I made this. Unused, as it's a bit too cryptic! • Vote No. 6 placard, as seen with Nutty 'Post 14' Squirrel as our furry hero tries to leave the village. From 'Free For All' originally? • Dropping the traditional Pennyfarthing village icon as it's copyright, I went with this fetching Unicycle one instead, seen here on No.2's badge. Escape! This scene was shot, partly at Waddesdon Manor (where some of Carry On Don't Lose Your Head was filmed - I know too much movie trivia!) in Bucks, and in Friars Square Shopping Centre in Aylesbury. That's where Kubrick shot some of A Clockwork Orange, and if it was good enough for him, it was good enough for me! Personally I feel many of the views of the big water feature used as a backdrop are far more convincing than some of the sets used for studio filming in The Prisoner. • Part-way through the bear stuffing, I stopped for a breather. This is a bench in the grounds of Waddesdon Manor, a National Trust property in mid Bucks. • This is what a teddy in a big latex ball looks like before it's blown up. I'm not proud of myself. • Screen-shots from the Escape scene were originally made to show Rick Davy of TheUnmutual web site my progress. • As above, but a different selection. The rock climbing and Rover attack scenes were filmlessly filmed at Waddesdon Manor. The Hospital and Village Tour scenes: Doubling as the Dolls' Hospital is the inside of my bathtub, with a couple of extra scenes shot on my bathroom floor with a green neon tube and cardboard circular window (complete with clingfilm 'glass') adding atmosphere. I won the bubbling indoor water feature used in this scene five years ago and was very please to have a use for the damn thing at last. • Filmed but unused, here's Cobb - DEAD! This scene was dropped as it slowed the pace of the action down, and didn't add much to the story. If anything. • Although he's glimpsed earlier, the Butler (played by Monkey, wearing a bow-tie and with his t-shirt on backwards) gets more screen-time in the 'Tour' scene. • I do like to be beside the [water feature]. The Shop Keeper and an 'extra' in an informal shot at Friars Square Shopping Centre. Notice they're wearing Dave Gorman badges. Props: No Prisoner spoof is complete without some iconic items from the series. I didn't have a big red telephone or a small Mini Moke, but I did what I could... • Smothered in kisses, Six's ID card (topical again in 2006!) drops down a chute. • The ID card, as it was printed. Note much detail that was never going to be seen in the film - but 'I knew it was there'. • The map of the 'Model Village' seen in the Shop scene. • Vital to the look of this film, I had to dye a jacket cut off an unlucky bear (50p from a charity shop) before stitching piping to it. Badly. • The Ballyhoo village newspaper is a play on words from the original Tally Ho. Both titles have a meaning, I suspect. End Credits: Head-rush, bars, clang! Even in a programme the word strange might have been made for, the closing credits start in a strange way. I decided against trying to copy the final 'Penny-farthing' section of the credits as well, instead keeping things snappy with rolling village-font credits on a 'Prisoneresque' background I made. Less is more, right? • A test animated gif I made to see if my timings worked. I made the rush a fair bit quicker in the end. Episode II - My 'The Empire Strikes Back'! - Stalemate: After the 'release' of 'Revival' on the Internet at the start of March 2006 I got a lot of nice comments and positive feedback. I also had a lot of ideas 'left over' from filming it and it wasn't long before I started work on a follow-up. I wanted to tell a darker tale, a very different vision of 'The Prisonbear' than my first slapstick episode. The Prisoner has some very different feeling episodes and I wanted to tap into this, almost telling No.2's story rather than 6's while exploring different aspects of the original series. Also different locations, both seen and unseen in The Prisoner, but not used in 'Revival'. Thus 'Stalemate' was born. With filming in London in April '06 and various other bits and bobs being done, it was uploaded to my site and Google Video in May '06. For a while it was going to be called 'Dance of the Ted' (From Dance of the Dead, a Prisoner episode) but in the end I felt 'Stalemate' (from Checkmate, another Priz episode) was a more fitting title, as it describes the situation at the end of most episodes of both Prisonbear and Prisoner. • Artwork used to 'promote' episode 2. Featuring the new Number2 (Pooh, geddit?) and the famous picnic bowl chair. On Location With...: For 'Stalemate' I shot a lot of material in London, on a very sunny day when I was in town to meet with bigwigs at Hattrick Productions (Who make Have I Got News For You, etc). The following weekend I joined in with a Prisoner Location Walk (19.4Mb Mpg. For a smaller wmv file, right click here and select "Save File As...") and did some more filming. Sadly the weather was rather poor on the second day, so I was only able to use what I'd shot underground at Marble Arch car park (the entrance barriers and 'Resignation Corridor', both seen in the long opening sequence of The Priz) in 'Stalemate'. I also did a little filming while in Berlin during April '06. • Something Sphinx here! On the north embankment of the Thames, not far from a genuine Prisoner recording location from Fall Out. • By Big Ben as heard (seen? I don't think so) in 'The Chimes of Big Ben', a Prisoner episode often shown as 'episode 2'. • The White Tower in the Tower of London with Curly, aka The Prisonbear. • Marble Arch, not seen in The Prisonbear 2, but seen in The Prisoner episode 'Many Happy Returns'. • After walking a few miles around London on a wet April Sunday, Curly and I stopped at a pizza place near 6's home to refuel. Photo by Rick Davy of The Unmutual web site. • Curly at a famous landmark in Berlin. Better gate than never? eh? eh? Oh. The New Number Pooh: The choice of a New Number 2 was an easy one when I saw Pooh in a charity shop. 60p I think he was, and thus a very cheap star was born. I played with a few voices for him before settling on one I could do consistently and reasonably easily. The fact he sounds a bit like Orson Wells (or the bloke who used to say 'Probably the best lager in the world' in adverts) was a happy accident. It helps keep the film a bit more edgy, I think. Compare Pooh's growl with Mr Hanky/Bob's Helium squeaking and you can tell this Number 2 is a much tougher character than his predecessor. That's even before he lays into 6 with some rapier-sharp sarcasm, which you may know is something Teddy Bears really hate. When watching The Prisoner I'd often wondered what No.2 did underneith his dome-shaped room, since he often arrived in it via his chair rising up from below it. So I thought I'd expore this particular aspect of 2's life in PB2-Stalemate. • Pooh at home. I made Pooh a bedroom in an 'Adam and Joe' slacker bed-sit style. Lots of objects to spot and try to identify, as well as a bit of fun with the posters. The Lair Revisited: I wanted No.2 to have a different 'reveal' in Stalemate (if we ignore the opening credits for a moment) than he'd had in Revival so I changed the room set so his chair could rise up through the floor. This made shooting the scene a little harder because I needed a fair bit of clearance under the set to get the chair on its support thingy. So I filmed this section over my bath. I also recorded the 'drugged' scene in the bath, with the help of a pair of small disco lights. • The adapted '2's Lair' set over my bath. It seemed the best place to have it as my kitchen table was full of PCs at the time. Now with added Village: Having exhausted my own limited collection of photos of Portmeirion, which I'd visited on a sunny afternoon in September 2004, I looked on the 'net for more, to give some other views of the village. A couple of shots on Tom Philo's www.taphilo.com site caught my eye and he was kind enough to let me borrow them for the sequel. MAGTAG were also very good to let me use their aerial shots of the village as seen on the Unmutual web site, especially as I'd used one I found on another site unwittingly for the 'Face-Woosh-Clang!' at the end of Revival. Woops! • The village from the hill to one side of it in this charming picture taken by Tom. • From the beach. This shot is used in the opening credits, coloured to look like it was taken just pre-dawn. More signs from above! Carrying on the playful use of signs I'd pioneered (ha!) in Revival, I came up with some more for Stalemate. As well as comedy 'Escape This Way' and 'Well Come To London' hanging signs, I printed some flat images on card to use too. • Number 2 is Watching You. As 6 says in Stalemate, "Very Orwellian" - which I think is a well known aspect of The Prisoner, seen as a dystopian social commentary. • As seen in the Prisoner episode 'The General', I liked this image and gave it my own mildly subversive twist. • As above, but another poster seen in The General. An unnamed bear was used as 'The Professor' - you may recognise him from the opening sequence, as it's he who 6 resigns to! Location Location Location: As well as Two's room seen in the opening scene, I wanted to take the viewer of my second Prisoner spoof to one of my favourite Prisoner sets; the scanner, see-saw, observation, Supervisor room. What was that thing about? Anyway, once I wanted a see-saw I knew what I wanted to do with it... I'm sure you've also wandered what would happen if the see-saw went crazy, and now I could show you! All I needed was some cardboard, tape, silver spray paint and a record player... • Before the rest of the set was built up around it, I tested the see-saw with a suitable load on it. 33 1/3 rpm was fine and stable, but if I cranked it up to 45 rpm I got the effect I was after! Bonus! I met Kate D'arcy of Playboy TV while at a show in Berlin and she was kind enough to pose with Curly (in PB mode) for me: • What a lovely lady she was. Curly, as ever, seems rather nonplussed. Too Much Information: In the film, my bear Curly plays Theodore McGoon (Edward McBear in Stalemate) playing No.6/The Prisonbear. This may be the first time a teddy bear has been called upon to display this multifaceted, many-layered level of performance. Originally he was set to play A Homing Crackpot, an anagram of Patrick McGoohan. But that seemed too obscure and a bit disrespectful. And not funny enough. So I tried Patrick McBear and Theodore (where the name Teddy comes from, of course) McBear before settling on Theodore McGoon. As I like The Goons, I suppose. "He's fallen in the water!" - Which he did in Barcelona, oddly enough. Technical Stuff: The Prisonbear was shot on Fujifilm S5000 and S5500 digital stills cameras, using their 320x240 30fps AVI movie mode with audio - although most of the sounds in my short were added later. While I do have a Mini-DV camcorder, my laptop (My desktop PC's DOA at the moment) doesn't have an IEEE1394 port and I feared its 20Gb drive might get filled rather quickly if I bought a PCMCIA card to slot in for video capture. So I made the compromise of using my Fuji camera/s, which make files half-suitable for Internet use anyway. Their main drawback is they'll not zoom while recording, which is why any zooms in The Prisonbear were faked. Either by moving the camera into the shot, or digitally with Macromedia Flash software. PM2006 event at Portmeirion, August 13th 2006: After climbing Scafell Pike, England's highest peak in Cumbria the day before, I arrived at a B&B outside Portmeirion a bit after 9pm the night before 'PM2006' event in the village. This 'do' was the second annual event held in celebration of The Prisoner, Danger Man, Patrick McGoohan and Portmeirion. As a part of it, I'd been invited to show my Prisonbear films on the big screen there. • A display of props, sets and 'actors' from my PB series was set up at the last minute in the room beside the Hercules Hall. • It seemed well received, as were the films themselves. I'm happy to say I don't think anything got pinched! • I did give away a 'SpeedDebt' poster though, because someone said they thought it was really funny. • Filming around the village, I spent about 20 mins at the fake Lighthouse along the coast. One of my favourite landmarks at Portmeirion. • Outside No.6's house in Portmeirion, with the little '6, Private' sign I copied from the series. • A montage of images from the on-location filming of 'Dance of the Ted', which will be Prisonbear episode III. Around 100 people watched my Prisonbear films on a big screen. Here's a 7 second, 1.03Mb mpeg video of them doing just this! :) Bonus! After filming some more PB material in London in August 2006, I met Danni again, having seen her at the ETO Show in July. She was kind enough to pose with a naked Curly for me in a Soho sex shop during a film launch: • What a kind dancer for Spearmint Rhino she is! As usual, Curly takes it all in his short stride. Some kind things people have said about my films: (More feedback for Revival here, and feedback for Stalemate here!) Hi Paul What can I say? Fantastic from start to finish! Some moments had me in stitches (especially the whole of the shop scene), and all had me wondering how you did it! Great stuff, and I can't speak more highly of it. With your permission, I'd love to show it at PM2006 (perhaps you could introduce it, seeing as you'll be there?). It knocks the socks off any Prisoner spoof done before, in my opinion. The attention to detail is great - so many lovely little touches here and there. Thanks again for sharing it with me - let me know the final weblinks for people to see it and I'll update the news piece on the site. Great stuff - thanks again. Rick PS I officially now am in love with the Keira Knightly announcer. :-) Dear Snaps & Bytes; A heatfelt thank you for your wonderful film. The parody is brilliant in its attention to detail and additional content. Yours, Karl Edmonds, WA., USA That was the best. Well done! Loved the "cast" Prisioner Bear, Mr Hankey No2, And Womble shop keeper. How long did to take to produce and film? Kind regards The General My reply: Glad you enjoyed it, General I started a couple of weeks into January and it was online on March 1st, so about six weeks of on-off filming, editing, prop, set and 'costume' making, as well as getting permissions to film, etc. But a fun project to do between proper jobs. 'Stay Tuned' for a follow-up I'm working on. :-) Paul Hello... I'm with BCTV, which is the in-hotel TV station for the science fiction convention BayCon. (http://www.baycon.org/2006) We'd really like to show "The Prisonbear" on BCTV. Any objections? Thanks... Stephen Nelson BayCon TV Technical Lead I said yes, of course. Hi Paul Your videos are inpired and hilarious. The effort you have gone to, the attention to detail, the allusions to the original, both the obvious and the subtle, the craftsmanship and inventiveness - all are so funny and so appreciated! More power to your camera and editing suite! And I have only seen the Arrival spoof yet - still a whole 'nother film to watch! Now will you actually use an Orange during an 'Orange Alert' I wonder?.... Brilliant. Thank you. Frank. My reply: You're too kind Frank :-D Since I'm putting some ideas together for Ep. III 'The Dance of the Ted' I'm going to go ahead and steal your 'when oranges attack' idea for an Orange Alert 'cituation'. Thanks for the excellent suggestion! I hope you enjoy Stalemate. Not so funny, but more of a story line. Cheers again Paul Some more feedback's here! Further Reading: For some more of my fanny (is that the right word?) stuff, visit my Jonathan Creek Fan Fiction page. More videos I've made can be found on my VideoRamaScope page. You came here because you like teddy bears more than The Prisoner? Then this page or this older one is/are the place/s for you! were you Googling for 'Aylesbury' and came here? Warning! This link contains Bad Language - plus more teddy bears. Or click here for U-rated Aylesbury.
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