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In the summer of 2007 my wife and I were lucky enough to be
chosen as ‘supporting artists', or extras, in The Mob Film Co 's production of
Terry Pratchett's Colour of Magic and The Light Fantastic combined into a two
part feature film for UK's Sky TV .
The film is now finished and we were sent tickets for an
advanced screening of the first half to be shown at Curzon Cinema in Mayfair,
London. There were two shows that day, an earlier one for the more important
people and a later one for the hoi polloi, of which we were the latter.
After much waiting in a very long queue, then feeling a
little dejected when we discovered that extras who are moderators from the
‘other place' (.com version of this site) and a few others were at the earlier
screening [obviously an admin mix-up Ed.], we all began to shuffle inside. I
wouldn't normally mention the interior of the cinema, but I this case I rather
liked it - very comfortable with an interior architecture that put me in mind
of artist, Marc Newson.
After we were all
seated Terry Pratchett and Vadim Jean, the Director, gave a little talk about
the production and how much they enjoyed working with each other. Vadim
embarrassed the crew a little by making them all stand up and receive applause,
and Terry said how glad he was that a UK company made the film because it meant
there didn't have to be any exploding cars in it. He also alluded to the
possibility of  Going Postal being made into a film and how it would be easier
to make; one - because it has a plot (he pointed out to us that The Colour of
Magic has no perceptible plot, which is why they joined it up with TLF) and two
- because half of the props (i.e. letters) are already in place. This
introductory piece before the film created a wonderful feeling of togetherness
that I shall never forget, and all under a continuous flickering of camera
flashes to create a thousand images identical to the ones in this article I'm
sure.
The film itself is
brilliant, which of course I would say being a fan and having a little part in
it, but I tried to watch it as if I'd never heard of the Discworld before and
the whole concept was entirely new to me. As soon as the lights went down everyone
was mesmerised, the settings are pretty amazing right from the start and you do
kind of slip into the world pretty easily. There are a couple of bits in the
first half an hour that felt a bit awkward to me, but I pretty much always feel
that way during the "set up" stage of a movie - even so they haven't gone too
far with the "getting to know everyone" and they have cut out a couple of bits
that really aren't needed anyway in my opinion. The Luggage is uber cool and
blends in very well. Of course I'm not going to give anything away, but for me
I stopped thinking about trying to watch the film, trying to weigh it up,
somewhere after they reached the Wyrmberg - after this point I was totally lost in the
fantasy until the screen went black and the audience let out a collective "awww!"
when it was all over... oh and there were a couple of brief snippets from the
second bit that looked totally awesome, special effects of mountain-moving
proportions, and did a great job of making me want to see it even more than ever.
Jonathan Malory (AKA Maljonic)
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