Pre-Production Unit - contacting agents

I signed up for Imdb Pro which gave me access to Felicity Jones's agent information and I have sent out an email to her commercial talent agent Louise Owens at IndependentTalent -

Louise,

My name is Casey Parker and I am studying Broadcast Media at University. I was wondering if you wouldn't mind helping me with a question for a uni project.

We are working on a hypothetical fiction adaptation, we are hypothetically adapting the Peter James crime fiction novel Dead Simple for a television series and one of my jobs is to work on fantasy cast. For one of the characters I have cast Felicity Jones and Imdb Pro listed you as her commercial talent agent. I was just wondering if you had a CV on file for her that I may be able to have (obviously any personal contact details removed) or if she would ever 'hypothetically' consider a role like this. The role is Ashley Harper - a very beautiful yet manipulative con artist who marries rich men and then a partner in crime would kill them, leaving her with a nice inheritance.

I would greatly appreciate if you could help me with anything regarding this.

Thank you so much for your time,

Casey Parker

UCA Broadcast Media

Maidstone Studios

Pre-Production Unit - Casting Alison Vosper

Amanda Donohoe is stern looking yet not unattractive like character Alison Vosper.

She was in liar liar in which she played Fletcher's boss and was a bit of a bitch and she was also a murderer I believe in Emmerdale.

Pre-Production Unit - Casting Cleo Morey

Cleo Morey is described as very beautiful, warm and sure of herself.

Anna friel is certainly very beautiful but she has that down to earth, warmness to her that Cleo would have. Although Cleo is meant to be blonde so I have found a few pics of Anna with blonde hair, proving that she is willing to go blonde for roles.

Pre-Production Unit - Casting Glenn Branson

Casting ideas for Glenn Branson have been narrowed down to these two - Ashley Walters and Simon Webbe.

They both fit the description of Glenn, looking cool and hip, however Simon is actually a singer, although according to imdb he has done some acting. And Ashley has acted in Channel 4 gritty drama 'Top Boy' which fits our feel of our project. Watch this space!

Pre-Production Unit - Casting

This is the idea I have for character Mark Warren. Paul Bettany has the right 'villainous' look about him and he is quite often suited and booted like character Mark.

Pre-Production Unit - Casting of Grace is tricky!

I have been struggling with the casting of Grace since day one and at the moment I have nailed it down to two options- Rupert Penry Jones and David Morrissey.

Grace is a sort of 'every-day' looking man, but he isn't ugly, he is described to be good looking, well built, fairish hair but with a squashed kinked nose from breakage. Rupert is the better looking man of the two and has fair hair. But David has the more brooding look with a bit of a squashed nose... hmmm ''ip, dip, dog..."

Pre-Production Unit - Peter James Replied!!

Peter James Hi Casey that is great about your project and let me know if there is any help I can give you in any other areas of my books. re the movie, it is still very early stages - the script is being written by Daniel Eckhart, but as yet no decisions on crew and cast. But do keep any eye on my web site for future announcements. All very best.

4 minutes ago ·

Pre-Production Unit - revealing the cast..

This is Felicity Jones and I have cast her as Ashley Harper.

She is the right amount of sexy and bitchy. She is pretty much what Cat and I envision what Ashley looked like and I have seen her in roles where she is a bit of a bitch - e.g. Cape Wrath as Zoe Brogan.

Here is a clip of her in Cape Wrath.

Pre-Production Unit - Contacting Peter

Today I wrote on Peter James facebook wall! Lets hope he replies, it seems by looking at his facebook that he does reply to everyone so fingers crossed!

Hi Peter, I am doing some research for a uni project based upon your dead novels, and was just wondering if you could update me on on any crew and cast for the movie thats in production? Do you have a director etc? Thank you :)

Pre-Production Unit - Character breakdowns - Vic Delaney

Vic Delaney

Vic is Ashley’s partner in crime and boyfriend. At five feet seven inches tall the Australian is barely an inch taller then Ashley, with a wiry muscular build and the persona of a fighting man. His arms are covered with tattoos and his rough-hewn, handsome face is topped off with a crew-cut hair-do. His clothes add to his military persona; his usual attire consists of a combat jacket over a black T-shirt, baggy khaki chinos and what could have been black marching boots. His accent is a hybrid of Australian and that of a South Londoner.

Despite his violent temperament and criminal record, it seems he is really in love with Ashley and allows her to be with other men in order for them to rip them off. It seems all he really wants is to get back to Australia with the one he loves.

Pre-Production Unit - Character breakdowns - Sandy

Sandy

Roy Grace’s beautiful, blonde, leggy wife Sandy has been missing for nine years. She disappeared into thin air on his thirtieth birthday. No note, all her belongings still in the house except for her handbag and her car is still in the garage.

Pre-Production Unit - Character breakdowns - Phil Wheeler

Phil Wheeler

Father of Davey Wheeler and owner of ‘Wheeler’s Auto Recovery’, Phil Wheeler is a hulk of a man with a massive beer belly and is almost always dressed in his work uniform of brown dungarees, scuffed boots and black beanie hat.

Years ago his wife had cracked and left from the strain of caring for Davey and for the past seventeen years he has raised Davey alone.

Pre-Production Unit - Character breakdowns - Nick Nicholl

Nick Nicholl

DC Nick is also a colleague of Branson and Grace and works with them on Operation Salsa. In his late twenties he is as tall as a beanpole, a zealous detective and a fast football forward

Pre-Production Unit - Character breakdowns - Emma - Jane Boutwood

Emma-Jane Boutwood

The newest recruit to them team, DC Boutwood also works on Operation Salsa. She is a slim, attractive girl with an alert face and long fair hair often scooped up in a bun.

Pre-Production Unit - Character breakdowns - Davey Wheeler

Davey Wheeler

Davey is 26 and slightly overweight. He dresses in his uniform of New York Yankees baseball cap the wrong way around, fleece jacket over the lumberjack shirt, jeans and heavy duty boots. He likes to dress the way he sees Americans dress, on the television. He has the mental age of a six year old and that will never change. But he has a superhuman strength that often comes in handy on call outs. He works alongside his dad, Phil Wheeler, doing auto recoveries after accidents.

Obsessed with American cop shows, he talks mostly in an American accent and eats a lot of junk food in his portakabin annexed off the side of his dad’s house.

Pre-Production Unit - Character breakdowns - Bella Moy

Bella Moy

DS Bella Moy is a colleague of Grace and Branson and works with them on Operation Salsa. At thirty-five she has a cheery face beneath a tangle of brown hair and is constantly eating Malteasers. She is a slim woman but it’s often said that she eats more than any human being you have ever seen.

Pre-Production Unit - Character breakdowns - Ashley Harper

Ashley Harper

Ashley is beautiful fiancée of Michael Harrison. Always impeccably dressed in designer clothes, it seems her appearance is always immaculate; even in the toughest of times. With long brown hair, a slender body and beautiful eyes, men fall at her feet and for her vulnerable act.

Her beauty, big grey eyes and acting skills have got her far in life. Ashley is a conniving con artist and a gold digger. She marries rich men under false names all over the world and months after the wedding, mysteriously the men die, leaving ‘grieving’ Ashley with a great big inheritance.

She seemingly cares only for herself, but works with a partner; Vic on all jobs and it seems that she may actually care for him.

Pre-Production Unit - Character breakdowns - Cleo Morey

Michael Harrison

Michael Harrison has always been the natural leader, if as they say, the secret of life is to choose your parents wisely, Michael has ticked plenty of the right boxes. He has inherited his mother’s fair good looks and his father’s charm and entrepreneurial spirit, but without any of the self-destruct genes that had eventually ruined the man.

From the age of 12, when his father gassed himself in the garage of the family home, leaving behind a trail of debtors, Michael had grown up fast, helping his mother make ends meet by doing a paper round, then when he was older by taking labouring jobs in his holidays. He grew up with an appreciation of how hard it was to make money – and how easy it was to fritter it.

Now, at twenty-eight, he is smart, a decent human being, and a natural leader of the pack. If he had flaws, it was that he is too trusting and on occasions, too much of a prankster.

Hopelessly in love with his fiancée Ashley, Michael cannot wait to marry her and share his life with her.

Pre-Production Unit - Character breakdowns -Michael Harrison

Michael Harrison

Michael Harrison has always been the natural leader, if as they say, the secret of life is to choose your parents wisely, Michael has ticked plenty of the right boxes. He has inherited his mother’s fair good looks and his father’s charm and entrepreneurial spirit, but without any of the self-destruct genes that had eventually ruined the man.

From the age of 12, when his father gassed himself in the garage of the family home, leaving behind a trail of debtors, Michael had grown up fast, helping his mother make ends meet by doing a paper round, then when he was older by taking labouring jobs in his holidays. He grew up with an appreciation of how hard it was to make money – and how easy it was to fritter it.

Now, at twenty-eight, he is smart, a decent human being, and a natural leader of the pack. If he had flaws, it was that he is too trusting and on occasions, too much of a prankster.

Hopelessly in love with his fiancée Ashley, Michael cannot wait to marry her and share his life with her.

Pre-Production Unit - Character breakdowns -Glenn Branson

Glenn Branson

Glenn Branson is Roy’s closest friend and colleague, he is a fiercely ambitious and razor sharp Detective Sergeant and not to mention a walking encyclopaedia on movies.

Tall, black and bald as a meteorite with a massive muscular frame from years of serious body building, 32 year old Branson is married to wife Ari with two children Remi and Sammy. He is a wizard on computers and light years ahead of Grace when it comes to modern technology.

He has an interesting dress sense, in which Grace likes to regularly make fun of - “Dressed in a crisp brown suit, a violent tie and two-tone brown and cream correspondent’s shoes”.

Much to Grace’s dismay he doesn’t haven the healthiest diet and after a course in high speed car chases he drives too fast and scares Grace half to death.

Despite all his jabs to Grace about his age, he looks up to him and almost sees him as a teacher, he values his opinions and listens to every word of wisdom and advice Grace gives him.

Pre-Production Unit - Character breakdowns - Mark Warren

Mark Warren

Mark is Michael’s business partner and best friend since their teens. Unlike his business partner’s sloppy dress sense, Mark is fastidious over his appearance. His neat, fair hair and his too conservatively cut clothes for his 28 years always look pristine and brand new, straight off the rail. He likes to think that the world sees him as a gentrified entrepreneur, but in reality, in any group of people, he invariably stands out as the man who looks as if he is there to sell them something.

He drives a BMW X5, although dreams of a Ferrari 360, and lives in a very sought after apartment building on the Brighton sea front. An imposing, modern Deco-style building with a bunch of celebrities among the residents, if you live in the Van Alen building you are a somebody, if you are a somebody, that means you are rich. All his life, Mark has had just one goal – to be rich.

But Mark is not all he seems, he has always been fiercely jealous of Michael and is sleeping with Ashley behind Michaels back, and they are planning to run off with his money and share of the company after their impending marriage. So when the stag night plan goes wrong, Mark is the only person who knows where Michael is but keeps it to himself.

Pre - Production Unit - Character Breakdowns - Glenn Branson

Glenn Branson

Glenn Branson is Roy’s closest friend and colleague, he is a fiercely ambitious and razor sharp Detective Sergeant and not to mention a walking encyclopaedia on movies.

Tall, black and bald as a meteorite with a massive muscular frame from years of serious body building, 32 year old Branson is married to wife Ari with two children Remi and Sammy. He is a wizard on computers and light years ahead of Grace when it comes to modern technology.

He has an interesting dress sense, in which Grace likes to regularly make fun of - “Dressed in a crisp brown suit, a violent tie and two-tone brown and cream correspondent’s shoes”.

Much to Grace’s dismay he doesn’t haven the healthiest diet and after a course in high speed car chases he drives too fast and scares Grace half to death.

Despite all his jabs to Grace about his age, he looks up to him and almost sees him as a teacher, he values his opinions and listens to every word of wisdom and advice Grace gives him.

Pre - Production Unit - Character Breakdowns - Alison Vosper

Alison Vosper

Assistant chief constable Alison Vosper is Grace’s boss and has been nicknamed No.27 by one of Grace’s colleagues. No.27 is a sweet and sour dish on the local Chinese takeaway menu, and that’s exactly what she is – sweet and sour.

In her early forties, with wispy blonde hair cut conservatively short, and framing a hard but attractive face with her powerful floral scent, Alison is not to be messed with. Often power-dressed in black two-piece suits and crisp white blouses Alison keeps a wall around herself. Nonetheless, behind her hard-cop carapace, there is a certain vulnerability to her. At times her waspish brown eyes twinkle with humour in a flirtatious way that reveals this.

Often found sitting behind her polished rosewood desk in her immaculate ground floor office in the Queen Anne police headquarters, with its view across a trimmed lawn. Her desk always almost bare except for a slim crystal vase containing three purple tulips, framed photographs of her husband (a police officer several years older, but three ranks her junior) and her two children, an ammonite pen holder and a stack of the morning’s newspapers fanned out like a triumphant poker hand.

Pre-Production Unit - Character breakdowns

So one of my tasks is to write up the character breakdowns of important characters within the book in terms of the TV adaption. I deducted the important characters down to 14 people. I did this by deciding that other characters within the book wouldn't be included at all, or if they did they would be so minor and are so minor in the book that it would be near on impossible to write up a character bio.

I wrote the character bios by literally going through the book and pulling out useful descriptions and personality traits and put them all together.

I have already posted Roy's bio, I shall post the rest individually... see next 13 blogs..

Pre-Production Unit - character breakdowns

I have been typing up the character breakdowns, I wont bore you with all of them, but i'll put up the main character; Roy's breakdown:

Roy Grace

Roy Grace is a 39 year old Detective Superintendent for Sussex Police. A kind and decent man who; after the disappearance of his wife Sandy, throws his all into his work to avoid the all consuming sadness of losing her nine years ago. Friends have forced him into several blind dates over the years and he attempts internet dating but along with the guilt it brings upon him, he simply cannot accept there maybe another miss right out there for him. It seems at times his only constant companion is his goldfish; Marlon. Although after a first date with Chief Mortician Cleo Morey things maybe looking up for Grace.

With short, light cropped hair, a little more than a light fuzz on his face, five foot ten inches of height and eyes like Paul Newman, Grace is a good looking man, if a little rough around the edges. His nose is squashed and kinked after being broken in a scrap he’d had when he was a beat copper, which gives him the appearance of a retired prize fighter. His powerful physique, despite his love of booze and an on-off battle with cigarettes, is kept up by weekly twenty mile runs, hard work at the police gym and the occasional game of rugger, is often hidden in a shirt and tie due to the nature of his job.

He has a stubbornness and determination inside him that has driven him relentlessly throughout his life to pursue facts, to pursue the truth, which probably led to his early promotion to Detective Superintendent. His photographic memory and strong interest in medium ship has served very handy in his years in the Police force.

Dissertation - Life of a third year...

Pre - Production Unit - Location Scouting in Brighton

Pre-Production Unit

After reading the book 'dead simple' I have listed every character in the book and noted all page references for descriptions. I have set about thinking about casting. It seems we have come across a possible winner for Roy Grace - David Morrissey. Other thoughts are Paul Bettany for Mark, possibly Emily Blunt for Cleo and Ruda Gedmintas for Ashley.

We are going to Brighton tomorrow for some location scouting :)

Pre - Production Unit - Delivery Schedule

Delivery Schedule

Cat – 10 Pages of script by Tuesday 13^th March

Casey – Character Bios and Casting ideas by Tuesday 13^th March

Dylan – Style/Tone/Mood of a poster by Tuesday 13^th March

Location Scouting – Brighton Wednesday 14^th March

Cat-script 20pages by 22^nd March

Dylan – Poster draft by 22^nd March

Casey – Casting decided, location/ set ideas by 22^nd March

Trailer Record Brighton – Thursday 29^th March

Thursday 10^th May – Everything ready to be printed and packaged

Pre - Production Unit - Dead Simple

Cloak n’ Dagger UK Productions

Bringing British Crime Fiction to the small screen

Adapting Peter James’ “Dead Simple” into a six part drama series for Channel 4.

Roles

Cat Dorsett – Writer

Casey Parker – Producer

Dylan Cox – Director

Task List

Logo - Simon

Scripting – Cat

Synopsis - Cat

Character Bios – determine who is important – Casey

Cast – Casey

Crew – Casey

Poster – Dylan

Trailer – Dylan

Promos/Campaign – Dylan

Website Design – Dylan

Locations/Sets/Costumes – determine all Places in book – Casey

Style/Tone – mood-board? – Casey

Budget?

Vehicle – Roy’s Alfa Romeo – Casey

Admin- actor contracts, crew contracts, release forms, location contracts, invoices, receipts – Casey