The Final Battle II
Location: Near Alton, Hampshire
Bodies present: Ian Lindsay, Sue Element, Mike Varty, David Randell, Henry Burrows, Shaun Gostelow

Today we were back in the woods to finish what we started last time. I gave Dave and Ian a lift to the location, and Shaun turned up soon after we arrived.  After waiting twenty minutes for Mike and Sue to appear, we decided to head off into the trees and make a start on some of the shots.  We got a few miscellaneous alien shots done before they arrived, about an hour late!   There was some excuse about being trapped in a petrol station that couldn't accept credit cards but we guessed the truth was probably something more like oversleeping...

Dave plays the popular 'kick the alien' game

Filming went fairly smoothly; the main cause of retakes being the shots where we had to coordinate aliens, explosions and missiles, ensuring nothing exploded until the exact moment they should.  There were a couple of explosions which had to occur in very close proximity to the three students - we got these by filming from a distance and using the good old zoom to make things look a lot closer together than they really were.

It's close to Jimmy, but Laura's behind him!

As this was the very last day for our small foil-wrapped aliens, we made the most of it, grabbing as many different shots as we could of them before we packed up for the evening.  We had more crawling, more exploding and even a couple interacting with the students...

An alien gets friendly with Jimmy's head

Finally, we had some new pyrotechnic devices to test - large maroons...  We'd read the warnings on the box about fragmentation, so Shaun had brought along a metal bucket we could place them in.  Dave wired one up, we retreated as far as the wire allowed, and then touched it to the battery.  Impressive results - the bucket disintegrated and sent pieces twenty feet into the air.  The sound of the detonation rumbled around the valley and could probably be heard from over five miles away.  All very nice, but perhaps a bit violent for a simple alien explosion - we may attempt to get some into our surreal dream sequences.

Sue and Ian can't stop laughing

Two days of filming left?  Quite possibly...