Ashens and the Polybius Heist

Created by Stuart Ashen

Final chance to back the feature film Ashens and the Polybius Heist! Also: GameChild discs!

Latest Updates from Our Project:

Thu May 9 '19 Announcement
almost 7 years ago – Thu, May 09, 2019 at 11:53:31 AM

Hello!

It's in the can, as they say - on Sunday we wrapped principal photography on Ashens and the Polybius Heist. We made it! Here's a little video looking back on the 4 weeks of shooting.

The video shows one person you won't have seen before in relation to the movie - the splendid Nigel Fairs, who plays Ashens' father Jonathan! But he's only seen in flashback, as the character is long gone before the events of the film.
 
So what happened in the final week? I shall ram some words and photos together in order to tell you!
 
Tuesday
A big day - the filming of the infamous Polybius machine itself! Can't really tell you anything more without spoiling stuff. It's a minefield, innit.
 

Probably the coolest photo of director Riyad I've ever seen. Could that machine be... the Polybius?
 
Yes it could. I said earlier. Keep up.
 
Wednesday
Dan Hardcastle's big day! We shot the interior of the heist van, where Dan's character Cube attempts to co-ordinate things. This is mostly to provide mobile support for the heist, and partly to keep him away from Ashens because they kind of hate each other. This was an incredibly gruelling 12-hour day for Dan who was an absolute champ. He hardly collapsed in exhaustion at all!
 
Cube, Annalise and Jarred keep an eye on things while Vocal and Yiannis keep an eye on... other things.
 
Thursday
Thursday was back to the crew's warehouse where they hatch their heist-y schemes. It was always pleasure to film with the whole crew - it was immense fun and allowed for some great ad-libs.
Notice Barry Lewis with a bad case of Terminator Eye behind Yiannis.
 
Dan Tomlinson poses with Katie and Keeley, heads of make-up and costume respectively. Not sure if the white sheet is the backdrop for a photoshoot or someone's washing.
 
Friday
We moved location to Hornsey Town Hall and shot a lot of technical heist stuff. It was the first time I filmed with Stuart Barter AKA Stuggy who was brilliant - super committed to the character of the villanious Antony Agonist, and extremely funny.
 
Heist stuff. Any description (and in fact any other angle) would be intensely spoileriffic.
 
The obsessively unpleasant Antony Agonist. The mutant lovechild of Silicon Valley and a git.
 
Saturday
Emotional scenes today in Ashens' office with his sister Christine, as they attempt to come to terms with the fact that neither of them has effectively dealt with the loss of their father. But in happier news, he's got a really cool Lego phone on his desk!
 
Eagle-eyed readers may spot that this is the same office location as used in the Mike Myers scenes in Bohemian Rhapsody.
 
Sunday
The final day! And my goodness we made the most of it. More office-based stuff and other scenes I can't even mention without giving away plot points. We wrapped at 11pm and all immediately collapsed ill, as our willpower-fuelled adrenaline gave up and took our immune systems with it. (This is traditional on low budget film shoots.)
 
Ashens and Benny studiously ignore the incongrous pink streamers.
 
And there we are folks. It's nearly all in the can! Heart-breakingly we have to reshoot two major scenes due to the frighteningly short-sighted act of a single individual, so we'll need another day filming. But then it's just a normal day of pick-ups and editor Linton will have everything we need to hammer together an entire feature film. Whew.
 
The final slate! With Director of Photography Christian, Director Riyad and my disembodied floating head.
 
Again, thank you all so much for your support. You know how people say that they "couldn't have done it without you"? Well in our case that is literally true as you guys paid for nearly the whole principal photography! It means so much to us all on Team Polybius, and we can't wait to complete the film so we can share it with you.
 
Also big thanks for all the positive feedback I've received for these updates! I did my best to make them entertaining without giving anything away, but you never really know if you've managed it unless people say.
 
So what next? Well, we're having a week or so to recuperate then we're back on it again. I shall be in touch...
 
Perks update: The Unseen Ashens videos are going out in a few hours. Keep an eye on your e-mail!
 
Cheers,
 
Stuart.

Mon Apr 29 '19 Announcement
almost 7 years ago – Mon, Apr 29, 2019 at 07:25:21 AM

Hello!

Week three has been and gone like a thing that comes and goes. We were based in a studio for almost the entire week, which doubled for the warehouse that the crew plan the heist from. And several other places too, because studios are good like that. Click here if you'd like to see week 3 in 60 seconds!

One bit of excite-o-news: The character of Vocal will now be played by comedian, actor and voice-genius Katia Kvinge.

Tuesday
Due to bank holiday shenanigans we began on Tuesday, filming The Big Briefing where Ashens and Benny explain their plan to the rest of the group. It's a huge scene with a lot of characters and some of my favourite jokes.

Sit up straight! No talking!

Wednesday
This was mostly heist setup, where the crew iron out the fine details and get everything together. Can't really say anything here without spoiling stuff.


We're through the looking glass, people.

This is the looking glass. Kind of.

Thursday
Ashens introduces the driver to the rest of the crew and Cube has some problems. which I cannot specify because SPOILERS. Annoyingly I don't have a photo of the driver yet, so please enjoy this one of Yiannis.

It's a strong look.

Cube and Annalise may have problems, but his jumper is magnificent.

Friday
More heist prep scenes that I can't talk about! But also: THE COOL SLOW MOTION WALK where the crew set off and walk towards camera! I've always wanted to shoot one of those. I don't have a photo yet so here's Eli pulling an evil face:

Not in character. Benny is lovely. (So is Eli, I just asked him to pull a face.)

A behind-the-scenes look at how we supplement budget.

Saturday
On Saturday we escaped from the studio onto a rooftop! A very cold rooftop in the rain at 3am! What lives we lead. Can't say much here but suffice to say that a mobile phone mast comes into play.

At least we had good signal.

Please meet the make-up crew. From left to right: Sophie, Lucy and Katie.

And there endeth week three. Please join me next week when I'll be telling you what happened in week four! Without giving away the plot!

Perks update: I've managed to get all the Weird British Sports stuff uploaded but it'll take a bit longer for the Unseen Ashens - partially because of terrible upload speeds here, and partially because I left some of the completed videos at my house LIKE AN IDIOT.

In fact, an e-mail with details about the Sports videos should arrive around the same time this one does! Spook.

We managed to see Endgame before anyone spoiled it for us! Huzzah!

Take care and I'll annoy you all again next week.

Cheers,

Stuart.

Mon Apr 22 '19 Announcement
almost 7 years ago – Mon, Apr 22, 2019 at 05:20:05 PM

Hello!

Week two of shooting was that most heinous of creatures – an entire week of night shoots. If you like going to bed
at 6am, then this was the week for you! We were based in the same location all week – a very impressive school in South-West London – which serves as several locations in the film.

Monday
A day of full-on heist action! We filmed Ashens and Benny sneaking around a secure building, overcoming fiendish security systems. All that high-quality heist stuff that lovers of criminal capers crave. We also filmed some background scene-setting footage for an eighties flashback, because we all need a little bit of eighties in our lives.


Costume designer Keeley attempts to remove noodle stains from Eli's costume.

Tuesday
Amazingly I had Tuesday off! I spent it editing the Unseen Ashens videos because I am always on-brand. But back on set there was more heist action with Jarred, Annalise and Yiannis - and top level science gubbins with Ashens' sister Christine.


Christine (played by Joanna) on the left talks to the coolest scientist ever.

Wednesday
Today was DAY OF THE SECURITY GUARDS. Because of course you can't have a heist without some security to overcome, can you? The rest of the day was taken up with more heist shenanigans which I can't talk about in any detail as it would totally spoil the plot. Sorry.


Security posse represent! Note comedian Ash Frith, Matthew of Cheesemint Productions, YouTube streamer notMarley and my friend Quang. Also introducing Alexander Tol as The Cowboy.

Thursday
Whilst the shooting went well - as it always has thus far - I can't say that this was a good day overall. An astonishingly serious problem appeared out of nowhere, causing mass wailing and gnashing of teeth. But! due to a frankly superhuman effort from the production team over the past 5 days, we've been able to continue filming. (In Game Of Thrones terms it wasn’t quite the Red Wedding or the destruction of the Sept of Baelor, but it was pretty much on the same level of "ARGH" as Littlefinger's betrayal of Ned Stark.)
In infinitely less horrid news, Thursday marked the return of everyone's favourite science loony - The Professor, played by the ever-lovely Robert Llewellyn. It's always a treat to have Robert on set.

Robert realising just how much complicated exposition dialogue we gave him.

Friday
It's the all-new villain show! It was the first day of filming for the baddie of Ashens and the Polybius Heist - the egomaniacal business psycho Antony Agonist (Do you see what we did there?). Played brilliantly by Stuart Barter AKA Stuggie, Agonist is obsessed with making everything around him homogeneous and sterile. And as you can probably guess, he is less than popular with the heist crew...

All the screens, all the time.

And that was week two. After 3 days off for Easter, we're back to working days and in a studio all week.

Jarred Christmas undergoes a heavy hat-measuring from 1st Assistant Camera / Focus Puller Bradley.

 
Director Riyad and Director of Photography Christian talk shot composition, while script supervisor Esther keeps an eye on their limbs for continuity.

Perks Update: The good news is that the Unseen Ashens and Weird British Sports videos are all edited and complete! But it will take daaaays to upload them as I didn't realise the speed in my AirBnB was so slow - less than 1Mbps upstream in fact, so it's taking forever to upload large video files between shoots. Ugh. 


The heist must go on!

Right, I'm off to sleep. Take care and I'll annoy you again next week.

Cheers,

Stuart.

Sun Apr 14 '19 Announcement
almost 7 years ago – Sun, Apr 14, 2019 at 10:59:03 PM

Hello!

Here's the update from the end of the first week of filming Ashens and the Polybius Heist. A bittersweet moment for me - whilst the week went very well, I just spent 2 hours writing an update which Indiegogo deleted for no reason so now I'm having to type the entire thing out again. GAH.

First things first: We are super-pleased to annouce that the brilliant Joanna O'Connor will be playing Christine Ashen, Ashens' sister and electronics expert.


Here's week one in 60 seconds.
 
So... Monday! The very first day! And due to location-based scheduling, the very first thing we shot was a post-credits sequence. Not sure if that's how Marvel do it, but that's how we roll. The first two days were on location in the house of Yiannis, cast member and associate producer, who somehow agreed to let a film crew take over his world for 48 hours. We shot some scenes with Christine here, and two flashback sequences which give a bit of insight into Ashens' childhood. In these flashbacks Ashens' father is played by the excellent Nigel Fairs, who will be well known to anyone familiar with the Doctor Who audio plays from Big Finish Productions. Young Ashens and Christine were portrayed by my godson Sam and his sister Charlotte, who were both brilliant.
 
A coin? Or pendant? What could it mean?
 
We also shot our first exterior scenes outside a drizzly town hall to introduce Annalise (Alyssa Kyria) the fixer.
 
If you need something, Annalise can get it.
 

Eli Silverman as Benny. Contrary to what this photo looks like, we are not shooting a romantic comedy.
 
Wednesday was another day of introductions - we filmed the first scenes of The Cube (Daniel Hardcastle) and Geoff Excellence (Daniel Tomlinson). Despite becoming a YouTube star at the end of the first film, Geoff is in a bad place when we encounter him 6 years on.
 
The Cube in his natural habitat. His jumper is MAGNIFICENT.
 
Not sure if Dan is in character here or not.
 
Barry Lewis as Geoff's faithful assistant, Chef Assistance. His uniform is a cross between a chef and Oddjob. And his hat is a colander!
 
Thursday was DAY OF THE EXTRAS, where I called in half the humans I have the contact details of. The morning - our introduction to Vocal (Daniel Barker) - shall remain vaguely secret but the afternoon introduced us to Jarred (Jarred Christmas) in a very low-rent casino based in a social club.
 
Jarred practices his card skills with dealer Alec Plowman, who you may know from the Ashens videos about Star Wars figures.
 
It's Dazz from Did You Know Gaming! Greg was there too but not in this photo, obviously.
 
Massive thanks to everyone who gave up their day to arse about for us. We had a lot of YouTubers including: Mike Jeavons, Film Brain, Kim Justice, Bex Trista, The Gaming Muso, and Quang who I don't think has a YouTube channel, but does have the most comprehensive games console collection I know of.
 
Told you Greg was there!
 
And as if that wasn't enough, fresh from Black Mirror's Bandersnatch and writing Polybius for PSVR we had mighty programmer Jeff Minter! And what a lovely guy he was too - he arrived a day early and stayed overnight, sat around all day without complaint and even appeared in a second scene as an extra (not that you'll recognise him.) He is a gent and a half.
 
Buy this man's games! (Not the man on the left.)
 
Friday was our first night shoot - 5pm to 4am, yum - and a precursor to an entire week of nights in week two. We covered the first few shots of the film and another scene where a NAUGHTY PERSON breaks into a HOUSE to steal a THING.
 
A naughty person. Looks a bit like a bad guy from an eighties toy line.
 
And that's a very brief rundown of week one - obviously I've missed a lot out to avoid spoilers. We've got some great scenes in the bag and visually it's looking pretty magnificent (big up for Director of Photography Christian.)
 

Perks update: I've postponed the exclusive video content for a week due to tedious technical issues - I should be able to sort it before next weekend. Also! At some point I'll be marking the Gamechild discs as sent. I know they've nearly arrived now, but I didn't realise you could mark items as sent and I need to keep the Indiegogo stuff up to date. So expect a totally redundant e-mail at some point.


I saw this painting in a hotel. WHICH SIDE IS THE THUMB?!

That's all folks! I'll send you another update next week, like Uncle Travelling Matt from Fraggle Rock or something.

Cheers,

Stuart.

Fri Apr 5 '19 Announcement
almost 7 years ago – Fri, Apr 05, 2019 at 04:39:11 AM

Hello!

Here it is! The very first proper production update! Blimey and possibly even crikey.

First things first: we begin filming this coming Monday, the 8th of April. Which editor Linton just realised is exactly five years to the day since we started filming Ashens and the Quest for the GameChild! It's probably fate or something.


The main production team for Polybius Heist. Clockwise from the lady facing away from camera in the bottom left: Make-up Assistant, Make-up Designer, Production Co-ordinator, Costume Designer, Production Assistant, Director, First Assistant Director, Associate Producer, Line Producer, My empty chair as I was taking this photo, Director of Photography, Gaffer, Production Designer. Not pictured: Sound Engineer.

Now I am super pleased to introduce you to the finalised main cast of Ashens and the Polybius Heist! Well, most of them as I want to leave a few surprises for you...

  • Ashens, a collector of collectables: Stuart Ashen
  • Benny, his business associate: Eli Silverman
  • SECRET: REDACTED
  • Anthony Agonist, a twisted businessman: Stuart Barter
  • The Professor, Ashens' mentor: Robert Llewellyn
  • Geoffrey Excellence, Ex-mascot and media personality : Daniel Tomlinson
  • Cube, the overseer: Dan Hardcastle
  • Jarred, the mole: Jarred Christmas
  • Annalise, the fixer: Alyssa Kyria
  • Vocal, the grifter: Daniel Barker
  • Yiannis, the grease man: Yiannis Vassilakis
  • Richard, the Driver: Richard Sandling
  • SECRET: REDACTED
  • Henry, a crazed collector: Tom Bonington
  • Car Salesman, a dealer in automobiles: Alex Lopera
  • Annoying Fan, an irritating person: Ben Allen
  • Chef Assistance, Geoff's PA: Barry Lewis
  • Handsome Man, a jolly co-operator: Jonti Picking
  • Attractive Man, another jolly co-operator: Dan Bull
  • And more! Obviously. There couldn't be just 19 people in a film like this.

...I think that's enough to be going on with. Obviously from next week we'll be taking all sorts of pics on set and behind the scenes, but rather than annoy you with a wall of constant e-mails I'll keep these updates in a digest format that I'll send out a couple of times a week. If you do want to keep an eye on all our behind-the-scenes minutiae then you can follow @PolybiusHeist on Twitter, @ashens on Instagram and polybiusheist on Facebook.

Now for a perks update thing!

Firstly, I said last time that I'd be sending out the Backerkit surveys soon. Then I realised there's actually no point doing that yet and it wil just confuse things while we're filming, so I'll leave that for a couple of months.
Secondly, all GameChild DVD's and Blu-rays have been sent out so should be with you soon if they're not already.
Thirdly, I'm hammering together all the videos for Unseen Ashens and Weird British Sports. I keep finding extra bits to put in! But I'll draw a line under it and send out e-mails with the appropriate links next weekend.

It still doesn't quite seem real that we're shooting on Monday. It's been an incredibly long and arduous process to get here and we quite literally couldn't have done it without all of your support. Thanks again folks.

Cheers,

Stuart.