:: gia’s blog ::

We arrived back from New York late last night. This morning I got up early-ish and started my regular tour through all my places online. On YouTube, I’d noticed that someone had put up a video response to the ‘Sunshine’ trailer in my account. At first it looked like a fan video - the song was by Linkin Park- but by about 15 seconds in I realised it was a music video by Linkin Park which was visually inspired by ‘Sunshine’. Nice to see ‘Sunshine’ popping up in unexpected places… [Warners keeps slashing and burning YouTube, so I apologise if the videos not available]

Sunshine is on at the Rio Cinema Dalston in London this weekend as part of the Physics On Film festival run by the Institute of Physics (and organised by my friend Sam Rae:).

Unfortunately, I’m not going to be in London this weekend otherwise I’d be there. I’d love to see ‘Sunshine’ in the cinema again. The last time I saw it on a big screen was at an IMAX After Dark screening.

I finished working on Sunshine when the DVD came out in the UK last September. I then had a bit of a physical collapse and needed to restructure everything again in order to not end up a complete wreck. So last autumn, I spent 6 weeks in bed. When I tell people this, they think I must have been depressed. Not at all. I was happy, but genuinely physically exhausted. When you do 7 days a week, 16 hour days for two years, you end up needing 6 weeks in bed. My colleague Stephanie at Fox in LA told me that would happen, so it’s not like I wasn’t expecting it. She said they’d suck my brain dry and leave me with very little left. And that they did.
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Another post I did for Sunshine.

In the beginning, it was hot. Really, really hot. You know how hot the inside of your oven is? Well, that is a relative walk in the park compared to how unfathomably hot it was at the Big Bang. It was so hot that Time, Space, Matter and Energy were indistinguishable. Yea. Hot.

A second after the Big Bang things had cooled enough for quarks to form and combine to create protons and neutrons. After about three minutes some of the protons bonded to neutrons. Though it had cooled significantly, it was still pretty hot, about a billion degrees, which was considerably too hot for atoms to form. It stayed like this for about three or four hundred thousand years. During that time, not much happened, but the Universe continued to expand and cool down and after a while hydrogen and helium atoms formed. For another 300 million years there was just a sea of atoms. And Darkness.
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I’ve been going through some of the stuff I wrote for Sunshine (I’m trying for a presenting job on the BBC and have been looking for examples of my writing). It’s been a while since I visited the site and was surprised and delighted by what I read. I wrote that?

Here’s a short one which was pretty cool.
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On first thought, I’d say that 2007 was fairly uneventful. My past few months have consisted of me being ill and feeling like I’ve done very little other than try and get healthy again… Then, when I properly think about it, I realise that the whole year has been MENTAL!

January

Me and Charlie Brooker

I was doing lots of stuff for Sunshine and Channel4.com, saw Ben Folds in concert, the Sunshine trailer was leaked by resourceful fans and I was interviewed for Charlie Brooker’s Screenwipe.

February

/Cat blog

MASSIVE Sunshine stuff, loads of Channel 4 stuff, went to LIFT where Brian spoke and my Screepwipe interview was broadcast.

Watch Video

March

Danny Boyle on the Sunshine set

I know the photo above wasn’t taken in March, but the month was so freakin’ mental I didn’t take any photos. I was doing 7 days a week, 18 hour days mainly for Sunshine- press and bloggers’ screenings, press interviews, cast and crew screening, Manchester screening, messageboards, emails, IMDB, generally mentalness. There was also Channel 4 stuff, a discussion I took part in at the ICA, went to Cambridge with Brian who spoke at their Science Festival… and I’ve also got ‘Milton Keynes’ in my diary on the 16th. I’ve got no memory of what that was about at all.

April

Danny Boyle, Cillian Murphy, Brian

Another insane month. Sunshine was released, screening and Q&A with Danny at the Ritzy cinema, trip to Russia for the premiere, the 28 Weeks Later premiere… and I bought some ‘Sunshine’ props and costumes. :)

May

Tiger in my face

My Sunshine props and costumes were delivered. :) Was starting to get properly frustrated with the Channel 4 stuff, was weaning off Sunshine, I went to the Arthur C. Clarke Awards nominations, did a Social Media Club photo walk with Lloyd, went to Anna and Julian’s wedding and started looking at secondary schools for my son.

June

Brian at the Star Wars exhibition

Trying to get back into life and recover generally from Sunshine insanity. Sunshine was at the IMAX, spoke at Music Tank, Daywatch screening, more secondary school stuff (including an entrance exam… yikes!)

July

Me at the Gormley exhibition

Secondary school interview (yikes!), started on the Sunshine DVD release, bit of Daywatch work, David Hoyle started Magazine again… my son was offered a place at a secondary school (yay!)

August

Brian, Mo, Benny Wong, Cliff Curtis

Sunshine DVD release, 28 Weeks Later DVD release, Daywatch, more David Hoyle at Magazine… QR Codes.

September

QR Codes

QR Codes for 28 Weeks Later, interviewed about QR on various tv and radio programmes, my son started at his new school, I was invited to talk to the Nuclear Industry Association, recorded the Nature podcast sponsor stings, went to more David Hoyle shows, saw Prince’s final aftershow gig, got properly ill.

October

CERN

Still ill. Started working on a project looking at the Ageing Population, went to CERN twice - the first time with Kevin Eldon and Simon Munnery, the second time with Quentin Wilson- took part in a Nuclear Industry Association roundtable discussion, met Arvind from Slingshot Studios.

November

David Hoyle

Lots of meetings, dinners and lunches. Ageing Project roundtable meeting and dinner… And, of course, the wonderful David Hoyle.

December

My father came to visit, I attended the Juno bloggers’/Twitterers’ screening, fell in LOVE with ‘Juno’ (you’ll be hearing more about this), started Twittering (finally), went to see the King Tut exhibition, attended the Nuclear Industry Association annual dinner, my son had his birthday, recorded a Digital Planet with Gareth Mitchell and Bill Thompson, more talks with Slingshot Studios, David Soul…then…

…today.

After all that, I really need to rest over the next few weeks. I feel like I’ve still not recovered from my illness properly and still need to catch up on all of the sleep I lost last spring with Sunshine… My next 10 days will consist of POWER RESTING. I won’t do any work (except for watching the pile of screeners I’ve got), I won’t worry about whether or not I’ll have any work in the new year… I will just relax in the most hardcore way…

Well, today Sunshine was released on DVD. I thought I’d take this chance to just share some of my Sunshine memories (well the ones which come with photographs which I can more or less make public) from the past two years…

During filming at 3 Mills Studios, I carried my ‘office’ with me to and from work every single day. I looked like a techy bag lady.

One of my very favourite things was wandering around the sets which weren’t being filmed on. Here’s me sitting in the social area of the Icarus II, where Capa sits when he’s told he’s got to make *the* decision.

My Sunshine husbands were/are Damien…

…and Phil

They did the videos, I did the website. We sat next to each other, ate lunch with each other, made each other copious amounts of coffee, hung out together, stalked Danny together… the whole thing.

My actual husband was on-set regularly, too.

In between the moment Danny shouted ‘Ladies and Gentlemen, that is a wrap’ in December 2005 and the start of the post-production phase, there was the wrap party at which Benny Wong DJed.

The post-production phase went on and on and I didn’t see a single frame of the film until September 2006 - it started with a completely different character doing the voice over and was, in my memory, fairly different from the final film. Danny finished post in December 2006 and a couple days later was the first time the trailer was shown. This is Andrew Macdonald, on his Crackberry, in the screening room waiting to watch the trailer shown on a cinema screen for the first time.

Andrew is just the loveliest person in the world. I love him lots and lots and lots. And lots. He very kindly invited me to Moscow to the ‘Sunshine’ premiere. Here’s the two of us in Red Sq.

The Moscow Sunshine Boys…

Andrew, me, Brian and Danny all tarted up for the premiere.

Brian, Danny and Cillian (well, his back) ready to walk on stage.

And on stage…

I, of course, made a point of making sure my son met as many ‘Sunshine’ people as he could. He got Alex’s autograph though Andrew said he’d only sign a cheque… He also had a great time on set with Troy Garity (who was absolutely lovely with him)…

He got to meet Chris Evans…

…Cliff Curtis…

…Benedict Wong…

…and was a honorary Sunshine Boy for a day.

So now I’m finished with Sunshine… there’s not really anything left to do (whether or not LA will hire me for *their* DVD release remains to be seen…), so for the next wee bit I’m working on ‘28 Weeks Later’… so you might want to get used to these.

I’m just seeing how this looks and works here. I’ve sent it out via Facebook already, but want to see how it looks here…

I just got in from the Rise of the Silver Surfer premiere. I unexpectedly got some tickets for it today when I was at a meeting at Fox. I took my son who *loves* the first film and was very keen to try and meet each of the actors. I said that might be difficult, but if we were close to Chris Evans he’d definitely get his autograph.

Of course, it was complete chaos when we arrived. We walked the full length of the ‘blue’ carpet and right outside the door I saw some people I knew from Fox so we stopped there to wait for the actors to arrive. They didn’t come and they didn’t come and then security got a bit shirty with us and made us go inside.

Once inside they were trying to usher us into the cinema, but I stepped aside to wait for *any*one from the film. I kept ignoring the security people (’Please, you’re going to have to go into the cinema.’ ‘Yes, thank you, I understand.’) and they were getting increasingly angry with me.

Suddenly (finally) Chris Evans walked by, I said, ‘Chris, I’m Gia, I worked on ‘Sunshine’ (he didn’t remember me *sigh*), my son would love your autograph.’ ‘Of course!’ So they had a little chat, Chris signed his autograph and then I got a photo.

My son is the luckiest kid. He’s now met Alex Garland, Andrew Macdonald, Danny Boyle, Troy Garity, Benny Wong (via webcam only) and now Chris Evans… He’s not even seen ‘Sunshine’ yet and he’s a big fan (though the DVD is coming soonish… *ahem*). He said in the cab on the way home, ‘I think I want to change my name to Mace.’ :)