“It was a script I wrote solely for myself. I thought, I’m not going to try to cater for an audience, I’m going to write something mad and see what happens. And everyone seemed to really like it, and they convinced me it was a good idea to make it, so I decided to just go with it” Anthony Woodley, the director of ultra-low-budget British sci-fi flick, Outpost 11 is talking about how the project came about.
It’s the middle of December, and we’ve headed down to a remote airfield in rural Surrey to visit one of the more unusual sets we’ve ever been on. With a budget that wouldn’t even pay for the catering on most movies – including most low-budget movies – Outpost 11 is an exercise in squeezing every last penny out of the production budget. For the last three weeks the crew have been staying in the director’s parent’s house, just down the road from the set. Everyone is doubling up on jobs, to the point where even a stuntman ended up helping out by operating the boom mic.
The set itself, built in a dilapidated and disused 1970s-style office building, is clearly where all the money has gone. Actually, that should be sets, as there are actually two sets within the building, separated out by the production office. At one end is the living quarters: wood clad, cramped and serving as both accommodation and office, it bears a remarkable resemblance to the real life Antarctic hut used by Captain Robert Falcon Scott.
Although we’ve come to the set a couple of days after the crew finished filming on it, the set is still standing, and while it’s nearly pitch dark – all the lights are currently being used on the other set –it’s still possible to make out the vast array of antiques that have been used to dress it. “We’ve not actually bought that much” explains producer, James Littlewood, “what you find in this room is a lot of stuff where you’ve grown up and your mum and dad have got something in the loft, and you’re like, ‘what the hell is that?’ and then you start to make this film and you go back up into that loft and you put it all in a bag.”
At the other end of the corridor, via the production office/green room/crew rest area is the engine room set. Built from a septic tank, fibre glass pipes and plywood, it looks astonishingly solid, and has the feel of a steam engine. It would look impressive on the set of a film with a Hollywood budget. Here it’s almost unbelievable. It’s also unbelievably cramped, with barely enough room for a camera operator and an actor, let alone the sound recordist, the camera assistant, the assistant director and all their equipment.
This strong sense of design is core to Woodley’s vision, as he explains, “I think it really does help, the artistic background, it gives a more visual style to the filmmaking, especially for directing it helps to get the look right as well as the acting and the actors. “ But this steampunk style, which Woodley believes hasn’t ever been fully realised on the big screen before, is more than just aesthetic. “An alternative past”, “not of any time period”, the setting is a fully realised steampunk world, at once familiar and different, it’s integral to the storyline of the movie, and allows Woodley to explore some interesting concepts, “there’s a fascination for that isolation, and I think I’ve taken inspiration from films like The Thing, and How I Ended the Summer”, he explains, “I thought it would be cool to do a cabin fever thing where everyone turns a bit bonkers, and they turn on each other, and they’re not quite sure why, and because they’re in the middle of nowhere there’s no getting out”.
And it’s the fact that the movie has something to say that attracted actor Luke Healy to the project, “Sci-fi isn’t a world I know. I didn’t know what steampunk meant three and a half months ago, so it’s all been a learning curve. But the thing that most attracted me when I first read it is the dynamic between the three guys.” He confesses, “Three generations of men, in a slightly futile position, knowing that they’re in a slightly futile position, and they’re stuck there. To me that’s one of the most interesting parts of the film, the futility of that.”
Having made several short films with Woodley, Healy wanted to bring more to the project than just his acting talents, and so also served as one of the film’s producers, “I’ve helped with the casting, and because I’ve been an actor for nearly 20 years now, you just accumulate lots of knowledge about what makes a happy job, what makes a smooth job. So I’ve just been working on the areas that I know, people that I know in that area – a mate of mine cast this for us – Knowing that if the actors have a decent B&B they’ll be better at work during the day. If we have decent catering. Making sure that the basics are covered.”
Even more remarkable than the production value on display is the project’s quick turnaround time. The crew had been in prep on another project titled Flight 86, but when that fell apart due to the loss of a location, Outpost 11 was brought together in less than three months. The man who helped bring it together was executive producer Mike Woodley, Anthony’s father. An experienced aerial coordinator, with credits on movies as diverse as Memphis Belle, Quantum of Solace and Captain America, Mike’s coonections and experience proved a boon to the team.
In spite of Mike’s experience on huge blockbusters, though, he’s realistic when it comes to ambitions for this film, “We’re not trying to make a big commercial film, we’re trying to make something that has a high standard, where the story is good”. For both Woodley’s the project is about much more than commercial success, “It is really raw talent being given an opportunity to show what they can do,” explains Woodley Sr.,“and everybody is doing a great job”
Outpost 11 is available to buy on DVD and Blu-Ray now.
