It’s all still coming together, but it looks like we’re going to be at Comic Con on Saturday, July 25th (two days before my birthday if you wanna buy me a present!). “We” is both me (Hayden) and Nichelle Nichols and we’ll be sharing a part of the Wizard booth which is Booth 2643. We should be there most of the day with lots of special, collector’s edition The Cabonauts posters that Nichelle will be signing.

And that ain’t all. That night at the Masquerade Ball, we’ll be premiering The Cabonauts trailer for all to see - that’s about 6,000 people, so we’re told. We’ll have it online the very next day for everyone who can’t make it, and you’ll be able to see who our special guest stars are for the pilot episode.

So please stop by and say hi, show us some Comic Con love, and get an autograph!

UPDATE We’ll be there from Fri through Sun @ Booth 2643 - here’s the official times:

Fri & Sat 10-1 & 3-6

Sun 10-2.

Plus the trailer screening at The Masquerade Ball Sat July 25th PM

Add our twitter @thecabonauts for any breaking news, info, etc!

Our third shoot day was last week and it was the one where our very fancy, magnanimous co-star did their thing. It was a jam-packed day and close to 20 people were milling around including photographers (the amazing Bui Brothers), journalists (guys from Starlog magazine), videographers and more. But we got tons of stuff in the can; regular scenes, dancing, singing, interviews, etc. I was absolutely blown away that our co-star got so much done – and did it so effortlessly, graciously, eloquently. And boy can they do comedy!! More on who that person is in the weeks to come!

In the meantime, we’re prepping for our fourth and final shoot for the pilot. That involves the two fancy guest stars - from Dollhouse and Buffy - who’ll be taking a ride in the Scarad (the name of the space cab). All will be revealed. In the meantime, peep our new logo, now with added “the” to avoid confusion

We shot more of the pilot last Wednesday (June 3, 2009) and we got a lot of great stuff. All the scenes in the front of the cab with me and Norm, to be specific, from about 8 different angles – all with just one HD camera to keep costs down (they’re already spiraling).  Sure enough we ran into problems with importing and digitizing the content but they were solved much quicker this time and we got everything we planned on.

It was an intimate shoot; just me, Norm (Harry), Paul (our DP) and Ashley (make-up). Ashley, bless her, helped out by reading the lines of everyone else’s characters and proved invaluable. She also shot behind the scenes footage of us – I’ve no idea why but virtually everything I said was so rude that I’m not sure I can use any of it. I’ll have to pick through it at some point (but did I really need to create & improvise the Billy Hitler show and talk about fake pornos I’ve been in?).

We spent the next day editing – and Paul (who’s also our editor) put together the roughest of assemble edits. The Scarad looks amazing – Kim Seff did a truly incredible job – and it was lit beautifully, thanks to Paul. A couple of people have seen it – because we’re still missing some major scenes and all the sfx, sound effects, music, video, etc, it’s like showing a pile of bricks and a blueprint and asking people to imagine the house – but despite that handicap, they’ve smiled/laughed, so that’s not a bad start. Our next major step is shooting with our co-star on Wednesday. In contrast to the 5 of us who were on set this time, there’ll be closer to 20 people.  

The days leading up to the pilot often seem more fraught with problems than the bloody shoot itself does. 24 hours before shooting, we were still finishing up the set, installing A/C in the green screen studio, and having to deal with finding a new wardrobe stylist because the one we’d had decided to take a different gig at the last second. Nowt like people. Anyway, believe it or not, all was dealt with and a new stylist was found within 15 minutes (gotta love Twitter).

I woke up at 5am the day of the first shoot, and in the news: Dr Who’s signed on a new companion. So instead of learning lines, I’m on the web trying to find who she’s repped by to see if there’s a chance of getting her on the Cabonauts.

Back to reality. The day went as days in production normally go - fraught with problems. We were using an HD camera for the first time and that means everything is shot digitally – no tape. But that also means that you have to take the filled up card and download it to a hard drive, dump the contents onto it, then begin shooting again. That wasn’t the problem. It was discovering that the particular camera we were using had just had its firmware uploaded and the drivers that the computer needed to be able to recognize the HD card…were nowhere to be found. So while camera whiz Paul Wojciak worked on that problem, we all had to wait around for 3 AND A HALF FRUDDING HOURS. But it wasn’t all bad. We had lunch. We shot lots of behind-the-scenes stuff. We learned – rather Monica and Norm learned – the unbelievable dance moves that Monica McSwain our amazing choreographer had come up with. I sort of wimped out and grabbed the synth and stood behind that nodding.  Then Paul called us all back ‘cause he’d figured it out.

By 6pm or so, we’d gotten a few scenes in the can – some stuff with Cyril and Harry in the cab, some stuff of Lolita and some intense dancing for the music video. We were all very hot, sweaty and ready to collapse but I was over the moon. Finally, I am starting to see my vision come together and it’s looking pretty damn good dare I say it myself. It’s colourful, it’s vibrant, it pops - and then you throw in music and dancing and you’ve got something so unique that…Well, I shouldn’t get too far ahead of myself (but I’m so damn excited!!!). Our next shoot is scheduled for next Wednesday and we hope to pick up all the stuff we missed. And while we won’t have to deal with HD drivers next time,  trust me - there’ll be something entirely new to screw it all up.

It’s a work in progress, but that’s what we’re here to celebrate. With behind the scenes videos and peeks at the creation of the CGI and expert design work, the casting process, the recording of the songs, etc, we’ll cover it all. Well, everything the bloody lawyers will allow anyway!

So where are we at the moment?

Let’s start with the basics.

The deal with Daily Motion is now officially signed (pause for roars of excitement - oh, wait, that’s just me). Two very British signatures (their CEO is English and if you don’t know me, now you know I’m English, too) now sit on the paperwork, and so we’re off to the races. Although, to be honest, we set off on this journey almost a year ago, and that’s where this blog shall begin…

(Making wavy shapes to denote a flashback.)

The original script was written back in May 2008 back when I hadn’t thought of making it a musical yet. That came when I cast the very handsome, square-jawed Norm Thoeming as Harry. Norm performs weekly at I.O. here in Los Angeles, in an improvised musical. You yell out an idea at the beginning of the show – and I tried it myself, so I know it works – and the team launches into a wholly original, one-hour improvised musical! It’s absolutely hysterical and the entire team (that, comedy fact-fans, comprises Shulie Cowen who co-stars in both Goodnight Burbank and Abigail’s Teen Diary) works wonders.

I was sitting with Norm at Burbank’s own Bob’s Big Boy over a ‘getting to know you’ lunch (Shulie had introduced us), when I began wondering aloud how we could incorporate Norm’s singing into the show. Ironically, my first thought was just to have him sing original, improvised songs for fans as an interactive add-on – but it was so incongruous. I mean, okay, I could make his character a wannabe singer who’s become a cab driver because he can’t catch a break, but it still felt fairly shoe-horned in. Watch the show about two guys driving a spacecab then have one of the main characters sing you a song? Weird. Norm, bless him, was up for it but then, he’s up for anything, or so his wife tells me. So after a month or so of thinking about it, I had this other, rather crazy idea.

What if I made the show a musical?

Oooh.

You feel the excitement, too?

It took another few weeks whilst my head came to grips with the idea. A musical sci-fi comedy? A comedy sci-fi musical? A sci-fi comedy… you get the idea. It was like holding a square peg and a round hole and wondering what to do with them. But one morning, I woke up and it fit. Perfectly. The only problem now was writing music because I’d never done that before.