The past two weeks have seen Penny Dreadful 4 : ‘The Hairy Hands‘ launch into production full throttle; with all of the Dartmoor location shoots complete and a number of the interior car matte shots filmed and subsequently in the rotoscope / animation stage.
Although hampered by illness (on the part of the director) the shoots have gone not only well, but faster than initially expected. “I’m very happy with our progress” said director Ashley Thorpe, “we’ve not only launched into production but,well, flown into it! It’s a great team. It’s so nice to be surrounded by like-minded people who not only understand the project but are enthusiastic about it. Previous Penny Dreadfuls have been made by an absolute skeleton crew with the majority of the actual production performed by myself and usually one or two others at most. Some days it’s been me , a camera and an actor! Bloody hell, some of ‘Scayrecrow’ was just me and a camera ha ha! This time I’ve been lucky to have Tom (Atkinson) on board who has not only been present but has mucked in and helped with all the time consuming side of art direction – moving lights about, set-up – the nitty gritty that can all so often devour your time on set.”
” Another aspect that has really sped up the process of creating this one is actually having some genuine locations and vehicles for the actor to ‘interact with’. Although ‘Screaming Skull’ had a number of scenes set on a real location (the bedroom sequences were all filmed at the Two Bridges Hotel) the majority of it was still generated from scratch with the actor added to the shot in post. ‘Scayrecrow’ was almost all done as a matte – as very few of the locations actually existed, they were painted or a collage of things. That also goes for the carriage sequences and any scene involving a horse: Very few people are actually aware of this but at no point did any of the actors physically enter a carriage or sit on a horse, that was all shot at different times in seperate locations and then faked in post. That’s obviously a massive amount of work. This time we at least have a real car for the actor to sit in and real locations. Thankfully I also don’t have to animate anything going off a cliff! “
“Apart from the shoot being very successful in terms of capturing what we want and need, I’m also happy to report that the shoot has 
been – thus far – tremendous fun! Which is something that I’ve always taken great pride in – that apart from working to a necessary level of professionalism the process should be spontaneous and above all fun. I’m glad that a larger budget hasn’t effected the creative process at all at this stage and has actually enriched it. However, though the shoots are going even better than planned – we still have a huge amount of work ahead. Though the styles and influences may fluctuate from film to film, I want there to be a line running through my work – a progression – and to achieve that involves a honing of approach and technique. Or in other words I’ve got to work bloody hard.” – Ashley Thorpe
‘The Hairy Hands‘ is currently set for an rough cut hand in date of Halloween 2009 and is on track to be premiered (in final cut) at the ‘Two Short Nights festival‘ 2009 (currently scheduled for early December), full details of which will be posted closer to time of release.