The big decision that was made in the past fortnight, which has already been announced on HBO and the 405th (and thankfully been met with positive opinion), is that the shoot dates have had to be pushed back from September-October 2009 to March-April 2010. Naturally this put paid to our hopes of screening the film at the San Diego Comic Con, and makes the expected release date to be some time in the Fall or Winter of 2010. It was a quality assurance issue – we could either rush pre-production through 4 months or work hard and steadily for 10. I had intended to wait until end of May to make the call, but the situation was apparent long before. The decision really made itself.

But for every down side there’s an upside. We can now look forward to an easier 2009, building lots of props over the coming 8 months, doing public events to help publicise our effort and so on. I have no doubt that the production will benefit as a result of postponing the shoot for a short while.

This week we welcome another crew member – Emil Smicklas (Props North America) is building Covenant weapons, and is doing a damn fine job of it. No doubt I will have more updates on crew in the VFX department in the coming weeks.

That’s all for now – keep checking in for more updates!

The status of the film so far is that we’re still pressing ahead with a goal for a September shoot start. Having had a good go at updating the cast and crew page, you can see we’re recruiting people at a rate of knots – and there’s plenty of names on there who I need to correctly assign and/or confirm names before adding. Crikey…

Right now, I have the groups of prop builders broken down into three – the prop builders in the UK (primarily armour and suit construction), the prop builders in the US (primarily weapons construction), and the prop builders dealing directly with the construction of the Warthog at Props Studios on the South coast. Our current tasks prop-wise, excluding the Warthog, are the construction of Marine armour, M7 SMGs, M6 Magnums, MA5C Assault Rifles, Covenant Carbines, Spike Grenades and Spikers, all to the full in-game scale (i.e. big). The Warthog is plodding along fine, and no doubt Dan will provide another update to his blog soon.

The “final” draft of the script is almost done now. The feedback on the last draft was very positive, so I am confident that this draft will be the final draft that we will work to. Fingers crossed, it will be sent out Monday evening. Another tick on the sheet!

I was pleased to sign on two new artists this week. Kevin Ivers and Adam Burn have both agreed to do artwork for Operation Chastity, the former doing storyboarding while the latter will hopefully be doing a couple of conceptual pieces – and I’m looking forward to seeing all that they create!

I also got a fantastic box of tricks through the mail. Two SPH-4 helicopter helmets, which are to be repaired for use by our Pelican air crew and are as good as a perfect match for the Halo: Combat Evolved/Halo 2 Pelican dropship pilot helmets. A fun little prop building side-project!

(the vehicle, as seen in the Halo 3 computer game)

The story of Operation Chastity follows a group of United Nations Space Command Marines fighting the survivors of a crashed alien Covenant battleship, and their final battle in the conflict – a secret mission behind enemy lines which none of them are sure they will return from. The film is a self-funded effort, with an estimated budget of around £30,000, and shooting planned to commence in Winter 2009 in the United Kingdom. The film project is in no way affiliated with Bungie Studios, Microsoft Game Studios or WETA studios, and is an independent work.

The vehicle that is going to be used for the project is an A-reg 1984 Land Rover Defender 110, rescued from the GumTree 4×4 yard before its eventual scrapping due to MoT failure. Being rebuilt by Props Studios, the vehicle will be fitted with a whole new body, chunky off road tyres, lifted suspension and a whole host of other upgrades to make it into the futuristic combat vehicle. This is certainly not going to be your average Land Rover!

In the games, the Warthog LRV was the vehicle of choice for Master Chief John-117, the superhuman Spartan raised from a boy to become humanity’s greatest soldier as he went across the universe and eventually home to Earth fighting the Covenant. The vehicle being made for Operation Chastity, however, will be used by the Marines of the 267th Division as they fight the alien invaders on human soil.

And it is also hoped that a second vehicle, in the troop carrier format, will also be able to be added to the Marines armoury in time for shooting to commence!

(the M831 troop carrier, a variant of the M12 LRV, as seen in the Halo 3 computer game)

More updates will be released as and when they come.

Peter Cooper

Writer/Director/Producer, Operation Chastity