Just Another Day At The Office

Saturday is Sci-Fi Day! Well this is true if I belive anything that the sandwich boards outside of work tell me, though for last Saturday atleast this was true, as for one day only Borders Southampton was invaded by a mixture of Time Lords, Aliens, Predators, Storm troopers and even a couple of Jawa's, thanks largely to the guys and gals from the "U.S.S Pendragon" who in thier ever continuing mission to raise money for the Princess Anne Baby Care Unit, with thier crew of like minded folks, who not only share a love for all things Fantasy and Sci-fi related, but also love to dress up as those same characters aswell, whenever they are given an opportunity. So last Saturday saw Pendragon teaming up with the branch of Borders I work at in Southampton, to raise even more money for this incredibly worth while cause, while also giving me an excuse to pose for this random photo.

This would be their third colaboration with the store, with the first being last year when we held a hugely successful "Dr. Who Day" and it was nice to see many of those same costumes and props once again reappearing at this event, after all who doesn't like to see a Dalek terrorising small children outside the store and with this success we quickly followed up with the "Beedle the Bard launch Party" and now Pendragon were once again back instore, only this time bigger than before, as this time they had called in some additional support including character actor Michael Henby, who not only is Southampton F.C's biggest fan, but also appeared in "Labyrinth" (1986) as one of the Goblin Corps aswell as an Ewok in "Return of the Jedi" (1983 and an uncredited role in "Willow" (1988) and he was more than happy to talk about these films, aswell as his stories of working with Warrick Davis.

We were also joined by fellow character actor Jerome Blake, who like Michael Henby is equally used to not being recognised on the street, seeing how when he appears in films, it is usually under several layers of make up, appearing as Mondoshawan (one of those giant golds things) in "The Fifth Element" (1997), which meant that of course I had to be a complete fanboy and ask what it was like to work with, one of my favourite directors Luc Besson, which he was more than happy to talk about, seeing how it was apparently almost as crazy to work on, as the film itself with Besson coming off as a real funny guy to work with, which is always nice to hear.

Jerome though will probably be best known amongst the slightly more geeky readers amongst you, for the various characters that he has played throughout Star Wars Episodes 1 and 3, especially episode one, were he played six different characters (feel free to put the answer in the comments if you can name them all). We also had a really random conversation about "Flesh Gordon" which I reviewed recently here on the blog, even though I can't actually remember how it came up.

Finally sticking with the Star Wars theme, we were also joined by John Chapman, who appeared in "Star Wars: A New Hope" as Red 12 and who has since gone on to write the children's book "Johnny Rocket".

Pendragon even managed to find a couple of predators as well as Abe the Alien, who has been used in the past for various pieces of promotional work, for "Aliens Vs Predator: Requiem". I don't know what it is but there is some sort of sadistic pleasure, from watching young children being scared out of thier little minds by these costumes, especially the Dalek which one young kid thought was chasing after him, when it started moving towards him, which reminded me just how powerful old school effects are and how kids today, never seem to experience those same sorts of feelings that I used to get as a kid when, you would watch films and see these kinds of effects, which have over the course of time been largely replaced by CGI, which sadly will never have the same kind of presence that these effects will always have.

Still before I go off on a rant about Old school effects VS. CGI I will wrap this up with some of the photos I took on the day, using the really shockingly bad camera which we have in the shop, so I apoligse in advance if any of these have come out a little blurry.

So until the next collaberation between the forces of Borders and Pendragon, I can only wish Pendragon, all the best with thier future fund raising events, as they continue tirelessly to raise much needed cash for Princess Anne's Baby Care unit.