'OPERATION BLUESMOKE' 1996

"I met this guy at college, he was obsessed with films and wanted to be a director, he wanted to make a 70's cop film and we all wanted to be in it. His name was Ian Burnett." - Jason Briggs

"We had a college project to shoot a trailer/opening credits scene for an non existent TV programme or film. We decided to work together and base it around the 70's cop theme" - Ian Burnett

"As soon as our friends found out it involved 70's gear and cops & robbers there was an influx of volunteers to star in it, it had already become bigger than it needed to be, so we said lets just shoot a ten minute short film with a basic plotline including the opening credits" - Jason Briggs

"Myself, fellow bandmate - Marcos and several others met up and spent a morning in a local coffee shop to work on ideas for the film, we were going to be filming it on the Sunday, it was already Tuesday and we had nothing." - Jason Briggs

"That meeting was a waste of time, we came away still with no idea of what was going on. I took it upon myself to get something written with an absolute bare minimum of dialogue but with all the right clichés in." - Marcos Dinsdale

"It seemed right that Pik, Marcos & myself  should play the good guys, we were already a team from playing in the band (Full Cry) together which we formed in January 1990, and had known each other for over ten years." - Jason Briggs

"I asked a friend of mine - Stuart Williamson to play the main villain - Henderson, he was ideal because he only lived around the corner and had lived in a great old house similar to mine and had access to a great 70's wardrobe - fur coats, jewelry the lot" - Marcos Dinsdale

"We started shooting about 12pm on the Sunday, the first stuff we did was the opening credits stuff and the end celebratory scene. We had the whole afternoon to shoot 10 or 11 scenes all different locations. We generally only did two takes of everything as we didn't  have time for more, but we got it all done and we didn't have to compromise too much with anything that was written." - Ian Burnett

"I'd planned it so that all the locations in the film were all within two minutes walk of each other  so no time was wasted traveling, We stopped that park dead when all of us in costume strolled in and started filming" - Marcos Dinsdale

"Sir Adrian Parker who played Sir Singen Smythe was a revelation, he just came to life when you put the camera on him. At every opportunity he would keep improvising dialogue when there wasn't any. The scene where Bluesmoke meet him in the alleyway and he tells them 'I want no mess ups' he just improvised that, nobody was expecting that, he was only supposed to hand the file over and stay silent. If you look closely at Pik's face in that scene you can see him struggling to hold back from cracking up with laughter." - Ian Burnett

"A few of us ended up down the pub after shooting had finished and still in costume. Stuart (Henderson) still in full costume, jumper, big coat, wig and shades also decided to keep in character and after many beers ended up in a real punch up." - Marcos Dinsdale

"Needless to say the finished film got us top marks for the college project and it had quite a buzz around it, people wanting to borrow the tape or make copies of it, and I think we'd all got the bug to do it all again." - Jason Briggs

"Without realising it, we'd just kind of filmed the pilot episode for Bluesmoke, it was immediately obvious we could go further with the whole idea and really develop it next time." - Ian Burnett

"The voice over the opening credits by Davey Garret was incredible, having our real life band act as a fictional band for fictional detectives was a stroke of genius. Also over the opening credits Jason had used one of our recently recorded songs 'Bluesmoke' as the theme tune which gave the film it's title, it had all fallen into place perfectly." - Marcos Dinsdale