The aliens are coming

While the alien space ship hovering over the suspension bridge may be impressive, the undoubted star of a new 10-part science fiction series is Bristol itself.

Two years in the making, Horizon launches online on Monday night and, over the next fortnight, follows the stories of five people as they try to escape the city after a mysterious alien ship appears on the sky-line.

“We wanted to do it because we love telling stories, we love the process – it’s like a drug,” says series creator and cameraman Paul Dudbridge.

He teamed up with creative writing duo Simon Pearce and Chris Marshfield and they all fitted in writing, filming and editing the series round their day jobs.

“We love episodic stories like 24 and Lost and we thought this is our chance to do something like that, set it in our home town and it can be something special,” says Paul.

Series creator Paul Dudbridge said he wanted the series to be fun

In bite-sized portions each episode is between five and seven minutes long and follows the story of one of the main character as they try to escape the invasion.

Filming Horizon involved dozens of professional cast and crew members from across Bristol, who all freely gave their time and expertise for the “passion project”.

“A lot of people have been involved to make sure it comes together,” says Paul. “Around 25 actors and dozens of crew members worked on the series.”

A film editor by day 27-year-old Simon Pearce, from Redfield, managed to squeeze in writing the script and playing one of the main characters.

“I was a little bit apprehensive about it as I knew some of the other actors and I thought I only want to do it if I can do a decent job,” he said

So, as both actor and screenwriter, did he give himself the best lines and get the girl?

“I didn’t want to stray into the temptation to do that,” he says. “I can honestly say everything that we came up with as a group decision.”

Simon Pearce (R) was one of the writers and actors on Horizon

“I got to do some really fun things but everyone in the show got to do fun things. That was one of the missions in the end for everyone to have fun…We wanted this to be a project where we went all out and thought what did we want to watch, what would be entertaining and fun to do?”

The series was shot in January, a quiet time for the film industry and a lot of favours were pulled in from friends in the business.

“It was quite intense, especially at that time of the year when you don’t have a lot of light,” says Paul. “We tried to shoot an entire episode in a day. We’d have a set crew and cast and location and we’d get it all done.”

Horizon very nearly ended up as a zombie film but, with Paul’s background in special effect, they though well why not do spaceships?

Why not indeed, although the special effect were a challenge. “A lot of the smaller shots, which we thought would be quite easy, turned out to be big challenge,” says Paul.

However, acting surprised at the sight of aliens hoovering over Bristol was one of the easier challenges says Simon: “The spaceship wasn’t too bad as it was so big you were looking up at a fixed point in the sky.

“What was tricky was acting to the fighter jets and explosions – the way you react to it when it’s not there is crucial.”

With Netflix and Amazon pouring huge resources into producing programs exclusively online, web series are also a perfect outlet for smaller film producers.

“The audience are open to a lot more now,” says Paul. “There are lots of people out there who can get their stories told.”

Simon agrees: “The great thing about web streaming it is so immediate, there are no distribution problems and it is in front of the audience straight away.”

Horizon has been produced as a series you really can carry round with you in your pocket.

“It’s accessibility as well,” says Paul. “You are not tied to a TV, you can watch it on your phone on a bus. That was our remit actually – making tiny episodes in a bite-sized format which you can watch anywhere – that really attracted us.”

Ultimately is there bigger and better things on the horizon for the cast and crew?

“There is a great film making scene in Bristol,” says Simon. “It would just be great to get exposure for all of us and hopefully that will lead onto more work for all of us.”

“We have a couple of feature films that we have written and we have an idea for a second season of horizon to wrap it up,” adds Paul.

“Hopefully people will like it and it will all be worth it in the end. We have made the show that we wanted to make and we wanted to have fun, make it fun to make and fun to watch.”
 

Horizon has been a labour of love over two years for cast and crew members including Paul Tonkin, Paul Dudbridge and Simon Pearce

Watch Horizon online from October 5.