How we made Time Travel Is Dangerous

Time Travel Is Dangerous is a buddy comedy wrapped in a mock-doc, drenched in practical effects, and partially set in a dimension called The Unreason. Think Bill And Ted with better coats and a North London postcode. The cast includes some of the UK's greatest and funniest names. Johnny Vegas, Sophie Thompson, Jane Horrocks, Mark Heap, Tony Way, Kiell Smith-Bynoe and many more. There's even the dulcet tones of Brian Blessed, and a brief glimpse of British Comedy Guide award winner Alex Horne, along with his comedy ensemble The Horne Section.

We asked the team to talk us through how they made it.

Chris Reading - Writer/Director

The idea started when I took part in a 24-hour short film challenge with my two friends Ruth Syratt and Megan Stevenson. Ruth and Megan run a vintage shop in Muswell Hill, and we thought the idea of them stealing stuff from the past was really funny. The idea grew, Ruth and I worked on the story figuring out how the two of them would play fictionalised versions of themselves, as we started shooting more scenes and sketches together.

Enter Anna and Hillary Shakespeare of Shakespeare Sisters. They jumped on as screenwriters with me, as we stretched the main premise into a feature. We wanted Ruth and Megan's friendship front and centre - two flawed, daft, lovable mates arguing over who gets to steer the machine.

Anna and Hillary are fantastic collaborators, helping turn my ramblings into a script that actually worked. The cast soon snowballed. Johnny Vegas signed on, Sophie Thompson, Jane Horrocks and eventually Stephen Fry said yes to narrating.

As we moved into production we had a tight shooting script, but we also had a lot of fun allowing the cast to improvise. Johnny Vegas brought this manic energy I didn't know we needed - he'd riff on anything, even the props. I still pinch myself about that. Ruth and Megan kept asking, 'Are we doing this right?' and I'd just say, 'Keep going - it's funny.' What started as me and some mates faffing about on weekends turned into a movie.

Something really important to me is world building. I took time in pre-production working out all the props, costume, practical elements, and special effects. Central to the story is a secret inventors club, who have developed such breakthroughs as Rocket boots, Time machines, Shrink rays, and more. Weaving all these into a story that has lots of payoff is what I love best. We had a lot of fun cramming in as much weird science as possible.

All this spectacle led to a pretty heavy post-production workload, especially in VFX. I owe a particular debt of gratitude to The Brewery VFX, who did an amazing job, having fun, and cramming in even more storytelling to every shot they took on.

Time Travel Is Dangerous is my love letter to North London's little absurdities, to time travel flicks I grew up on, and to the chaos of making something with people you adore. It's silly, it's heartfelt, and it's authentic. Years of work, a brilliant team, and two shopkeepers who trusted me with their story got us here.

Anna-Elizabeth Shakespeare & Hillary Shakespeare - Co-writers/Co-producers

Making Time Travel Is Dangerous was like making three different movies. We had three separate shoots, with different cast each time (aside from Ruth and Megan who were there throughout) and in one case - a different dimension. As we were a small tight-knit team this meant we could really push ourselves to the limit in terms of (for me, Hillary and Chris) many sleepless nights and working round the clock. Then we would take a couple months break, have a play with the footage, make rewrites where we needed to, and start prep for the next 'block'.

It was a funny way to make a film and we probably wouldn't do it again because at times, like the lost dimension of 'the unreason' it felt that there was no end to production. Leaving a shoot with the footage always feels like making away from a heist but in this case every wrap party, we knew we'd have to go back to the scene of the crime, like we'd forgotten to wipe away the fingerprints... It was mentally exhausting to say the least. But from a writer's/editor's perspective it was a major advantage to be able to look at footage from one half of the film before starting the shoot for the next half. You could see what was working and what was missing.

Editing the film was at times similar to editing a documentary, which was fitting given the style and real life elements. We had so many hours of footage and alternative jokes - though we did follow the script in the edit, there were so many different avenues to go down and our aim of trimming the film to under 100 minutes was a hard one. Johnny especially had joke after joke and sometimes you wanted to let him go on for five minutes of bangers - but ultimately we had to keep it slick and the centre of the story needed to be Ruth and Megan's friendship.

At times it can be challenging to write for "real people". While they're best friends in real life, we needed to add fictional tension between Ruth and Megan's characters and to make up problems in their relationship so the friendship had a trajectory. We based that on the difficulties of being a duo - something that we (as a sister pair) know well. One thing that happens constantly is being compared to one another and so we built the idea that Megan was generally seen as the "better one" so Ruth's fictional insecurities about that can be a source of resentment and set her off on her adventure and character growth.

Simon Porter - Composer

Given its genre-mashup nature, scoring TTID was really a job of two halves, scoring the expository mockumentary first half as though it were a regular TV doc - essentially a 'library music' job, fairly hands-off in terms of writing to picture or hitting any particular beats or moments. And writing the music for a film about time travel is I think the film composer's dream brief in many ways - it affords you the opportunity to be something of a chameleon and convey all manner of music genres, as Ruth and Megan travel through the various eras.

In this case that includes medieval, the American civil war, the American Frontier, 70s funk, 80s synthwave/wailing guitars, 90s new jack swing, through to the present day, which is where the film catches up with the protagonists in the present and becomes more of traditional film-scoring job, which is to say largely orchestral (the orchestra being somewhat timeless), with some retro 80s seasoning here and there.

Marc Knapton - VFX Supervisor, The Brewery VFX

The visual effects in Time Travel Is Dangerous were vast and varied. In pre-production, we helped previs the studio shoot of the "Unreason" section to help maximise the tiny South London studio, and help transform it into a sprawling landscape. We modelled the studio space in 3D which allowed Chris to work out optimal camera positions, and to frame up shots we would later extend digitally. Being on set allowed us to scan the dodgem and actress to create digital doubles for more complex shots.

Our workload in post included bringing to life the inventors contraptions, enhancing historical landscapes, and the challenging task of creating novel visuals for the wormholes and time portals which feature throughout the film.

We wanted to avoid the typical sci-fi trope of blurry, indistinct wormholes, so we designed a crystalline cavern for the time machine to travel through - something sharp and defined. It became a sprawling maze of connecting tunnels the main characters, Ruth and Megan, could navigate through.

As time portals open up, they fragment into jagged shards that refract and distort the surrounding space, warping light similar to imperfections seen in pieces of quartz. This creative decision helped unify all the time travel visuals with a similar aesthetic.

To create the look for these elements, the 3D and 2D team referenced geodes and amethysts, they spent a lot of time in the local new-age hippie shop and even built some crystals from a children's Grow Your Own Crystal kit.

Peter, played by Tony Way, has a host of jet-engine powered devices. In the instance of the rocket boots, these were prop shoes Chris made from ski boots and foam board which were puppeteered on set when in the air. In post we painted out the rod and added CG flames, sparks and smoke assets. We had to get the look of this correct as the same technology features later on the flying van and dodgem landing gear.

The van was a CG asset built to match the miniature Chris was also building for another scene. We wanted some small visual gag so designed the van with caution tape, flammable chemicals precariously ratchet-clamped to the roof and finished it off with primary-school livery. To drive the CG van we needed a digi-double for Tony Way and this was a surprise cameo from Bob Mortimer - we had built a CG lookalike previously for when we worked on Vic & Bob's Big Night Out and from a distance the model was passable for Tony, so in the driving seat he went!

We wanted to support Chris make his film and add as much value as we could. In total we delivered 100 VFX shots between a team of 10 people.

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Time Travel Is Dangerous is in cinemas in UK and Ireland from 28th March.
TimeTravelIsDangerous.com
Instagram: @timetravelisdangerous