A Word from Darren Scales
Director of "DOOM RAIDERS"

Why make Doom Raiders? I blame it all on my Mother. In 2000, during the premiere of The Empire Strikes Backyard (TESBY), she quipped, "Why don?t you do an Indiana Jones spoof next?" Now I knew that living in the UK, this would be a difficult task, but a year later I was sent to Cyprus through my work and hey, presto, an instant Indiana Jones environment laid before me!

Making Doom Raiders was very different to TESBY primarily due to the fact that most of the film would be location based. An extensive location search was conducted covering the whole south coast of the Island. Some scenes such as the first scene with our hero in were filmed over 7 locations!

Doom Raiders also has an original score, composed by Mark Scales. The score is excellent and even the best midi samples we could find simply does not do it justice ? I know this for a fact as we had a real orchestra playing the theme as the Premiere, which received a standing ovation before the film even started!

We also venture into some new filming techniques using a camera arm and track dolly, both built for under $300. Other challenges were working with horses, 100 extras, screaming kids, 3 trucks, 1 jeep, a rabbit and 2 helicopters. We were very lucky to get the trucks and choppers, but since we rose over $5000 for local Cypriot and UK charities, the local military were more than happy to help where they could.

Doom Raiders has been the hardest film I have produced to date; costing over $2000 to make it was also the most expensive. There are many things about it that didn?t come out the way I would have liked ? the price you pay for trying to direct and star at the same time. In my (limited) defence, there was no one else prepared to jump off trucks, helicopters, fight almost every day and learn to ride a horse, so casting was pretty limited.

Doom Raiders was also great fun to make. Filming over 16 days across some spectacular scenery and on some great sets, made this the most realistic filming project I have gotten involved with. On a personal note it was great to see my wife play Eve (the Lara Croft character) Man! She was hot!!!

Special mention has to go to John Hall, who played the General. He made the role his own and everything else seemed to fall into place; a true professional.

Many good lessons have been learned about filmmaking on such a big scale; paving the way for future BYP productions?

Enjoy the movie!

Darren Scales

Director, Doom Raiders