Video CDs were video discs burnt on standard CDs. They had the same time constraints as regular CDs for runtime (about 70 odd minutes) and they were limited in file capacity, which meant any MPG Video file would run out of space before it would run out of running time on the CD. Still, we ploughed on and produced a large run of double set Video CDs, complete with special features such as the ‘making of’ documentary and the original TV spots. Sadly, Video CDs aren’t particularly good in terms of quality (they’re worse than VHS) and they’re not especially good with reliability either, as many of the original discs no longer work properly.

Luckily, with modern home technology the way it is today, we now have DVD copies of Cop on the Edge too. These DVD copies were produced by Eddie Keaton, who resampled the original Beta master of Cop for the process. The DVD copies have many of the same special features as the original VCDs, complete with some new, DVD exclusive, features.

The new DVD copies include new features such as directors’ commentaries with Darren Jamieson, Eddie Keaton and Marijan von Staufer, as well as a special hidden Easter Egg that you can find by completing a specific sequence on the main menu – the only remaining scenes with original Captain Jack Harris actor, Graham Cox.

You can’t buy this in any shops (but let’s face it, before long you won’t be able to buy any DVDs in any shops because they’ll all have closed down) but you may be able to get a copy of the Cop on the Edge DVD if you enquire on this site, and be prepared to negotiate with Eddie.

This scene actually took two nights to shoot because, due to a technical error, some of the footage from the first night was wiped… this made us very popular with student Dan Hopkins, who didn’t want to be there anyway.

During the warehouse shootout scene we filmed a shot that, thinking about it, wouldn’t be allowed in today’s health and safety conscious world. One of actors (a perpetually stoned student named Jonathan Brett) was required to run whilst firing his gun at Jake Cop, before being shot. In order to break his fall from the hard concrete warehouse flooring, we gave Brett something nice and soft to land in – an open bad of asbestos.

If you watch the clip of the ‘making of’ on YouTube, starting at 11:30, you’ll see Brett flinging himself into the bag with gay abandon, before getting up coughing up his guts. Naturally, taking into account the lad’s extracurricular activities, we thought nothing of it – but perhaps we should have let him come down hard on the warehouse flooring, instead of landing in the bag of asbestos.

I don’t think this would be allowed on film and TV sets these days, damned health and safety people would step in for sure.

Still, the scene turned out rather well, and the college were at fault for leaving an open bag of asbestos lying around anyway.

Despite being a university filled with photography students, and its own dark-room (photography students today may recall reading about darkrooms in the history aspect of photography) we only managed to get two production photographs taken during the making of Cop on the Edge IX. This is a cause of much annoyance, especially as we had some pretty elaborate set-ups for some of the scenes and the production of the film should have been recorded.

The problem was, as is always the case with students, none of the photography students (even the ones doing documentary photography) could be bothered with turning up for a night shoot that spread over three days. In fact, they couldn’t be bothered turning up for lectures, never mind for something outside of hours. This is a common problem with students, and one that I find today in my career when interviewing graduates for jobs – but I digress.

The university was full of students looking to do commercial photography, fashion photography, becoming a food photographer and, of course, creative photography (where they’d take some photos and then deliberately muck up the development so they looked ‘abstract’ and made up some crap about why they did that) – yet none of these crusaders of the camera were interested in doing a real project.

In fact it wasn’t until the final few months of the year, when Cop was pretty much wrapped, that any photography students began showing an interest in the film department and asked to photograph shoots of final year films. I had one such student tag along on my graduation film, although I never received a copy of the pictures… naturally.

So we only have two production stills to show for an 18 month shoot – and these were both taken on the same night. Let this be a lesson to anyone making a low/no budget movie; have someone responsible for photographing the shoot, you’ll regret it if you don’t.

With a Cop on the Edge dining experience you could, for example, have Sanchez Conchita Gonzalez cook your food, Rachel take down your order and Jimmy get shot on his way to the kitchen. Things would then kick off into a feast of bad dialogue, woeful acting and plastic toy explosions.

This isn’t daft an idea as it sounds, honest, as there are many different existing dinner shows that you can attend today. For example, there’s Fawlty Towers the Dining Experience – where you can be served by the cast of Fawlty Towers (or at least actors pretending to be them). There’s also dinner shows such as Father Ted and, in Orlando (which is very popular for this type of entertainment) there are pirates shows, stunt shows and of course murder mystery shows.

Ok, so the demand for a Cop on the Edge dinner show might not be there quite yet, but as soon as word of Eddie Keaton’s cooking gets out you just watch those applications come flooding in.

On second thoughts, perhaps we’ll stick to uploading clips to YouTube – that seems to have gone well so far.

We mention this because we’ve noticed there are a number of different ‘cops on the edge’ knocking about the Internet, and we wouldn’t want anyone confused as to which cop first set foot over the edge and tossed away his badge in anger.

Yes, we realise we’re arguing over who first coined a well-worn phrase by the time we coined it, but we’re petty like that. In any case, here is one of the many videos pertaining to be a ‘Cop on the Edge’, yet without any sign of Jake Cop… the lunacy of it all.

We’re still copying across much of the content from the old website into this new, funky website – so if you’re looking for all of that quality information such as ‘how the action sequences were filmed’ or ‘pictures from Cannes 2000’ then bear with us.

The good news is that we will be catching up with cast and crew from this mistake of history and finding out what they’re up to now, and how Cop has influence their lives. Yes, we realise we may have to remind them of Cop beforehand – perhaps even convince them that it wasn’t all a bad dream or a product of too many drugs at university (Jonathan Brett, we’re looking at you).

Some of the cast and crew may not have travelled from the original Newport, South Wales, whereas others might have made it all the way to Cardiff – we aim to find out.

If at this stage you’re asking ‘what the hell is Cop on the Edge’, and it would be a justifiable question, simply watch the theatrical trailer on the homepage – that will tell you all you need to know.