A little more headway

Well, things are really starting to pile up on me, to quote the song by Dan Reeder, "I've got all the f-ing working I need", (which incidently is the only lyric to the "Work Song") cleaned up for a PG rating of course.

But oddly enough as it piles up, it suddenly becomes simpler - well, not simpler, but clearer maybe. Things start finding their own place on their own and then suddenly everything kind of makes so much sense it almost seems ridiculously easy. Or perhaps it's the early onset of senility.

In any case here’s what’s transpired that’s making my life easier. If you’re following along at home, you may know we start shooting next week, and after that 2 more shoots to go and I can start to pretend I have a life again.

The main stress factor of all these 3 scenes left is the fight choreography, which is a little tricky for certain reason I won’t get into. However, I sat down tonight with Draper, whose ass it getting kicked in 2 of 3 fights, so I figured who better to discuss this with. I tried coming up with ideas on my own, nothing, he tried as well, nothing - we got together, watched a very nice little fight scene from a certain TV show that shall remain nameless, but we both agreed was a very sweet and brutal little butt-whooping (I’m going to see how many different ways I can say that). And then suddenly the entire thing was done, in less then 5 minutes we had a very doable, very exact fight choreography with a possible running time of 1:30 to 2:00 minutes. And if you think Malice looks like a badass, wait until you see her in action.

So we continued to discuss other aspects of the movie, and finally came upon the ending of the movie which involves a potentially awesome showdown between Malice and Mal’Vash - who happens to be a 20 ft tall computer generated, armor plated, demon king. I’ve been putting off thinking about this because it just seemed too much brain power was needed, but I was pretty much thinking out loud and suddenly it just spilled out - this totally weird and almost shocking way to end the final fight.

I sat down, plotted out the White Room Fight Scene, there’s really only 9 points to it, like I said, very simple. Then I started really thinking about the Final Fight, it’s about 31 points - I basically do a step by step of the scene in point form, such as; 1 - Mr. A picks up the sword and turns to face Mr. X. 2 - Mr. X lunges and Mr. A and misses, passing him on his right side and falling on his face, Mr. A moves with him, turning to stab him in the back as he hits the ground. Basically like that, when shooting you can focus on these single points rather then the whole sequence, makes it much easier I think.

So there, I now have two major battles (literally and figuratively) plotted out. One potential fight has been reduced to a very one-sided “incident”, not to diminish it’s importance, but making it simpler actually makes a little more of a statement about some changes in one of the characters.

And to top it all off, this afternoon, while doing work for another project, I was spending a few hours going through some royalty free music when I found this one piece. It is incredibly creepy and cool - and was exactly everything I wanted for the main theme of the movie. I debated about having something custom made, but upon hearing this - no contest, this is it hands down, without a doubt.

Now the soundtrack is a way off, but having this main theme in my head, almost gives me a little more sense of direction for certain aspects of the final parts of the movie. In any case, what once felt like months of work, now feels like a week or more...I’m really hoping it’s not the senility thing.