Thank god that's done. The Orwell Shoot, Part 1

I think it'd be fair to say it wasn't the easiest shoot in the world, probably more accurate to say it was stressful and a little tenses by time - but from the looks of the footage, it was worth it. I think.

In any case, thanks to all who helped out - there weren't that many involved. Draper in front of the camera as the dude who chops off the Beast's head. Kim Bradford shot the scene as best she could, and from what little time I've spent going over the footage, she did a great job. And Kim Johnston who got some awesome pictures of the whole ordeal.

I call it an ordeal because being in the prosthetic and that costume was extremely uncomfortable, moreso then I'd expected, and it just made me really impatient and pretty much frustrated and exhausted the whole time - and on top of that I had to make sure everything was working with the shots (it's a fight scene and they're so hard to make look good under the best of circumstances) and that we got everything we needed before the inevitable death of our equipment batteries. All of which gave out within seconds of the last shot actually.

It's over in any case and I can easily say that I will never attempt anything like that again, at least until I can figure out a way that I'm not the slightest bit concerned about what's going on behind the camera. The attention split was really overwhelming this time around.

With the ranting overwith, now the good side of the shoot.

Having just gone on about how horrific my costume was, it looked great on camera. From what I gathered, all that frustration kind of worked well since the Beast is supposed to be a pretty angry little fellow in the first place.

The latex swords worked brilliantly. I'd been assured by the manufacturers that they'd more then adequately hold up to this sort of abuse, but I still had a nagging doubt and was just waiting for something to go wrong - nothing did though. And it wasn't like we held back, those things took a massive amount of abuse from us.

The real swords on the other hand, chipped and scraped and even bent at one point. I can only imagine how long a real sword in a real battle would actually last, or at the very least stay sharp enough to do any damage.

Anyway, here's some pictures:

Kim Bradford helping me take care of some
of the parts of the makeup that were next to impossible
for me to do on my own.

Draper getting suited up.

The evil demon going over his Checklist of Doom!

Setting up the first shot.
Action Shot #1

And Action Shot #2

And the resulting Death Shot #1

Of course, the inevitable useless shot.

Peeling off the makeup on the drive home was awesome fun.

Don't I look ever so happy?

Overall the shoot took the better part of the day. I started the makeup around 11, we were on the road by shortly after 1 and I think it was close to 5 or so when we got back into town. I think the actual shooting took about 3 1/2 hours. Not too bad, but a little tiresome when you're running and fighting the whole time.

There was one incident that I actually found rather amusing. I wished we'd kept shooting, but ah well. Makes me think of those videos you see online where a guy impales himself on something, or someone falls off a roof and rather then help the guy with the camera just keeps shooting instead - I can say that I don't know anyone like that after this incident.

After that buildup, all that happened was an overshot jump that landed me right over the edge of the bank into the mud. I thought it was funny myself.

The area of incident.

The aftermath.
That lump in my hand is my muddy shoe that I almost lost.

There are a couple hundred more pictures to go through, from another camera. I'll go through them in a while and maybe add some more images here in another post, but until then, I'll leave you with some random snippets from the drive out to the shoot.