DVDs, sound effects and a theremin

So that's what new.

The DVDs for Bimbo Zombie Killers! are finally done, I did them up mainly for the folks who were in the movie. I'm not selling them - at least not yet. so you'll just have to enjoy this lovely picture until then.



The 3D movie is very close to be done. I've made a good start on the audio, luckily the style of audio for this movie is meant to be relatively minimal, so it should be easy. I'm already done the first half of the movie almost, I reckon it shouldn't be too hard for the rest.

Also, the soundtrack should be following shortly - so you might be seeing this one my mid-January. I've finally got my Theremin, although it's not quite what I expected. Ah well, still cool. It's going to be one of the worst movies ever made.

Speaking which, making bad movies...I had actually written a long rant about this, but I just don't feel like it. Basically, I'm a little in awe of the fact that no matter how obvious a joke, there are just going to be some people who simply will not get it. And oddly enough, the only negative comments came from people who very obviously missed the point.

It's sort of sad, but whatever - this movie, or any other, obvious wasn't, or won't be, for them. I suspect that even if they got it, they still wouldn't have liked it - but at least getting the joke would be a good start

Brain Monsters Invade and other crap...

I thought was rather amusing so I thought I'd post it here. Now, I don't know about you, but my first thought here was - what would the average newspaper reader who stumbled across this think? I mean, Prince Edward Island isn't exactly the place where a lot of weird and crazy stuff goes on (at least not like this) so it's not like folks around here are jaded to this. I mean, the rest of the photos in this page, it was a large spread of local news basically, were all staged pictures of people accepting awards or posed behind their desk...and then there was me and these 3 weirdos.

It wasn't an interview or anything, we were just shooting and a woman, whose name I never got actually, took some pictures while we were getting ready and when we had a moment asked us what we were doing. A fair question. I can't believe she got the name of the movie right.

In other news, the 3D movie is very nearing completion, a few other outside projects got thrown up in the way and are slowing things down, but it's been worth it. I'll be working on the sound effects this week - even though I'd hoped to be through with them by now.

The other projects are on hold, I really need to tie up all the lose ends I have going on right now before I can comfortably move on and dive into another project. The winter is a good time to regroup and rethink a few things.

One major change coming up is I've decided to scrap one project. I was planning on doing a Japansese style action movie short, sort of a live action Anime. I've done that before and it was beginning to seem like a huge expense just to make it look right and I've really lost interest in the idea totally. So instead of that one, I've come up with a 1980's style slasher flick, The Monkey Rodeo: Bloody Summer Camp of Gore. That's a tentative title.

It'll be silly and over the top, much like Bimbo Zombie Killers! was. I had such a good reaction from that, it seemed like a good idea to sort of venture back into that territory. It's a fun style most people relate to and can enjoy regardless of whether or not they even like that kind of movie.

I've got a few plot ideas. I'll be writing it over the winter as well as getting things ready for the other movies.

Zombie Aftermath

So far the response to Bimbo Zombie Killers! has been pretty awesome. I've even heard praise from folks who don't like that kind of movie. I guess that's pretty good.

I knew getting one movie finished would help motivate me into getting some other stuff done. I managed to get all the recorded dialog into place on the 3D movie. There's a few more lines to be recorded still, but I reckon by the time I'm done the sound effects they'll be done as well. All that's left after that is he music.

My plan was to do the soundtrack for the 3D movie myself, using a Theremin. The more I think of it, the more I'm not sure the whole soundtrack done that way is a good idea. We'll have to see how things progress with that.

Otherwise, I'm hoping to get things moving on Cronus soon as well. About half the dialog is recorded, just not edited into place - that's going to be real fun.

Well, that's all the news for now.

The Monkey Rodeo: Bimbo Zombie Killers! now online

Here it finally is.

Bimbos and Zombies

After saying yesterday that not much was progressing, well, Bimbo Zombie Killers! is done...almost. Now that's not to say, "In about 3 more weeks" or anything like that. Wednesday, maybe even Tuesday evening.

Main reason for the sudden finishing was all that was missing up until now was one of Heather's lines and some foley for the jugs (it's near impossible to find good foley for ceramic jugs, most "ceramic" foley was little tea cups and crap), and then there was the matter of the soundtrack. Well, it seems the guy I had lined up is moving away and I just didn't want to deal with it being put off any longer (not that it was his fault, totally mine) so I sat down last night and rummaged through some royalty free stuff and managed to find 3 or 4 really good tracks that all had the same sound to them.

And the soundtrack was done. The reason for it not being done right now? I have to wait until I get some extra money to afford it, should be tomorrow.

Getting this one movie done has also served to get me motivated again - it was about time. So I'm making more of an effort to move on them. Who knows, you might see another one in about a month or even sooner if all goes well.

When Bimbos discovered fire.

Updates are becoming few and far between

There's no real reason, other then nothing is going on. The last 2 projects I was going to try to do this year have been put on hold to whenever, the scripts just are coming along at all and I just don't seem to be motivated enough to make any headway on them.

However, there is some minor good news. The musical we're doing next year, Social Lives of the Undead has a really great story - no script yet though. And I managed to get permission from John Coulton to use the chorus from his song "Re: Your Brains", we'll be rewriting it slightly to fit the movie better, so that's kind of cool. If you don't know who he is, he does some really strange, but really cool song. I would venture a guess and say "Still Alive" from Portal is his most famous.

I think it's pretty cool in any case.

Otherwise, I'm plugging away at the audio for other movies. Awesome fun.

Not much news

Things have come to a standstill, not much progress on anything. Not sure why, just seems to have happened - not like I'm terribly overwhelmed by some other project. Probably just as well anyway, I probably could use the prolonged downtime.

In any case, all that's left is audio, lots and lots of audio. I'm sure I'll get to it soon enough though. Until then, I will leave you with this totally unrelated to any movie I'm doing picture.

Defective kitty needs to be sent back
to the manufacturer for repairs.

Zombies, Demons and Aliens...oh my.

It's been a while since I updated this thing. I've been extremely unmotivated the last week and now it seems things are starting to pile up a bit. Crappy.

I've been slowly getting everyone's dialog recorded for the last 3 projects. I'm planning on getting a good chunk of the sound effects done next week if I can motivate myself. I still have a couple sequences to shoot for the 3D movie I've been meaning to get to. We'll see how that goes.

In other news, I've been making some minor progress on the next project, KARL. This one is going to be really tricky. I've got a decent plot worked out, now to get the script together. It's sort of a combination of The Office (the BBC version, not that American sleeping pill of a TV show) and Arrested Development. Not an easy script by any means.

One good thing is that there'll be no post audio aside from music - that'll be nice.

Grayson and Gortch has been put on hold, I just can't wrap my head around the script for that either. I think I got a bit of writers block. The ideas are there, they just won't come out. Call it creative constipation I guess.

I did manage to sort of one of the bigger projects for next year, the musicial. It's still a long way off, but I do have a really good plot worked out and I'm in the process of contacting a professional musician to use part of one of his songs as a bit of a basis for it. We'll see how that goes.

It'll be called The Social Lives of the Undead. It's an old title I've had kicking around for ages attached to a mockumentary, it works much better for this one. The basic idea is a zombie love story musicial. Should be amusing.

That's it, I gotta go fight some evil now. Or at least stand at a safe distance and mock it mercilessly until it notices me.

Horrible Alien Brain Monster Poster

Here it is in all it's crappy looking 1950's style glory.

Alien Brain Monster Squad!

We had our last day of getting major footage for the movie. Basically we went to a park, Draper, Rick and Will got into costume and we shot for about 35 minutes - in between being briefly interviews by someone for something, I've no idea who she was, I assume it was for the paper. And then a group of tourists came along and took their picture with the Brain Monsters. It was amusing. Most people seemed fascinated by it.




So the main part of the movie is done and edited. I'm hoping to do the title sequence soon as well as the opening and closing monologue bits - which might be cut depending on if I find just the right person and get a decent script for it.

Otherwise another one down. I'm working on finalizing the poster today, it's suitably 1950's sci-fi crappy looking.

3D Movie Trailer now online

If you have 3D Glasses, I highly recommend watching the 3D version of the trailer

For the rest of you, I'm also posting this non-3D version.

So the movie is pretty much shot. The bulk of it is, in any case. There is some 2nd Unit type stuff still needed. Tomorrow I'm getting the last of the Alien Brain Monster horde shots. That should be pretty easy.

Otherwise, there's the opening title sequence I'll probably start working on soon. It's not a "working on the computer" sort of thing, I actually have to shoot it. It's going to be pretty cheesy. As well there's an opening and closing monologue that I want to do, I could do away with it. But I really want to - Plan 9 From Outer Space has it, I think this one needs it too.

So that's it for this one nearly - on the video side of things. I'll be moving on to the audio very soon.

What happens after this one, I'm not sure yet.

More Horrible Brain Monster pictures

Some more pictures from the shoot, behind the scenes stuff, not stills. Taken by Kim Johnston.

3rd, and pretty much last, day on the 3D Movie

I kinda can't believe we actually got everything major done today - aside from a couple minor shots just involving the Alien Brain Monster hordes, which will be really easy.

I was worried things might bugger up shooting at the lab at UPEI, espcially since it's an uncontrolled environment, we only had from 9:30 to 1:30 (and at 1:30 there was a class coming in), as well as the fact we were told that student would be in and out of the place setting up for their class. No one was there but us and we finished at 11:30.

I'll also point out at this point in time we had two more exterior scenes to shoot, because of scheduling we wouldn't be getting to them until Monday and Jaz is leaving on Friday for a year. So the best hope was to finish early and maybe do it today...but it was hailing and raining all morning while we were shooting. However, as incredibly uncooperative as the weather has been - it cleared up long enough for us to finish everything.

It was a pretty rushed shoot, but it wasn't stressful at all. I reckon this was because I wasn't concerned about continuity or anything, otherwise there could've been some bad moments. Overall the footage looks awesome, as you can see below:














The cast was Will Beckett as Dr. Jack Hammer, Jaz Krautwusrt as Susie, Tim Gormley as Lt. Edward Wood, Draper Bulger as the unnamed Boyfriend, Kim Johnston, Tanya Nicole MacCullum and Patrick Poirier as the Alien Brain Monsters and EmilyAnne Fullerton as The Brain Queen. It was a pretty awesome cast, everyone did a brilliant job.

So thanks to everyone who helped out, you all did a great job - especially shooting in the cold weather - for which I specifically apologize to Jaz for making her suffer through, at least everyone else had pants and long sleeves.

There's also about 350 behind the scenes pictures that Kim took today, I'll post some of those later.

2nd shoot on the 3D Movie

It went awesome. I think I can honestly say I've never had so much fun on a shoot before - not to say normally it's like being flogged, but this was just utter ridiculousness it was so silly.

This morning we shot the last part of the opening sequence. Even by itself it looked foolish. Kind of put me in mind of a Kids in the Hall sketch for some reason, not any in particular just in general. It was pretty quick and easy, just 3 shots, no dialog, no marks to hit, nothing. Just Draper dressed like a dork look silly and getting blasted by a space ship that wasn't even there.

I had an hour or so to get myself organized for the big shoot later. The weather was iffy so I wasn't expecting too much, it was chilly, but nothing too horrible. I mainly felt bad for my lead actress, Jaz, who was wearing short sleeves and a poodle-like skirt. Kim was on standby the whole time with her coat when we weren't actually shooting.

We shot right down in behind Province House, so we were in a pretty open and public area. We had no problems, aside from some tourist who decided to film us - which I have no problem with, but then he just stood there in the middle of the shot ignoring me until I gave him the finger. I can't tell if it was that or he just got bored because we didn't do anything but stare at him.

Otherwise, it was pure - I'm running out of good words for foolish and silly, but whatever it was, it was pure that.

In any case, here's some images from the movie.


So that's it for now, we've got another long day tomorrow. Everyone did an awesome job today, let's hope tomorrow goes as smoothly.

Recasting

I hate recasting, simple as that.

I've been having to do it more often lately and not because people are being dicks or anything, but just because of bad timing. If I ran a business and had an employee, who I was paying, and they were a continual screwup - I'd fire them no problem, but in comparison my volunteer actors have done nothing wrong. Just victims of bad timing. It sucks.

I had to do it on Bimbo Zombie Killers! because of work conflicts and a very tight schedule. This time around, nearly the same thing but it was because I hadn't heard back from the actor and I have only a limited number of days left before I would have to recast another part.

I would hope the average person would well understand the situation and not take it personally. The only real thing on the line when the situation goes wrong is time and money, and unfortunately it's my money. It's at this point when a project goes from being fun to being a stressful pain in the ass.

No to say that this latest project is being a pain in the ass, it's taken forever to actually get it to come together properly and now that it has, something else has fallen off. I just hope this was the last time this happens on this project.

UFO sighting

I'm hoping this isn't premature and that I'm going to end up regretting mentioning all this.

Thing have picked back up again on the 3D movie. I've made some major changes to the script, ripped out a lot of the more frivolous material so we can get right to the important stuff, it shouldn't feel like you're missing out either - you won't even notice in the final product, but it makes shooting a lot easier since I only have 22 days starting today to finish. That might seem a little overwhelming, but we really only need 2 good days to shoot this thing.

I should have everything I need to jump right into shooting by beginning of next week. For some reason I just stalled on this, I've no idea what happened exactly but I just ran out of steam when it came to getting this thing done.

The masks are done and look pretty damned cheesy. I didn't want them to look really awesome and high end, I wanted them to look low-budget and amateur - which was pretty easy since this was the first time I ever made something like this and I've never used an airbrush before so the paint job is a little simple and sloppy.


As well, I think I managed to round up the last of the props and costumes I need to get the bulk of shooting done this month.

The only disappointing thing is the UFO. I managed to find just the right thing, it's small enough that I can control it myself while looking through the camera - making it much easier to deal with in that regard. The only drawback is that being so close to the camera, it's out of focus - so I'll have to shoot it separately and composite it, at least the method I'll be using is somewhat close to how they would've done it back in the day and will look suitable cheesy.

And that's it. I'm cleaning up the last draft of the script to be ready as soon as possible, I'm hoping to get the actors ready to do the first day of shooting next week. I guess we'll see how things go soon enough.

Other then that, post production on Malice has been going along pretty well, a few weird technical glitches but other then that it's looking pretty good so far. I actually has to get some new footage the last couple days to fill in some blanks. Nothing involving actors, just establishing shots or backgrounds for CG shots.

One thing that's been interesting is looking back on Malice and trying to figure out what I was thinking when I started it, almost 7 (?) years ago now. I wrote the script with the assumption at the time that I was able to pull off the FX that it needed, and here it is a very long time later and I realize there was no way I could've done them back then.

I'm glad it took so long to shoot, because the movie would've looked like crap with what I was capable of back then, even now I'm struggling to keep up with the FX it needs. One good thing is that it's pushed me into doing stuff I would have never normally done. And luckily most of the shots were planned out well enough that I'm not too restricted.

I've still no idea when it'll be done, but it's moving along slowly at least now, better then not at all.

My keyboard is messed up...

I'm missing my "M" key - so you an imagine how hard that last sentence was. It's weird how much missing one key really throws off the rest of your typing, so be warned there could be typos aplenty.

First off, I've managed to get into doing the post work on Malice this last week and it's going really well aside from a new glitch with the newer software. It may not be noticeable, I've yet to watch it on a TV to really know for sure, but any shot that I have to do up an FX shot, it gets a slight soft focus - and that's just coming right out of Premiere before I do anything, it doesn't appear to get worse if I have to rework the shot several times, I guess I'll see, either way I've learned to live with it at this point.

In any case, the FX are going well, there's only a few shots left in the first few scenes - aside from The Titan. The Demon, whose only in 4 shots looks pretty good, I have one shot left with him.

Right now I'm just adjusting the colour of a lot of the FX-less scenes and it's looking a lot nicer then when it was shot, Overall it's coming along pretty well so far.

Still working on the audio for Cronus and Bimbo Zombie Killers!, it'd be nicer if it was going faster, but there's no problems it's just going slow.

And it looks like we'll be putting a massive rush on The 3D Movie to get it done. It could end in disaster since my lead actress will be leaving in about 25 days. That seems to happen a lot lately, I have to be more careful next time.

And there's a few other new things happening, for now we'll just see how this month goes.

Slow and steady progress

Things are starting to get back in order. I've sent word to the actors for The 3D Movie that i hope to start shooting next week. There's still a few minor details to sort out, but things are well underway.

As far as future projects, there's only 2 left for this years. 3 if you count on that I've already shot 80% of, All About Monsters. I still need the "dramatization" footage for that. Karl is up next, it should've been Grayson and Gortch, but since it's a Lethal Weapon parody and that movie was set at Christmas, we'll be going the same way.

Speaking of Grayson and Gortch though, I got the first prosthetic for it done today, came out not too bad, a few problems that can still be fixed. The biggest problem was the batch of foam didn't quite work very well, I think the latex might be off or something - I have no idea if it's even possible for latex to go "off." In any case, it's not too bad. There are some definite problem spots, mostly caused by the off latex.

So next I'll be getting ready for Karl, which should be somewhat easy since it's just a documentary and most of the footage will just be improved anyway. There'll be a story, just not sure what yet. That almost means I'll have to subject myself to the having my face cast since i'll be playing Karl - I'm sort of not looking forward to it, since I have to train either Draper or Kim to do it and it's a full face cast. We'll see how that goes, if there's no update afterwards, you'll know it went bad.

Grayson and Gortch

I'm definitely running way behind schedule on these shorts, I'm hoping i can catch up before I can no longer shoot outside.

I did make some decent progress today. i started working on the Gortch prosthetic for the Grayson and Gortch movie. I decided rather then buying several of the same ones originally used for Malice, that I would make my own - mainly because of the expense.

This particular prosthetic is pretty delicate, and while I managed to peel it off somewhat intact, I can't really rely on that being the case every time I need to reapply it. It's rather ridiculous when I'm fully capable of making my own - that and the cost of ordering just one is more them what it'll cost me to make 6 or 7 on my own, so it only makes sense to do it this way.

So I won't take credit for the design, that was done by the good folks at Scream Team, they make really decent prosthetics, most of which were used in Malice.

The original in Malice.

The sculpt of the new one,
designed to fit the actor much better.

The script is still being worked on, although it's coming along pretty well.

As far as the other movies, here's where we are:

Bimbo Zombie Killers!: Video is done, a rough audio track is laid down, just need to add end credits and record all the dialog.

Cronus: Video is nearly complete, one shot is missing I need to get that at some point and that should take care of that. End credits are needed, sound effects and dialog are still needed as well.

The 3D Movie: Way behind schedule. Still working on props, there's still stuff I haven't even thought of yet. A couple locations are still needed as well as extras. I'm really hoping to get moving on this soon.

And that's it.

Cronus Opening Title Sequence

It's been awhile since I posted anything other then ramblings about how things are going - they're still going slow, although it's been picking up this week - so I thought I post the opening title sequence to Cronus.

They're not totally done, at least as far as music or whoever I'll find to do the music is concerned, otherwise totally done. What you're hearing is just a temp track, the same music I used for the trailer.

The main reason I'm showing it off, is because if you're familiar with Film Noir, then you might recognize it.

Came out pretty good as far as I'm concerned. Here's hoping the movie itself will be just as decent. The video should be done this weekend, I'm working on the audio for both this and Bimbo Zombie Killers! all weekend.

Bimbos and Demons

I've finally finished the video part of Bimbo Zombie Killers! and it looks pretty good. I might watch it a few times and decide to adjust the 70's look to it, but that's nothing major and effects nothing as far as moving on to the audio is concerned - which will hopefully be starting next week.

Also, I took another look at Cronus today, just to refamiliarize myself with it. It also needs to be processed to give it an older film look. The FX are done, one actros dialog is all recorded and soon I'll be finalizing that an getting into the audio. I'm hoping to finish the video by end of next week.

As far as The Horrible Alien Brain Monsters From Outer Space in 3D goes, it's been put on hold, but I should be getting back into it this week and if all goes well I'll be ready to start scheduling the rest of the shoot by early next week. So here's hoping all goes well.

Next up is Grayson and Gortch, basically it's Lethal Weapon with demons. I had a hard time getting the script together, so like Cronus, I watched a movie with the basic idea of what I'm going for an just took a lot of notes and more or less turned the movie into a Lethal Weapon clone. It's a bit of a cheat since I'm following nearly exactly the way Lethal Weapon was done - I'm hoping the next rewrite will give it a little something of it's own. More on this pretty soon.

And in limbo, but mostly filmed, is All About Monsters. It's been idling away on the backburner since the remainder of it is a series of very quick shots with a lot of FX. Mainly the monster, which I have yet to even design. I'm hoping to start snagging footage next month maybe.

And that's it. I can offically say without a doubt that Bimbo Zombie Killers! will be done by October 1st and hopefully even Cronus.

The Look of Bimbo Zombie Killers!

For some reason I can't get the proper aspect ratio to display here, it's fine other - as soon as I upload it, it looks like this. Ah well, not that it matters anyway.

The point is, I've finally nailed down the final "look" of Bimbo Zombie Killers! I've got one FX shot left, and it's going to take a couple days, but otherwise the video aspect of the project is finally done. The last step is to colour correct the whole thing to give it more of an old 70's look. You can see the difference here.

Top: Before and Bottom: After

And add to this some dust and scratches to make it look a little beat up, and some flicker here and there and it should look pretty good.

I'm starting the first relooping session with one of the leads, Heather, tonight and I'm going to try to get everyone taken care of over the course of the next week or two.