Saturday, May 23, 2009

The Monkey Rodeo: All About Monsters

I don't even know where to begin. The last week has been insane, I don't even know how I managed to make it all come together and not have my head explode.

As far as Cronus goes, we've one more night of filming. The big fight scene - it's really more of a beating actually. I've had a lot to prepare and still have a long way to go to get it all ready for this coming Wednesday.

The chairs have to be made to fall apart, shouldn't be too much of a problem since they're held together with screws - I'm just going to pull all the screws out and replace them with balsa wood.

The desk is going to be a bit of a challenge. I'm not sure how that's going to work, but we'll see what happens.

I got some breakaway glass in. A couple pieces of picture frame glass, one sheet is already broken from shipping, not too badly though, it's still usable. And a breakaway bottle to be smashed over Draper's head.


Also had our first relooping session to redo all the dialog, I think it went pretty well. I haven't heard it yet, but a friend of mine whose equipment I used to record, said it turned out pretty good.

All About Monsters. This one is a little hard to explain, but it's primarily already shot. In about 30 minutes Saturday afternoon. It's done as a small segments, perhaps to a larger show, perhaps it might air during commercials. It's write in segment where people, (children or adults, it's not really sorted out) write in to a monster expert to ask questions separating fact and fiction.

It's way more ridiculous then serious sounding. One segment has a fellow named Harry asking whether or not it's true if giant monsters like to eat babies. The which the answer is: Yes, yes it is. Cut to a giant monster, looming over a daycare, a massive hole in the roof through which the monster pulls out a handful of babies he then eats like popcorn.

It's dark, kind of sick humor. You'll like it.

This shoot was really last minute. I wasn't prepared to shoot it until mid-June, but in order to get the actor I really wanted, a fellow by the name of Rich Wilson, I had to do it before May 25th. So it was a little rushed, luckily the concept is simple and I only need him for half an hour.


The biggest problem was recording the audio, I wanted to get a lav mic and just record it all live and be done with it. I had gone to the only store locally that might carry such a thing, only to be told it doesn't exist. AC powered one yes, battery powered ones no. That's actually crap, they couldn't have just said they didn't know, instead they began to explain why it wasn't possible for such a thing to exist...I told them to look it up and the reaction was just "Oh. There's one."

Whatever. They didn't have one in, all they had were the AC powered ones. So I had to find an exterior location that looked rather decent - I wanted one of the park areas - that had an outlet. All day Friday morning I drove around testing them and found nothing.

I decided to go get the AC powered one anyway, I find a place I could shoot - not perfect, but it was fine. And then they asked if I wanted the battery powered lav mic they just got in...It's weird to be thrilled and pissed off all the same time.

So it turned out pretty good in the end, I've only given the footage a quick glance, but the level of the actor's audio seemed really nice and clear above the background.

Bimbo Zombie Killers! is coming along slowly. This will be shot first of July.

As far as the major elements to get ready for this one; I need to get my Firearms Safety License because there will be guns involved.

I need to come up with a very cheap, non-toxic, non-sticky blood recipe - I hate any of the syrup based homemade fake blood recipes, they're just rotten to deal with for actors, especially when they're going to be covered in the stuff all day long. I have a few good ideas I'll be testing out over the next couple weeks.

As well, the major props are a couple dozen moonshine jugs, 3 will be real and the others will be made of foam. I have someone making me the jugs, which I'll then make a mold of to mass produce the foam versions.

And I have to get a fake axe as well, it'll be made like the LARP weapons I used last year - I'll be making it myself though this time.

We'll see what the next couple weeks bring with this one.

And lastly, The Horrible Alien Brain Monsters from Outer Space in 3D is coming along really well. The script is almost finished although it's already been completely cast.

I've been outlining a few minor details to make it feel really campy and poorly made. The FX should be easy for this since I want them to look really bad. I don't think there'll be any CG involved in this movie at all, it'll all be live action, old school special effects if possible.

So that's it so far, we'll see what the next month brings.

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