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.