Thursday, December 23, 2010

"Demons" by Karl Wenham IndieGoGo Funding Campaign


This was actually posted awhile ago, but I was going to update it and saw I'd posted nothing else since, so I'm just adding to it here instead. Not really too much more info on it, I posted some of the photos and videos for now, I'm hoping to do a lot more to get some interest in it.

$2000 is a pretty high goal, I just thought I'd set it as that, I'm willing to take any small amount really. And if you can't afford to make a donation, then you can easily help out by reposting the link everywhere you can think of.

Wednesday, December 22, 2010

Mada the Vampire and other stuff

A short video, shot by Kim Johnston, of the last photo shoot I did with Julia Laforest as Mada the Vampire.



Finally got around to putting this online, even though it was edited about a week or more ago. Anyway, things have been slightly busy, fairly annoying and some other stuff I can't really remember at the moment.

The editing on Grayson & Gortch is coming along well. Just one scene left, half a scene really. So far it's pushing 20 minutes and this last scene is probably the longest of the movie, so it should be a decent length. It'll definitely not be a boring movie, even if it doesn't make total scene because it's moving so fast.

Still waiting to hear about the grant I applied for for the "Demons" by Karl Wenham project - that's been a bit of a source of annoyance.I'd love to rant about it, but I'm too annoyed by how long it's taking to bother. Regardless of the outcome whenever I do finally hear about the grant, I'm going to start up a campaign on IndieGoGo and see if something comes of that. Should have that up and running in a few days if not sooner.

Otherwise not much going on. I've got no supplied so I haven't been working on anything aside from one new prosthetic. It's looking pretty funky though. Can't wait to be able to make the mould and do a shoot with it, should be cool.

And that's it, probably won't be posting anything until the photo shoot next week.

Monday, December 13, 2010

Grayson & Gortch Trailer now online.



Came out not too bad, although my announcer voice kinda sucked today and since I was in a hurry to just get it done I just decided to put up with it.

Too much to do and not enough time (or money mostly).

Things tend to bottleneck rather often on me. And that always seems to coincide most proportionally to how poor I am. In any case, I have a whole pile of projects I'm trying (or wanting) to work on, but I'm unable due to lack of funds - kind of annoying.

Right now I'm trying to get the trailer to Grayson & Gortch done, almost done - it's been taking forever as it turned out to be a pretty tricky trailer to edit. I think I finally got it all working, if all goes well I could be online within the day.

Otherwise I'm just trying to get things organized with the online shop. I've got a couple props I'd love to put online for sale, but because I currently can't mass produce them for various reasons, or ship them because of lack of proper packaging, I have to just leave it for the moment.

I've got a short video from the Vampire photo shoot I've been wanting to get to, but due to other projects (not mine but I did make a small amount of money off them) that popped up. I'm hoping once the Grayson & Gortch trailer is taken care of I can get to that.

As well I'm trying to get a new script written, it's almost 2 weeks past my self imposed due date. I'm trying to track down a location for another photo shoot and that's been just dead in the water for some time now.

I need to make some progress with Social Lives of the Undead soon too.

There's 2, perhaps 3, web series type projects I have in developement. One is ready to go just waiting on suppliers. One is just a thought in my head that will take very little work to get off the ground. And the 3rd is the one I want to do the most of all, but I've got a tonne of work ahead of me before I can attempt that.

Also, I've been trying to find a local UltraCal 30 supplier - I'm hoping that's done today. I guess we'll see.

And I've been patiently waiting to hear about a grant I applied for that might actually solve about 80% of all these problems. As well as making a 2nd attempt at a program that will allow me to get the business up and running more smoothly.

I think that's it.

Sunday, December 05, 2010

Vampire photo shoot

I did a photo shoot with Julie Laforest today, done up as a vampire at a local lounge, 42nd Street, and while I'm pretty happy with most of the images I don't think my head was quite into it today because when I look the pictures I can't help think I could've done so much more with that location and whatnot. Then again, things were very limited because of the lighting up there. I brought in some lighting, but it wasn't entirely enough - as a result, keeping things in focus was a little tricky and some of the pictures weren't as sharp as I'd hoped. Ah well, they still look good, just means I should really look at investing in some good lenses.








I think the makeup turned out great, the fangs, as cheap as they were looked great and even the fake blood I made up for Julie to actually drink - yes, this was totally drinkable and pretty damned realistic looking blood. Overall I'm pretty happy with the images and as usual Julie was willing to put up with the makeup and did a great job.


Saturday, December 04, 2010

Editing Grayson & Gortch

I'm finally getting around to editing this thing. So far here's how it's looking:

8 1/2 scenes out of 12 are edited

Current running time is 13 minutes - approximately 5-7 minutes of unedited scenes

60 FX shots (not too bad, most are muzzle flashes and bullet hits)

I've got everything organized, all the FX shots listed out and now it's just a matter of time. I've got a couple other projects taking up my time this weekend, so chances are I won't get much more done until Monday or Tuesday at this rate. I'm really hoping to get a chance to make a trailer for this thing really soon, just not sure where to even start at this point. I think I'll need some Lethal Weapon sounding music to start with and go from there.

Wednesday, December 01, 2010

Demon Ear Prosthetics - finally online.

I finally got these bad boys (or girls, ears don't have a specific sex that I'm aware of) online. I thought I'd actually try to insert the stuff from the online shop into the blog and see what happens.

If it's not appearing properly, let me know. Otherwise, if you've got a hankering for some Demon Ear prosthetics, you know where to get some. There will definitely be more coming online in the next few months. You can never have enough demon ears.



Demon Ears
Generic Demon Ears (Type A)



$20.00 CAD





More Info


Or you can go to the actual website to buy them - either way, you should buy them.
The Monkey Rodeo

Sunday, November 28, 2010

It's a wrap on Grayson & Gortch - finally.

Had our last day of shooting finally on Grayson & Gortch, it's been a long time trying to get through this one project (while many others were postponed, delayed or outright cancelled) but it's finally all shot. And even if something is missing, I don't care, I'll find a way to make it work.

It's about half edited already, so I'll be attempting to make some sense of it all this week and hopefully cut a trailer pretty soon as well. I've got a couple other projects in the works, hopefully things will smooth out over the winter and things will get back on track for the few project in the works for next summer.

So, until whenever there's more news, here's some pictures from the last day.







Another instance of seeing a still of someone falling that at the time I had no idea their feet had left the ground quite so dramatically.


Next on the list are at least 2 photo shoots and the mini web series Home Sweet Hell.

Thursday, November 25, 2010

Club 13 - Behind the scenes video

This was shot by Kim Johnston as I did the makeup and photo shoot. I'm planning on doing this for as many of the photo shoots as possible, might not always be - but here's hoping.


Also, I added a page to the website with this on it and a few of the images - this will hopefully be a regular edition. http://www.themonkeyrodeo.com/demons/club13.html

Silas Wynne's Club 13

I did another photo shoot last night, this time rather then featuring one prosthetic, I did 3, two of which I had never used until now and one of which were the ear pieces I'd made recently. I've been holding off on making more because I wasn't sure how well they'd work out and I have to say I'm really impressed with the result, easily just as good as any professionally made prosthetic ears I've ever purchased.

So very soon I'll be putting these new pieces online - although I forgot to get photos of the raw, unpainted ears - I'll have to do that soon as well.

Anyway, here's some pictures, the initial idea was a sort of 70s lounge lizard kind of thing, I ended up calling it Club 13. The groovy dude in the middle of the picture below is a fellow Karl knew back in the early 70s called Silas Wynne (Draper Bulger), a Thuul Demon who own a place by the name of Club 13 - which was also the hottest place back in the day for demons to go out and enjoy themselves. With him are two two infamous Kane sisters (Heather Panton and Aleshia Farrell), not much was really known about them, other then they had supposedly had affairs with several important human political figures and as a result had amassed a small fortune through blackmail. Awesome stuff.























Overall it was a pretty easy shoot, the makeup took next to no time despite doing 3 people at once - but that's because the girls just had the ears and forehead pieces. During the shoot, Kim Johnston took some video footage, I'll be throwing it all together into a short video to be posted late today hopefully.

Here's the prosthetics used in this shoot:


Thuul Demon Prosthetic Image Thuul Demon



$50.00 CAD







More Info


G'Lorn Demon Forehead Prosthetic Imgage G'Lorn Demon Forehead



$20.00 CAD




More Info


Demon Ears Generic Demon Ears (Type A)



$20.00 CAD



More Info

Monday, November 22, 2010

More Grayson & Gortch goodness

Another scene shot. I think we attempted this one several times already and I'm kinda glad we held off for whatever reason. It's a sort of important scene, since a lot of the plot is really dished out at this point. We shot at a local restaurant/club - not sure how you qualify it - that was closed for the day, so we had to whole place to ourselves.

One more scene after this, not sure when that's going to happen, but it's nice to be finally getting close to the end. Anyway, here's some pictures:

















You can see here the makeshift green screen used to hopefully create a hole through Graham, no idea if it'll work since I don't believe I got background images of what's behind him. Ah well, we'll see.