Balls

I hate redoing old work. I came to the realization today that I'm probably going to have to redo most of the molds I've made recently for the prosthetics. Partially because I made a few mistakes in the sculpting process and more then a few in the molding process - however, as much as I usually hate taking a huge step backwards, I'm actually sort of looking forward to it. I guess because I see it as more practice and hopefully it'll result in a nearer to perfect quality prosthetic then I had originally.

Anyway, I think all this has helped work out the kinks in my process, problems with air pockets, issues with excess talcum power ruining the mold - all sorts of stupid little things. All gone now at least.

The first redo I think will be the Gortch prosthetic since I'm really hoping to get to do a photoshoot soon. We'll see how this goes, this will be the 3rd attempt at this one.

Otherwise, things are still going along alright. The next few weeks should see a lot more things being produced, the first being the Severed Baby Troll Feet prop. The sculpt is looking really good, should have the mold made by Wednesday.

That's it for now.

Productive couple days

Things are suddenly picking up a little bit of steam, which is hardly a bad thing at all.

Got some actors all lined up, even a couple new locations potentially lined up. I started outlining all the prosthetics and props I'll need to make for the next two movies - so far it all seems pretty reasonable.

I got to test my underwater camera case, it was a little nerve wracking at first since I wasn't sure just how reliable these things are or how the camera itself would react under water. I first just tested it in the sink while the case was empty - that worked. Then I let it dry out and filled up the tub, if you think the tub looks a little dirty, it's actually been stained a little pinkish from all the blood splatter tests I did last summer.

I'm just sculpting a new prosthetic tonight and I'll probably start another one tomorrow and that'll leave only 2 more I think. In total there will be 8 different prosthetics created for Grayson & Gortch. Not too bad.

Once I get my foam latex stuff next week, hopefully Monday, I'll be doing up a copy of the Randall Meincke prosthetic for Breath of the Dead - that's the name of the deformed voodoo zombie. It'll be a pretty elaborate makeup job too, there will be a main face, a rotting gimpy ear and a somewhat bulbous headpiece for the back. The actor will be wearing a baldcap under all that and will have some straggly hair added as well. Should look pretty funky.

Unfortunately I'll be keeping pictures of Meincke under wraps for now, so you won't be seeing him until the movie is done. In fact, no one but my self, the actor and a couple of the crew will ever see it until the first shot he appears in the movie - so the actors are in for a bit of a surprise I think. Hopefully that one take will end up making it into the movie and we'll get the reaction we're hoping for.

That's pretty much it for today. We'll see what happens tomorrow.

Another update without pictures.

Sorry to disappoint the slightly illiterate people who try to read this, but no pictures today. I don't know why I felt the need to point that out.

Here's what's happening so far:

Breath of the Dead. Script is coming along. Casting has begun - pretty happy with some of the folks tentatively onboard. Working out the special effects, that's going to be the best part of this project. The budget is pretty reasonable so far too. My underwater camera case should be arriving in a matter of hours, it'll be scary/fun testing that out.

Grayson & Gortch. Script is 95% done. Got lots of molds for prosthetics made - still waiting on my foam latex to arrive, that's been a pain in the ass. I need to create about 5 or 6 more prosthetics for this and a few props as well. Casting is slowly trudging along but I've got the word out to a few folks and hopefully that will be all nailed down in a few weeks.

We'll hopefully be doing a photoshoot for the poster in a few weeks, that'll be pretty cool.

And in older project news:

The 3D Movie. Soundtrack very soon to come. It's gotten delayed but I think it'll be well worth it.

Cronus. Hoping to get back into this next week. It's been shelved I think mainly because it took so long to get edited and I lost interest in it. I have to really rework everything, my workflow has totally changed in editing since I started this so it's a real mess to get it to where I need it to be. We'll see I guess how this turns out.

And one that's very much slipped through the cracks unnoticed:

All About Monsters. You'd really have to be paying attention to remember this one. It's more of a PSA about monsters then a movie. The bulk was shot last year, almost a whole year ago actually, and the reenactment sections will be done this summer hopefully. I have to design the monster and I'm hoping to get a new system for doing 3D work soon.

And that's it.

I was going to mention the online shop, but it's at a standstill for the moment because of crap that's really not interesting enough to mention.

Lost in Shipping

Things are progressing well. I'd like more time, but I'm not complaining.

There's a near final script for Grayson & Gortch finally. I've just completed a breakdown of all the characters and extras, and there's a lot, as well as the locations, which seem relatively easy overall.

There's 22 roles in it. A lot are background, one or two lines. A couple are non-speaking, only one or two scenes. So that all seems doable. Most have to look like Special Agents, all suited up - which is pretty easy to organize. The hardest most time consuming will be working out the makeup - there's going to be a lot of it, but that's going to be part of the fun.

I think I'll be starting on the casting as soon as possible. I'll have to circulate the list around to my usual contacts and see what turns up.

The props should be easy, not too many and only a couple will need to be hand made, but well within my skill range. And they should make for interesting items to sell once the online shop opens (I still have no idea what that is going to happen unfortunately). There's going to be some Severed Baby Troll Feet, a weird demonic looking glass of sorts (no design for this yet, but it will feature an eyeball I think) and a medallion that shoots bursts of energy. Pretty standard weirdness.

So we'll see how that goes progresses.

Breath of the Dead has a really solid outline I'm pretty happy with, I started writing the script and hope to do some character outlines tonight. Casting will be pretty tough on this one, especially our lead - not only will she have to be an incredibly instantly sympathetic character, but she'll have to be a pretty tough chick to pull off the ending. She gets full body tackled into a river and has to fight underwater. This is going to be a really hard find.

I mentioned we'd worked out the deaths I think last post, this week I hope to start really designing them on paper and should be doing some field test for some of the more tricky - and messy - deaths.

Now to explain the title. This is a messy situation that I have a little trouble wrapping my head around given the number of hands involved. I recently place a pretty huge order with a company in Quebec, I needed some foam latex and this time of year is has to be shipped via a heated vehicle, which isn't cheap hence the large order to justify the shipping cost.

The company Sial Canada I believe they're called, I could be wrong about the full name, has been awesome to deal with, really nice helpful folks - no complaints whatsoever with them. And no complaints really with the shipping company since they've been incredibly communicative and helpful, but like I said "lost in shipping". I received 2 items out of 10 or so. The missing 8 were all boxed together and contained the foam latex. Now, I'm not sure where the fault lies yet.

Apex, the shipping company, handed it off to another company to haul it to their depot in Monction and then to another, Armor, to take it from there to here. Well Armor never received it. So I can't blame them. Apex claims it went through them with no problems, so it's obviously this other company - who took it from Toronto (I think) to Moncton. That's a lot of space in between to get lost.

Like I said, I almost can't complain because the folks at Apex have been so helpful in attempting to track it down. I really don't think I'd get this kind of help from any other courier server, certainly not Canada Post. And Sial has already confirmed that if nothing shows on the radar by tomorrow afternoon, they will ship a replacement at no cost to me. Awesomeness.

So really, I'm just left to complain about the annoyance this whole thing has caused, because the people involved are more then willing to take all blame and correct it with no expense to me. I'm hoping it works out, I'd really like to get to making some of the prosthetics and see how they look. And post some pictures of them.

Blood spray and gore galore

Dan Caseley and I sat down today and hammered out the plot and script outline for Breath of the Dead today. It's a fairly typical 80s horror movie I think, it's got a good solid back story, a touch of weirdness with the voodoo, a fairly logical story progression - I think there's a few things people won't expect, at least not when it happens - and lots and lots of blood and gore.

We're planning on some SFX tests throughout the next month, a lot of really great ideas - even when we came up with them we were laughing at just how horrible, silly, bloody and gory they were. There'll be exploding heads, a couple rather horrible deaths, some creative uses for intestines and a good example of why you shouldn't leave beer bottles lying about when there's a undead deformed killer on the loose. Hopefully they'll all work out and this will be a really good, maybe even scary, little movie.

Meanwhile, still cranking out as many prosthetics as I can. I'm aiming for at least 12 different demons for Grayson & Gortch, not including Gortch himself.

Breath of the Dead

So that's it, the new title for the 80s Slasher Flick, which is really more just an 80s horror movie in general now. Struggled with this one for the longest time. We really wanted something kinda vague, that almost doesn't suit the movie but does once you watch it - although you'll have to figure it out on your own.

In any case, that's some progress made on this one. We're hoping to get the plot roughed out in the next few weeks, too many movies make their characters do stupid unrealistic things just to move the plot along, set up various deaths or just to get themselves out of a corner they've written themselves into. One thing we really want to do is to make sure no one does anything overly stupid, there's realistically stupid and then there's "no one would ever do that in that situation" stupid. We'd like to avoid the later.

Then it's onto designing the special effects - that's going to be the best part of this shoot. With the literally thousands, of onscreen horror movie deaths, it'll be hard coming up with a couple original ones. It'd be nice to have a couple that really make you squirm when you see them.

And lastly there's the makeup aspect of the movie. Not only is the killer horribly disfigured, but he's also been dead for some time and now is undead, having been raised through evil voodoo - should be swanky. The other major makeup job is taking a 20some year old girl and making her look like a crazy 90some year old voodoo lady whose been living in the woods for about 75 years on her own - even swankier.

If all goes as planned, this one will be full HD as well.

DVDs

I just got a couple emails through The Monkey Rodeo website asking about DVDs. These were from people who just happened to stumble upon it online too, not people I actually know. While it's awesome that folks would actually like to purchase these movies, I figured I'd do a short explanation of why it's not publicly available on DVD.

Each short, while totally viewable on its own, is part of a larger collection of short movies intended to be viewed all together. Not every time, but at least at once. I don't want each short floating around out there unattached from the larger project. And I don't have the money to professionally produce individual copies of all these movies, nor do I want to do it myself and create amateurish looking DVDs, especially when that is not my goal in making these movies in the first place.

Again, I certainly appreciate the interest in them, but they won't be made for sale (only viewable online) until the entire collection is completed. Which could be some time at the rate things are going. Until then, I might make then available for download possibly, but that's something I'll have to look into once I get the storage space to host them all somewhere other then Vimeo.

Thanks for the interest, we'll see how the rest of the project goes and hopefully even more folks will be interested in the future.