Monday, July 30, 2012

BZK! Web Series, First day of shooting

We finally had our first day of shooting, only a few minor snags and bugger ups. I missed an entire scene and could've shot another as well, but overall it went off pretty decently.





Some pictures!








Saturday, July 28, 2012

Hoping to get The Monkey Rodeo to HalCon this year!

Exactly as the title suggests. I'm hoping to take The Monkey Rodeo to HalCon this year, but money's tight and if I don't book a booth soon I might not get in. It's a niche business and I had no idea how hard it'd be to break into it, I'm really hoping something like this could give me the boost in exposure the business needs.

I only need $750, that's it. Just to get over there and sell some weird assed stuff and come back and hopefully have made some really awesome solid contacts that will help the business finally really take off.

Tuesday, July 24, 2012

New Prosthetics!

A few new pieces this week:

The Morg'Shath Parasite Demon - $55 (includes 9 resin teeth)
Zombie Collection #1 - $45
Individual pieces;
Forehead/Eye-$20
Left Cheek-$10
Mouth-$20
Zombie Collection #2 - $45
Individual pieces;
Forehead-$10
Left Cheek-$10
Nose-$10
Right Cheek-$10
Chin-$10

The zombie pieces are obviously great for anyone doing a zombie walk and don't want to spend a fortune - if you have a couple friends you can pitch in and buy the collection and each have a piece or two.

Sunday, July 22, 2012

Zombie Viral Videos

As part of our attempt to draw a little more attention to the funding campaign for Bimbo Zombie Killers! Undead in the Water - go here to check it out, or use the link to the right - we made a series of "Viral video" inspired zombie clips.



If you go to the Vimeo page, you can also download the video and upload them to your favourite video site or even your most hated video site. Anything we can do to get the word out there would be awesome, so feel free to share them anywhere you can, or whatever else you can think of. Thanks!

Thursday, July 19, 2012

Web Series Funding

We're slowly stumbling towards our goal. Thing is, I was really hoping to get more by now - not to dismiss what we've already received. So far it's been awesome. We've received enough to actually start filming.

I've got 10 zombie prosthetics made, various smaller pieces. A couple latex masks made - which I'm not really sure we'll be using aside from a couple scenes. I'm hoping to get to some other pieces this week, but scheduling has proved to be a huge task that's taking up a lot of my time.

I've got the whole script broken down now. Everything's cross referenced based on who we need, where we're shooting and what needs to be done before those sequences can be shot. Out of 12 shoots, I've got about 6 lined up. So far so good. But we're not out of the woods yet folks, we still need assistance.


We've already received a couple big donations, which put us over the top and got on on track. A huge thanks to everyone who has donated, regardless of the amount. While this might not seems like the most lofty of artistic endeavors - it's fun. If you like cheesy, campy zombie movies that has some respect by not insulting it's audience by just throwing crap at them (I think it's obvious we actually give a shit about what we're doing), you will more than likely enjoy this.

Here's the first two movies in case this is your first time here and you've no idea what I'm talking about. Both these movies were made with less than $500 each. We've got an opportunity to show that PEI isn't just about fart jokes, it's not an intelligent movie by any means, but at least it's different from the rest.

And I have a feeling I might insult some people with the "PEI isn't just about fart jokes" line, I'm not referring to anything or anyone in specific, so if you're offended - that's really too bad. If that's your style of comedy, good for you - but you really should have thicker skin if that's the case.

Monday, July 16, 2012

BZK! Scheduling frustration.

I think the worst part of the entire film making process, at least for me, is scheduling. At first you say, "We're shooting on Sundays" and pretty much everyone says, "Yeah, good for me." And then you say "How about this date" and everyone's onboard until one person says "Can't make it, busy."

Now, I'm going to state this before I say anything else. We're all volunteers, I appreciate that. So that means, if you're busy, you're busy. End of story. Sure I find it frustrating, but to be angry at someone for that I'd have to be a huge asshole. If I was paying people, that'd be a different story. I'm not, so we're stuck in scheduling hell.

The delays started pretty early on. My plan was to apply for a grant, which was normally due on May 1st which would have given us plenty of time to make to proposed start date of July 8th. Well, because of cut backs and other government related bullshit, the grant due date was pushed back and pushed back until July 12th - and with roughly an 8 week turnaround, that sucks balls. Still, I accepted that and applied and hoped for the best.

Also, back in the beginning of June, I started an Indiegogo campaign, which I thought with enough effort to promote it we might get just enough money to start on time. Nope. That didn't happen either. Now, not to discuss my own financial situation (which doesn't exist) but I don't have money to invest in this even with the notion of being compensated later.

So we're stuck with waiting. And waiting. While we've had several beautiful Sundays slide by where nothing could be done. Finally, enough donations came in through the funding campaign and it looked like we were all ready to go finally. Awesome. I picked a date about two weeks from now, which was the soonest I could get my shit together and get enough done to actually shoot - only to find out just one out of the 5 people needed was unavailable - and justifiably so too.

So, no problem, how about next weekend? The weekend after that? It was kind of like in high school when you asked someone out and you couldn't take no for an answer - not that I ever experienced that, mind you. Until finally I realized, everyone's schedule was so out of whack that I was now looking well into September before I could shoot with everyone. Not good at all.

So I had to do the one thing I hate more than scheduling and that's recasting. Just recasting one role made everything fall into place. Sure that feels awesome that everything's almost back on track, but shitty that I had to tell someone that just because they couldn't make one date, even though everyone else has shitty schedules too, they were the one that got cut because of it.

It sucks because the whole idea of doing this is to have fun, but the fact that it comes at a price like this tends to sour it a bit - regardless of how awesome it might be in the end, you can never forget you had to axe someone because of one day they were unavailable.

So we're looking at August 12th as our day now, working on July 29th for other stuff and hopefully some evening for another shoot that's been postponed twice. I'm going back on my original idea of Sunday's only because while Sundays are good for about 80% of the cast, I don't want that other 20% feeling like their being shit on. Ultimately everyone's going to have to suck it up a few times and shoot on a day they'd rather being sitting at home hungover.

Work and family obligations I have no issues with, people get sick and who wants to do this shit when they're sick? But when it comes to those few times, and it does happen, people would rather go out drinking because some friend of theirs they only see 50 times a year want to go out, that annoys me. It annoys me because then everyone else has to rearrange their schedule and then I have to do the whole process over again, only to find out the next proposed date is not good for someone else and then we're left waiting 3-4 weeks.

It sucks. I hate it. I'm actually good at it, but I hate it. I will go so far as to say, I fucking hate it. And having to recast to make my life easier, makes it worse. This is supposed to be fun, as I said before, but I guess everything comes at some small price.

Anyway, things are working out slowly, a little more messily then I'd planned, but they're working out. Let's just hope I survive this. I'm done ranting now.

Friday, July 13, 2012

Bimo Zombie Killers! T-shirts

If you haven't check out the Indiegogo fundraising campaign for the BZK! web series, you might not know one of the perks for donating ($50) is a DVD and a T-shirt. The main idea was to simply do a "Bimbo Zombie Killers!" shirt and leave it at that, then I decided to add a little something to the actors wardrobe and make some t-shirts, so I'm offering those up as well.

The "BZK!" shirt will hopefully be red on black, haven't had much success printing with red so far though. The "Clarence" and "STJ" shirts will be black on a lighter colour, not just white. And finally the "Zombie Girl" will hopefully be white on black.

Aside from the "BZK!" shirt, these will all be featured in the series. So if you've got a couple extra dollars burning a hole in your pocket (how money does that without itself burning up, I've no idea), head over to the Bimbo Zombie Killers! Undead in the Water funding site and donate, when the time comes I'll check in and you can make your final choice as the what shirt you want.

Picture of the actual shirts will be coming as soon as we begin production.

Sunday, July 08, 2012

Zombies! Sort of.

Finally started in on sculpting some zombie prosthetics for the web series this summer. I'm planning on doing several of them as small pieces - as well, when they go online they'll be a bit of a mix and match sort of deal. I do as many of them as I can in one mould, saves time producing them in batches and cuts down on wasted mould materials.



Just waiting on some more supplies and I'll be cranking out the rest this week and them hopefully getting to master mould them as well.

In total there'll be at least 15 new zombie prosthetics being added to the online shop very soon, and if you're interested in a full collection of them, you can check out the Indiegogo page for the Bimbo Zombie Killers! Undead in the Water web series, for only a $150 donation you can get the whole set, as well as a DVD - they whole set will actually retail for over $300, so it's a bit of a deal and you're helping us out.

Here's the link:
http://igg.me/p/110014?a=53757

Friday, July 06, 2012

Mid year review of search terms.

Normally I do this once a year in Janurary, but this year there were a few weird ones I had to bring up sooner.

The top ten offered no surprises;
1. Severed finger
2. How to make a fake axe
3. Severed fingers
4. Zombie photoshoot
5. Fox Henderson (seems reasonable)
6. Severed thumb
7. Monkey Rodeo Project
8. Demon ears
9. Bimbo Zombie Killers 2
10. Make a fake axe

And many variations of severed fingers/thumbs of both male and female varieties. As well as axes and how to make them and again variations on anything resembling an axe. A surprising amount and variations about "Tibetan Fire Starters" Are they actually a real thing?

There was the usual round of people's names as well, mostly the females who've been involved in my projects.

Then there was the weird ones;

finger monkey - ??? I'm not sure I want to think about this one.

men hookers - really?

golems for sale - because most people have then, just not for sale I guess.

silicone male ass - come on, there's no need for that

casting bimbo - not sure I get it

june 22 monkey rodeo - while it might seem odd, I assume it's a date when a real monkey rodeo was happening
  
latex hooker - because real ones are so tacky
  
who the actor for thork - must be something for The Guild I suppose?
  
ape giving the finger - is that something you search for?
  
fingerfuck male - seriously?

"project bimbo" - sounds awesome to me

the zombie killer from the dawn - not sure if this is a complete search term or not

most power hallucinogen - glad this phrase landed them on my site

zombie hooker demons pei - seems a pretty good set of words to find my site, I guess

painting zombie voodoo halloween - another good random set of words

horned girls - you misspelled a word there I think

nasty hooker makeup - is that something anyone really want to see?

zombie killers online monkey - it's like someone heard parts of names for stuff I've done

a picture of a monster horrobale - nice spelling

really odd family pics - yup, you came to the right place

how to cure a delvian - you do know they're not real, right?

 putting on prosthetis is a pain in the ass - why do you need to search this? Were you looking for someone to agree?


casting fake guy - because real guys are too hard to cast these days

casting hookers - since they're already for hire, seems like something that'd be pretty easy to do


men with hookers - you do one "hooker" movie and look what you keep getting

addicted to love halloween costume - okay, this is awesome, but do you really need to search the internet for a costume?

movies with x ratings - something tells me I'm getting a bad reputation


 mold ass in silicone - just stop it!


cool forehead prosthetics - yeah, because searching for lame ones is...well...lame

female anus fingering - I apologize for this, but the hell did I ever do to cause this search to land on my blog?

 

how to sketch cronus - my suggestion is to find him and ask him to pose. Seems pretty simple.

weird deformed zombies - as opposed to the normal deformed zombies


pretty male fingers - something tells me I just shouldn't ask about this

fox henderson hookers - I am now a pimp, muthafucka

monkey head for sale - do they actually sell these online?


men eater monkey movie - sure...?

awesome paint job go kart - how? I've never even made a go kart


demon eyeball cake - hell yeah!


images of thugs with hammers - regular thugs, not so interesting - but give them hammers and suddenly that's awesome


werewolf girl makeup prosthetic - so a real werewolf girl in prosthetic make up or a girl in werewolf makeup?

ass silicone mold - again?

where is the next monkey rodeo - right here, bitches! No really, I bet my name annoys people sometimes

why do i have demon ears - because your father was a very curious man in his younger days


i'm giving you the finger - that's not very nice

man eats out hooker - not cool at all. Really someone searched for this?

And there was the usual assortment of demons, ears, fingers, axes, monkeys, halloween, prosthetics and so on. So far it's been a rather creepy year.

 

Thursday, July 05, 2012

WIP The Morg'Shath Parasite Demon

Finally got around to redoing this bad boy. It was originally done for the book "The Secret Lives of Demons" as a last minute shoot, but the mould was in pretty poor shape was was destroyed after 1 or 2 pulls. After having seen it I also realized I wanted to mess it up a little more, the edges were a little too clean.

So I re-sculpted it and here we go:

This is just a few minutes before I began working on the negative mould, which turned out pretty damned well. I'll be master moulding it in silicone tomorrow and hopefully crank out the first one over the weekend and then another quick photoshoot and it'll be going online for sale.

Here's a shot of the original:
The main differences are just a little more lumpy, the edges are a bit more messy and I added two larger teeth. Otherwise, it's pretty much the same.

Updated Vampire Brow Prosthetic and other stuff

As the title said, here's an image of the update Vampire Brow prosthetics, it'll sell for $25.


In other, less awesome news, anyone who finds there way here who might've been trying to access The Monkey Rodeo website would have noticed it's down for the moment. Yes it is down, for how long? I've no idea, maybe a week, maybe longer. Reason being, I am very poor and my host tends to be a little pricey compared to others I've recently noticed.

While the service has been excellent, the price is just too high for me so I couldn't afford to pay for another full year for something which is really just a presence - most of my business is wholesale so the website is really a pit stop/catchall for information, pictures and what stuff I carry. I've done some minor retail through the site, but not enough to justify paying over $200 a year any more. And yes, that seems like very little, and over the course of a year it is, but when it comes time to pay it, it's a lot.

I'm hoping to get it squared away and I'm thinking of trying some cheaper methods of hosting. We'll see what happens. In the meantime if you're trying to get a hold of me, you can use this address: themonkeyrodeo@gmail.com

Sunday, July 01, 2012

Latex Zombie Mask

It's been awhile since I've done any work what with moving and all that but the move is more or less don and I'm attempting to get my workshop in order and trying my damnedest to get things moving for the BZK! Web Series. It's slowly grinding to a halt, but I've got to get to work and make things happen as best I can.

One of the things is this piece here:

Which is a latex zombie mask, the regular old latex kind not a prosthetic that will be used by the most background of the zombie performers in the series. As well this is being given out as a perk for a $50 on the BZK! Indiegogo campaign.

This is just a work in progress sculpt of the piece, I'm hoping to get a rough prototype version ready soon enough. If you're interested in helping out on the web series and getting one of these, check out the link on the sidebar.