Saturday, July 13, 2013

Moonshine of the Damned, Production Journal #12

This will be a photoless update unfortunately, just lots of rambling and updates - although there will be a quick update tomorrow afternoon, hopefully with some awesome stuff.

So, July ended up being a fairly quiet month, we've put things on hold because of lots of scheduling conflicts - which is awesome considering the amount of work I need to do to get caught up with where we are in the shooting scheduled. So this isn't really a setback - this all sounds familiar, I think I might've mentioned it before.

Just what do I need to get caught up on? Well, the Zombie Gator is nearly done. Later today I plan on doing a quick touchup with the airbrush to finish him off, then add a bit of a shine to him and get started on his teeth. I need to take stock of how many he needs and how many I already have made, get them painted up and attached and that will be the end of him until his scene comes up.

Prothetics, still got a few left to make. I think about 3 or 4 maybe? I can't recall off hand there's just so many. I suspect I'll be getting to them in the next week or so as well have them all prepped and ready for when they're needed.

Speaking of prosthetics, the biggest news there is the completion of my foam latex oven, I had to make a special trip into town to get 3 skinny bolts to attach the fan. I got it installed last night and threw in the Zombie Eater piece. To backtrack a bit, I had to figure out the right run schedule to do the Zombie Eater on my own. I used the amounts from a different foam instruction sheet (from a competing brand of the foam latex) and just made up the mixing time as I went and it worked great. I was pretty impressed in this heat and humidity that I was able to eyeball it all on the fly and had it work out the first time.

However, the core mould of the Zombie Eater had some moisture in it and kind of made the foam separate in some of the thinner parts, completely ruining the first attempt. It would have been pretty awesome though. First attempt at a full head piece in the first run of the foam latex oven. The foam was perfect otherwise, so at least I know it's just a matter or getting the excess moisture from the core and we're all set. The oven works perfectly, it ain't pretty, but it does the job I need it to do.

I have some other pieces for the Zombie Eater to paint up and still have to get a decent copy of the prosthetic, so I had to cancel the shoot with him tomorrow. Gives me a little more prep time as well.

Other than that, the whole project is going pretty well, there were a lot of hurdles to overcome and obstacles I really didn't think I could get past easily, but so far so good. The FX are on par with what I wanted, not perfect, high end, ultra-realistic, but stuff that keeps with the mentality of an 80s movie - which is what I'm going for. We'll see what tomorrow brings and then I'll be taking a break from shooting for a while and hopefully getting to do some photoshoots instead while I get the last of the FX ready and wait for August.

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