Monday, September 23, 2013

Moonshine of the Damned, Production Journal #20

Seems like there should have been more than just 20 of these. We just had our very last day of shooting on Moonshine of the Damned - I was calling last week the last, but that was our last day with the leads and extras and all that stuff. This was the final fight sequence involving the Zombie Eater, so it was just two actors. The Zombie Eater, Steve Marchbank and Heather Panton's stunt double, Kinza Mae Baker. Normally I don't do stunt doubles and, quite honestly, while Heather and Kinza are vaguely similar in size, there's still some major differences - however, those differences don't matter at all. You'll see once you see the final movie.

First thing we shot was a couple little cutaway shots involving the very first zombie appearing in the movie and of course I shot it last. It was pretty short and simple, while we were out coming up with ideas for the fight scene I brought the actor along and got his shots. We when went back home and I did a blue screen shot as well.

The Zombie Banjo Boy.
Our only real Deliverance reference left from last year.


After I got done of the Banjo Boy stuff I began a very long makeup process on Kinza, it's something I'm not showing off at all until the movie is release. Normally I'm pretty open to showing stuff off, but I've held back a little on this, but not too much.

That sort of reminds me, at some point I'm actually going to write my own review of the movie. Seems a little pointless and possibly even pandering to myself somehow, but I have a lot of thoughts on it that I'd like to address. I'll probably do a Director's Commentary for the DVD even to explain a few things. Mostly, I feel a little sad that I might actually have to explain the joke that the whole movie is. About 98% of what you'll see what done intentionally - I might've said that before.

Every bad line, awkward delivery, bad camera angle, rough editing, goofy FX - I planned it all. Or at least designed how I would plan it to force myself to do those things through no other option. It's easy to go over the top camping up a bad movie, but this was an attempt to seriously make a movie that might seems like it was done with the utmost of sincere intentions only to sort of fail a bit in places. I've said this time and time again. I love bad 80s horror movies, they were just so much fun. You don't see them anymore and I really wanted to capture that 80s mentality of almost nonsensical plot, where some things you have to suss out for yourself or fill in the blanks on your own.

In all seriousness, if you the sort of person who feels everything needs to be properly explained, needs to nitpick continuity and plot points - you really shouldn't watch this. It wasn't made for the likes of you. It's made for people who really enjoy bad movies that are so bad they're good. It's the kind of movie you're supposed to make fun of - trust me, I do all the time when we talk about it.

One thing I've always had a difficult time with in making movies is fight scenes. They're just to hard to do and do right and even slightly believable. Now this time around I won't brag that it's totally believable, but you can see there was no holding back with the actors. They went for it, risking seriously injuring themselves I'd say - but we tried to be as safe as possible and there was not one injury, aside from being incredibly sore afterwards.

I can honestly say I've never been more excited to show off something I've shot before than this scene. The whole movie is pretty awesome and has some great moments and moves along at a pretty decent pace. But this one sequence turned out just how I wanted. It's really fun to watch and even a little silly in places. All thanks to Kinza and Steve's hard work.

These are the only photos I can show you of what we did for now. Neither of them looked even close to this when I got done with makeup either.


It was a long day too. Started at 9am and finished by 4pm. I had three makeup applications - which took a huge part of the day and I'm so glad I got a couple extra airbrushes, it made the work so much quicker and the make on Kinza was so awesome looking. I even glued down the Zombie Eater prosthetic this time, up until now I let it flap around lose, but knowing the paces we were about to put it through I felt I had to glue it down to prevent it ripping and ruining shots. Worked awesomely and came off intact, if not a little sweaty.

I got it all edited last night as well, in total we got one minute, 30 seconds worth of a fight scene. Not too bad at all, I expected one minute at the very most.

I've been whittling away at the re-recording of everyone's lines. It's a long process that can be a little tiresome, but it's the way I chose to do it. The video itself is about 90% done, it needs colour correcting and whatnot. A few FX shots that I don't need anyone else for. Possible a small sequence with a couple zombies might need to be shot if I can't get the footage in from someone else I was planing on. But even that's not a problem, I'm kind of looking forward to that if it happens.

Otherwise, we're on the downhill stretch of it all now.

Posters! I've got posters done too. First up the official poster for the movie:



And I wanted this time around to do a series of character posters for the Bimbos.







And finally, all of them in one.

Someone had asked about T-shirts and I think even getting prints of posters. Right now I'm busy trying to get the movie done and get a lot of other projects off the ground as well as trying to get shop stuff done. So while the answer is yes, they will be available, don't expect it for another couple weeks until I get my scheduled cleared up

And finally, the trailer:

And that's it. I'm pretty glad it's over with, not because it was a shitty experience, but because it was just so much on my mind this whole summer and I really need to clear my head for the Halloween season as well as for the upcoming Hal-Con in November.

For now, we're pretty close. Hope to do a rough cut screening for the actors and even do a private screening at City Cinema. We'll see how all that goes.

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