Friday, October 18, 2013

Limited Edition Mummy Hand Prop

I've finally got the Mummy Hand all ready for proper sale. I have 2 versions. There's the "Standalone" piece, that's just the hand itself for $30 (limited to 20) and the "Museum Piece" version for $70 (limited to 10).

The "Museum Piece" includes a stained box with plexiglass lid (so no worried about it breaking in shipping), it's hand stained and lined with Spanish Moss and includes a label on the front of the box indicating the number of the piece out of 10.

The "Standalone" version is just the hand itself, wrapped with gauze and comes with a card indicating the number of the piece out of 20. The hand itself is a latex skinned polyfoam that's hand painted.


A properly coloured picture to show what the hand really looks like, as well as the staining on the box.

I make these to order, so give about 1 week for manufacturing.

If you're interested, you can contact me at: foxhenderson @ themonkeyrodeo.com. Payment can be made through Paypal, or Email Interact if you're in Canada. Right now I've no idea of shipping costs, but I'd estimate around $30-$40 in the US, possibly $20-$30 in Canada for standard delivery. And at least $30 for overseas - at the lowest rate, 4-6 weeks as well.

Sunday, October 13, 2013

Moonshine of the Damned, Production Journal #21

Finally after all this time, we've shot the last of the secondary footage for Moonshine of the Damned. There was one little scene that someone else was going to do up for me, but as usual - unreliable extras and whatnot. So I had no choice but to do it myself or edit out the surrounding footage, which would have sucked since this partially sets up or re-enforces one of the minor concepts of the movie. I can't remember which one, either sets up or re-enforces because I forget where this comes in during the timeline.

It was an easy day, that's for sure. Less than an hour and we were done, but it was pretty fun since there was absolutely no pressure or racing to get things done, or waiting on people or anything. Just some very simple makeup and a trip to the woods on what turned out to be a beautiful day.

What the scene entailed was simple a couple zombies getting wiped out by a redneck booby trap. Obviously we couldn't have used a real trap, so it had to be safe and it had to be simple and cheap to make. I went with a log that would come swinging down and bowl the zombies over.

I got a concrete form tube, about 6 inches and I chopped it to about 3 1/2 feet long. Covered it in upholstery foam donated by Kim Bradford. My original idea was to score the surface with a soldering iron to simulate bark and whatnot, after several hours of that I realized a paint job wasn't going to work in time. So I came up with covering it in real bark. It was pretty much falling off the trees out there so I didn't even have to do any damage to anything.

And there you have it, it looks awesome, weighs next to nothing and is totally safe to have it slam into you.

Another prop I wanted to throw in was a severed hand. I used a mould from another mangled hand in another scene and since I knew I'd never use it again for anything, decided to run it as foam latex - just to see how it'd work, no other reason really. It worked great though, it was cartoonishly stretchy - although I don't think you'll see that in the final cut. Not sure yet.

So onto the shoot. With only two zombies I knew I at least wouldn't be overwhelmed with makeup all morning and with Trevor volunteering once again (he's been in every group zombie scene so far) I decided to use a silicone mask I'd make for last years version of the story. It was scrapped this year because too much had changed and quite honestly the mask didn't turn out very well.

For some reason it totally stretched out and deformed. No idea why, but since this is supposed to be a crappy movie, I figured it'd be perfect for this. Plus it was nice to just to be able to use it at least once and not just have it gathering dust on a shelf.


And now with the blood. Since I again didn't feel like mixing up some fake blood I used some old stuff I had lying around for some time now, it's actually Graftobian Stage blood and to be perfectly honest - this stuff is awesome. It's a little thicker than I'd suspect this much blood to be, but it smears and stains just like what you'd expect real blood to be like, plus it's totally safe and you can put it in your mouth.

And now for some slightly insane looking bloody zombie pictures with Lin Sigs.



The shoot went by so fast and went so smoothly it almost felt like we accomplished nothing at first, so I was constantly checking the footage to make sure we got what we needed - it would've sucked to have to come back again after all this.

I had Trevor help out with the swinging log shots, it was just easier to have someone actually holding it and letting it go than to try to tie it up and reset it each time. I'd rather have the chore of cleaning up a shot in post than struggling with resetting between each shot.

Seconds before or after they got hit. We did three takes and this was the last one and it was beyond perfect. I'd asked Lin to let go of the hand she as  gnawing it and let it fly up in the air as she got hit. I just thought it'd be kind of funny looking to see this severed hand flying up in the air.

Well, it worked and we ended up with the most awesome accident possible. The hand flew up, you can see it here in this picture if you look closely in the upper right corner on the log, and actually landed on the log for a couple seconds before flopping off onto the ground. While it might not read as a hand on screen, it still looks like some body part gone flying.

And so that's it, we're done shooting, no need for actors on camera at all anymore. I have 2 shots left I'm adding into it, they're just 2 minor FX shot that I don't even have to do but it's something I want to try at least just so I can have to experience in doing it and to see if it works better than the CG I currently am using. I am essentially building a miniature redneck booby trap and combining it with previously shot footage. But, more on that next week hopefully.

Tuesday, October 08, 2013

Demon Pirate Photo Shoot


Yesterday, despite two false starts on this shoot, we finally got the Demon Pirate shoot done. It was planned out quite a while ago and the timing, or weather, just never seemed to work out. Although, it did rain at the beginning - as you can see here:

The prosthetic had been used for another project, although designed to work for both and I think it works pretty well. The makeup itself was pretty simple since there were just the face and shoulders to do up - although it still seemed to take quite a while to do.

Most of the props and some costume pieces were all stuff either myself, Heather (the model in the photos) or my friend Kim Bradford already owned. The only thing I had to buy was the blouse - not really something you can find locally in a 2nd hand shop and altering a close enough shirt seemed like too much of an effort considering the time when we originally planned to do this.



Overall, I'm really happy with how it turned out. Almost exactly as I imagined it would when I came up with the idea. I'm sure some might disagree but the character really looks like something I'd love to see in a movie. Heather and I talked about it briefly during the shoot and again afterwards, but once the pictures were done I really think it would be awesome. Hard to do without a decent looking ship, but something might come up that works without using a ship. Who knows.



So that's it, that was the Demon Pirate shoot. Once again, I think it looks pretty damned awesome.

The prosthetic is yet another in my Limited Run Collection*, it's called the Tortuga Demon. It was designed more for women or anyone with a slightly smaller face than the average adult male. It's $55 dollars and includes the horns in black by default, but if you wanted white horns and wanted to paint them up yourself, be sure to mention that.

* If you never heard me mention the idea of Limited Run prosthetics, the idea is simple. These pieces aren't meant for continued mass production, the mould has a limited life and I might only get 5 made, I could get as many as 30 made. This means a higher rate of new pieces being added to my online shop and much more unique pieces a well. Only a small handful of people in the entire world might ever get a chance to wear this piece.