Moonshine of the Damned, Production Journal #4

Lots of pictures this time around.

Things are progressing well on Moonshine of the Damned, we start shooting in a month, June 1st is the first shooting day - well, evening actually. There's been yet another massive round of changes, I think even from the last update. I've settled on a final incarnation of the script, one that had to incorporate certain difficult scheduling issues. All those issues have pretty much been resolved and now I've got a finished script, 37 pages down from 71.

Scheduling will start this week - that'll be fun. I've already got a rough schedule worked out, now it's just time to see what else goes wrong and if another rewrite or recasting session has to happen. It's been a troublesome project already, but I always feel like if pre-production is difficult than the shoot usually goes well. Something always has to go wrong and I'd rather it happen now when it's fixable than when it's too late and we're halfway through shooting.

Location scouting, while partially done, will start soon as well. I'm trying to simplify our locations so we're not running all over the Island. Luckily we don't need anything too crazy, we're just shooting in wooded locales and those a pretty plentiful around here.

So the biggest thing left to tackle are the special effects. While the fundraiser is still going for another couple weeks, I've managed to really narrow down the FX needs of the project without sacrificing my overall goal for them. Some single use pieces have been altered and for convenience (and safety) some will be CG - I wanted to stay away from CG as much as possible, but time and money was a concerned. A $100+ prop for a single shot use didn't seem reasonable.

The first big round of supplies cam in this morning from Sculpture Supply. Some various stuff from Smooth-On and Monster Makers - they pretty much make everything I use on a regular basis, I highly recommend their stuff, I've been using it for years now with very few problems or issues.

The Zombie Gator. I've been looking forward to this prop for so long now. It's the biggest thing I've every sculpted and attempted for something like this. It won't be ultra-realistic looking by any means, but that's not what I'm going for. I like my movies with a healthy side order of cheese, coated with melted cheese on a plate made of cheese...I think you get the point.

This here is the upside-down mould, secured together while the latex skin cures in the sun. Normally you'd use latex in an UltraCal 30 mould, however my intention was to originally do this as a urethane skinned prop - I've since made a lot of discoveries through experimenting and found latex was a much more reasonable solution. It's a little more work, but that's not an issue for me.

The latex should be pretty much cured by now, I'm writing this while it's sitting outside right now. I spent yesterday painting several layers on each mould part, assembled the mould and painted another layer of latex along the seams to make sure it's all one decently solid skin before I dump in the expanding foam. I'm really hoping I can get to this today.

A hand. Pretty simple. This was made from an alginate mould from my girlfriend Kim's hand. It'll be used as a stunt hand in the opening sequence, but I've since written a shot or two requiring some random body parts. If time and money permits, I may do couple more body parts.

Foam weapons. Same stuff as last year, I've just updated the method by which I'm finishing them. I have to make a new axe set since I sent the others off to another actor for him to do his shots. There'll be another sledgehammer made for a specific gory FX shot I'm looking forward to.

Here's a closeup of the sledgehammer head. I'm really happy with how it turned out. Last years sledgehammer was given a silver coating, I realized that was just a poor move as I wanted it to look old and used, this will just be given a quick fake rust treatment and it'll be all good to go for whacking zombies.

Finally, I thought I'd show off a couple more shots of this bad boy. I've still got a long way to go in understanding silicone masks. This one here had some really thin spots I tried to patch up as best as possible, but unfortunately this type of silicone, Eco-Flex 20, doesn't adhere to itself very well so patching and seaming was near impossible. Not that it really matters, it's just being used as a background zombie now and does make a decent prop to just have sitting around the workshop. Overall it was a good learning experience in sculpting, moulding and painting.

Up next on the FX list is to start the moulds for the few body parts I have planned and to get into sculpting the new round of zombie prosthetics I'll be making. There'll be a lot more unique, single use makeups this year, I don't want the zombies to look lazy and sloppy, that's not the point of why I'm doing this. I'm doing this to really showcase some of my FX abilities so nothing will be half-assed. The schedule has taken all this into account so I won't feel rushed to get zombie groups done in order to get things done quicker.

That's it for now, it's already been a busy morning getting things worked out and settled and now I need to take a quick break before getting back at it again.

Making a fake rock

Without a doubt the most boring prop I’ve ever made I think – at as far as descriptions go. There’s a short sequence in Moonshine of the Damned requiring some violence and a rock, so for safety’s sake we’re going fake

It was a pretty simple prop to make as well, finding the perfect rock was just as simple. It was in a pile by the car during a shoot last summer – so it wasn’t like I even had to hunt for one.

First thing I did was give it a bit of a cleaning. Most all of our rocks here are sandstone, not the easiest to clean – luckily this bad boy was granite – at least I think it’s granite, I’m not a geologist. Once it was all cleaned up I made a two part silicone mould – you’ll have to imagine that part, I didn’t take pictures because I didn’t think it’d be that interesting…and it might not be.

Once the mould was done I actually abandoned the prop once the web series was cancelled and only began thinking about it just recently. I had been making some other simple props and thought it was time to crank this out. It also helped that I finally had a handle on painting it.

It was easy enough to cast, but one thing to note about using Flex FoamIt, that I only found out last summer - I don't know how widespread this information is, but I didn't know this - the material, once cured, can sort of shrivel into itself, this can easily be fixed by crushing the piece, squeezing out supposed gases that cause the shriveling effect. So far it's worked well for me nearly 100% of the time.

So, here’s some pictures:

The mould, made of silicone with a support shell.

I bolted it together, seemed the simplest thing to do.

The original rock (left) and the unpainted soft foam rock (right).

The fake rock - the detailing is what helps it, even this doesn't look too bad.

 The original and the final fake rock. Didn't come out too bad.

And here it is, in all it's artifical geological glory. The Fake Rock.

So there you go, a fake rock. It's only needed in a very short sequence, but it's one of those thing that you might write in a script and not really think about how you'll accomplish it, let alone accomplish it safely. This is something I couldn't have done a couple years ago and now it's a completely simple process to create a tiny bit of movie magic.

Chances are when you see the scene it's in, you won't really think "How'd they do that?" Most people will just assume it was a trick camera angle, or some folks who don't really understand FX might even think it's CG - nope, it's a chunk of soft foam. It can be throw right at a person's head if needed and it'll be relatively safe - at least moreso than lobbing a real rock.

Technical Info: The whole thing was done using Smooth-On products. The mould was Rebound 25 with a Plasti-Paste II shell. The rock itself is made from Flex FoamIt V and painted using Monster Makers Latex Paint Base tinted with acrylic paints.

This isn't something I'll ever put on the website for sale, but if you've stumbled upon this and think it'd be a whole lot easier (since the mould is already made) to just buy one instead of making one yourself, feel free to send me an email. I reckon I'd sell it for about $25 - it's a bugger to paint decently and does take awhile. Email: foxhenderson@themonkeyrodeo.com.

Note about cost: Just an FYI concerning the cost of making one of these. It's not too bad, but even using the minimum quantities available of the products, you're looking at over $100.

Lucky Leprechaun Toe

Need a little extra luck? How about a wee little Leprechaun Toe for only $10?

A little known fact about Leprechauns, there are many magical creatures whose magic comes from certain body parts, in the case of Leprechauns their power is contained with in one, sometimes both, of their big toes. And when a Leprechaun passes away, their bodies decompose into a bed of clover, their magically imbued toe becomes a 4 leaf clover - hence why they're so rare and considered lucky.

So you can imagine, it's not too easy to collect these, you have to wait to find a dead Leprechaun and hope you get to it before it begins to decompose and the digit loses its power.

Actually, it's a silicone sleeve over a resin nub into which the hardware is embedded and the silicone is bonded to. I was originally selling them as keychains, however I have doubts about the longevity of the silicone to stand up to the wear and tear of being rubbed against keys - however they can be used for whatever you want really, even a pendant. Earring versions will be coming soon!

They're pretty small and should be able to sent as a letter just fine, so shipping on these bad boys should be pretty cheap. If you're interested, you can contact me at foxhenderson@themonkeyrodeo.com.

The Corpse Head prop

This isn't so much a "how to" post so much as archiving or for curiosity. The Corpse Head prop was one I wanted to make early on, but because we had to start shooting before we had any money it was scraped in favour of a cheap paper mache one. Well, since then our lead redneck villain had to drop out and those scenes all need to be reshot (as well as rewritten) so I got my chance to do this bad boy up and I have to say I'm really happy with the result so far. And yes, I believe I will be offering this up for sale online, but it won't be cheap.

So, I had the idea of what I wanted to do early on and how I wanted to do it too. I have a medical skeleton skull so I used it as my base. Kind of cheating, but it did help speed things up and remove a lot of guess work in making it look alright.

I start by slapping clay onto the skull and getting the basic shape. Leaving the teeth exposed because I didn't feel like sculpting them, especially with everything else I'm sculpting these days I'm willing to cut corners where it works.

After a few hours of sculpting I ended up with this, not too bad looking. I gave him some wounds and whatnot that will match up with a corresponding silicone mask that I'll be making soon.

I used Rebound 25 to make the mould, I decided not to make it a 2 part mould since it will be a somewhat soft(ish) final piece. So I just coated the whole thing making allowing that it would be split up the back of thead.

I don't recall how long it took to do the mould, but since I started in the evening I guess it was at least another day. Here's the final silicone mould with a Pasti-Paste support shell. You can see what looks like a bit of a ridge here along the back of the head, that's there I split it open.

Here's the whole thing pulled apart. It was a bit of a struggle getting the clay and the skull out, but it eventually ripped out. You can see the silicone mould flipped inside out here.

And the poor skull afterwards. The lower jaw was originally attached with springs, they got stretched and destroyed. Ah well, it finally served a purpose after all these years. I got this in a thing called "20 lb Bag of Bones" years ago, you can no longer get them, only 10 lbs bags now. That's the way things were in those days.

Wasn't much to see until this point. But I used Vytaflex 40 to do a slush casting in the mould, which was tricky since I've never used the stuff before and it's pretty runny. I did one layer at a time, letting it thicken up a bit each time. Not a perfect method, but it did work. I have a nice urethane skin filled with flexible foam inside. I even attached a pvc pipe with a hole drilled it in to attach it to the corpse body.

It's not done, it need to be all painted up. That's the next step in experimenting. I've never painted urethane, but I'm well aware it's a pain in the ass. My plan is to use another Smooth-On product called Brush-On 40 that can be tinted and thinning out and supposedly makes for a good urethane paint. We'll see soon enough.

Severed/Mangled Hand Prop

Day 5 of shooting got postponed due to rain. It was pretty annoying since it wasn't raining where I was and I made an attempt to salvage the day and it went back and forth a few times until finally I just gave up.

So one of the actors needed to have a copy of her hand made for a severed/mangled hand prop (we actually needed it and a 2nd prop today but I chose to shoot them sort of 2nd Unit, but now I might not have to) and since she'd planned on filming today, she just came by to get this done.

I kinda screwed up with the alginate, I was too rushed and it came out pretty bubbly - but for the very limited screen time this prop has, it came out better than expected.

Julia with her hand in alginate.

I cast the silicone right in the alginate mould since I really only planned on this being a one off - but I'm actually running a 2nd one right now. I let the silicone form a skin on the edges where I knew it wouldn't be solid so I could slop in some thickened silicone (Eco-Flex 30 from Smooth-On) to simulate meaty bits inside the hand. I chose not to go with bone sticking out, just because I don't really care how ultra-realistic it looks, anatomically or otherwise.

Here it is fresh from the mould, still a little shiny and in need of painting.

It wasn't perfect, not by any means, but for our purposes in the web series, it's freakin' awesome. I'm planning on testing some silicone adhesive to glue fake nails to the hand as well.

And if you're seeing this blog for the first time and wondering just what in hell is going on, we're doing a web series - and we're raising money. Follow the Indiegogo link on the right, and feel free to spread the word or even donate something.