Moonshine of the Damned, Production Journal #9

We finished Day Three of shooting on Moonshine of the Damned. This was a repeat of footage from last year and while I forgot my shot list for the day, it was all slightly familiar and we even finished pretty close to schedule.

We shot in a place we've been to before, the old car museum in Dunstaffnage. I think we're pretty fortunate since we have a good connection with the folks that own the place. It's a great location, no immediate plans to use it again, but nice to know it's always a decent option.

Things pretty much went as planned, nothing uneventful. We had a tricky schedule to work around and it all panned out. Had some on the fly makeup to do and it held things up a little, but not too much - and it came out decently at that.

PICTURES!!!

Me and John, getting things ready. Always great to work with John, he's always up for most anything.

This sequence was nearly dropped from this last draft of the script, but after some consideration I realized it wasn't slowing anything down and while it didn't add to anything, it was a funny little moment that was my weird homage to one of my favourite movies, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang - a very vague reference, but one nonetheless.

We even got the original actor back to reprise the role, this time with better makeup. I neglected to get a decent shot of it though, kind of disappointed about that.

You can kind of see the makeup a little better here. James was blind in one eye but it didn't slow him down at all. Here James Davey (Piss Zombie) and John MacDonald (Bo) show off our jug of fake pee. I actually tinted it this year, for no real good reason other than just to do it - I've no idea if it'll even show up on camera as being yellow.

And I had to do this again.

Didn't get too many pictures inside, but the lighting wasn't great for still shots - looked awesome on video though.

Eventually Jillian showed up and we got down to work. This here shot was one of the few locked off shots because a zombie will eventually be bluescreened into it.

Doing some very simple makeup here, needed to do a messy gunshot wound to the face - something we skipped over last year. Nice to be able to add all these little touches back into it. I just did black around her actual eye, it'll be darkened out in post to appear deeper and remove her actual eye.

One of the last shots of the day, Jillian (Daisy) peeking out of the barn.

And that was it. It was a beautiful day, not a bad way to spend a Saturday afternoon either.

We got three cast shots this time around because of the stages of when people arrived and left and makeup.

That's it. Got another small shoot tomorrow, should be quick and relatively painless. For me at least.

And of course, here's the line of the day:

Moonshine of the Damned, Production Journal #8

Day Two on shooting has come and gone quite successfully. We ran a little longer than planned, but that always seems to happen even on the simplest of shoots like today was. The scenes today were pretty complicated to set up. We only shot two, the first one required so many angles to cover what was going on, the second one actually ran pretty fast, thankfully.

There was an odd bit of luck that ran through today that happened long before we started shooting. Some Islanders may (or may not, I guess) recognize Tim Gormley here, who went above and beyond the call of duty for this. 

 Tim was very almost not involved at this time around. He was originally slated to play a totally different, demonic character in the full version of the story - but had to drop out due to a busy schedule. That was a huge upset actually, but I found a replacement and soon after (I don't fully recall the sequence of events anymore) I lost someone else or something happened that I had to cull back the script twice, the second time actually removing the need for that demonic character completely.

Upon doing that, and actually moving the original actor from his character to another role (who also) dropped out eventually anyway, Tim expressed interest again after seeing we were shortening the project and this look is what he came up with and since today was his only day out for us, I had to give him the "Line of the Day", and here it is:
So, onto the rest of it. We did a before cast shot:

John and Mary as Bo and Roxxy.

And some rednecks, Tim Gormley, Tim Wartman and Mark Wells as Luke, Roscoe and Cletus.

We needed a zombie for the shoot and there were some minor issues with our originally scheduled actor so we found a replacement, however since he was used before in a scene that takes place nearly opposite this one I decided to use an old silicone mask on him. It's not perfect by any means, but I like the weird clunkiness of it.

And he's gone.

And bloody.

And as I said, far from perfect, however it was easy to get him ready and clean him up.

Yeah, that my girlfriend.

There's something pretty messed up looking with the hollow, slightly bloodied head just lying there.

I had to remake the "axe in the arm" prop for Tim W., this one worked a little better anyway. I also remade the fake sledgehammer and gave it to Mark this time around.

But it's the same arm as last year. I tried to clean it up a bit.

And finally the bimbos, Jobeth and Ginger played by Ancelene MacKinnon and Julia MacDougall.

Tim usually has to play with all the props at some point.

The Bimbos meet Roxxy. This played out so differently over many version of the script. Roxxy would escape, meet up with the Bimbos, get caught again. She was knocked out at one point. There were different numbers of Bimbos as well in various versions. Finally were came up with this and I won't say too much about where it goes from here.

End of the day cast.

After the girls were free to take off we had a couple quick shots with the Rednecks to finish off the day.

And that was it. Overall a good day, we shot all we planned to. As I said it ran a little longer than planned, but we did get off to a late start as well. The footage looks good, pretty happy with it. And now onto the next shoot.