Thank god that's done. The Orwell Shoot, Part 1

I think it'd be fair to say it wasn't the easiest shoot in the world, probably more accurate to say it was stressful and a little tenses by time - but from the looks of the footage, it was worth it. I think.

In any case, thanks to all who helped out - there weren't that many involved. Draper in front of the camera as the dude who chops off the Beast's head. Kim Bradford shot the scene as best she could, and from what little time I've spent going over the footage, she did a great job. And Kim Johnston who got some awesome pictures of the whole ordeal.

I call it an ordeal because being in the prosthetic and that costume was extremely uncomfortable, moreso then I'd expected, and it just made me really impatient and pretty much frustrated and exhausted the whole time - and on top of that I had to make sure everything was working with the shots (it's a fight scene and they're so hard to make look good under the best of circumstances) and that we got everything we needed before the inevitable death of our equipment batteries. All of which gave out within seconds of the last shot actually.

It's over in any case and I can easily say that I will never attempt anything like that again, at least until I can figure out a way that I'm not the slightest bit concerned about what's going on behind the camera. The attention split was really overwhelming this time around.

With the ranting overwith, now the good side of the shoot.

Having just gone on about how horrific my costume was, it looked great on camera. From what I gathered, all that frustration kind of worked well since the Beast is supposed to be a pretty angry little fellow in the first place.

The latex swords worked brilliantly. I'd been assured by the manufacturers that they'd more then adequately hold up to this sort of abuse, but I still had a nagging doubt and was just waiting for something to go wrong - nothing did though. And it wasn't like we held back, those things took a massive amount of abuse from us.

The real swords on the other hand, chipped and scraped and even bent at one point. I can only imagine how long a real sword in a real battle would actually last, or at the very least stay sharp enough to do any damage.

Anyway, here's some pictures:

Kim Bradford helping me take care of some
of the parts of the makeup that were next to impossible
for me to do on my own.

Draper getting suited up.

The evil demon going over his Checklist of Doom!

Setting up the first shot.
Action Shot #1

And Action Shot #2

And the resulting Death Shot #1

Of course, the inevitable useless shot.

Peeling off the makeup on the drive home was awesome fun.

Don't I look ever so happy?

Overall the shoot took the better part of the day. I started the makeup around 11, we were on the road by shortly after 1 and I think it was close to 5 or so when we got back into town. I think the actual shooting took about 3 1/2 hours. Not too bad, but a little tiresome when you're running and fighting the whole time.

There was one incident that I actually found rather amusing. I wished we'd kept shooting, but ah well. Makes me think of those videos you see online where a guy impales himself on something, or someone falls off a roof and rather then help the guy with the camera just keeps shooting instead - I can say that I don't know anyone like that after this incident.

After that buildup, all that happened was an overshot jump that landed me right over the edge of the bank into the mud. I thought it was funny myself.

The area of incident.

The aftermath.
That lump in my hand is my muddy shoe that I almost lost.

There are a couple hundred more pictures to go through, from another camera. I'll go through them in a while and maybe add some more images here in another post, but until then, I'll leave you with some random snippets from the drive out to the shoot.

Bright Green Demon Blood

I just got done my first day (of only 2 hopefully) as the Beast, the demon that starts the whole mess that unfolds as the plot of the entire movie...sort of. You'll have to see it I guess.

Today was I guess what you'd call 2nd Unit kind of stuff. Just some quick cutaway shots that didn't even require prosthetic makeup or anything - since you never see the Beast's face until the confrontation at the end. It was also to get Kim Bradford used to using the camera - although it was pretty hurried so I'm sure how used to it she got.

Overall it was relatively painless, although the costume was really heavy, cumbersome and warm. I felt a little rushed because the forecast was pretty damned sure it'd be cloudy and raining by 1 pm...it's almost 8 pm and it's been a blue sky since near 2 pm and not one drop of rain.

In any case, here's some pictures and whatnot from the day.

Getting suited up.

The super awesome Green Demon Blood (tm)

Stills from the footage

If the weather holds we'll be shooting the remainder of this scene, the actual fight, on this coming Wednesday. And as much as I'm looking forward to it, I'm really dreading the makeup and the costume.

A quick update

Preperations for a quick shoot on this coming Saturday and the opening fight sequence are well underway. There's been a few new added shot of the Beast as our hero, whose been given the name of Dunham in the last round of storyboarding, tracking him down.

To keep the scene a little brisk I'm doing a shot of the Beast rushing through the forest for every shot of Dunham doing the same. As well as a quick series of shots of the Beast bandaging up his arm - his freakish green blood being the thing that leads Dunham to him. Kind of a Predator homage in a way.

I spent the day taking care of some final details. I gored up a shirt with some demon blood for the Beast. I worked on preping the makeup, the bald cap is annoying little bastard - the slightest nick turn into a massive tear, so I did some patchwork and it looks good to go. I also had to touch up a real sword to match the fake sword. The fake has a gold looking hilt to it, while the real was silver - some gold paint took care of that easy enough.

So Saturday I'm running my new camera person through her paces, kind of a trial by fire. I figure I can get her up to speed, get some extra shots done now so we can just focus on the fight scene - which I've tentatively scheduled for this coming Wednesday.

So there should be some good stuff to see soon enough.

Two posts in one day! Exciting!

The reason for two posts today is that some stuff arrived unexpectedly early. The prosthetics. This was the part I was worried the most about, one of those things that you have you get dead set on when you see it and you know that nothing else will really work. They're nothing too crazy, but there's just something about this particular prosthetic that I really liked.

I like this, I guess because, it was just different enough from the average monster face. I suppose it's kind of werewolf/vampire looking to a degree -whereas this sort of solider demon character is normally very orcish or goblinesque looking.

Here's all four of the little buggers.

And a swanky closeup of one.

It's odd though that I'd be so picky when really only the nose and mouth will be really visible once the hood is on - but I see it as part of the foundation of the characters I guess. For me, just knowing that's the face under the hood is what works.

Anyway, there you go. One more thing down.

I also just got word of 2 more shipments, one should be here tomorrow or Wednesday - with this one down I'm able to finally get my scene as The Beast over and done with. The other shipment - maybe late next week are just the gloves. I'm still waiting to hear back about the swords for the Demon Army, hopefully it'll be good news.

I also wanted to point out, these came from Makeup Mania, there's a link over there on the side if you're interested.

New Stuff

Here's the stuff I said I'd post from this weekend.

This here's more or less the armor for the Demon Army. This is just the tunic (which has to be torn and raggedy looking), the breastplate and the mantle. There's way more to the costume, this was just on a sewing dummy and I thought I'd take a picture.

The gorget keeps making me think of the Scarecrow from Wizard of Oz, but ah well - what can you do?

And keep in mind there's a black top and bottom that go underneath this, as well as leather gloves, greaves and bracers and finally a hood. And after they're all done, I'll also be taking each costume out to wear it in and dirty it up so it'll look like it's seen a few wars already.

And here's the two axes I made. They're small hand axes, not giant crazy things like the warhammer is. The blades are 8 inches long to give you a general idea of their size. And they're a lot tougher then I expected them to be, I still wouldn't risk smashing folks with them though.

They were relatively easy to make, all things considered, so I reckon I'm going to try to make a mace, that will be a third weapon this particular member of the Brotherhood gets to use. Everyone else has massive sword or a warhammer - I figured what his weapons lack in size, they can make up for in number.

The best part of trying another weapon is that it won't cost anything other then the price of the handle. There was more then enough materials and supplies left over from these two that I can do the mace without spending much more. I'm starting that this afternoon, I'll let you know how it goes

Productive weekend

I managed to get a massive amount of work accomplished this weekend, and there's still almost 2 hours left, so you never know what else might happen.

I did a good chunk of work for my actual paying job and got some new shots done for an animated movie I'm doing for someone - it's looking pretty damned good so far too.

In the middle of all that, got some work done for the Demon Army costumes, I made the mantles, or gorgets...or collars, whatever you want to call them. Didn't come out as I'd hoped, but they do what they need to do. They're pretty crude looking, which was the look I was going for so I guess that's a "mission accomplished".

I even made some attempt to create the tunics for the same costumes. Not that there's much skill involved in making a ratty, torn, piece of crap looking tunic. Still, it's done.

So far all that's left to be made for these costumes are the hoods - that'll be an awesome good time.

And I also made two weapons. I wanted to give one of the Brotherhood characters two small hand axes for his weapons. I couldn't find anything reasonable to buy, so I figured I made a warhammer - how hard could and axe, or two, be?

They're far from flawless, but for what little they cost - they're pretty good looking. I'd post some pictures, but it's getting late and I'm tired - plus they still need a couple more coats of paint and latex to really solid them up.

I think that's about it. I'll probably post a few pictures soon.

The Demon Army

I've finalized the design of the demons for the Demon Army. There's still a bit of work to do to fully complete them. I was hoping to keep it pretty streamlined, but it just didn't look right at all. It's a lot of layers, but it should be really easy to slip on and off without too much problem.



I think each costume has at least 10 pieces - maybe 11 depending. I've got most of it all sussed out, either on order, made or almost made. The only part that been causing problem is the hood. It's not something you can just buy - or at least not like I want it too look - so I'm hoping it's something that can be made relatively easily. That hardest part will be creating a workable pattern. And then the most fun part comes along, wearing the costumes in so they don't look all bright and shiny new - I get to take each one, wear it and roll in the dirt and whatever else with scuff and filthy then up a bit.

Other then that it's nearly take care of. I have the weapons being shipped as well as the prosthetics I wanted. It's coming along really well and I hope to have this scene shot and over with by end of June.

Things are insanely busy these days so knowing this is coming to an end is a bit of a relief.

Location Re-scouting

I've made some decent progress over the last couple weeks.

I've been working away on the armor for the Demon Army for the upcoming shoot. As well as rethinking and making some new pieces for the Brotherhood. None of them are highly professional looking pieces, but I think they're pretty good given what they're needed for.

Bracers are easy enough pieces to create and tend to stand out the most I think. So I made sure each character has their own distinct set.

It wasn't until I took this picture that
I realized I made a mistake with these ones.
They're supposed to be opposite to one another,
not like this - ah well, no big.

I should be done all the leatherwork part of the process in another week or so when I get more time. I've also managed in the meantime to get more pieces ordered as well, most importantly the prosthetics for the demons. I was worried that by the time I got around to ordering them, they wouldn't have enough in stock and I've have to look for something else - the company doesn't seem to update their stock very frequently.

Otherwise, there's been some really good progress with the opening sequence as well. It just seems to be lagging in getting off the ground. This last week I managed to get things rolling again. I had to rethink to location because my original one was based off it being winter - it's not so winter any more. I changed it to a location I've used it in a couple other project, neither of which were mine - so this is my first time shooting my own stuff out there.

We're shooting in a little valley in Orwell Corner, if you're familiar with it, you know why we're shooting there. If not, I've got some pictures for you.





It was pretty soggy out there, it had been raining off and on for two days straight. We went out to get some ideas on Thursday, then decided it was good enough to actually do some shots on Friday, as well as finally do a few run throughs of the fight scene choreography.

The shots went quickly. The run through was a bit of a task. It paid off though, we discovered a few flaws in it and were able to make some fixes, add some new parts and whatnot. It was actually pretty fun.

About 5 minutes in through, I snapped my practice sword. Which I guess shows we weren't holding back. In any case, if all goes well we hope to shoot this in the next couple weeks. The storyboards are nearly completed and I think it'll be a pretty good opening.

Now we'll just see how things go until we shoot again.

Making armor for my demon army

I had a fairly productive couple days in regards to creating the demon armor. I think I mentioned I’d taken a trip to Halifax to visit Tandy Leather (as far as I know the only place in the maritimes you can really get decent leather) and get some first hand advice on what I should do.

My experience with leather work is minimal, so obviously the designs pretty much reflect that. Plus it's supposed to be demon armor, not formal evening wear. I just needed some advice on what I needed, hence the visit to someone who knows. I got to talk to Brian, the manager, and I ended up with 65 sq. feet of leather, for about $170 or so.

Once I got home I started into it. And within about an hour or so I managed to have the first piece, one of the bracers, completed. I won’t say, “oh, the process is incredibly easy, blind, fingerless monkies could do this stuff”, but if you have a head for this sort of thing – it’s not too hard to get started making something this simple.

It took about 5 or so hours in total to do all 4 sets of these. The longest part of the process is preparing the leather and dyeing it, otherwise it's a decently fast procedure. These aren't anything fancy, as I mentioned, but it should look pretty good once the entire costume is put together...at least I hope, but then again at the worst it can look is a little campy and that's still not too bad.

Finally got some shooting done.

Overall it was painless. There was only about 12 shots to take, nothing terribly exciting - at least not by itself or without post work. We still have to do the fight that ensues after this part of the scene, should happen in about a month I think.

In any case, here's some pictures:

This is a still camera version of the opening shot.

An "action" shot from the footage.

And this has nothing to do with anything.

Ooh, scary demon blood.

Took awhile to get these shots and I'm pretty happy overall with the way things came out. Couldn't have asked for a nicer day to shoot either. It was about +10 out, no wind. I think I got a bit of a sunburn actually.

I wish there was more to show - but the shots taken out of context aren't that interesting. But don't worry, there'll be more stuff soon.

Warhammer Time!

Get it? War-HAMMER Time? Yeah, it's lame, but it's the best I could come up with on one cup of coffee so get over it.

Anyway, the new warhammer prop is finally done. It was pretty pricey and more or less an experiement to see if I could do it in the first place. I'll be posting a step by step on how I made it in a little bit, just so you can see how relatively easy it was.

Also, I'll be heading to Halifax on Friday to snag some leather supplies to create the 4 sets of demon armor for the reshoot at Fort Amherst. It's been a very long time since I've done even the slightest bit of leatherwork, I have a pretty good idea of how to work with it after creating the armor for The Beast for the opening sequence. So I'm pretty confident it'll all turn out.

There's also the possibility I'll be looking at designing and putting up a Monkey Rodeo website over the next month or so, all depends on how much I recall about creating websites. Any out there feel like they have some invaluable imput on this, let me know.

And I'm hoping to FINALLY start shooting for the opening flashback sequence tomorrow - the weather seems to be against me every time I try to schedule a shoot lately. This has already been cancelled and rescheduled 3 or 4 times. The weather has pretty much turned so let's hope for the best tomorrow.

I think that's it for the time being, check back tomorrow afternoon if you just can't wait to see how the morning went.

Just thinking...

I was just thinking today how much more work is needed to finish this movie. I can't fit it all into my head actually - there's just so freakin' much crap.

From designing this and that, little minor post elements that don't effect anything other then the final look of the movie, to characters and down to finally the Brotherhood flashback sequences.

The flashbacks are slowly becoming too huge I think. I'm not worried or changing them, I might have to edit them down more then I'd like to make them work in the final piece, but better that then having too little to work with.

I've changed the Brotherhood costumes a small bit, nothing major, they just look a little more indivdual now. The tunics and surcoats will be actual purchased pieces for the most part rather then handmade ones - just because they look cooler. The original foam bracers will be replaced with actual leather ones.

The demon armor is coming along well. With a little rethinking and whatnot I've gotten it down to a very simple, easy to put on and take off design. It'll be very realistic in the sense that it'll be all made of leather. Greaves, bracers, chestplate and pauldrons all made of leather. Seems a little overboard - but I do want this to look good. Plus this way it'll stand up to a lot of abuse and it seems appropriate for the characters.

I'm just hoping the company I've chose to get the demon face prosthetics from has enough in stock by the time I order it. Otherwise it looks like there's the possibility I'm going to do my own custom prosthetic - this'll be a first.

That's all for now. I'm hoping to do some shooting this coming Wednesday if all goes well. We'll see I guess.

Starting to film again very soon

It's been extremely slow going, I've been pretty slow to get these last scenes up and running - BUT, it looks as though we should be filming within the week. We'll be filmng the leadup to the fight scene in the opening sequence.

I broke the sequence into two shooting parts. The one that involves me in costume and the one that doesn't. Well be doing the one that doesn't involve me next week. I have a few minor costume pieces to finish up, and then we're good to go.

After that it could be close to a month before we do the fight scene that I'm invovled in. Which is fine, I've been totally ignoring working on the choreography for that. Hopefull that'll happen soon as well. My costume is complete for that...I should actually try it on to make sure it'll work.

And other then that, I'm hoping to get Heather's final shot for the movie done in the next little while as well. That'd be awesome.

And finally I've been working a little bit on the reshoot of the Brotherhood Flashback scene. I've got my actors all cast - it'll be a great bunch to work with, can't wait for that. I've made some adjustments to the hero costumes, sussing out authentic pieces rather then trying to make cheap copies.

As for the demon costumes, they're coming along slow but incredibly well. I've redesigned the helmet - it's now going to cost about $4 per helmet rather then $30 - always nice. And they'll look so much better I'm hoping. I'm halfway done the first prototype and so far I'm pretty happy with it. It's very Lord of the Rings inspired - which works well since the whole damned scene is anyway.

Otherwise the last of the movie is slowly shaping up well. I had a slight, almost end of the world moment last week when one of the harddrives, that a 3rd of the movie is stored on, ceased to work - but all is well and there is now a backup and a 2nd backup is on it's way to being made. I was rather amazed at how calm I was when I thought the movie had been trashed.

That's it for now. No pictures this time around, nothing to look at I'm afraid - but soon, very soon.

The Monkey Rodeo: Demon Rum

Well, I've been thinking about this for some time, but it's finally (sort of) come to light. I've been wanting to do some short films after Malice is all said and done, but I've really gotten to like working with prosthetics and whatnot - so I'm looking at doing a series of Monkey Rodeo short films.

They won't necessarily be related to Malice, there could be some character crossovers or reference, but for the main part they'll be stand alone stories - perhaps only enhanced be seeing Malice first, who knows though.

The first completed script is The Monkey Rodeo: Demon Rum, it's almost like a scene from the movie Trainspotting, but with demons. It's sort of a pointless little movie, more just for fun then anything - unless I come up with some better ideas in any subsequent drafts.

Also, things are gearing up nicely for the reshoot in May. I have pretty much all the parts cast, Heroes and Demons. I've working and reworking the Demon armor designs. I want them to look as cool as possible, but still flexible and lightweight, so there's a lot of experimenting with various materials to see what's the best.

One the other side of things, there's been some delays in the upcoming opening scene shoot. Mainly in getting things started. I have a shooting date in mind, I'm just being lazy in getting the actual fight scene outlined and rehearsal times set up. I'm not too worried about, that's the easiest part of the entire scene. It's the lead up to the fight and finishing touches on the costumes that's the most painstaking.

Otherwise, so far so good. It's a slow time of year, hard to stay motivated.

Funky New Eyeballs

Do I really need to say anything here?

I will anyway. These are the lenses for The Beast in the opening sequence for the movie. They're not exactly as pictured on the site I ordered them from, but I'm still pretty happy with how freaky they look. If you're wondering, they're freakin' huge. They're 22mm in diameter and pretty much cover half my eyeball - at least it feels that way putting them in.

They're hand painted I believe, so they're fairly unique in that sense. Since they're so large though they don't sit like normal lenses, again at least it feels that way. My vision isn't awesome with them in, since the edges are opaque and not semi-transparent like some lenses there is some vision loss around the peripheral.

Anyway, that's it for now. Things are progressing a little slowly, but the weather has been crap for filming anyway so I'm not complaining. As well, things are going well for the reshoot.

I didn't check my last post if I mentioned the reshoot, so I will more or less officially announce a major reshoot of one of the scenes for the movie. Now don't panic, if you haven't already about this you're not involved.

I'm planning on reshooting the scene that was done at Fort Amherst last fall, not because it didn't turn out, but because I can make it so much better and way more impressive. The basics of the scene haven't changed at all, we still have the Brotherhood facing an army of demons - although now we will have live action demons.

We'll be replacing the original real weapons with latex weapons. Some I already have, some I have to order, some are being custom made by a company in Germany and one I'm making myself.

The Demon Army will be played by for actors. With a lot of planning I intend to turn these 4 into several dozen, and with the addition of CG background characters - hundreds. The techniques are ones I've already used in the movie, but I was recently re-inspired by a video of 4 guys who recreated the beach storming scene from Saving Private Ryan, turning 4 into dozens.

It's actually pretty simple with a lot of planning, the post aspect becomes fairly easy. So I'll be working out the shots with much more detail to really get the most out of the 4 demons actors. These guys will be done up in funky sinister armor, with custom made swords, prosthetics and contacts lenses. I'm putting as much into this as humanly possible.

So there's a lot more to do, seems this has long since become the never ending movie - the final production time is now looking to be close to 4 1/2 years, maybe longer. Who knows, we've still got a long way to go.

Anyway, I'm still wearing these lenses, trying to get used to them. Forgive any typos since I'm working on less then 20/20 here.

The Big Nothing...

It's been very quiet and not a whole lot has really been going on with the movie. Just thought you'd like to know that.

I took a stab at reworking yet another CG character, might post some pictures soon on that.

Almost everything is ready for the big fight scene. Just waiting for a set of contact lenses and I think that's pretty much it. I'm starting work on the actual choreography and we start fight practice next week.

Aside from that, I had a talk with Draper today about something from the movie. I won't say anything just yet, still need to confirm some stuff. So it's all quiet until then.

That's it really. Nothing too major just yet.

Swords

I thought I'd do up a quick post about the swords I'm using in the last scene. During the course of my prop and costume hunting for the movie I came across the term LARP. I had no idea what in the hell this meant, I saw it mostly on eBay, along with MIB (which I thought was Men in Black, but turns out it's Mint in Box). LARP stands for Live Action Role Playing - aside from being a slightly kinky predilection for some folks, it's another term for people who like to get dressed up and fight pretend evil.

An easier to understand version is "re-enactment actors", or those kids who go to renaissance fairs. Although it's not simply limited to medieval themes. Take any role playing game and do it live action...and there you go.

At first I was seeing some weapons mainly, then some random props and costumes. I looked into it, out of curiosity, and eventually realized there's a lot of great props out there for LARPing. Which, in turn, become great props for movie making. Great, but not cheap.

I had no real use for LARP weapons, they're usually silly cartoony looking things you use to beat on fat guys dressed like minotaurs, or part-time shoe salesmen from Minnesota. These are sometimes called "Boffers" depending on how they're made - from what I understand, it's the more homemade looking ones.

These are some very homemade looking weapons.
Usually PVC pipe, or even bamboo, and padded with
foam and duct tape to hopefully resemble a weapon.

These ladies here have some bow and arrow Boffers.
Not terribly believable, but they work for what
they're intended I reckon.

After a fashion I began to see some pretty decent looking ones, so good that without any direct comparison, you'd never know the difference.

I decided this would be a good way to go for the new opening. It was one of many minor things that brought the idea together, it couldn't be done without many strange little things I stumbled upon over the course of the entire movie.

There are different types of the high end LARP latex weapons (yes, they're made of latex). Some are pretty simple, some are rather insane looking. You can even get latex shields as well...although it's not as weird as it sounds.

The ones I eventually settled one were a little more expensive then the ones I first had my eye on. And they're made in Canada, in Quebec to be exact. Take a look at http://www.calimacil.com. They have some pretty good stuff, some are pretty simple and some are pretty nice looking.

One thing that attracted me was this thing they called a hybrid core, normally these weapons are supposedly made with a fiber glass core, the hybrid cores are also reinforced with carbon fiber. Makes them more durable and they react more like a real metal sword when swung - although they're incredibly lightweight.

So after hunting and debating cost, I settled on the Calimacil swords. The ones I went with are replicas of swords from Lord of the Rings. And then I stumbled upon another site that had a cheap real version of the same swords. I only needed a real version of one of them though. So we'll use the real one up until the actual fight - then swap it out for the latex one. Hopefully it won't be too obvious.

The real sword.

The latex sword.

Both of them.

Side by side the differences are incredibly obvious. I'm hoping those differences won't show up while it's being swung around like crazy. One thing I didn't bother pointing out here, and I never realized from all the pictures I saw, but the blades are really thick. They're thickness is tapered too at that. They start out about about half and inch and widen to a full inch, if not more, at the tip - which apparently makes it good for stabbing, otherwise they're just good for whacking...That didn't sound quite right.

That's about it for now. This has been a public service announcement for the use of latex weapons. If you simply must smack someone safely, do it with latex...or not. Man, you just can't use latex in a sentence without conjuring up some major inappropriateness.

Location Scouting

It went well.

The location I had in mind I haven't been to in about 10 years. Luckily it was pretty much as I remembered it, a little more eroded, not that it's a problem. I wanted something a little bleak and desolate looking - and not one man made structure of any sort in the background.

We'll be heading up to the north shore in between North Rustico and Cavendish, it's not a very well traveled road as far as I know. I was hoping things were a little more frozen and barren looking, but with the warm weather lately aside from some chunks of snow there's not much "frozen" looking going on.

The only problem is whether or not this is high or low tide. I tried to figure it out, but I couldn't make much sense of what I was reading. I'm hoping there's more shore at low tide, otherwise it's going to be a little tricky shooting there.

I guess we'll see how it goes.

Very small update

It's been a couple weeks since I bothered with this here, things have been pretty busy otherwise so the movie has taken a bit of a backseat to everything else.

However that's not to say things have been progressing. Over the next couple weeks all the props and costume pieces for the one scene left have been coming in. As I start to see everything I can tell you this one little scene - which is the opening I might remind you - is going to be awesome.

All the makeup is now in, I'll be ordering the contact lenses this Friday and all that'll be left is one of the swords. It's already ordered, just on back order. Should be a couple weeks.

I'll be location scouting next week I think, so I'll probably post a few pictures of where we'll be shooting if it turns out alright. And then it's a matter of finishing the costumes and blocking out the sword fight and finally rehearsing it.

So I guess we'll see how things go over the next couple weeks. I wasn't expecting so much snow, so it might get postponed until a little later in February. Right now things looks pretty good out there, kinda cruddy and desolate looking is what I'm going for - easy to find here this time of year at least.

The Librarian

I spent the last day or so working on the Librarian character. He was pretty much designed already - I had posted some head shots some time ago - but I had yet to complete the rest of him. All done now, barring the typical animation tests.

I've been thinking that a newer, higher end system might be required once I start into rendering. The characters have a pretty high polygon count, twice as much as I'd normally be using - not that it's a bad thing, I've been thinking about a newer computer for some time now anyway.

The Librarian himself is pretty simple as far as CG characters go. He's more or less a floating upper torso with a weird head and extra long arms. His clothing consists of a metal-looking neck piece and a poncho-like cloak. The cloak will be done as a cloth simulation, so I won't actually be animating it myself - it's movements will be based on the movements of the main body. The cloth movements are then calculated afterwards and hopefully it'll work with too much tweaking.

I've done most of the basic tests, so it's looking like it should work - but during the course of actual animation there's always little problems that pop up. I'm hoping that it should go smooth enough. So far I've managed to get him to the point where I can comp him into an actual shot and so far I'm pretty happy with the results.

So here you go:

The background in this picture might change once the actual library set is totally complete - I'm not sure how much will be visible in this frame, might just be a couple books floating in and out. It's pretty rough looking right now.

Once I sign off on the rigging and skinning, I can start the animation tests, then I'll make an attempt to do some face morphs so I can make him talk and give him some expressions. I'd imagine those will take some time to render - right now we're looking at about 11 minutes per frame (at the size he appears in the above shot at least - closer up will take longer).

That's it for now. Once the Librarian is finished I'll probably start in on the Titan, he's already underway, he just needs a body.

Downtime

It's been a couple weeks since we wrapped principal shooting, I've been sort of taking it easy. Been working to get Dan's movie up to date and ready for production the first week of the new year, so far so good with that. I've also been working out costume and prop details (among other things) for the new extended opening sequence.

About 90% of everything needed has been ordered and on it's way. There's some new contact lenses that will be ordered as well as 2 prop swords - which are unlike the regular swords I've been using, these are much safer to really fight with. And then we'll be working on the sword fight choreography for a couple weeks, as well I'll be storyboarding the whole thing, plotting out any visual effects and if all goes as planned we should be ready to shoot this by mid-February.

I was hoping to have snow, mainly because I want this one little scene to really look unlike the rest of the movie, which is mainly dark and could be summer or fall, this I wanted to be a little more hostile looking. I'm just hoping it won't feel hostile while we're shooting. We'll be padded up enough so I think we'll be warm enough - the only concern is the camera in the cold. So our location has to be somewhere close to a place where we can slip inside.

Location scouting this might be problematic, we'll see.

Otherwise I've not really made any progress on the movie. I've taken a quick look at this and that. I spent a couple days redesigning The Library. It's the biggest FX scene in the movie I think, I'll more then likely be trying to complete that first. There's only 3 or 4 shots out of the entire sequence (maybe 30 or 40 shots in total) that don't require any post work. The rest is almost frame by frame touching up. Fun stuff.

I've been thinking about the movie as a whole lately, the overall look and feel of it. The more I think of it, the more I realize I could've gone farther with it. Not that I'm disappointed with it, it's just a matter of several things that were unavailable to me when I wrote it that have become almost simple and common now.

There are some techniques and visuals that I would never have thought of 3 and half years ago when the script was written that I've since become pretty comfortable with - and there's really only so much going back and adding stuff you can do. For instance, and CG actors - no problem. Real actors interaction with them? Impossible, unless it's already been shot like that, you can go back and add the real actors doing something that you didn't shoot - unless it's a long shot and you replace with with a digital actor, in which case it better be worth it because of the amount of work. And reshooting is more of a pain in the ass then anything, too much time has passed and too much has changed to even think of doing reshoots. So I'm settling on the sort of weird detached feeling the movie has, which kind of works since Malice herself is a pretty detached person.

Specifically action sort of stuff. I wish I'd had more moments of some action, but it would've required rewriting scenes and then working out a fight, or whatever, and then how does this action impact the location - could we do a fight scene on this location and what can we do safely - and still believable and worth the effort. And then there's can the actors do it? Do we need props, are the props going to hold up and will they be safe to use? So it boils down to, just forget it. Let's shoot what we can.

So in the end I opted to ignore this and just keep it as it was written and try to flesh out the scenes with more live action visuals to make it more interesting. I guess I came about with this thought over the last little while, off and on, seeing other movies, older ones that inspired this one. Lately I just happened to see the trailer for HellBoy 2: The Golden Army (the original HellBoy was very much an inspiration for The Monkey Rodeo: Malice) and all I could think of afterwards was how much larger and more impressive I would've really liked The Monkey Rodeo to have been.

Obviously I have to settle on what's already been shot and just deal with it. There is no more adding at this point. All I can do is take the post visuals already planned from the beginning and just make them 10x more cool. I've been pushing myself to add more details to the movie that in the end you probably won't even realize are added visual effects. Mainly just to see if I can do it. Overall they should gloss over any imperfections or slacker moments of the movie.

Like I said, it's not that I'm suddenly deflated and disgusted by what's shot. I think in comparison (both budget and talent-wise) to "Hollywood" movies, The Monkey Rodeo should prove to be a pretty impressive movie. It's just one of those things where you keep seeing potential to make a scene a little bigger and a little cooler. At some point you really have to just let it go and hope that you can make the best with what you got. And that's where I am right now.

Within the next 2 months I should have everything I need to start working on a completed version. Visually speaking at least. There's some software I need to complete some visuals that I should be able to snag over the next while.

By late-summer/mid-fall I hope to be doing all the dialog recording. That will mean all the visuals, probably rough versions at the least, will be done by then.

That's where things are now, I just wanted to make an update since things are very quiet on this at the moment.

Aykroyd, Wine, Stealing Money from the Cash Registers and Staring People.

Not really movie related, at least not my movie, but - Dan Aykroyd came to town today promoting a new wine he has out now. Available in both exciting colours, red and white.

Derek Martin and I went up to get a bottle and an autograph. We arrived early, 3rd in line. I'd rather wait an hour and a half indoors then out. So we took out place in line, snagged our wine. Red of course, not too much fo a white fan these days - but I'm sure it's good. I'll probably try it at one point to see if it makes Blues Brothers 2000 a good movie or not.

I ducked out for a moment once we were settled to get a couple things from a nearby store - more costume pieces for the movie. And I swear to god while I was there I saw the woman at the register, just as she pulled out my change with one hand she pocketed a twenty from the cash. I was kind of amused by it for some reason.

So I got back, we waited and waited. I guess Aykroyd was supposed to be there at 4, but things got delayed. And no wonder. He just came from Dieppe and Moncton that morning (I guess it was 2 separate instances of wine signing, not sure) and he got here, he was scheduled to perform at 9 at an uptown Sports Bar as well he was supposed to be at another place between 5 and then.
So he arrived, and he made a loud entrance - like I really expected he'd slip in the back way quietly. He seemed pretty cool, much what you'd expect if you've ever seen him in a movie or seem him interviewed. But as soon as he sat down he was just in head down signing mode. He spoke, but it seemed more like stream of conscious out loud thinking - not that I was upset by that. I appreciate he had to be running out of steam and this was close to a veneer of "I'm excited to sit here and be gawked at and sign stuff for a couple hours!" as you were going to get without being obviously disingenuous.

So I took a couple pictures with Derek's camera, while he gathered up everything he got signed - and other folks came in right behind us - so no picture with Dan, but I did steal this from Derek's facebook.

The first head-signing of the night.

So we left. And such was my brush with fame...Ah well, it was cool enough.

Then I went to get some groceries and was on my way home. I was ready to pay for my stuff and leave and I got up to the register and this girl was in the lineup and was staring at me rather oddly. Not bugged drooling, but really oddly. And not it any way that I thought she was checking me out or anything. She I was in my lineup, she in hers and a few more quick stares.

I get to pay for my stuff, and then the girl at the checkout keeps looking at me. I was staring to think I must've had some booger the size of Texas somewhere on my face. And this one wasn't even being subtle like the first girl. I'm standing on the other side of the counter, two feet away and she's ringing stuff through while daring me to a staring contest or something.

And then I went home and I hope to avoid people for a couple days until they get over their weirdness.

And that was all. I'm taking some time tonight to work on some movie stuff actually. Not a whole lot, but a few little odds and ends. The stuff I bought from the pilfering cashier was for a costume piece for the extended opening sequence. Not something I have to do, but I wanted to do for a different visual - I just decided to do different looking bracers for Draper's character. They're sort of based of Boromir's from Lord of the Rings.

His looked like this:

I was going to even try to make them from real leather, but then the part of me that doesn't have a lot of money advised me to change that plan quick. I'm hoping to order a few more pieces within the next week or two. Maybe some location scouting over the next couple weeks. If all goes well I might have everything ready to go by February for this scene.

In the meantime, I'm reworking the Library designs and trying to get ready to start animating Dan's movie. Dan Caseley, not Dan Aykroyd.

Odd things people search for

This is actually not much of a movie related post. In fact it's more about this blog and how some people stumble upon it. About a month ago I added a tracker to the blog, so I could get some vague sense of whether or not (and whoever or not) was reading it.

Now I didn't expect thousands of people a day flocking to the blog, and good thing too because it ain't happening. Really, unless you know about it, you're probably not going to find it. Unless you search for: homemade monkey bars galvanized or even blind "contact lenses" halloween actress.

There hasn't been too many odd searches, but a few, such as demon footage, backup tape monkey and demon footwear. The others have been for some things only a little peculiar, rodeo props (???), warhammer prop and (twice this popped up) bile demon. In all fairness to the folks searching for Bile Demons, they were characters from a video game called Dungeon Master. And oddly enough the Bile Demons from the game resemble Pyre (big, fat, and orange) more then they do my Bile Demons. And it's actually where I got the inspiration for the name.

There was also iceposter canvas (referring to the place where I got my posters done) and firestore fs-4hd (the digital storage drive I use) and homemade steadicam (which reminds me I should put a link to the place where I got the info to build mine). And that was more or less the extent of it...except.

Now, I don't want to creep anyone out with letting you know this, but 4 other searches that led folks to my blog were women's names. I will point out now that they were all from the UK or nearby, so chances are it wasn't anyone any of you know searching for you on the net. I don't want to name names - since it's obviously not the folks involved in my movie they were actually looking for I'd say.

I also don't want to give anyone the impression that it's that easy to track people's net surfing habits. Well, it kind of is, but the only info is an IP address and a referrer. By referrer I mean whether it was a search engine (and what search words were used) or what website if any. Some IPs aren't static, I guess dynamic IP is the right term? I'm not sure, in any case it just means your IP isn't always the same so you couldn't really track and IP address and tell exactly whose it was - at least I can't, someone else might though I suppose.

Still, it's all kind of weird knowing that all these people who have no idea what the hell this movie is have stumbled upon my blog. Quite a few are scattered over Europe, including 2 from Singapore and 1 from Instanbul, the bulk come from Canada, supposedly on 3 from PEI though. So obviously it's not that easy to track specifically where an IP comes from, I guess because Aliant is all over, sometimes it guesses the address come from Nova Scotia, unless that 18 people from NS know about the movie. I doubt it.

The numbers I have so far are about 181 pages viewed in the last month. Good thing I don't expect to make money from this blog. Most folks are using Firefox 2.0 as their browser and 1 person out there is still using Win98.

Anyway, that's it really. I thought it was interesting, perhaps it's not. Why knows. In any case, if you got a website or blog or whatever and want to keep track of it. http://www.histats.com/ That's where mine came from. It's free, doesn't seem to bog down the site or anything.

And if you want to see what kind of info can be found from just your IP address, check this out: http://ip-lookup.net/ It also allows you to look up info on other IP addresses.

If you're suddenly paranoid about that fact that someone out there can tell you searched for "Mistress SpanksAlot", remember that there's probably a couple thousand other folks doing the same and much, much worse.

That's it for now

I'm done filming. That's about all there is to say about that. The shoot went well last night, took a little longer then I thought, but then again I shot everything from about 4 different angles. There's probably more footage of those scenes then I can ever use, and one shot that I didn't expect to get. I can't really say what it is without giving away too much, however it was great looking and extremely dangerous - so we never bothered to try another take of it.

I guess I should more accurately say I'm done principal photography. So by all accounts I'm not really done, but what's left are a couple minor pick up shots that require no more then a few minutes attention. I'm not too worried about those, might get them next week, maybe next year even.

All that's left is an added scene, which I'm not filming because I'm in - although you'd never recognize me. This scene requires a bit of money to shoot, so it's on hold and can be shot whenever. It will be awesome though.

There won't be any shots posted of the last scene, it's a bit of a plot giveaway so I'm avoiding showing anything from it. Both Derek and Steve did a great job though.

I have a couple meetings today about other projects and I need coffee, so I might be done filming, but I still have a lot to do otherwise.

Gearing up for one more shoot

I'm just going over my shots for the last scene. It reads pretty simple, so it should be a simple shoot. Right? Nope. I don't say that to scare anyone involved should they read this before Thursday night though. It's more difficult for me then the actors.

The scene is simply this: Grayson (Derek Martin) finally assembles everything he needs to translate this prophecy in order to figure out just what the hell is going on. He's doing so as Malice is off to fight some evil elsewhere. Now there's some previous references that Grayson's method of choice isn't exactly safe, in fact he's supposedly dealing in some serious dark magic.

However when I started looking at it and thinking about it, there was no payoff to all this talk of dark magic. He just reads it and that's it. So with the help of a few visual effects, I've added some spice and we got ourselves a nice tasty bit of dark magic gumbo. We will get to see a result of these warnings about using this sort of magic. I had to keep it simple though since it intercuts with an action scene and it'd be stupid to pause and explain crap - so I'm hoping to rely on some serious visuals to sell the point.

The effects are simple, nothing groundbreaking as far as what I've already been doing. If it holds up on screen as well as it holds up in my head, it should be a pretty cool little scene. And it marks the reappearance of the Delvian Demon Rum.

I also want to point out, while I was working on this I was checking out some movie stuff online and apparently the first stills from the new Indiana Jones movies have been released: http://www.aintitcool.com/node/34908

While Indy looks pretty clean in his adventurer duds, I have to say Ford still looks pretty good in character. There's only going to be two good movies next year folks, HellBoy: The Golden Army and Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (both of which feature John Hurt). The predecessors of both, by the way, were partial inspirations for The Monkey Rodeo: Malice.

1 more left (part 3)

I haven't edited anything in ages so I took a quick stab at the scenes.

The Two Ricks.
This part of the shot is just old-fashioned
split screen. It works pretty damned well too,
Rick's eyelines are perfect.
However right at the end of this both characters will walk
offscreen together - that'll be fun to do.

Everything looks like it should work just fine. I did some rough comps of the Twin Guards shots and they look awesome. Rick's timing and placement in the shots was perfect. It's going to take quite a bit to really clean the edges up and even add some shadows here and there to really sell it, but it's well worth it.

In going over all the shots one thing I noticed, and I was thinking of this last night, is how hard it is to focus the camera in this kind of light. It's got a touch of orange to it, so it tends to look slightly blurry even when it's in perfect focus. A quick couple tests and I should be able to tweak the shots to make them look a little sharper, as well as really fix the major out of focus shots.

This helps with some previous scenes as well. So in conjunction with all the visual effects, there's going to be a lot of work in just cleaning up the footage to make it presentable. Overall I'm pretty impressed, it was a bit of a bugger to organize, it well was worth it though.

After this coming Thursday, our last shoot of this year, I'm going to try to get a rough estimate of the running time of the whole project. I have no idea how long it'll be at the moment.

So that's it for now. One more to go and we'll see how it progresses from there.