Amid the chaos of the day...

The last night on Cronus went well, pretty nerve wracking but it went well. I've yet to check the footage, we did while shooting though just to make sure we got everything.

The place is now utterly destroyed looking. One of the chairs is smashed up, there's broken glass (fake) all over the floor, the chairs and pretty much everything. And the desk is broken in two and files everywhere..

It was fun.

That's it for shooting on Cronus, didn't go exactly as planned - never does though. It's pretty much all edited aside from the scene last night, which I doubt will take long since it was almost all one take for every shot.

The desk breaking gag worked great, one take is all it took. We were prepared to do about 4 though, one was all that was needed and trust me when I say it was a little shocking when it happened. It was loud and a nearly lamp popped making it a little more dramatic.



I had to place a sign there because I think nearly everyone was tempted at one point to sit. This is the breakaway chair, so it would've been a shock.






And here it is all destroyed, this picture doesn't do it justice. I took some footage of it, we'll see it that does.






Draper showing off the one and only injury of the night and it happened on the last shot.


So thanks to everyone involved. Draper, Natasha, Pete, Adrian, John, Kier and Heather. you all did a pretty damned good job. to Kim for waiting around taking most of the pictures and watching all this. To anyone we got props from, or helped out in any small way, there were a few along the way. Especially to Ray Brow for letting us use his building for all this, it would've been a massive pain otherwise...I don't think he knew we'd be trashing the place though.

And that's is it for now for Cronus. I did a voiceover version of the trailer, I'll probably post it later today. And once the movie in done, in about a month maybe, you'll probably see it here.

And now onto Bimbo Zombie Killers! I have to pick up a shotgun today. Awesome.

The last shoot for Cronus

Well, this is the last shoot of the movie. I've got most of the morning tomorrow to get everything set up as well as I can and then hope for the best. I've said before I'm not a fan of filming fight scenes, I just can't get the rhythm of it, luckily this is much different. It's more a serious of shots of Cronus being beaten, nothing really has to flow from shot to shot so much.

The desk got hacked in half today, and unfortunately it won't hold it's own weight and stay up as I'd hoped. This isn't so much a problem. I do have a couple workaround that should work rather well. I'll also be testing out the breakaway chair idea tomorrow, should work just fine.

The most nerve wracking part of this is that some of the shots are one take only. If it buggers up, then it wasted time and money - and that's just not fun for anyone involved. Not for me because it's my money and not fun for the actors because they'll be the ones feeling responsible for buggering it up. So I'm thinking it won't be as much fun as we'd planned, you never know though, it could all go off without a hitch. I'm hoping for that.

I don't know if we'll have many behind the scenes photos, since the set is a little too dark for the camera, but we might be able to snag some stagged shots and there's always the stills.

Depending on my mood, it could be a quick update Thursday morning, or perhaps nothing for a couple days should it all go south. We'll see.

In other news, the idea of getting my own Firearms License to get the guns for Bimbo Zombie Killers! is at a standstill because of a 4-6 week processing period and the potential for wasted money. I'm looking into other options since this won't happen in time.

And now, I'm off to fight super mutant evil for a bit before crashing for the night.

The Monkey Rodeo: All About Monsters

I don't even know where to begin. The last week has been insane, I don't even know how I managed to make it all come together and not have my head explode.

As far as Cronus goes, we've one more night of filming. The big fight scene - it's really more of a beating actually. I've had a lot to prepare and still have a long way to go to get it all ready for this coming Wednesday.

The chairs have to be made to fall apart, shouldn't be too much of a problem since they're held together with screws - I'm just going to pull all the screws out and replace them with balsa wood.

The desk is going to be a bit of a challenge. I'm not sure how that's going to work, but we'll see what happens.

I got some breakaway glass in. A couple pieces of picture frame glass, one sheet is already broken from shipping, not too badly though, it's still usable. And a breakaway bottle to be smashed over Draper's head.


Also had our first relooping session to redo all the dialog, I think it went pretty well. I haven't heard it yet, but a friend of mine whose equipment I used to record, said it turned out pretty good.

All About Monsters. This one is a little hard to explain, but it's primarily already shot. In about 30 minutes Saturday afternoon. It's done as a small segments, perhaps to a larger show, perhaps it might air during commercials. It's write in segment where people, (children or adults, it's not really sorted out) write in to a monster expert to ask questions separating fact and fiction.

It's way more ridiculous then serious sounding. One segment has a fellow named Harry asking whether or not it's true if giant monsters like to eat babies. The which the answer is: Yes, yes it is. Cut to a giant monster, looming over a daycare, a massive hole in the roof through which the monster pulls out a handful of babies he then eats like popcorn.

It's dark, kind of sick humor. You'll like it.

This shoot was really last minute. I wasn't prepared to shoot it until mid-June, but in order to get the actor I really wanted, a fellow by the name of Rich Wilson, I had to do it before May 25th. So it was a little rushed, luckily the concept is simple and I only need him for half an hour.


The biggest problem was recording the audio, I wanted to get a lav mic and just record it all live and be done with it. I had gone to the only store locally that might carry such a thing, only to be told it doesn't exist. AC powered one yes, battery powered ones no. That's actually crap, they couldn't have just said they didn't know, instead they began to explain why it wasn't possible for such a thing to exist...I told them to look it up and the reaction was just "Oh. There's one."

Whatever. They didn't have one in, all they had were the AC powered ones. So I had to find an exterior location that looked rather decent - I wanted one of the park areas - that had an outlet. All day Friday morning I drove around testing them and found nothing.

I decided to go get the AC powered one anyway, I find a place I could shoot - not perfect, but it was fine. And then they asked if I wanted the battery powered lav mic they just got in...It's weird to be thrilled and pissed off all the same time.

So it turned out pretty good in the end, I've only given the footage a quick glance, but the level of the actor's audio seemed really nice and clear above the background.

Bimbo Zombie Killers! is coming along slowly. This will be shot first of July.

As far as the major elements to get ready for this one; I need to get my Firearms Safety License because there will be guns involved.

I need to come up with a very cheap, non-toxic, non-sticky blood recipe - I hate any of the syrup based homemade fake blood recipes, they're just rotten to deal with for actors, especially when they're going to be covered in the stuff all day long. I have a few good ideas I'll be testing out over the next couple weeks.

As well, the major props are a couple dozen moonshine jugs, 3 will be real and the others will be made of foam. I have someone making me the jugs, which I'll then make a mold of to mass produce the foam versions.

And I have to get a fake axe as well, it'll be made like the LARP weapons I used last year - I'll be making it myself though this time.

We'll see what the next couple weeks bring with this one.

And lastly, The Horrible Alien Brain Monsters from Outer Space in 3D is coming along really well. The script is almost finished although it's already been completely cast.

I've been outlining a few minor details to make it feel really campy and poorly made. The FX should be easy for this since I want them to look really bad. I don't think there'll be any CG involved in this movie at all, it'll all be live action, old school special effects if possible.

So that's it so far, we'll see what the next month brings.

The Monkey Rodeo: Cronus Trailer

Well, it's done - the trailer in any case. I have a lot of work to finish the actual movie. The editing is mainly done. The relooping for the dialog is coming soon, a few very difficult visual effects shots and then all that's left to shoot is the fight scene next week.

It runs a little choppy, but it could be my connection at the moment since I'm uploading another copy of this elsewhere at the moment.

Editing isn't as fun as you'd think, unless you think it's not fun at all

I muddled through converting all the footage and going through it all shot by shot picking out the takes I wanted. I really have to come up with a better method of doing this. Of course I didn't notice until afterwards the file number is displayed on the camera and I could have just been taking note of which take was good...would've saved a lot of time. Ah well, next time.

As far as editing went, I've had more fun. Now, I can't blame anyone, nor will I, because it's as much, if not more, my fault then the actors. It seemed (in the final scene in any case, the rest looks fine so far) that everyone was doing something different with their hands or their body positions every single take.

I blame it on first night of filming, everyone tends to get a little carried away. I was more worried about making the shots look alright and getting done on time. I really should have been paying better attention to what everyone was doing.

Shooting 6 actors all interacting is a pain the ass though, if even one person is out of place it can make a cut look awkward. In any case, I got it all to work pretty well. I was thinking far enough ahead to get way more coverage then I could ever use - well, I used it all.

Having said all that, I'm either way better at editing or the footage wasn't as bad as I thought. The edit still could be tightened up a bit, the visual effects added and once the dialog is all relooped it should come out pretty damned good actually. It's a little hokey looking, but it kinda makes it work all the better.

Anyway, here's a couple stills from it.




I've got 2 more scenes to edit before Wednesday when we do our first relooping session.

202 posts?

I just noticed I recently passed the 200th post mark. That's a lot of rambling.

We had another shoot on Thursday night, it was long, but not overboard. Everything stayed on schedule pretty well. The last of the major scenes and the minor exterior shots are all done. I've been spending the day converting all the footage into a more editable format - it's a long uninteresting process, still better the capturing from miniDV.

One of the cooler things we accomplished was an alternate ending for CRONUS. I had a plan that if my original actor for Satan, Kier Kenny, didn't show up (which he didn't the first night because of personal reasons and he was very apologetic about it) I had a backup. I decided anyway to shoot the backup ending even though Kier did show on a later shoot.

The ending has Satan showing up and retrieving his (or her) Gateway Key to Hell, the alternate version was still Satan, but a female version played by Heather Panton. While Kier's Satan was very simple and to the point, he did a good job, however there's a much more interesting visual with Heather as Satan. I made a last minute prosthetic for her since I felt the viewer might need a bit of a push in realizing this strange woman who appears out of nowhere is actually the Prince(cess) of Darkness.

I'm wondering if someone can debunk this for me, in doing this alternate ending we talked a bit about how none of us could think of anything any of us had seen before that had a female Satan for no good reason, other then just do it. Any else know of anything we might not have thought of?

The prosthetic was so last minute in fact, it barely came out of the oven at 4 pm for a 7 pm shoot. It wasn't perfect, but it looks pretty good.

Speaking of prosthetics, I think I made a total of 21 sets of prosthetics for the movie. Not all were used, I would just fill up another mold when I found I had extra foam left over from whatever one I was specifically making at the time.

Other then that, I've made a few tests to see how well the footage converts to black and white, so far so good.

There's minimal CG involved this time around, which I'm pretty grateful for. Most of it takes place at during the end scene.

I'm hoping to get a rough edit done this weekend, as I also hope to get Natasha's dubbing done this week. As well I think I should be able to crank out the trailer to be ready for Monday, I just need to find some decent music, I might find something temporary for now that fits well enough.

And now, pictures!

Makeup time again...

SATAN!

And out of makeup...

Going over lines for the last scene...

Shooting the scene...

Pretty much done for the night...

Up next is the tentatively titled: The Monkey Rodeo: Rich's All About Monsters. A quasi children shows which has children writing letters to Rich, a guy who knows all about giant monsters. I use the name Rich because the actor's name is actually Rich, so I reckon he'll pretty much be playing himself in this. Instead of it being a single short, it'll be a series of 30 second shorts. Shouldn't take more then an hour to shoot all of Rich's footage and the rest will be gathered over the course of the summer.

After that, The Monkey Rodeo: Bimbo Zombie Killers! I've done a little pre-production it, but will be stepping it up big time in another week or so to meet the shooting date of the first week of July.

I'll post some stills from the movie over the weekend most likely.

The Monkey Rodeo: CRONUS movie poster

Not perfect, but I'm pretty happy with it.

The much delayed CRONUS update

I've been lazy updating since we started shooting CRONUS, so here goes.

Here's some shots while we were getting the office set together. This is what it looked like when we first started.
And that's pretty much it.

And now a few shots from one of the nights of filming.



And a few shots from the last scene we shot on Sunday evening.

So there you have it. I don't really have much to go on about. Shooting is going pretty well, a little slower then I'd like - but I guess the trade off is shorter shoots. Luckily my choice to make my own prosthetics this time around paid off, this would be really expensive if I had to purchase enough of them to cover all the shoots we've had to do. A rough estimate would be about $500.

And here's a couple silly looking shots we took after the first night of filming.

This is the main character from Demon Rum 2: Bofa's Revenge.

That's about it. We're shooting an alternate ending this coming shoot. I won't say too much about it, other then here's the actor in the process of having a her face cast for a prosthetic.


When I get a chance to start editing the footage I'll probably post a few stills.

The first still from CRONUS

I haven't had a chance to update anything on CRONUS lately, I've been pretty busy - even though I'm not supposed to be. That's kind of annoying. Also, I need to get a new hard drive to dump all the footage on - I'm rapidly running out of room it seems.

I snagged one clip off the camera at random and did a little test to see how I could process it. This clip was pretty simple, it was shot against a black sheet and meant to look like a bit of a dark interrogation room, originally it was supposed to be in a club owned by Bofa, the big guy on the left. It seemed too much work for such a short scene, so we did this instead.

This clip was in HD, I didn't downscale it for Standard Def. I'm pondering leaving it in HD, I've never edited in that format before so I've no idea what I'm doing. I guess it'll all depend on how the makeup looks in the brighter scenes if I chose to leave it this way or not.
The beam of light was added with just a simple filter in Premiere, I've never used a filter like this before - never had much use, but it really worked well here. I was going to attempt a similar look using another and I don't think I'll bother now, this works well and is much quicker.

So that's it for now. I've made a stab at the poster. It's looking pretty good. 90% of the footage for the trailer is already shot, I just need a couple good Cronus shots and that'll be it. Hopefully it'll be ready by next weekend.

First day of shooting on The Monkey Rodeo: Cronus

As the title says, tonight's the first night of shooting on Cronus. If it goes well, we should be filming in the evenings over the next 2 weeks. Four nights in total.

That's all I have to say, I'm just getting ready to head out the door and make one least check of the location and go over everything before we start the makeup at 4. We'll be doing a quick photoshoot first, so the poster should be ready in a couple days.

The office set still needs a few odds and ends to properly fill it out, which is too bad since I was hoping to shoot a trailer this weekend. Maybe next week.

Stay tuned, we'll see what happens. It's my first time really using the new HD camera as well.

Almost time

I don't even know where to start. It's been one of those weeks.

The office set is coming along well. Most of the stuff has been moved in, still some of the minor props to get together and a little set dressing needs to be done. Overall it's looking pretty spiffy.

The prosthetics are all done, just running off some duplicates for each day of shooting. So far I'm pretty beyond pleased with how this part of the project had come along.

Props...Some good, some bad. Last minute we managed to cobbled together a few ideas and came up with one prop that's been eluding us for ages. Something as simple as a little box for the Gateway Key prop to be held in. We found one and it looks great.

The guns. This is were it starts to fall down. I've never used real guns, with the firing pins removed of course, so this was a learning experience. And a lesson learned well. Now I knew right away someone involved would have to have a Fireams Safety License. Normally the fellow who owns them would come out to the set, this time he couldn't so we had to find out own person to transport them. One of our actors being a police officer we though we'd be fine...Nope.

This is one of those things that makes sense and doesn't. He carries a gun for his job, therefore he's exempt from needing a license to carry it. But that doesn't mean he's allowed to carrying guns for personal reasons. So we don't have guns, at least not cool looking ones. We have crappy painted up plastic ones. They look okay, but still a disappointment.

Draper and I are getting our Firearms Safety License soon to avoid this in the future.

The costumes are at the dry cleaners, I pick them up tomorrow.

Otherwise, I need to dress up the rooms a bit at the location to get them ready for Sunday night and we're all set for our first night of filming.

I won't bother going into all the hassles and this and that that went on. Some spots were really annoying in the pre-production, but overall it's gone pretty smoothly. Let's see how the shoot goes now.