The Fake Axe

This was written over the course of 3 days, from
Friday afternoon to Sunday morning.

I'm sort of writing this as I'm working on it, so it might seem a little disjointed and whatnot.

The idea behind this is that I wanted something else besides guns for one of the girls in Bimbo Zombie Killers! to use. And something relatively safe and easy to handle. So I decided to try to make my own fake axe, much like the weapons I used for the big medieval battle scene in Malice. Problems was I had no idea how to do it.

I eventually found on a website that I get most of the molding materials a step by step set of pictures showing how these weapons are made - more or less. They left out a few details I think in order to protect some trade secrets or something, I don't know. Overall I figured this looked like something I could do.

And nearly the same time I managed to suss out the materials needed as well, so it seems like it was coming together really well. I even managed to get a decent, but cheap, airbrush so I could paint the thing (it needs special paint, same as ones used on fabrics I guess). So I was all set.

The first problem was how to mold it, as I'm learning these materials are not cheap. It would've cost me about $200 just to make the mold - which would've been fine if I had to make several duplicates. My budget didn't really allow for it, so I figured I could just use the massive pile of UltraCal 30 that I have.

It seemed to work alright, I've got one side of the mold made right now. Demolding the axe was a huge pain in the ass and damaged the mold in a few places, but it should be easy to clean up. That's the next part.

...

Well, that wasn't easy at all. The problem here, and I knew this before I started I was just hoping I could do it, is that the mold and the object are rigid - this never makes for a great combo. Had I modeled the axe in clay, I probably would've had a much better result. I just didn't have enough on hand and was a little impatient, it's still an option though.

Having said that, I did get it to work alright, there's some problem spots where the mold broke away in a couple tight areas. That was to be expected and should mess up the final product too much. I'm hoping I can trim away any excess material.

Next step is making sure when I do the 2nd part, there's no obvious undercuts, otherwise the axe get locked into the 2nd half of the mold. Looks like there might be a bit of a problem there, but I'll try to fix that first.

Meanwhile I've got the fiberglass rod for the center of the axe ready - although it's going to be tricky since the handle has a bit of a curve to it.

...

And I've done my first test with the Flex Foam-It, as it's called. So far it seems to be great, although what oozes out of the mold is rather disturbing looking. Kinda like a little brain. It takes about 2 hours to demold so I'm just waiting for about another hour before I can see how well it worked. Luckily, it slides right off the silicone mold - however, the axe mold isn't silicone as you might recall.

The Flex Foam-It Voodoo Spirit Bomb was a success. I noticed that the excess material, that oozed out of the mold, had a much thicker, tougher skin then what came out of the mold. It demolded incredibly well too, it actually just slide out with very little effort, almost none in fact.

The Flex Foam-It one is in the yellowish one in the middle.

So that's looking promising. Right now I've got the 2nd mold of the axe done, just giving it some time to fully harden before I begin the painful task of trying to pull it from the mold and see just how horrible it is. I'm going to leave it for another hour or so.

...

It came out not too bad, there was a bit of a struggle at first and I really thought a whole chunk of the mold was just going to break right off, but it didn't. In fact the 2nd half turned out much better then the first.

I'm taking a break and I'll clean the mold up later. I might actually get around to pouring the Flex Foam-It tonight and just leaving it overnight and if all goes well I'll have myself a rubber axe in the morning.

I just poured the stuff into the mold. I'm not entirely confident this will work. It's not a huge mold, but I didn't get much of the liquid in before it started foaming and it became impossible to keep filling it. The good news is I don't think it takes much of this stuff to go a very long way so I can try again if this doesn't work. I think there's definitely a technique to it that I'm not sure of just yet. I'll find out in the morning I guess.

Very professional looking.

I guess I was wrong, that stuff works brilliantly. I used way too much, I wasted quite a bit, I kinda wish I had another mold ready that could've been filled - doesn't even matter what it was, just so I didn't end up with a cup fill of wasted material. Funny, I originally only intended to use half the amount, and that's pretty much exactly what I would've needed.

It was a little tricky to demold - it's pretty grippy to most surfaces. Looks alright though. The blade of the axe is a little floppy because there's no support and very little material it being so thin. But otherwise I'd say with worked alright. I now have a safe, lightweight rubber axe. Needs to have some excess trimmed away, that's about it.

Now I just have to paint it. I got an airbrush a couple weeks ago knowing I'd have to do this eventually. I'll probably take a stab it later today, I'm kinda not tin the mood since I have to do a few tests first and probably need more another air canister for the brush - I don't have an actual compressor just yet.

So there you go, that wasn't too bad at all. Aside from already having the UltraCal 30, I bough the axe - $25, the fiberglass rod - $7 and the Flex-Foam-It - $45 ($60 with shipping). Not too bad. Next up, the moonshine jugs. I will defintely need silicone to mold those bad boys, but not too much probably. We'll see how it goes when I can afford to get more in.

UPDATE, June15th, 2010:  I've noticed this page of the blog alone has well over a thousand hits from folks looking to make or buy foam axes. This wasn't meant as a tutorial, because it's not done properly, but should someone stumble upon this and have questions, by all means feel free to email me and ask me something - I might be able help, you never know. foxhenderson@themonkeyrodeo.com

Foamy urethane goodness or not.

This is where I really have no idea what the hell I'm going and I'm really cutting it close, too close.

For Bimbo Zombie Killers! I needed jugs...moonshine jugs I mean. And lots of them. Only 3 have to work, and I've got those - now I just need to figure out a way to make copies. Fast, cheap and simple copies.

The mold was no problem, I've plenty of good ideas there. the only thing I could come up with for a reproduction material was some kind of expanding foam.

There's a, I guess what you'd call, "artist grade" version of the stuff, expensive as hell though. So after a lot of searching I managed to find something sort of local and supposedly pretty similar. I'm not really familiar with the stuff, so I can't make any educated assumptions at all here.

Tonight I gave it a try, using the Voodoo Spirit Bomb mold. It's small, has some fine details so I figured if it worked here it can repro the jugs just fine. Well, I can't say my first test have me overly excited.

you can see here how much the foam has expanded out of the mold. This was 2 tablespoons of the stuff, and it ended up filling about the equivalent of 3 cups approximately. That's pretty impressive and you can demold it almost right away.
Here's where the problems set in though. The stuff is brittle, really brittle. It's a flotation foam, so it's filled with bubbles. I just thought it'd be a little tougher though. Some chunks broke off when I demolded them - however, it's a pretty tight mold so that could have a lot to do with it.

You can see here the first one on the left is my first attempt, it was pretty ugly. The middle one is my second attempt. I used way less, about 6 mL in total, I actually used an eyedropper I used that little and it expanded by and inch or so out of the mold. The last is the original, cast in plaster - you can see the difference.

I'm still not entirely convinced this is the way to go. I'm debating about a hard shell, made of non-foam urethane filling it with this stuff - I could even use that spray in crap you can get at HomeDepot - that'd work just fine too as filler.

It's looking like there's no easy way of doing this, at least no cheap way of doing this. A pint kit of the urethane is about $30, I've no idea how far that'll go mind you. I'm hoping I can do this for around $200 - the mold alone is going to cost me about $60. We'll see I guess.

I'm looking at the calendar and realizing just how close to out first shooting date we are and very little is done. Hopefully I'll be able to get the axe made this weekend.

Pre Zombie Killing

In some ways Bimbo Zombie Killers! has been easier to figure out then other projects, and in other ways it becoming a little problematic.

The locations are nearly all taken care of, which also solved the transportation problem. I'm shooting in Victoria Park, so no need to bus everyone out of town. Plus, given that I'm not getting the number of people that I wanted having a smaller enclosed space will make the smaller crowd look a little larger...I hope.

This will probably slightly offend anyone who falls into the category of people I'm about to talk about, so be prepared if you think it might be you - you do deserve it kind of. Over the years I've had so many people ask me to put them in a movie, most of the time it comes out "So, when are you going to put me in a movie?" Which I think is a little rude, especially when I either hardly know them or sometimes not at all.

So pretty much all those people have been asked, about 10% have actually agreed, 20% said no and the rest are just saying maybe or haven't even responded. Unless you finally end up coming to the shoot, I really don't ever want to hear you ask me ever again.

Otherwise, casting is still stumbling along slowly. Considering we shoot in less then 4 weeks, this isn't a good thing. I'm hoping we can take care of it in the next week.

The prop building is coming along, although nothing has been done yet, a lot of the details are slowly being worked out at least. It'll be close, but I think it should work out.

And the fake blood. I've been going on about finding just the right recipe and avoiding the sticky syrupy kind - looks like that's about all that's going to work.

I haven't tested any of the special effects I'm going to use yet either. Pretty soon though, I'm hoping.

Otherwise I'm still plugging away slowly at Cronus and Malice, when I can get a peaceful moment - right now sitting at the computer half my time is spent pulling kitten claws from various part of me.

Not much news, just working away.

Been working away on the visual effects shots for both Malice and Cronus. So far so good. The FX for Cronus are proving to be a little trickier then I'd thought, although the worst of them is almost over.

Got some new stuff on the way for making some foam jugs as well as a foam axe. The jugs will be harder, whereas the axe will be much like the one we used in the big fight scene for Malice last summer.

And in non-movie related stuff...
I picked her up at Pets Unlimited on Friday afternoon, took me awhile to decide what to name her - I went with Madchen, but I'm just calling her Maddy. She's about 7 weeks old. I'd forgotten how hyper and excitable kittens were - at least she pretty much sleeps through the night.

My other cat, Mulder, isn't too thrilled but she's getting used to her.

Before and Aftermath

I've finally found the time to start working on Malice again. It's slow going, especially since my entire workflow has been rearranged so things are a little wonky getting back into it.

I'm starting right at the beginning and working my way through, scene by scene. The first scene is the medieval fight scene between Dunham and the Beast, or Draper and myself.

I've spent the last couple days working on this one major shot an was so impressed, I thought I'd share it with you. It's made from about 20 different elements and was pretty tricky keeping it all straight, but here it is.

BEFORE

AFTER

It's not perfect, the perspective is a little off. It's only on screen for 3 seconds, so if you complain - make sure you can do way better.

"We have achieved jugs!!!"

The title quote is attributed to David Bennett the guy who made the jugs pictured below.


This is for Bimbo Zombie Killers! by the way.

At first the moonshine jugs were just meant to be a small part of the movie, once the script was finished they had become a fairly important aspect of the story. So I needed to have some made since it was nearly impossible to find 3 identical ones. Before anyone I know pipes up with "You should've asked me, I have 3" - you should've told me you have 3, how do you like that?

I'll be soon making a mold of one of them and making about, if I can afford it, 2 dozen foam copies of the jug. Mainly because I need a pile of the things for a couple scenes.

As far as other other work on this project, I need to create a foam axe - which is well on it's way, the details are sorted out just need the molding materials. A huge load of fake blood, I've sussed out a good recipe, I think I mentioned this before that I want to avoid syrupy blood because it's just too much of a hassle. I've got something that seems decent in a small quantity and splatter really nice, a little thick but it makes it a little cheesier - which is good.

The weapons are nearly taken care of. I was going with a Firearms License and hoping to get real ones with the firing pins removed - not enough time so I'm going with some cheap air guns. They look pretty good for what they're worth.

Other then that, still sussing out hordes of rednecks to become zombies and trying to track down 2 more bimbos. I might have them taken care of this week, we'll see.

Location scouting starts this week as well. I'm breaking down the script to see what I need and how I can manage wrangling about 50 extras to get all their footage in one day.

This should be fun.

Cronus trailer with voiceover

It's the same as the previous trailer, but with a voiceover.

Last night of filming on Cronus

The title pretty much speaks for itself, as does the video.

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.