Moonshine of the Damned, Production Journal #8

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

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

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

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

John and Mary as Bo and Roxxy.

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

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

And he's gone.

And bloody.

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

Yeah, that my girlfriend.

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

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

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

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

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

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

End of the day cast.

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

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

Moonshine of the Damned, Line of the Day, Day One

Here it is, might as well do it again this year too.
The audio and will be replaced, the look of the footage is just one of the many test "looks" I'm working on, it won't be final either.

Moonshine of the Damned, Production Journal #7

I wanted to post photos, but I'm too tired to really be creative about it or put them in any order. 

We finally had our first day, after 2 false starts we decided to just go for despite potentially shitty weather. We lucked out and we got about 85% of what I wanted to get done today. Our biggest stumbling block was my inability to check out the location beforehand - which cause problems.

The main area I wanted to stage the final fight, was utterly ruined by fallen trees. And then upon discovering a nice little path to a bridge that wouldn't taken us to another decent area - that bridge (a small one) was ripped up and flipped over. I have no idea why, but it really threw a massive wrench into things. So after a little reworking and rethinking, we shot everything we needed all the zombie extras for - thank god, that would have been a colossal waste if we hadn't been able to.

Otherwise it was a decent day. I forgot my shotlist so I was making it all up as we went and even totally altered the way the opening scene was supposed to have been and it worked so much better.

Everyone was awesome as usual. The zombie extras were fantastic today. It was a much better way to start things off than last year. The makeup looked better, everyone seemed almost too eager to get filthy and stick twigs, leaves and crap in their hair. It was great.

One of the shot of our Bicycle Girl homage, I've mentioned it before and it was an effect I really wanted to see happen as well as I could make it happen on such a small budget. The Out of Mouth Dentures weren't perfect, they did interfere with the prosthetic a bit - I know better for next time - but either way, it looked great for a first attempt with them.

The entire cast of the day, Kim Johnston, Crystal Murphy and Maggy Essery chose to sit the picture out.

Another shot of Half Zombie.

The Bimbos.

Overall it was a great first day, I've quickly checked the footage and I'm pretty happy with it. I'm hoping to get some energy back tomorrow to start work on editing.

And I just want to take the time to thank everyone that turned out today, everyone was fucking awesome. Thanks.

Moonshine of the Damned, Production Journal #6

First day of shooting was postponed. Not off to a great start, but I'm no so much worried about shooting this year, I think it'll be fine if we're all a little patient. There's only 10 days needed. If we can't find 10 days over the course of the summer, than something is horribly wrong.

Lots of pictures this time around, so let's get to it.

First up, the sculpt of the leg bone prop. I was thinking, since I have a medical skeleton leg bone, that I would just do a quick alginate mould and fill it with clay to get this, but that was just a lot of wasted time and material. As well, a real femur has too much of a curve to it to accommodate the support rod, so I quickly whipped this bad boy up.

I've said before how much I really don't like doing 2 part moulds, creating that dividing wall is just so tedious and normally difficult to get just right. Have made so many of them lately though, I realized while I was doing this one that I really felt like I was finally getting the hang of it. Turned out great.

Started sculpting a couple of the custom "hero zombie" pieces needed for the movie. I wanted to make sure this time around that the FX were was detailed as I could make them. And that meant creating a single unique piece for each of the "hero zombies". This here is for the "Half Zombie" and while you can't tell here, this is our homage to the "Bicycle Girl" from The Walking Dead. It was a really quick sculpt, about half an hour.

"Piss Zombie". One of the few things to survive from the original draft, but this time he's getting a little special treatment to mess him up a little more. The actor has a beard so I wanted to make sure since I only had so much room to do a piece, that it would be very dramatic. I like it.

All the zombie pieces I'm making for the movie are just short run moulds, and since I'll only be needed one good piece from them, I will be creating as many as possible until the moulds give out and added them as a limited run for sale on the website. I'll be adding as them as they're used in the movie to have a good applied shot of them.

Return of the Zombie Frog. While I was more or less happy with how the original turned out, he was made of silicone which I find difficult to paint dramatically. Since he's only onscreen for a couple seconds I really wanted to make sure it was obvious and really stood out, so I remade him, exaggerated the silhouette a little more and he'll be made of latex. He looks very chocolatey here, I'm thinking maybe Chocolate Zombie Frogs in the future?

The finished leg bone. Latex skinned and polyfoam filled with a support rod - as usual. It turned out awesome. Really happy with this piece and how simple yet how great of a prop it is. I've been meaning to make on for over a year now and give how simple it was I'm not sure what I was waiting for.

For those interested. This will be added for sale to the website very soon, once I get this one painted and get some good pictures. They'll be $30. Feel free to get in touch now if you want to pre-order one.

Note: it's not medically accurate, if you'll recall the bit I was mentioning on the sculpt version of this piece up above. It does look pretty decent though.

The Spiked Zombie Head Mace - still really happy with this prop, can't wait to see it on screen.

A quick detail shot of the staff. The head is so distracting you don't really notice just how much work I put into the staff and how well the paint job came out.

So that's it for pictures. I've got a few more things on the go this week to prep for the coming shoots this weekend - if the weather and schedules hold out for us. It'll be nice to get back into it finally.

Spiked Zombie Head Mace!

It's finally done and I'm pretty damned happy with how it turned out.

I will at some point very soon be selling just one on ebay as part of the fundraiser. And I will be selling a limited number, probably 10, later in the summer on the website. Although if you're reading this and you just can't wait, feel free to email me about it. The price will be $150.00 CAD.

It takes a long time to create each piece, there's 10 in total. 8 spikes, the head and the staff. Right now I only have one mould for the spikes, so that's what makes it take a little long - I'll be creating about 3 moulds in for the future ones.

Each spike is embedded in a whole cut in the head, with a small amount of the foam removed, and where each part joins, it's given a coat with latex. That bonds them together really well - however I'm sure if you really want to destroy it you could - why you'd try, I don't really know.

It's about 45 inches long. The staff is 30 inches - and could be shortened for anyone who wants one, but wants a shorter staff.

A fibreglass rod is placed into the latex skinned mould as the polyfoam is expanding, so it's bonded with the staff really well. Enough of the rod is left extending from the staff and them the head is impaled in it, giving the whole piece some stability.

This specific finished piece only had one rod, so it's a little wobbly - however for the movie I think it just adds another level of campiness, so I'm happy with it. For any sold I'll use 2-3 rods to improve stability. Unless people like wobbly.

Painting took place over 2 days, about 3-4 hours in total I'd guess. I wasn't really keeping tracking. I  just used Monster Makers Latex Paint Base and some acrylic paints, works perfectly.

Also, I think for any retail versions, I'll allow for some customization, colours, spike placement, any damage to the head, blood splatter. I kept this one clean and free of damage since it's part of the movie and it will be getting bloody on it's own.

UPDATE: I'm selling one of these on ebay right now: http://www.ebay.ca/itm/111084065279?ssPageName=STRK:MESELX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1555.l2649

Latex Zombie Finger Puppet

Just turned the first one out and painted it up. Came out not too bad. It's just barely over 2 inches tall, made of latex rubber as the title would suggest, so if you have latex allergies I don't recommend it.

It's being added as part of the fundraiser for Moonshine of the Damned. For $10 you'll get this guy (shipping is $5 to Canada and the US), a thanks in the credits and a chance to win some props from the movie. Limited quantity of 10 being made, so don't wait too long.

The fit is actually customizable as well, but it can be done only once - it's not permanently adjustable, I just add more latex to the rim to thicken it to make it fit more snug on a smaller finger. So if you want one and you're buying it for someone specifically, like someone with smaller hands, I suggest if you want it to fit well (so it's not flopping around or falling off), you can measure the circumference of the largest finger on the hand, around the last joint (too small and your choices are limited of which finger it'll fit) and I'll do my best to fit it to that size.

To order, just send an email to:brains@themonkeyrodeo.com. Include your preferred payment method (Canada: Paypal or Email Interact. US: Paypal) and your address. They ship out as soon as they're made, which I'm doing right now.

Cthulhu Chess Set Concepts

This is one of those ideas I'm on the fence about, should I or shouldn't I? I want to do a Cthulhu themed chess set. Yes, it's been done before so I know I'm not being totally original here - but that's kind of beside the point I think.

I'm trying to suss out if it's worth the effort or has it been done to death? I'm looking at a limited 5 set edition cast in (most likely) Aqua-Resin, it gives a nice, almost unusual fake stone feel. Estimated price will be $350 and will include a fully sculpted and appropriately themed board as well.

I'm debating on the style. Realistic and slightly abstract have been done, both to very good results. I'm not looking to one up anyone, I just wanted to attempt more functional pieces. I'm not into chess, but I know plenty who are. So my thoughts immediately turned to "what would be the best style for this?" Are people looking for such an item more interested in a semi-realistic approach or would a cartoonish, somewhat Mike Mignola-esque take on Cthulhu be interesting enough?

My concepts are rough, I think the Cartoon version will have somewhat more detail and will also be fully painted with colour variations to represent each side, whereas the Realistic will just be simple light and dark variations with some minor antiquing to bring out the details.

I might, over the next couple weeks, actually sculpt both pieces and look at this again to see what opinions might be.

For those who think $350 is too expensive for something like this, I can't help but point out the sheer amount of work involved and expense of the materials. I won't be getting rich off this. I'm aiming for somewhere below the line of the serious collection (for which this would be easily affordable) and the higher end of the casual collector (those that might not be rich, but appreciate the work that goes into something like this). If I were to do just one set, I would charge way more, but I feel that a limited edition of 5 sets is more than reasonable.

I might also make a couple sets available cast in resin, without the board, to appeal to those with are really interested but feel the price is too out of reach. Don't know for sure, I'm open to opinions on this as well.

Basically, should I do or not? Is there already enough of this kind of thing out there? Is Realistic the way to go or perhaps some want to see a different, more Cartoon approach to it? After collecting a few opinions on pricing, I feel $350 is a very fair price for this - anyone else feel different? Just thinking out loud on this for the moment, it's very possible it won't even happen if I get enough negative feedback on the idea, I don't want to do something that there's no interest in - especially something that will require this much work.

Moonshine of the Damned, Production Journal #5

Today I did something I've never done before on a project. For Moonshine of the Damned, one of the "bimbos", Jobeth, is supposed to be something of a gun nut, or survivalist even, however the actor playing her, Ancelene, has never had any experience with guns. Last year when we shot I felt the whole experience might've been overwhelming, trying to act, remember lines and feel comfortable holding a gun - for someone who has never acted at all before at least.

So this time around, I wanted to change that. I had a friend of mine, Jeff Gillis, who works with the RCMP dealing with restricted weapons, take Ancelene out to a gun range and give her a very basic crash course in how to handle a gun, some proper shooting stances and allow her to actually feel what shooting a gun is like - to understand the recoil, rather than faking it without any knowledge.

Turns out she's a pretty good shot, her first shot would've dropped a live target, her second shot was pretty much a bulls-eye and she even made a couple long distance shots that surprised Jeff.

I kept trying to get a shot in motion shot, this was as close as I got.

This is what her target look liked after several rounds.

Most of the shots in the lighter blue area were hers.

In the end I think it was well worth the effort. My thinking was that even though we have one of the rednecks, John MacDonald, wielding a shotgun with a rather campy recoil reaction, that's something no one would really complain about, however I just had a nagging feeling that should Ancelene have done the same thing - it would've been the focus on many a negative comment. She's not certified trained now, not by any means, but she has a much better understanding and was actually interested in getting a firearms license after all this.


Next weeks update: severed body parts, progress on the Zombie Gator and a finished Spiked Zombie Head Mace.

Concept: Cthulhu Chessboard

This has been done a few times already, some are just the pieces from what I've seen, some a really good and some are just decent, so I doubt I'll be setting the world on fire with this idea but I'm looking to create a very limited edition Cthulhu themed Chess set along with a board.

Right now it's in the very, very early concept stage - there's nothing even on paper yet. I do know full well if I'm going to do it, it HAS to be awesome to hold up against the work already circulating out there. My basic idea is to do all the pieces, much like the others that have been done and to do a fully sculpted chessboard as well - I've spent more time concerned about the board than the pieces themselves at the moment.

So far I haven't seen anyone who has done a full board as well - but feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, I just haven't seen it myself in all the searches that I've been done. I saw something that looked like a custom board, but it didn't really scream Cthulhu when I saw it, so it might have been totally unrelated and just used to show off the pieces.

It will be a non-traditional looking board, at least I'm hoping that'll be the case. The pieces will all be as uniquely styled as I can manage, using various Lovecraft creatures and my take on them - trying to keep them as close to any current ideas of how they should look as well.

I'm going to make 5 of them, cast in aqua-resin. I like the stone type feel of aqua-resin, it's feels more expensive than regular resin and actually is more expensive I believe. And if I can figure out the process, I've seen it done, 1 set in pewter - but it would be tinted pewter to make telling the side apart easier. The pewter set might not happen if I can't figure out some method of tinting, although I've seen other do it a quick search turned up nothing but a few images of it having been done. Nor do I really understand anything about the quality of tinted pewter, other than it does look nice.

The price would be expensive as well, based on the time spent, cost of materials and overall uniqueness of the final pieces and board as a sculptural piece of art, however I'm also trying to avoid overpricing. I did some looking around as well on what some others were charging, some I think were way too high considering the materials used were incredibly inexpensive, and some were very reasonable priced for the exact opposite reasons.

I'm looking for any feedback on the idea if possible. Has it already been done to death? how much is too much to charge? Is 5 sets a reasonable number for a limited edition? Concepts to avoid and ones to focus on that might not have been done yet by other artists? Anything would be appreciated at this point and I'll keep things updated as I work on the idea over the summer - I'm hoping to have them ready in the early fall.

Moonshine of the Damned, Production Journal #4

Lots of pictures this time around.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Moonshine of the Damned, Production Journal #3

Very quick, slightly disappointing and at the same time a little relieved, kind of update.

There's been yet another massive change to the project - this will actually be the 4th big change. Due to the fact that scheduling has become near impossible at this point and face with either scrapping the project entirely or doing some drastic alterations to the script - I ended up shortening it to something a little more manageable.

The main point of doing this was to do a bit of an FX show off of some of the work I can do, that hasn't changed. There's still pretty much the same amount of FX in it as there was in the latest version of the full script (and still more actually than in the original script from last year), aside from a few full head makeup pieces - which I'm not upset about losing as they really presented another issue with time and scheduling.

It's been reduced down to the best elements, keeping all the more interesting and silly, campy moments that make it fun, the plot has been severely truncated a whole plot aspect had to be removed as it was just too complicated for something so short - and I guess it doesn't matter if I mention it now.

I was worried in the removal of this one aspect that the movie would fall back into the typical overdone category of zombie movies and it might have to some, but I think it's still got enough uniqueness to it that it will be pretty good. What was removed as the appearance of a character called Abassylar, the Devourer of Souls. Abassylar was a demon, that fed on souls obviously from the name. And his appearance was because of the sudden increase in disembodied souls because of the zombie outbreak - so the bimbo were also having to deal with this guy as well. But, he's gone because he was too complicated.

I'm aiming for a 30 minute short now instead of a 12 episode web series. I'm a little relieved as I was already feeling the stress and I'd really only a couple weeks into just scheduling things. But it's all for the best, short and sweet is sometimes better and the next update will be way more interesting.

Win a Spiked Zombie Head Mace!

I've been mentioning that as part of the Moonshine of the Damned Fundraiser that everyone who helps out gets a chance to win some zombie stuff. Well, I've finally settled on at least one of three possible prizes I'm planning on offering up.

The Spiked Zombie Head Mace is the first prop up for grabs. A limited edition version will be going online for sale later this summer for $150 (this could change slightly), so if you're like it, you got a chance to win this for only $10. Seems like a pretty reasonable trade.

The final prop will be made of polyfoam with a latex skin, it's pretty tough and durable under reasonable use - I wouldn't recommend repeatedly bashing a cactus covered with sandpaper and broken glass though. It'll have a carbon fiber rod in its core to give it some stability. The colouring will differ as well - but that can actually be your choice, as well as the number and even placement of the spikes jammed into the head.

How do you win it exactly? Well, if you hadn't noticed, I'm running a fund raising for a web series I'm doing. Head to www.themonkeyrodeo.com/BZK3 and it'll outline the various ways you can help out and later in the spring I'll be doing a draw to see who wins what stuff.

Some of the other possible prizes will be a bag of Severed Zombie Heads and a foam sledge hammer and hatchet combo or even a collection of body parts. I'll be making a final decision as the props are made and decide what would be most interesting.

If you're interested, you can also email me at brains@themonkeyrodeo.com for more information as well.