Fake Hatchet

Just like the title says, it's a fake hatchet. It's a prop for Breath of the Dead and more then likely the item in the online shop. Hopefully it'll be available soon - as soon as I perfect my hand painted wood grain technique. It's made in 2 parts, the handle and the head - the foam is tinted so it has as close as possible to the proper base colour.

Be sure to check out The Monkey Rodeo website, you might find it there by late July.

Finally...

Another one over and done and DVDed. It should've been done weeks ago but the company I ordered the 3D glasses from were pretty poor about communication. It was taking forever for them to arrive, so I sent an email, asking how it was shipped and if there was a tracking number, no response. Sent a couple more and eventually someone responded, acknowledge the shipment was probably lost if it still hadn't shown up and FedExed me another shipment.

So the DVDs are all done. I'll mention this now in case anyone's curious, they're not for sale unfortunately. Not at this point in time. These were made specifically for the people involved in the movie. So why am I posting this since they not for sale? Because I wanted to.

At some point in the future, the very far future, they will be for sale. I might even make them available for download from the site, for a very small dollar amount - once I figure out if that's possible or not.

Awesome stuff

I got more supplies today. I hope to get the Flex FoamIt hatchet made this weekend. The mold of the handle is done I hope to get to the hatchet head itself today and it should be ready to go and be all ready for hacking people up on Sunday. I hope - god knows how busy I'll be otherwise.

The "otherwise" just happens to be the sculpt of what will soon be the Randall Meincke silicone mask. If you're wondering who the hell is Randall Meincke, that's the name of the deformed kid who is raised from the dead in Breath of the Dead. And so far, I'm pretty impressed with how he's coming along. I'd love to show you, but I've forced myself to put a bit of ban on any images of him until the movie is completed.

The actors won't even get to see him until the first shot he appears in the movie, and even then they won't know exactly when he's coming or where he's coming from. There won't be any images of him from the shoot being posted either - until after the movie is released.

If all goes as planned the movie should be available pretty quickly. We're doing live sound, all live special effects - as little post work as possible. No CG or anything of the like, the most I'll be doing in post is colour correcting and enhancing the sound effects and the music. So this could be ready before Halloween, which seems like good timing.

That's it for now, I'm about to try casting the foam hatchet handle.

Postponed Dead

It was a pretty quick decision to make, but we've postpone shooting Breath of the Dead until Late July/early August - the problems ranged from casting and actor availability, time and money and other things.

Can't say I'm upset about it, as soon as I was told that 2 of our last minute replacement actors were unavailable I actually was relieved because the choice was made for me. There was simply no way we could pull all this off in two weeks. So now I'm looking at 5-7 weeks - much easier.

In some good news, I got the mold done for the hatchet handle. I'll be doing a hatchet and sledgehammer, the heads and handles will be done separately. And the mold turned out pretty damned good, I guess we'll see when I get the material to cast it this week.

So that's it, nothing major things will go back to being quiet again for the time being.

Silicone Hand

I went back and forth on whether or not this was going to work at nearly every stage of doing it.

A little background, in case you've no idea what's going on here. The killer in the movie is a deformed person, resurrected from the grave through evil voodoo. Pretty simple. to create his look I was going to originally go with the old foam latex standby. I eventually, and very recently, decided to try my hand at creating it with silicone instead.

The main reason was to make it look better and cut down on the lengthy makeup application time. Time which we won't have while shooting.

The makeup, or whatever you want to call it, was going to consist of several small pieces for the head and a glove. It's now just a glove and a mask, a full head mask rather then the small pieces - which will look so much better.

Now, I've no idea how these silicone pieces are made. I saw some images, very vague images here and there and eventually felt confident enough to give it a try. I figured the glove would be easiest way to start.

Here's the original sculpt. It was done over an UltraCal cast of the actor's hand. I wish now I'd had made it much longer to go all the way down past his wrist, but this was meant to be a foam latex prosthetic at first.

I'm not that great yet at making 2 sides molds like this.

I used a material called Shell Shock to create the 1st part of the mold, backing it with another material called Plasti-Paste. I also learned the hard way that I didn't seal the clay properly and clearing it all from the Shell Shock mold was an absolute nightmare.

After many, many hours of scraping and cleaning I got all the clay from the mold. A lesson well learned, I now know how to properly seal it. You can't see here, but the Shell Shock was really thick and cured really fast so there were a lot of air bubbles in the mold. Not that I'm worried. It's a zombie hand, it's not supposed to look pretty.

And here it is all ready to go. I made up way  more silicone then I actually needed. Kind of a pain in the ass, but ah well, again - lesson learned. I've still to figure out how I'm supposed to gauge this sort of thing.

It was a bugger to pull from 2nd half of the mold off too. At this point I really noticed how thin some parts of the sculpt were. I thought I'd corrected it but I didn't do a good enough just. I can still reinforce it a bit though, it'll just be messy - as if this wasn't messy enough.

And here it is, about 10 minute out of the mold. You can see how a long sleeve on the glove would've been nicer, but again - lesson learned.

A quick test on camera about 10 minutes after pulling it from the mold.

And this is the only glimpse you'll see of the character of Randall Meincke, the deformed voodoo zombie killer until you see the movie. I have 2 weeks before we shoot and about 2 months worth of work to things ready for it - at least this here was some major encouragement that I made the right choice instead of makeup.

Grayson & Gortch Update

I guess it's a bit of an overall update really. In any case, I believe I might've mentioned that I've postponed Grayson & Gortch until mid-July, maybe even later depending. Things are sort of all colliding right now, project-wise. I'm trying to wrap up Cronus, get things ready for Breath of the Dead and I've got a bunch of little projects I'm either helping out on, volunteering on, etc. and it's all getting to be a bit much. This should lighten up a bit after this week, but it doesn't help balance out my financial situation. Seems the poorer I am the busier I get.

I'm hoping to get a few items ready and have the online store up and running come July as well. This should help things if I find some decent ways of promoting it. I might even use eBay at first. I don't know yet. I've got enough to think about that's happening right now anyway.

Anyway, the good thing that's hopefully coming out of all the chaos  is the possibility that the silicone mask idea will work out. If it does that's a huge jump in what I expected I'd be able to do this summer and it makes things a little more versatile and efficient for other projects.

While I love the hell out of doing prosthetics, they are limited in a lot of ways. Silicone masks will allow be to do background characters, or extras, without the worry about making sure I'll have time to do the makeup before the shoot. That's a huge bonus. Another thing is that they encompass the whole head, while a prosthetic (that I'm able to do now without a huge oven) are just face pieces, so there's concern about the actors basic face shape and hair - this isn't a problem anymore.

Now what all this means for Grayson & Gortch, as the title implied, I've had time to look at the script and see where I can make changes that will save me time and money. This happened a lot with Malice. One scene that was pretty boring and would've cost me a rental fee was bothering me. It's a crucial scene, where the two main characters are introduced. I was always a little annoyed with it's simplicity. Not any more.

Originally it was two pages in an office-ish type setting. Now it's a raid on a drugged out vampire den who are holding human hostages. That might seem like it's more work and more money, but it's not. The actors are mainly the same, some roles are just adjusted slightly. And it's much more of a cool little scary action scene.

Where the silicone masks come in are the vampires. I don't want to do traditional Buffy style vampires, these are a little more feral looking - they are junkies after all. So I just make one mold, do a couple different paint jobs, a couple costume changes, and I can turn 3 or 4 actors into almost 10 or more vampires.

I'm even contemplating making foam stakes and I'll get to use some crossbow props I was given last year. Should be pretty cool. I just need an old house or barn now.

3D-ish

And that's it. Not awesome 3D, but 3D-ish. It's a totally brand new style.

Some news-ish type news

The latest project, Grayson & Gortch has ground to a halt, but this is for the best I think. I'm hoping to resume it again in mid-July. If that happens there'll be some changes made for the better, nothing anyone will really notice - it'll just make things easier for me.

Recently I did a little video for a film festival about special effects and visual effects. I filmed the entire progression of a prosthetic from sculpting to applying it. Here's the final result.

Maddy doesn't look as thrilled as Draper does.

A nose piece I did. Came out pretty good.

And a forehead.

These 3 pieces, were for extra, non-speaking roles in Grayson & Gortch. And while they certainly turned out decently I'm rethinking them. Not because they don't look good, but for time. Let's see if I can explain this quickly. I'm now doing the movie Breath of the Dead first. In this one there's a deformed voodoo zombie, which was originally going to be done with prosthetics - and still might be depending.

One of the elements of the makeup is a deformed hand, first time I've made a three piece foam latex mold, or a glove type prosthetic. I was a little worried about it ripping while being applied so I began to rethink it. I decided to attempt to cast it in silicone instead. Not only to make it easier, but as a test since I do intend on doing silicone masks at some point.

The idea is the same for a full mask, so if the glove works out, I might do a 2nd hand and a full head all in silicone. It'll definitely make the shoot go faster and make life much easier on myself and the actor. Plus this will be a good test to the durability of the silicone pieces.

I don't know exactly how to do it, but I think I've worked out the details and did enough research to do this properly. We'll see how it goes. Should find out in the next couple weeks.

So back to Grayson & Gortch, if the silicone mask works out for Breath of the Dead, I'll seriously think about doing silicone masks for the extras in that movie - much less time spent doing makeup on those demon heavy cast days. So we'll see how all this goes.

I also just noticed today, after a week of it being online, that the 3D version of the Horrible Alien Brain Monster movie had no sound. Kinda surprised no one mentioned it. I just uploaded it again in any case. I'll post it here once it's all done.

So that movie all done now. I'm just waiting on the 3D glasses to get here so I can package them up and get them to the actors.

In the meantime, here's some pictures Phil MacNevin just sent me that he'd taken the first day of shooting.

Brain Minion Steam Bath

The Brain Minions had a hard time with their lines.

I can only imagine what all the vehicles driving past must've thought.

"Summon the Brain Lord!"

And there you go. I'll be doing a post on the 3D movie very shortly.

Summon the Brain Lord!

It's finally done. Here it is, The Invasion of the Horrible Alien Brain Monsters from Outer Space in 3D. The 3D version will be online later this week, this is just the regular version.

Severed Baby Troll Feet

Most commonly used as a powerful hallucinogen and breath freshener. Pictured here are 5 pairs of Troll Feet with a street value of $200,000. It's so expensive because of the process by which they're harvested, which is a closely guarded secret by those who dare do so.

Troll Feet, the infant variety, first appeared on the black market in the late '80s - although the adult variety has been used for centuries by various cults and sects in certain bizarre black magic rituals. People didn't take notice until Leonard Cohen first sang about them in the song "Jazz Police" - whose lyrics were changed after the song was played live for the first time.

The lines:

"Stick another turtle on the fire
Guys like me are mad for turtle meat"

Were originally:

"Stick another troll foot on the fire
Guys like me are mad for troll feet meat"

Most people were perplexed by this, as it was widely known that Troll Feet, the common adult variety, was nothing more then a foul smelling headache remedy and cure for inverted eyeball syndrome. It wasn't until someone suggested trying the infant variety that it became a popular narcotic.

Severed Baby Troll Feet can be ingested in a variety of ways, but the most effective (and traditional) method - ensuring the user a very strong high - is cooking them over a campfire.

*These are props for a drug bust scene in the movie Grayson & Gortch. They were originally sculpted in clay, a silicone mold was made and finally cast in Flex Foam-It V. The paint job is just homemade PAX paint.

Ancient Tibetan Fire Starter

Used by Tibetan Monks as a single use fire starting device, created specifically for use in conditions where traditional fire starting methods were not possible.

Later a group of alchemists modified the device, with the aid of a Shaman known only as Nyima, to emit small projectiles of flame repeatedly. It is believed to predate the earliest known firearm, approximately 1288AD, by at least 400 years.

Currently there are only a handful Tibetan Fire Starters in existence and fewer still are the individuals who know how to properly use them.

*This is a minor prop from the movie Grayson & Gortch.

A Short Rant

This is one of those things that not specifically any one person's fault - but just plain old bad timing.

So far, Grayson & Gortch has to be the most nightmarish project I've ever tried to schedule. I want to very clearly point out right now that I'm not blaming any one individual or even a group - just pointing out the frustration at the utterly bad timing and total chaos of their collective schedules. It's truly awe inspiring how horrible this movie has been already to try to shoot.

Plus three of my actors are all taking consecutive vacations. Seriously, they all overlap by 1 or 2 days to end up with the entire month of May going by and unable to shoot with all three of them (and they're in 2 major scenes all together). I even had another actor drop out on me due to work.

So rather then just give up and be pissed off, I'm taking this extra time to work out some details which remain a little sketchy for the project. Originally I was doing pre-production on 2 at the same time, that isn't happening anymore. The other was pushed back to June 25th. So this just leaves me with more pre-production on a few key scenes.

Plus I want to build a crash mat, finish a couple prosthetics and redo one as well and even make a shoulder holster - got all kinds of time for that now. So hopefully this will be the big snag on this project and it means things will go smoothly once we're back up and running.

Another awesome shoot.

Today was the 2nd day of filming on Grayson & Gortch. It was a short day, just one small scene. Spent more time doing the makeup then actually shooting, but the result was really good.

We had Draper Bulger as Mr. Eliah and John MacDonald as the teleporting twins, Thark and Thork. Most of the pictures were taken by Kim Johnston.

Draper and John getting ready.

Mr. Eliah poses.

Thork, Mr. Eliah and Thark.

Just a small part of The Eldritch Syndicate.

And now a couple still from the movie.

Mr. Eliah and his huge '80s cellphone.

Thark and Thork arrive.

Thork and Thark get ready to take out Gortch.

And that's it. I'm shooting again on Wednesday and hopefully again early next week and then a bit of a break while my two lead actors take vacations.

Prosthetic Problems

I like the title of this mainly because I foresee many people inadvertently landing here when searching for ways to ease their issues with their fake limbs. Sorry, not that kind of prosthetic if that first sentence applies to you.

This kind:

Now, when I say "problem" I don't mean "ah shit, everything's screwed and gone straight to hell". No, in fact all I really mean is that one of the prosthetics for Grayson & Gortch, the one for the character of Mr. Eliah in particular is being problematic. To be more accurate, the mold is being problematic.

An experimental sculpting technique caused some unforeseen mold issues. While most of the other mold suffering from this problem are fine, this one - Mr. Eliah - is just getting worse. And of course it's too late to just scrap it and redo it since that character has his first scene tomorrow morning.

So I guess I'm willing to run the risk of him looking a little different in this one scene. There's just no way I can get another decent prosthetic from that mold anymore. Ah well. At least there's time before the next scene and I'm mostly done all the stuff that has to be created so I look at this as a little more practice. Not only do I have to recreate it, I need to make it look as close to the original as possible while improving on it slightly.

We'll see how that goes.

Otherwise, I'm still working away at creating a prop for tomorrow morning's shoot. It'll be ready just in time and the paint might even still be wet - but it'll be ready.

Nearly completed Troll Feet Props

I finally got the mold finished up yesterday, tried running the Flex Foam-it through and see what came out. It was a bit of a rough start. First of all the mold itself was an experiment - that actually worked. I made a block mold of the clay foot that I'd sculpted, which was tricky to pry from the mold but I did and it's pretty much intact too.

Since it had to be painted I knew I needed a better base coat then the natural white, so I got so dye - which works brilliantly. I was amazed how little was needed.

Tasty Troll Feet!

Then I had a problem with getting the liquid into the mold in time. The pour spout was too small, ruined batch #1. Tried to widen it, not enough, batch #2 no good either. So I cut a small air hole to allow air to escape better and it turned out not too bad, batch #3 usable, but not awesome. Since the mold is rather detailed, I was getting air pockets, not huge ones but enough to be annoying. I think I can patch them up anyway. So batch #4, nor perfect but pretty good.

Anyway, it's not painted yet - this is about 2 minutes after I pulled it from the mold and did a quick job trimming away the excess along the seam. I hope to get about a dozen of these bad boys. And for those interested, I will be selling them if I can get them a little more perfect.

The Day After the First Day of shooting

The first day of shooting on Grayson & Gortch went pretty well, things started off potentially wrong - the night before one of my actors had a horse riding accident, I think she's fine, she just wasn't up for shooting. I wrangled myself a replacement and things started off well, got delayed but pretty much stayed on track for the remainder of the day.

I realized I really have to rethink shooting dialog heavy scenes. Not that there's anything wrong with them, I just have to develop more of a style that makes them feel a little less dead. I haven't even tried to edit it, so I could be wrong about that in this case. I just know I was thinking after I left the shoot last night that I'd wished I'd shot it handheld maybe, giving it more of a actiony feel to it. Might not've worked though, at least this way my footage is stable, handheld can just make things look very amateur if it's not handled right.

In any case, some pictures to break up the rambling:

The shoot was pretty light on props for once.

Evan Dickson and Derek Martin getting ready.
Evan was a last minute addition, huge thanks to him for stepping in.

Supernatural CSI.

Jonathon Driscoll...way too happy looking for a crime scene.

Don't drink the Red Kool-Aid.

Keeping the world safe from evil one
ODed Demon at a time...or something.

And then a little before we wrapped up, before 7, Aleshia Farrell showed up to start getting ready for her scene. I have to give her credit, this was her first time doing something like this and it couldn't have been a more strange experience for someone first time acting.

She played a stoned demon girl wandering about her swanky apartment in lingerie and eventually ODs. (The scene is our version of the opening of the first Lethal Weapon movie.) She was naturally a little nervous, but did a great job. She spent more time getting into makeup then shooting too.

Aleshia before.

Putting the prosthetic on.

Then Savannah Belsher-MacLean stepped in to do the makeup, it was her first time working around a prosthetic - otherwise she's quite used to doing normal makeup.

And then end. The seams are pretty noticeable in this picture, but they aren't in the footage, I find pictures usually are a little more severe in showing any flaws in the makeup. But it still looks pretty good.

Demons and Drugs don't mix.

And we were out right on time. I was pretty sore and tired by the end of it, mainly because of the floor in the location we shot in - I wasn't wearing shoes and the floor was just too hard or something, I don't know what it was.

Now some stills from the movie:

Opening titles

And now I've got a pile of work ahead of me this week - aside from movie stuff, so we'll see where things go from here. Off to a great start though.

First shoot for Grayson & Gortch tomorrow

I just realized last night how long it's been since I shot something. I think the last day of shooting for the 3D Movie was late-October? I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure it was at least around Halloween.

So I've been gearing up all week to get ready for the first shoot for Grayson & Gortch. The script is done, aside from the final fight and epilogue, but this will come pretty soon - no worries since the final fight is the last thing we'll shoot. I've got about a month before I have to wrap it all up.

Most of the props are taken care of, I'll be working the last few out next week. And I've finally gotten the perfect foam latex, so that's a huge relief. I'll be cranking out as many as I can next week as well. I still need to make some molds for a could but I reckon all the molds will be made by end of next week too. It'll be a busy week

Casting is wrapped up as well, I think there's 2 roles I'm unsure of - mainly because I'm having trouble finding just the right person to fill them, but I've got a few ideas rattling around.

Locations are nearly taken care of as well. I lucked out this week and came up with, what I think, is a great location for a gun fight scene between Gortch and 3 drug dealers. We'll be shooting it in a car salvage yard, my main concern was finding an interesting looking place with lots of cover for a gun fight and I can't think of anything better. This should turn out to be a pretty cool scene.

And as far as Breath of the Dead goes, things are working well for that too. Most of our locations are taken care of, hopefully we'll have casting wrapped up in another week and I'm hoping to start in on making the props and whatnot in the next 2 weeks.

This is the first time I've allowed two projects to overlap like this. I've had a few overlap as far as post and pre production, but not like this. So far it hasn't been too bad, I'm feeling productive at least while I have the time.

And the website. Right now, if you've not seen it yet, it's pretty simple. I took the time this weekend to re familiarize myself with the whole website building crap. Can't say it's awesome fun, but I think I've got a decent site worked out. Not very polished or high end looking, but I'm happy with it, it's nice and simple - no flash or crappy plugins or apps, just straightforward html. I might jazz it up later on, but for now I just want a decent, easy to navigate site to host the movies on and hopefully sell some stuff.

It should be online within the next week if I get the kinks worked out. I'll let you know.

Foamy goodness

I've been having issues with the current brand of foam latex I've been using. Now, I've heard (although there's always varying opinions) that each of the 3 brands, Monster Makers, Burman and GM are specially made - so the logical assumption would be they're slightly different from one another. The run times and instructions are definitely different for the Monster Makers and GM - I've no idea about the Burmans since the kit I used came with no instructions whatsoever, but using the same runtime as the Monster Makers worked fine.

This was the first time I've used the GM Foam and at first I was not impressed, it sort of worked but wasn't very foamy. And with each batch it just got worse. I couldn't really figure out why, it was just coming out runny - still usable, but not the best. I bought some Micad, it's supposed to give you some extra foaminess. And did it ever.

It was hard to figure though if it was just the Micad or the fact I turned the bowl a little faster while mixing. They say it's a really sensitive procedure so I'm assuming the speed of the bowl turning could be a factor since previously it was turning it much slower.

In any case, it appears to be working, I've got the first one baking away right now so I won't know for sure until about 3pm. Either way, I'm way more impressed with the quality of it now and I'm hoping this gets the prosthetic making back on track - I've got buttload to make for Grayson & Gortch and out of 5 runs of foam only 1 usable piece.

SEVERAL HOURS LATER...

Well, it definitely made the foam softer and much more closer to where I'd like it to be...but it's too foamy now. That's to be expected since I'm still more or less testing. The problem with being too foamy is air bubbles tend to get trapped in the mold. At least I'm getting closer. I should have foam latex left to get all the prosthetics I need done. If not, at least it's not as cold anymore and I don't have to worry about heated shipping anymore.

Severed Baby Troll Feet

One of the props for Grayson & Gortch are several Severed Baby Troll Feet, not something you can just buy online - at least not that I've ever encountered. So of course I had to make my own. Pretty simple, I just got some armature wire and about 1lb of clay and eventually I had one.

I'm still making the mold, I ran out of silicone just before the model was covered. Silicone will adhere to itself, so I'm hoping that once I get more in that the mold will continue on just fine. I guess I'll find out soon enough.

One of the main issues with the prop was painting it properly afterward. I used some airbrush paint on the fake foam axe and the latex alien brain monster masks and it just didn't hold up to a lot of wear and tear - not that these little buggers will be seeing that much action, but I'd like to make sure I'm doing it properly.

You need a product called PAX paint, which isn't cheap at all. Luckily I recently discovered you can make your own fairly easily with some Pros-Aide (the same adhesive I'm using for prosthetics) and regular old acrylic paint, equal part of each. If you want it for use in an airbrush, just another equal part of water to thin in out - I would assume it's possible you could end up ruining your airbrush if you don't clean it properly afterward.

So that's a huge expense taken care of over the next few projects, since I'll need the stuff for a fake foam hand axe, sledgehammer, rock and maybe some other stuff. Also, these props might actually be available for sale online by June if all goes well.

Speaking of other projects and other stuff in general, casting is pretty much sown up for Grayson & Gortch, location scouting is nearly done as well. I need to do one more pass at the script and I think it'll be done, just in time too since our first shoot is next weekend. I just need to finish up my prosthetics and I'm hoping that will happen next week as well.

As far as Breath of the Dead, it's progressing really well. The script is 99% complete. I'll be doing a pass over that today and then I'd imagine there will be a serious rewrite to tighten it up and shorten it down from the 26 pages it sits at now. I'd like it to be a little less dialog filled and more action/quiet. Easier to shoot.

There were already some minor changes. We unfortunately had to make the choice to remove the breakaway beer bottle in the face gag - too much work, too much money and I was a little uncomfortable since the warnings on the material to create breakaway props was a little severe. I think we've come up with a decent new death idea, pretty cheap but pretty brutal.

I'm hoping to see a little more progress with this in the next 2 weeks.