The aftermath of the battle

I spent a better part of the day editing the footage from Saturday, and it looks pretty swanky. I spent the rest of the day, and I'm still spending it, organizing all the footage from the last 4 years - and miraculously I think it's all there. Either way I reckon I can make it work somehow.

It's an absolute massive task trying to sort all this out, I've had to move almost everything around, sort through the script and make sure I've got everything labeled right and in the proper order. Next will be a rough assembly of the entire movie just to get an idea of the approximate running time...I've really no idea what to expect there.

It's a little overwhelming hunting through about 8 hard drives to see where you scattered everything, luckily, I kept things fairly tidy. So it's looking like we're all good so far, but it's taking forever to transfer everything over to the one drive I'm storing it all on. And then I have to take all that, and make a backup on another drive. Fun.

So while I'm doing that, I'll leave you with some stills from the footage from the other day.

The demon's about to find out the hard way why
it's not a good idea to jump outand
surprise Demon Hunters.

A good solid knee to the chest should do the trick.

Poor little Demon Hunters have lost their way.
Makes me think of Scooby Doo for some reason.

Tim having an Indiana Jones moment.

Draper takes out Jonny with a
rubber sword to the neck.

Draper and Joseph prepare for battle.

Tim sees he's missing out on the
senseless violence and decides to join in.

Rick crushes Jonny with
the warhammer of DOOM!

Draper in an Aragorn moment.

A job well done kids.
You can never kill too many demons
in the run of a day.

I should take this time to point out all the actors in that last scene, we have Draper, Rick (they've been in the movie several times up to this point), Tim Gormley (he was in the original scene) and Joesph Ambrose (who came onboard a few weeks ago) - all playing the Brotherhood. And Jonny Hanes, Andrew Mooney (their first time in the movie), Graham Putnam (his third role in the movie) and Myk Hambly (his second time around) as the Demon Army.

I also had Kim Johnston helping me out behind the camera, taking pictures and keeping an eye on me to make sure I was actually recording something. And Pete Murphy came along to videotape the scene, but we couldn't get a video camera, so he just hung out and guarded our stuff.

Thanks again guys for doing this, it was definitely well worth it. After shooting this, I can almost see why there are folks who enjoy that LARPing thing, this was pretty much the same deal with just a little more disorganization and chaos.

Battle with the Demon Army

I've finally had time to go through all the pictures. So here you go.












































































It was a pretty good shoot overall. Everything seemed to work out nearly perfect. So thanks to everyone who showed up.

And that's it. Finally done filming this thing after 4+ years. I've a few small shots still left to take to fill in some blanks, but they're mostly close up of hands or items, most don't even require the original actors or anything, I'll be working away at getting those done over the next couple months and then onto editing and trying to make a movie out of all this crap I've been shooting.

The last scene down.

We finished a couple hours ago now, I've been pretty wiped and had some other things still to do afterwards - it's all done now.

I went over the footage, everything looks awesome. It's almost impossible to get a bad shot out there. For those of you who know PEI, we filmed in Victoria Park in the woods around Dead Man's Pond. And despite my being overly cautious about using that location, we had no problems whatsoever. Only at one point did I even notice someone watching us (out of the few people actually in the area).

There were a few pictures taken and there's some really good stills to post, but that's for later, for now it's time to sleep. and I will leave you with this.

Final hours before the last scene

I've already been up for about 2 hours or so getting everything ready for the last scene. So far everything's working out pretty good, I had a last minute call from an actor who might not make it, but it's an easily replaceable part so no worries yet.

It's not the biggest shoot I've ever done, I don't think at least, but there sure if a hell of a lot of equipment, props, costumes. My living room is full right now.

I'm just finishing up the shot list for the day, pretty simple - way more then I expected, plus there's a lot of room for improvisation here. You got 8 guys with swords and free reign of a park on a Saturday morning, pretty much anything can happen.

So that's it for now, chances are there'll be something interesting to look at here in the next day or so.

The Plot Twist

I'm going to take time out from going on about my movie to go on about other movies.

I just saw the movie Hancock last night, and if you've read any articles on it - which if you do because, it's a movie that has a "twist" to it and some might give it away. And this here is the main point of this rant.

Movies with a twist ending, or just a twist somewhere in there that's supposed to catch you off guard and make you say "I never saw that coming!" Very rarely have I ever said that, because most movies are incredibly predictable - not in a specific way, but perhaps generically.

The articles I mentioned about Hancock are about how this movie's twist has critics divided. First off, not much of a twist, saw it coming very early on. Did I predict it exactly? No, but I was actually pretty close - if I actually wanted to stop the movie and ponder it, I might've. Now, this doesn't make it a bad movie, just because you can see a plot twist coming doesn't change whether a movie is good or bad - however in the case of a movie like this, where the plot twist is out of almost nowhere, is a good thing. I think.

See there's too many movies claiming "You'll never guess the ending" that are complete and utterly obvious or the twist is just uninteresting or just not enough of one. This is directed specifically at M. Night Shyamalan, who has made a supposed career out of this type of movie, which sort of defeats the purpose. It's kind of like telling you're going to punch them in the face, do it, then you call it a sucker punch. Doesn't work like that.

If you go into a movie and it's basically bragging about how awesomely twisted it's ending it, then you'd better deliver big time or end up looking like an ass. Which is the case with Capt. Can't-Write-A-Good-Ending Shyamalan. He's telling you the movie has a twist ending before you've even seen it, he doesn't bother now because it's implied almost. So therefore there's no real twist, it's more of a case of can you out think him. Which ain't all that hard, kind of like trying to outwit a rock.

Don't take offense if you've actually fallen prey to his endings, I don't care who doesn't and who does - the point I'm trying to make is simply people, myself included, complain about these obvious twist endings that are about as impossible to suss out as finding your way out of your own house and now we have critics divided because a movie actually pulled off a genuine twist - without bragging or making it the big reveal at the end - that's it's too out of nowhere.

So is that to say we like our plot twists to be obvious, but not too obvious? I'm not sure what the moral of this story is really.

If you want to see what a genuine out of nowhere plot twist looks like, I highly recommend you check out The Caller, it stars Malcolm McDowell and Madolyn Smith Osborne (and no one else). Not a brilliant movie, but if you're like me and find most plot twist movies a little predictable, just try to figure this one out. If you do, you were just making random guesses and hoping for the best because there's nothing to indicate the ending of this movie.

Is The Caller a good movie because it kind of pulls off the twist ending? Not really, it's an amusing movie that you probably won't like to be honest with you. But it goes to prove my pointless point a little further. Why did we like Usual Suspects so much? People loved that twist ending, but Hancock? Some folks hated it's twist. The Caller? Maybe it went too far realistically speaking, I don't recall how it was received by critics. Even worse is the movie you guess the ending of having only seen the commercials - case in point, The Village.

I don't really know what my position is in all this myself. I like Usual Suspects, that's one I didn't see coming. Why? Because the movie kept my attention at the time and didn't make me want to jump ahead and figure out the ending. Hancock? I saw it coming but what else could you do with the movie? The Caller? Malcolm McDowell is cool and the ending was so abstract I had to admire it for that at least.

I guess it all boils down to whether the movie is good with or without a plot twist. I could even point out why some just don't work, but I won't, I'll just point at Shyamalan-a-ding-dong and say nothing else. How's that for a twist ending?

Fun with Styrofoam...

I probably should've been working on this sooner, but I'm about halfway through getting the Titan Device ready for painting. I've got 2 2'x2'x2' cubes nearly done. Sealing the gaps up in one, the 2nd is ready to sand down and then I have to do 4 1'x1'x2' blocks - which I should get to working on tonight.

So far so good, there's styrofoam crap everywhere in my stairwell. The respirator I'm using while doing this tends to give me a bit of a headache because I already have some issues with my ears, something about air pressure and all that I guess.

I'm hoping to have the blocks nearly all done by Tuesday night.

This is about half the pile, it's getting whittled down slowly.

A failed attempt at creating a decent surface to carve into using
expanding foam. It ended up being way too soft and would've been
way too expensive in the end.

And here's the first nearly completed block. I'm in the process
of sealing it up so it won't be all crumbly like this crap tends to be.

Not exactly exciting, but it's something. As I mentioned before, it's the largest prop I've ever built, I've no idea what I'm doing really, I'm just making it up as I go - so far it's working pretty well, although it's terribly messy. I'm buying a small shop vac tomorrow to clean this all up.