Sunday, September 28, 2008

More Rum

All the footage looks good as far as I can tell. I probably won't get around to editing as quickly as I'd hoped, but definitely sometime this week.

Overall, the shoot went pretty well. We were running behind schedule almost from the beginning and it sorta kept getting worse and worse. We ran 2 hours more then I'd really planned on - as simple as the whole thing seemed, there were just so many shots and so many little things that had to be timed just right. Made it way more complicated then I'd figured.

But I'm not complaining, I reckon the final product will be pretty peculiar and kinda surreal in it's own little way. So, thanks to everyone involved, Kim, Draper, Bob, Thomas and Bobbie Jo, it was entertaining to say the least.





































Demon Rum done

All done shooting. I just have to go through the massive pile of footage and piece this thing together as best I can. I think it turned out pretty well, regardless it turned out pretty weird.

I have quite a few pictures and whatnot I'll upload later, I just finished the poster for the movie and thought it'd hold you over until I have some more stuff to post.

Thursday, September 25, 2008

Demon Rum Shoot

Everything looks to be in order for a shoot this Saturday.

Since we're doing the whole script (5 1/2 pages) all at once, at one location with live sound, there's a lot of little details to work out beforehand - otherwise the project is project is a bit of a failure. That might sound a little overly dramatic, but we're considering this a test. Can we shoot an entire short, with as much setup and work as this one needs, in one day?

It's a proving ground sort of deal for the rest of The Monkey Rodeo Project. If this goes well, it will calm a lot of the worries about doing 8 or 9 more short movie like this. Demon Rum is the easiest of all of them, even though it does have 4 actors in and out of prosthetic makeup.

One of the little problems encountered was with one of the prosthetics. One of them is sort of a spider looking thing, with 6 eyes and a bunch of teeth protruding from around the mask's mouth. Problem is those teeth were all separate - they had to be glued on individually. I've never dealt with a prosthetic that actually came "some assembly required".

Not that this was the problem, the problem was the teeth were wrong. It was pretty obvious they were just scooped up and tossed in without checking to make sure they were the right ones. So I had to make my own set, about 6 of them on top of the 4 original ones that actually were useful.


They don't really look like much, but they're identical to the original ones at least. These were just made from Sculpy.

We've got a big pile of equipment to be taken to the location and set up - we're doing some minor lighting as well, including a quick photoshoot once the actors are all in makeup.

As well, I have a documentarian (big word, not sure if it's even a real one) for this shoot. So I'm hoping to be able to upload a short "making of" or "behind the scenes" video eventually.

The movie itself should be done within a week of shoot. The editing should be done that weekend, the minor visual effects should be taken care of quickly. I just have to wait on getting the music, which is royalty free - but sounds really great. I think royalty free music has a bit of a stigma attached to it. I know I used to this most of it was crap (and some still is) but there's some genuinely great pieces out there for very little money.

So that should be everything. I guess we'll see how well this all went by Saturday evening, not sure if I'll get to do much of a post then - but I'm sure I'll have time at least to say it went well or not.

Friday, September 12, 2008

A quick update

Things are moving along slowly, pretty well - but slowly. Which is of course much better then things moving quickly and terribly.

The main project I'm working on right now is Demon Rum. Which is nice because it's pretty simple to fit in my head with everything else I'm involved in. It's already cast, the prosthetics ordered (although because of random customs retardation, 2 of them are severely delayed in getting here), most of the major props (such as they are) are sorted out, a rough shotlist and shooting scheduled\ has been hammered out, lighting tests have been done and even the music has been picked.

Right now all that's holding me up are the 2 prosthetics and nailing an exact shooting date. Could be anywhere within 2 to 3 weeks, not exactly when I'd hoped but hardly totally off schedule. Hope to have more to update with soon.