Short Scripts and Mock investigations

Greetings, one and all! Well, as expected, we finally have our first completed draft of the short script! At the time of reading it will be going through review and revisions, and we hope to have a finished product in another week or so… if we can survive this one. Real life promises to be very busy, so hopefully we have the time to do the needed iterations.

The team met again Sunday, and did something a bit different. In keeping with our goal of familiarizing the new team members with different aspects of screen performance, we gave them an exercise in just existing as a character, In this case, being cops in a fantasy city.

The plot centered around finding a missing merchant marine captain. The first half was investigation, speaking with witnesses, pursuing suspects. The second half was retracing his trail, to find out what happened to his ship, and its valuable cargo, culminating in a fight beneath a lost island fortress. All in all, an entertaining bit of chaos.

Well, that’s about all for this week. Until next time!

Scripts and Striking

Greetings, one and all! Well, I’m currently on version four of the script, possibly version five by the time you read this. Using an existing world that already has a film that hasn’t come out yet presents its own challenges, as we need to present a core aspect of the universe that still won’t spoil the main story. The characters are easy enough to write, but striking that balance is the new challenge.

Sunday the team met again, and this time focused on unarmed striking.

While people are progressing at different rates, they’ve got the basics, so all that’s left is drilling and refinement. Based on the amount of laughter, they seemed to be having a good time, though I can imagine how sore everyone was the morning after.

Well, that’s about all for this week. Until next time!

Old World, New Short

Greetings, one and all! So… this week is quite picture light, as Mother’s Day meant no stunt meet, but we nonetheless soldier on. After trying out various other ideas for a short script, we soon realized that the world and character building requirements would slow us down even more. But then we remembered that two of the people on our actor list were also supporting and bit characters in the Nine Isles project, which got us wondering, what have they been up to in these last few years?

So I started writing, and it’s amazing how readily the scenes flowed onto the page. Granted, there will need to be revisions, as always, but I guess this world and these characters are really ingrained into my psyche, because I had the idea in the morning, and the characters were arguing by lunch. The idea is for them to kick off the adventure, and new characters are brought on board as the story progresses. We hope to use this as a platform for the new actors to cut their teeth on screen performance, and for the new stunties to learn the ropes of choreographed combat. It also has the side benefit of teasing the world of the feature film, without actually spoiling it when it releases.

Well, that’s about all for this week. Until next time!

Spears and Schemes

Greetings, one and all! This week has been a funny sort of backwards pre-production. Whereas ordinarily you start with a script, and then find what you need to make it, we are seeing what we have, and then seeing what kind of story we can make from it. This starts with the people we have, and their respective availability, but also includes their relative skill levels, available props and costumes, as well as any potential locations. But this also includes research to see if there’s anything else that would significantly up the production value for a little extra effort. We’re then using this information to suggest characters and scenes that can be fleshed out into a full script. Well, a short script, anyway.

With the new framework in mind, the team met again Sunday and reviewed the sword and shield, before expanding into strike/counterstrike drills. After that, we introduced them to the basics of spear use.

All this was capped off with a single round of a classic exercise. Good progress was made by all, and we creep ever nearer to having a fully trained stunt team.

Well, that’s about all for this week. Until next time!

Pivots and Shields

Greetings, one and all! Well, this week we had to make a pivot. After assessing all the performances of the people we’ve tried out thus far, we realized that we’d run out of time to bring everyone up to spec for the major roles before shooting was due to start. So now we’re shifting focus to team development. In short, we plan to run different exercises to teach the theater backgrounds how to interact for the camera. We’re also expanding the stunt work overview to prepare our new stunties for our Plan B. Namely, we’re currently developing a short script to shoot this summer that focuses on using everyone we currently have, as sort of a shakedown cruise, to familiarize everyone with the process before we do anything larger.

While most of the week was plan revision and script development, Sunday the team met again, and ran through precision exercises, followed by learning the use of the sword and shield.

It comes to mind that this is probably the first time I’ve taught this art since my shoulder injury, which explains why it’s now killing me. For all that, they’re learning quickly, and just have to develop the static strength that’s so important to shield use.

Well, that’s about all for this week. Until next time!

Weights and Readings

Greetings, one and all! This week saw a lot of troubleshooting and mod engineering. Specifically, we worked through how to give the proper weight to sidearm props, some of which have already been “finished” (in the sense of assembly and painting). We’ve figured out the inexpensive solution to the weight problem, namely rebar down the barrels, but which adhesive to use so that we can get it down the barrel without significant loss on the way in? That’s… still in progress.

Next up, we worked on new prop designs, chiefly figuring out what the in-universe computers and flashlights will look like, and how we can make them out of random junk from our own collections and the local thrift stores. Lastly, we did a couple more readings, and reviewed all of the major performances to date.

Well, that’s about all for this week. Until next time!

Laying Track and Acting Casualties

Greetings, one and all! So we started this week with finishing off the music for yet another block of the film, which meant that the next thing I had to do was render out more reference edits for the next block of composing. After that we had a micro production meeting, this one about post production, and how to streamline it. This conversation put me in the mind, so next up we did an effects shot breakdown. This took a lot longer than I was expecting, but in the end we had a pretty good idea of the work ahead of us.

After that we scheduled some followup readings, and ran one of them before the end of blog week. Next up, we bit the bullet and did some supply runs, preparing for the next stage of prop creation. Along with this, we’ve been working on the pouches for some of our characters and extras.

Last up, the stunt team met again, and continued with the theme of last week, this time focusing on weapons injuries. Then we brought all of their training together by having them choreograph a short fight scene where they die at the end. After all that, we gave them the 101 on the use of the single sword.

This was the first week where I finally planned enough material to cover the full session and keep up with their rate of learning. It’s exhausting, but fun.

Well, that’s about all for this week. Until next time!