20 Years Ago Today...

 Today is a very special anniversary. One I nearly forgot because life is crazy, but worthy of a special post. Twenty years ago today, on June 6, 2006, we had our first ever movie shoot, a twenty minute sci-fi story that I often joked would never be seen by anyone who wasn't part of it. (That lasted until the cast party for "Gatewalkers".) Little did I know that looking at a bunch of friends and saying, "Hey, wanna make a movie?" would set the trajectory of my life for decades to come.

We've all grown since then, things have changed, we've gotten a lot better at what we do. Tomorrow I'll walk outside and work with the sixth generation of our stunt team to perfect a fight scene. The day after that, we'll meet with our actors for a costuming session. But, in all that, I'll remember that this started twenty years ago with a bunch of friends on an overgrown logging road outside of Brownsville. The times have changed, and we're all different people than we were back then, but I can say with confidence that good came into the lives of a lot of people because a dozen teens decided to run with a crazy idea. 

So I tip my hat to all the original crew, it was fun, it was a bit mad, and more came of it than we could've ever imagined. Maybe not money, none of our projects have had a budget above the mid four digits, but it's been amazing to see the growth of the people we've worked with through the years. To all who have been with us over the years, thanks for coming along on the ride, it's been a good one. Here's to twenty more.

I'll see you all in our regularly scheduled blog. Until then!

Honing Scripts, Clashing Shields

 Greetings, one and all! This week saw a redoubling of the work from last week. We did more passes on the script, and it's now much closer to completion. On the costuming end, we started going through patterns and cloth, to see what would be best for each character. In between all of this, we did some technical and render tests on the Nine isles project, because getting different eras of tech to talk to each other is loads of fun...

Finally, stunt team met again, and we ran two separate projects. First, refining and revising the duel choreography from last week; and second, teaching some more sword and shield, though the drills were a bit more free-form than normal. This was then followed up by a classic exercise, and culminated when both parts of the team got together for a final bit of fun.

All in all, good progress was made, and plenty of laughs were had by all.

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

Choreography, Costuming, and Mock Trailers

Greetings, one and all! This week saw further refinement of the mock trailer script, focusing on getting the right flow between different beats of the narrative. Yes, even a trailer tells a story, and this one is coming at it from three different points of view. The trick is smoothly handing off the story from one person to another, all while properly building the tension.

Next up, the team met again on Sunday, and this time we had enough people to practice the fight from last week, as well as teach it to a different team member, while also developing the duel we’ll need for the project.

This was soon followed up by the other major endeavor of the week, which was costuming. With the very tight schedule for team availability, we spent the better part of the week scrambling to find the right elements for the different characters. Sunday we began to test them out on our actors. Now to work on the revisions and bespoke elements…

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

Headings and Hand to Hand

Greetings, one and all! Between writing last week's blog and it going live, the prologue script got its first major review, and gave us both good news for the feature length script, and bad news for my workload. In short, writing a prologue showed that the feature script actually started in the best possible place for character introductions, and a prologue would actually somewhat diminish that. So now we're focusing in on the second half of that plan, which is a mock trailer for the movie and universe. A working version of that script was completed just in time for the team to start working on one of the fight scene excerpts... 

Being a trailer moment, the focus was on making it a really impressive six seconds of action, so we centered it around what fun and dramatic moves we wanted to see, and then built out the fight from there. (Also known as the "Three Cool Things" method.) 

Now that we have a rough guide for the shoot this summer, our energies can shift to things like working out what sets and costumes will be needed, and how best to stack the shoot days for team availability. 

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

Materials and Writing the Prologue

Greetings, one and all! As has been the case for a lot of weeks recently, real life has interfered with things a bit, but nonetheless we have managed to make progress in two major areas. The first was finding good deals on the raw materials needed for making the models of the various ships and vehicles of both the short, and the feature length film. When you're on a limited budget, getting the best price for every square inch of material matters, and when you're looking for a specialty item, the issue compounds itself when a 15 dollar can of adhesive goes for 45 from most online retailers. Thankfully we found that for a decent price, and threw in the material for all the glowing buttons on our ship sets for less than the adhesive alone would have cost from... a certain megalithic online retailer.
 
On the fun side of things, we're finally deep in the weeds of writing the short. Thus far it strikes a good balance of character and action, though it's a delicate balance at times, as it's easy to get bogged down in dialogue. 

The tools of an interstellar archaeologist 

Currently I'm at a point that reminds me a bit of an old Peanuts comic where Snoopy types "The" and hands it to someone, who says they don't like it, so he types "It" and they say they like that beginning much better.  Trying to be efficient with storytelling while still giving the characters room to breathe means that everything can cascade into chaos very quickly if I pick the wrong sentence. For all that, I'm still enjoying the process quite a bit.

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

Dramatic Action and New Phases

Greetings, one and all! Well, today we have big news. Thursday marked our last composing/editing session for the music of the Nine Isles! With that done, now comes the leveling of the various instruments, the renders, and integration into the soundrack of the film. After that comes the eternal fun of trying to make radically different eras of technology talk to each other so that we can get a high quality feature length render out of all our work.

Next up, the writing work has narrowed down to making the promotional short a prologue to the script, giving more "show, don't tell" to the trials of our protagonist. It's a fun challenge to make this an interesting story in its own right, while not spoiling the secrets of the main plot.

Lastly, the stunt team met again Sunday, and this time focused on the dramatic aspect of fight scenes.

Things like timing, readable moves, and proper lines of action were all covered in the exercises. By the end, the pairings were very efficiently turning out their fight vignettes, and we very quickly decided to record them for reference in our choreography library.

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

Shorts, Daggers, and Research

Greetings, one and all! After a fair amount of real life obligations took up the first half of the week, inspiration struck toward the end and, after a bit more work on the mock trailer idea, we shifted over to work on the promotional short proper. The focus was on capturing the atmosphere and themes we hope to convey.

Next up, the team met again on Sunday, and trained in the fundamentals of dagger play…

While occasionally chaotic, as befitting the discipline, there was still a fair amount of progress made.

Lastly, with the summer’s path loosely framed in, we turn our minds toward quickly and effectively creating the visual elements we’ll need to really sell the idea and the world. This means… more research. A lot more. So I’ve been reading up and watching tutorials on everything from modelmaking to simulating aerial explosions. Lots of fun.

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