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!

Preparing a Prologue

Greetings, one and all! This week we were able to get through most of the Block 7 music, as well as reviewing Block 9. On top of that, after a bit of experimentation on both ends of script writing, the rough availability for the team started trickling in, which strongly leans us toward the prologue and mock trailer idea, so that’s where we are at the moment. At the time of writing, we’re working through what would be in the mock trailer, so we know what elements can be included in the prologue, so that we won’t be doing a lot of work for only three seconds of screen time, in the case of say a set piece.

Sunday the team met again, and this time choreographed a fight scene for the prologue idea: An ambush at the dig site.

Focusing on unexpected levels of imbalance, the scuffle was short, chaotic, and “really fun” according to at least three of the participants. As an observer, I enjoyed I quite a bit, myself.

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

Music, Writing, and Plan C

Greetings, one and all! It’s with some pleasure that I’m able to announce that we’re into Blocks 5 and 6 of music revision, despite working around extensive real life interruptions. We’ve assessed all the way through Block 8 out of 9, and thankfully the changes appear to be less seismic in nature as we approach the near-present again.

Next up, we crossed the deadline for finding our final lead without success, and the aforementioned logistics issues brought on by excessive day to day life changes, which launched us into Plan B, which was an attempted rewrite of the script for less locations and a smaller cast. However, the missing character is very important to the plot, and removing him renders about half the characters we do have pointless, thus we’re basically writing a totally different script at that point. So on to Plan C, which is developing and writing a prologue for the movie, which would be able to use the actors and characters we already have. As a sort of Option B to the plan, we're also attempting to write a short fantasy web series centered around our current actors and stunt team, just in case the logistics of the prologue prove to be too steep.

Lastly, Sunday saw a reconvening of the stunt team, this time exclusively with people who have been here for more than a year. We took advantage of this opportunity, and choreographed a hypothetical fight scene for Plan C, Option B…

The fight was fun, and the stunties are really stepping up their game when it comes to timing and speed.

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

A Musical Brief

Greetings, one and all! This week put us in a bit of limbo, as we waited for the results of various attempts, tests, and inquiries. On top of that, real life continues to intrude, so progress was slower and more cerebral in nature. Despite that, good progress was made on the music front, finishing the second batch of revisions, and assessing the third (very large) batch of edit blocks for whatever improvements were needed. As of the time of reading we should be deep into those revisions.

It’s been quite a ride to revisit our earliest work, and see just how much we’ve grown in our skills and sensibilities about music and the score in the last year or so.

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