First Presentation and First Principles

Greetings, one and all! Well, the first half of this blog week was take up with writing a speech, then scrapping and re-writing it… twice. The presentation went fairly well, or so the people who actually saw it tell me. I haven’t been in front of an audience in a very long time, but I didn’t think that would be a problem ‘til I started getting tunnel vision. But for all that I still know my material well enough to give a complete presentation while only semi-conscious. (Yes, I’m mostly joking about that.)

After that, the stunt team met again, and returned to first principles of swordplay technique, before elaborating with a look into close guards, which will be important to next week’s training. This was followed by a couple rounds of a classic training exercise with an added twist…

Coming into the new week, we’re recovering from the exhausting promotional work, and laying out the groundwork for our next steps. On top of that, hopefully some story ideas will be developed…

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

Post-Thaw Progress

Greetings, one and all! Well, the power and internet came back just in time for the weekend, which I spent trying to update the codec on a couple of videos. Yes, that’s exactly as boring as it sounds, but turns out I need to run a video made with ancient tech on a far more modern system, that likely doesn’t understand anything from two OS’ ago… This right here is a prime example for anyone who thinks film is glamorous.

Anyway, Sunday the team was finally able to meet again, and we ran a couple different exercises. The first was a longsword momentum drill. As the rain intensified, we retired to the shop and took up dagger choreography, with the only direction being “Entertain me.”

This naturally led to three comedy fights, including a dance duel, and a literal fourth wall break.

As we go into this week I am working on the presentation, trying to bring three different elements into a highly compacted timeframe. Reminds me of an old joke about needing a bottle of aspirin and a thesaurus…

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

Frozen

Greetings, one and all! So… directly after writing the last blog, I came down with a slow burning cold. This was in turn overlapped by an ice storm, and loss of electricity for 57.5 hours. The roads were quite slippery, but getting to them was dubious at best, given that our 1/8^th of a mile driveway was also a sheet of ice. So we soldiered through with the practical stuff as best we could, and now that the power’s back we’re racing to catch up with everything that’s lapsed.

That said, there was one spot of good news right before the power outage. We finally managed to schedule our first opportunity to speak publicly about what we do, and try to drum up support for it. Now that the power’s back, I have about a week and a half to get ready…

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

Diving Back In

Greetings, one and all! The new week finds us about half way through revising the edit, and adjusting a bit of audio here and there. We have a short list of things that could make certain scenes more readable, but the kinds of shots we’d need are a bit challenging with our current tech, so we'll have to decide what would be most useful.

Next up, after a couple weeks off, the team is finally back in action! Over the holiday one of our team members fashioned some ancient-styled daggers, and we used them to choreograph some dagger fights, attempting to cement the plays and techniques we’d taught previously.

The session started under heavy rain, but by the second iteration the rain had let up, and the team was able to move outdoors. All in all, the fights looked pretty good for this being the first time of half the team.

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

What Does a Filmmaker Do On Vacation...?

Greetings, one and all! By the time you’re reading this, I should be back to work on finalizing the Nine Isles edit (again), and hopefully doing a little bit of writing. That said, even on vacation we’ve found ways to be productive.

First off, after an extended period without a library card, it seemed like a good idea to go back to basics and read some of the foundational works in the genre…

At heart, every genre filmmaker is a huge nerd. For the holidays proper, we paused to play a few new board games. (Or, in the pictured case, a new old game.) After that, some of us sat down to discuss a long-percolating idea for a fantasy empire building game… As I said, we’re huge nerds.

All that being said, I’m feeling the rusty cogs of creativity starting to turn again, so I hope the product of this brief vacation will be even more creative productivity on the other end.

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