Preparations and Short Shoot 1

Greetings, one and all! This week saw our first shoot day for the short. While we had one scene planned for that first shoot day, things came up, and we had to change our plans on the fly. So we shot with just one actor, and did a bit of a tense traveling sequence…

A scripted scene, but with no dialogue, it was a softer start to the project, while still making good progress.

That done, we touched up a few props for the upcoming project, worked on some minor location crises, and had a couple more composing sessions, before preparing for the next week’s shoot. This then led into the return of the newer stunties…

They reviewed the fight scene, before shaking things up with some dagger training. So… yeah, a crazy and random, but productive, week. By the time you read this, we will hopefully be costuming our actors for the second shoot of this week, but right now I’m writing early and preparing myself for the first one.

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

Paint and Prep

Greetings, one and all! Well… this week took a bit of a turn. After success with assembling a number of props, attempts to paint them have been… inconsistent, at best. A previously smooth muted metallic color suddenly develops the look of melting wax, questionable adhesion on other items, etc. So we’re letting things cure for an extra period before attempting to fix all of this. In the meantime I’ve been researching which adhesives work with which plastics, as an attempt at building one of the background ships for the movie came to an abrupt halt when the adhesive bonded with one plastic, but not the other.

On the plus side, we did get a fair amount of music work done this week, covering a lot of ground in Block 7. Sunday we had a fairly small stunt meet, but that allowed us to focus on one corner of the fight scene, before splitting off to do costuming and makeup tests for a minion and a lead, respectively.

So while this week mostly became an exercise in finding new problems to solve, we still made good forward progress in a few areas. Now our minds turn toward the upcoming shoot days…

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

Places, Pallets, and Parts

Greetings, one and all! Well, this week went from uncertainty about exactly what would be accomplished this week to frantically running over hill and dale, taking advantage of the opportunities that presented themselves.

The week opened casually enough. We finally had the matching availability with one of our stunties to go on a location scout. However, his availability was either right now, or at the end of the week, so we hurried out to kick things off.

Good thing, too. It was a beautiful little location that the pictures don’t really do justice. Now we just have to figure out how to sync up schedules for filming… Which brings us to another one of the big jobs for the week: Trying to schedule the shoots. This generation of stunties seem to have all decided to have a busy summer at the same time, but not on the same weeks, so finding that one day that everyone can be together for the big fight scene has been… interesting.

Anyway, after that we found a local source for some black plastic pallets, which have something of a history standing in as the decking for gritty, industrial starships. They were also a good price, so we arranged a meeting with the seller and, within two hours, were cramming the suburban as full of the bulky pallets as we could.

Then came the end of the week, and yet another excursion. This one to explore a discount hardware spot and a local hobby shop that I was somehow ignorant of. The former for props and set dressing, and the latter to find greebles (a term invented by George Lucas) to detail starships for our big upcoming project.

Both endeavors were fairly successful, with us finding pieces to detail walls and control panels, as well as the “seal” for the side of the datapads at the first location, and a reasonably priced WW2 armor kit with a ton of pieces at the second. And that's not even covering the false starts we had this week, or the two music sessions we had. All in all, a busy, tiring, and productive week.

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

Crafting the Look and Feel

Greetings, one and all! This week was focused almost exclusively on acting practice and costuming for the short, though we did manage two composing sessions as well. All this around the 4^th of July weekend, no less.

With the outdoor temperature rising, we started the week by digging into the ol’ storage unit for costume elements. It got quite warm in that metal tube, to say the least, but we found what we needed. We met with three of our major actors over the course of the week to block out and refine their scenes, following that up with some costuming and makeup tests.

Sunday the team met again, and brought our recently absent member up to speed on her part of the fight. After that we did a whirlwind costuming session with the stunties, roughing in their looks before a couple of them disappear into the wilds…

All in all, a busy but productive week. Now all I need to do is scrape together a few brain cells so we can get this new week started…

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

Stick to Your Goons

Greetings, one and all! I was informed at stunt meet that this needed to be the blog title, after it was yelled at the leader of the opposing force during choreography. So I guess we'll start there. Working backwards, Sunday saw further refinement of the fight choreography, followed by a couple combat exercises, starting with a classic, and ending with the veterans each coaching a new stuntie in what they should do in their fight.

Back to the rest of the week, we actually made decent time during music composition, covering the first set piece in only a few hours.
Next up, yet more props work. We found some cheap snap fit sandwich box lids that would work well for datapads, our more rugged version of a tablet, so now we're working on how to reinforce and adapt them for the purpose. We also spent some time working on the staff for an important supporting character. (Pun mostly unintended.)

Making consistent negative space in a non-uniform cylinder was a challenge, but I think it's going to work, once we get everything sanded and filled.

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