Dark Design Pictures

Things are really coming together. I think I already said that? Maybe for the 3rd time. Anyway, on Sunday we went back to Darren’s to film the Katie’s head shot with the with the splatter rig. It wasn’t nearly as miserable, but it was still kind of hot. Everyone was running late. No big deal, we only had to do one shot. Manual is one of the local makeup artist. Man that guy rocks! Best $50 buck I’ve ever spent on an effect. We got the shot in one take. It was beautiful! Even though it was sunny when we shot, I was able to match it with the overcast look when we originally did the filming. I’m about 75% done with the editing and should have it done by the mid week. Christian hooked me up with some music from some local bands. Not to bad. The Death Metal music really works for the ending scene when Katie gets her brains blown out. I’ve given the guys at work another sneak preview and the reviews have been very positive. So far the only thing that is bugging me is the at the lights were to damn close to the mic and you can hear the fans going. Well I know better for next time.

Day 2 has wrapped and principle photography is complete. It was a hell of a day. We started filming at 9AM and went to 7PM. By days end we were all sweaty, dirty, stinky and gross. It was fucking worth it. We have some killer footage. We started the morning off by getting the rest of the footage from Mark’s apartment. By 2PM we had moved to shooting in the parking lot. I think 3 guys carrying a tarp with a body in it may have freaked some of Mark’s neighbors. We finally got to Darren’s property around 5 where we shot the final scene. Because of the rain both the mud and mosquitoes were horrendous. Poor Bronwyn had it the worst. There is one lat pickup shot I will need to get next weekend. It involves the guys from The Darkness so you know I’m up to no good.

Tonight was the first day of shooting Real Friends Help You Move Bodies. So far I am rather impressed. Things got off to a late start but shoot was quick. Only 3 hours. We didn’t get started till 8PM 2 hours later than I had planed. Mainly I was waiting on extras to show up. Bronwyn managed to con one of her friends into helping us, and I conned my co-worker Wes. Everyone did an incredible job this evening.

The past couple of weeks work and not getting enough has been killing me. However, I’m getting my energy back. I haven’t posted much lately because of this, even though I’ve been doing a few things in the background. I’ve decided that I am going to venture down the path of a feature length film. So far the project is codenamed Unlucky 13. I’m not sure if that will be the title or not. This is going to be my gritty action movie. So far I’ve started working on the character and plot outline and about 7 pages. I think it coming together nicely. I’m shooting for 90 minutes. I don’t want to make it to long or to short. I don’t see the point in over doing it. I want to keep it simple so I can actually films this and have it look good. Before I start there are a few things I’m going to need to pickup. Daytime lights, a jib arm and a dolly! I’m looking at about $600 for the lights and I can DIY the dolly and jib arm. If my next quarterly bonus is good I can probably pick up the lights. The wife is going to kill me…. But I’m not planning on filming this till the end of the year so I’m not in any rush.

This week I started reading Bret Stern’s How to Shoot a Feature Film for Under $10,000 (And Not Go to Jail) Great book, funny as hell. If you ever had the desire to become filmmaker it’s a good book to pick up and thumb through. A few of my film making friends decided to stop making short films and going for features. So I figures what the hell, I’ll at least entertain the idea. Though I do have one feature length script written it still needs a lot of work. Also it is a collaboration so I need my friends blessing before proceeding. However, do I want to get two more short films under my belt before proceed down the path of the great feature length film.

I’ve decided that I want to do a bare knuckle, hard hitting, gritty action movie. No explosions, no guns, just fist, bats and a lot of ass beatings. The plot is pretty simple. Thug breaks legs for a living. Thug wants more out of life. Thug wins the lottery and wants to skip down, all hell breaks loose. Though out the course of the story and want the protagonist to get more and more beat up as well as do a fair bit of ass kicking himself. So I guess we’ll see where this goes. I really want to get Dodging Bullets and 187 done first.

Well after working most of this evening I’ve completed the first incarnation of Dodging Bullets. It weighs in at a little over 20 pages. I sent it off to my co-worker Adam to see what he thinks. The story is about Steve and his misadventures of trying to find two runaway juveniles a place to live. Steve is your average IT professional who has a not so average week. All Steve really wants in life is some peace and quiet. But it’s kind of hard because his roommate Laura is a party girl with a total disregard for Steve’s tranquility. While trying to find the teenagers a place to live Steve encounters, ex-girlfriends, annoying co-workers, Nazis and a kidnapping.

Lately I’ve been trying to come up with some ideas for a short that I want to submit to SAL Film Festival. My original ideas was to do a modern fairytale of Little Red Riding Hood. I came up with a good idea, but I’m having issues flushing out the story. The last thing I want is it to turn into a cheesy and lame horror adaptation. Earlier this week I was telling a few of my co-workers this funny story about this encounter I was with Nazi skinheads when I as in college. Adam was like, you should do a short about that. Though most of the events are based around what happened, it’s going to be totally fictionalized version of these events. It’s been years and I really don’t recall everything that went down. But what I do remember about what happened was pretty damn funny. Though it wasn’t funny at the time. So far in the pasted few days I’ve manage to hammer out 14 pages of the script and I should have version 1.0 finished by tonight.