because ... well ... why not ...?

it's a dirty job, but somebody's got to do it.

Saturday, April 21st

_5:49AM

Festival of the Stars

This weekend's Starfest convention is proud to feature actor/director/stunt guy Mark Steven Grove this year (you can see him on the 'guests' page there with fellow luminaries Leonard Nimoy and Ray Park)

Among other things, Mark will be showing some footage from our recent projects, including Seven Swords and, as I last heard, he was hoping to get the sound files for the reel at 1:00 AM this morning, which means he's probably not going to have the luxury of a lot of sleep before the event.

Sara Salazar flies into action, battling Brian Cahill (left) as Kristie Griever (right) prepares to jump into the fray

At this point, only some of the scenes are cut together and he'll be making a promotional trailer from those for the event. It's an exciting project, because it's the first time for many of us that we're combining live action and serious physical stunts with a lot of CGI effects. The time is ripe for these sorts of techniques, because with modern computer power and software and the wonders of high-definition video, it's possible to create a much more seamless and realistic fusion of real and virtual elements than was achievable with standard-definition video or affordable with real movie film.

With luck, Mark's got it all cut together and ready for the event. With even more luck, he's asleep by now. I'm certainly looking forward to seeing the finished product myself--perhaps I'll see you there!

Wednesday, April 11th

_19:41PM

Turning Blue

...and I didn't even have to hold my breath (yet). That part may still come later.

Maybe it's something in the air. Or the water. Hard to say, but whatever it is, it seems to be exerting a strange force that makes all the films I'm involved in get shot, either partially or entirely, on green-screen or blue-screen.

In the case of Seven Swords, it's blue-screen or grey-screen depending on how you look at it. They're shooting using my Holoset (now renamed the LiteRing by Reflecmedia) and the accompanying retroreflective Chromatte backdrop for isolating elements to be assembled into some of the special-effects sequences.

But since Mark Grove is directing, you know that the action is going to be real and not merely generated by computer. The CGI is just the icing on the cake--and us actors are going to get wallopped more than a few times during the baking of said cake. It's all part of the job, really, and just helps make it all that much more real.

The one question I get asked the most about performing in a blue-screened set like this, facing imaginary adversaries with invisible allies by one's side, is whether it's a lot more difficult to act in a vacuum where all those elements are only going to be added in post.

What you might not realize is that making movies the old-fashioned way is often just like that, too--because the world you see in the movie still gets assembled in post. When you watch something as simple as a conversation between two people, the two halves might have been filmed at different times in different locations. Neither of the actors may have been talking to each other and the two "sides" of the room might have been in different cities.

Or there was the sex scene that was shot over here a while back where the woman's partner wasn't on the set...and couldn't be, because a movie camera had to be where he would have been in the movie world. This was a big film camera, too, not some itty-bitty camcorder--as always, size does matter--but the mere lack of a partner didn't seem to impair her performance.

It's not always like that, by any means, but it works out that way often enough. I've been filmed having a conversation with someone who hadn't even been cast at the time the camera was rolling on my lines, and I've had angry face-to-face confrontations where the the two of us were at least fifty feet apart at the time.

Interacting directly with the other actors is a terrific thing and it certainly can help with your performance, too, but you have to get used to playing solo, whether you're dealing with computer-generated monsters on a yet-to-be drawn alien landscape, or you're making a down-to-earth drama on real movie film that won't feel even a single stroke of a computer artist's brush.

Thursday, April 5th

_9:43AM

Trailer Park:

I just got the April 2nd issue of Video Business magazine, a trade publication for the home video distribution, retail, and rental industries, and there on page 9 was a full-page ad for The Shadow Walkers. (which I've scanned here for your viewing pleasure). One of the cool things is that the ad mentions, "Trailered on: Curse of the Zodiac Drive Thru, and The Perfect Marriage--which, as you might imagine means that viewers of those DVDs will get to see the Shadow Walkers trailer when they pop any of those disks into the player. Those might not necessarily be the currect top-selling titles, but, to be fair, the viewers of those titles are probably more likely to want to rush out and grab a copy of a cool "Creature Feature" horror flick like The Shadow Walkers, than the average family gathered around the living room TV to bask in the musical phosphorescent glow of Happy Feet.

The Shadow Walkers Ad appearing in the April 2nd, 2007 issue of Video Business

As a side note, I have to admit I find the premise of Drive Thru especially compelling. To quote from the IMDb listing:

Mackenzie Carpenter, a gorgeous 17-year-old girl who would kick your ass for saying so, thinks her biggest problem is dying of boredom in the bucolic wasteland of Orange County...that is until her classmates start dying of massive blood loss and Horny The Clown begins madly stalking her with cryptic messages hidden in 70's kitsch toys. It isn't until Mac discovers her unbelievable connection to Horny and his victims that she realizes, if she's gonna live to see 18, she must come face to face with the killer clown in the bloodiest week Blanca Carne, California has ever known.

...and that's despite the fact that I'm feeling pretty well overloaded with "Killer Clown" movies--not to suggest that Killer Klowns from Outer Space isn't a classic-must see flick, it's just that at the most recent American Film Market, it seemed that every time I turned around there was *another* poster for a slasher movie featuring yet another bloody clown--and last year was almost that bad as well.

So I'm kind of jaded when it comes to the whole clown-slasher movie, but at least this one sounds a lot more creative than most, so if I'm going to have my trailer hitched to a killer clown, I'm happy it's this one.

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