My next project:

Hello again!

I finished my 'weinerville' inspired puppet film. You can watch it here. I was fairly pleased with the outcome, however if I do a film in this style again I would do several things differently. The display boards I used greatly reduced the angles that were possible to shoot in. If the three walls that made the sets had not been connected, I could have played around a bit more and had a more interesting looking film, but you live and you learn.

I decided my next film would be another puppet show but more in the style of Jim Henson and the Muppets. The story involves an armadillo and a hog traveling from the midwest to the east coast during a second dust bowl. There'll be a lot of sets and effects, so it should be a lot of fun, but I've got my work cut out for me.

I plan to submit this as my senior capstone film for film school so don't expect to see a finished project until May of 2011. Anywho, I had to teach myself to sew to make some puppets and here is my first attempt:

I made a few mistakes on this one, so I probably won't end up using it in the film, but it's supposed to be the main character, an armadillo.

This next one is the villain in the film, a rockabilly goat.

I think this one turned out much better and the next one should be even better and so on, because Sarah bought me a sewing machine, these first two were sewn entirely by hand.

There is an online puppet building contest this month and I plan to submit this goat once I've done the finishing touches, then cross my fingers for the $200 cash prize [licks lips]

And if you want to see the above puppet in action, look no further.

So, I'm in pre-production for my next short film. It's inspired by the mid-nineties Nickelodeon show Weinerville, that is, puppet bodies with human heads. The main innovation is that my short will be filmed from more than one angle, and has no jokes (it's a gritty mob story) but it exists in a universe full of tiny bodies and humongous
heads.

I've finished the script, although I may do another draft, and I've built most of the sets, which I will gladly show you now: these first two are from the first scene in the film in which one character comes to visit his old friend and lounge singer in Las Vegas. This is the seat the visitor is at.

<--- I have also built a table that will fit in nicely here. I don't have the body for this character yet, but I have the materials to make him, as well as a cocktail waitress who will come by. It's a front row cocktail-booth for a Vegas show. The show he is watching will be done in the next photo.

<--- This is where the lounge singer will perform. The

front curtain actually opens and closes. I can't decide wether I want to hang stars or other decorations. I hope to light t

his so the shadow from the front curtain casts total black against the back curtain, so the viewer will imagine a back-stage area to exist.

<---This is the body of the lounge singer. The head will be a real person's head. The thing I was most proud of with this body was the tuxedo lapel, which took my quite some time to get right. However this photo doesn't really do it justice. I'll make sure the video I shoot will catch more of the details.

<--- This is something of a work in progress but it will be a diner that our two lead characters visit. The table top isn't flush because I'm holding it with my hand in this photo. Instead of making two sets for this scene I decided I'd just shoot both characters on the same side of the table, then make a mirror-image of one. The end result should (fingers crossed) appear to be a complete diner booth.

<--- This is a private black-jack table in a casino's high-rise. I have built a green felt table that is not pictured. This will be the first set to be filmed because I plan to flip the image like I will with the diner scene, but in this case, I will need to a) repaint the city skyline seen through the 'windows' b) cut another head-hole (the first angle will be a single on the black-jack dealer, and the second will be the two leads in a

two-shot.)

<--- And finally, this is the dealer's body. This is another reason I want to shoot the casino first, this way, instead of buying another doll, I can get the dealer character out of the way, then use his body for another character. In retrospect, this project would have worked fairly well by shooting either one set at a time, or one character at a time. This way I could re-use all bodies and display boards. The way I've done things, it only makes since to shoot the whole thing at once, except perhaps, the dealers coverage in the casino scene.

It has been a rigorous pre-production, and I anticipate a rigorous post-production. As for production itself, I'm not sure. I've never done a film like that. There are a thousand questions racing through my mind and I'm sure unseen problems will rise up during production, as they always do, but I'm excited to put myself to this test in this regard. I'll keep my readers posted on this film's progress.

Halloween Scrooges

The kids that live in the apartment across from mine made some pumpkins for Halloween. They were those small pumpkins that you draw or paint on instead of carving them, and this way they can be turned around and used as a decoration until December. I never took much notice of them until today but there was something pretty silly about them: they drew a pumpkin on the pumpkin, instead of a face. They drew a stem, the outline, and though it doesn't show up so well in the picture, they drew lines to denote the pumpkininny texture. Although I laughed, it actually makes me sad how quickly and rapidly Halloween is changing, so many kids aren't allowed to actually carve a pumpkin, or they do all their trick or treating at a church or the zoo. When was it decided that all the Halloween festivities were so dangerous? I realize they can be, but they aren't any more dangerous now then they ever were. And any parent who keeps their children away from the good Halloween fun is only depriving their child of the fun they themselves enjoyed as children.

Blog

This is my first adventure into the world of blogging, and so far it has been a long and horrifying experience. I wouldn't say I'm 'computer illiterate' but my knowledge of computers is probably the bare minimum of what a person in my demographic is expected to have. I know that the '.com' goes at the end and there were some 'w's in there at some point, but this process of getting a blog set up is making me feel a lot like Channel 5's Dr. Steve Brule. I hope to learn more about this soon, or forget about it quickly, I haven't decided which yet.

I have included a picture of me floating through clouds, that I made on the new photobooth program.

Bill Hader did this in Forgetting Sarah Marshall, but I didn't know it was real.