Text Deliverables

Here's the place I'm putting my list of extra deliverables for Battle: New York, Day 2

EPK or standard press kit or production information stats; synopsis, trt, aspect ratio etc etc. Any quotes, any festivals, any write ups, anything? Who's in it? New art will be up in June.

We don't actually have an EPK but we'll come up with... something. And of course there's no festival play. Ooh. But we do have some extra and groovy pictures of Tina Tanzer (in front of a blue screen) we should send them. 

Oh but wait. That's not the really exciting part of the coming week. Our sales rep wants pictures of Robowar before we begin shooting!

And then we also need to finish with the visual effects shots for Earthkiller... soon. Like in 2 weeks.

"Would be great to get a few stills of the robot(s) in the next week or so for the teaser artwork.  Maybe one or two of the lead actresses/actors.
Can I get all /most of the Earth Killer finished efx shots by mid april for the trailer?"

OK. I'm on it!

Dad and Cat

Meydl stands directly in front of my dad's computer while he's working. He has a very high tolerance of cat.

I think what's happened here is that my dad put his hand on her rump, leading her to lie down. Then with some occasional mouse-use, he ends up "petting" her to her satisfaction.

I know this qualifies me as a dorkus

But when the sound of the vocals on the songs in Glee don't match the sound of the production dialog it really takes me out of it.

Sure, that might be mostly a "Drew thing". But there is a measurable effect there.

OK. Back to Firefly and looking for women's boots. It's like a fetish but with all of the work and none of the kinky fun.

Cats

My sister Jeanne took pictures of cats.

Winston mostly sleeps, but here he's looking fairly majestic. Shockingly this is him after he's lost weight.

There's something about Meydl that makes you just want to pick her up and put your nose in her belly.
I do wish you couldn't see up my nose here though. 

I have nothing to say today

The only real reason I hate telephones is because they're so much worse now than when I was little. The damn delay on digital cell phones is just maddening. If we actually had POTS lines, I might not be as phone-irritated as I am. The Times thinks telephones are passé.

I can has robots?

Ian came up with a couple sketches of robots for Robowar. This first fellow with the round head is your standard-issue combat robot.

Next up is the "big bad". It's an arachnid-type bot with an unusual head.

Skyline

So I saw the movie "Skyline". It's shockingly similar to our "Day 2". It even has titles of "Day One", "Day Two", and "Day Three".
The movie was very close to being good. The biggest problem for me was the structure. They had a good idea where they could keep the characters together inside an penthouse for most of the movie. And when the very first shot is the aliens descending from the sky you might be forgiven for thinking that you're going to be going for a fun ride and avoid that whole boring exposition of your characters where they mostly don't have any dramatic tension. That is until the title "15 Hours Earlier" comes up.
Save the Cat could have saved the picture. One thing you need for a movie like this is the "half man". The main cast needed to run into a survivor -- someone who's seen the dark side. They actually do end up with a half man, and it's sorta interesting, but it's a 3rd act element rather than the 2nd act element you'd expect.

There's also a bunch of stuff they establish -- like a telescope and a camera -- which don't really pay off. It's not that critical that they have them. They could have just looked out a window which, in effect, was what they were doing.
The aliens look nice.

New Schedule

OK, so now we're down to an 8-day schedule for Robowar.
Actually, we're lying. There's a hidden 9th day of robot fighting.
Does this mean we get to keep 8-hour days? Nope. It means there's going to be a couple 12-hour-days. I see them. In my mind's eye, Horatio.
But we do get to take Easter weekend off.
Anyway, our schedule looks like this now:

Saturday	Sunday
Chamber C/Chamber C Airlock (4) Saturday April 9 1. Foxwell 2. Hammermill 3. Yurra 4. Rathbone	Offices/Elevator and Lobby Sunday April 10 1. Foxwell 2. Hammermill 3. Yurra 4. Rathbone 5. Tango 6. Cage 8. Doc Ponce
Guardian Corridor (2) Saturday April 16 1. Foxwell 3. Yurra	EXT Newark (7) Sunday April 17 1. Foxwell 2. Hammermill 5. Tango 6. Cage 7. Moony 11. Arkady 12. Beckett
Easter weekend off	Easter weekend off
Corridor B (7) Saturday April 30 1. Foxwell 2. Hammermill 3. Yurra 4. Rathbone 5. Tango 6. Cage 8. Doc Ponce	Fabrication Shop (5) Sunday May 1 1. Foxwell 2. Hammermill 3. Yurra 4. Rathbone 6. Cage
Robot Rooms / Welding Shop Saturday May 7 1. Foxwell 2. Hammermill 3. Yurra 4. Rathbone 5. Tango 6. Cage 8. Doc Ponce	INT Ulysses, EXT Compound (8) Saturday May 8 1. Foxwell 2. Hammermill 3. Yurra 4. Rathbone 5. Tango 6. Cage 8. Doc Ponce 9. Bellware

Costume Notes II

Millennium Crisis -- Foxwell?

1. Foxwell -- F

Pleather pants

Boots

black top

Nehru-collar jacket


2. Hammermill -- M

is dressing himself -- 


3. Yurra

I think we may end up going with a wig and black tights with accessories -- the "Solar Vengeance" look. We have all the costume pieces


4. Rathbone -- M

I have no idea


5. Tango -- M

No idea


6. Cage -- F

We discussed a dark body suit with mock turtle collar

boots (she owns a pair of chamois black boots)

A red collar, perhaps some sort of red wrist accessories? 

A short "Ike" jacket with epaulets?

A flashlight on her shoulder

7. Moony -- M

Is dressing himself

Solar Vengeance -- Yurra?

8. Doc Ponce -- M

You got me. We do have this tan flight suit. 


9. Bellware -- M? F? 

No idea at all

Robowar bible

A simple android assassin.

I love the arm-thingies on this. Perhaps Cage has these sorts of things.

As always, nice armor.

So I'm working on some ideas for costumes for Robowar.
Spoke to Juanita Arias about Cage today. She suggested dark blue tights with a red collar. I like the idea of maybe a kind of stylized Ike jacket, big red chronometer on her left wrist, and a light on her left shoulder.

Martin, Our Teacher

The groovy Louyi Tang directed this feature, "Martin Our Teacher". It looks hugely expensive. Tim Naylor was DP (he's also directed stuff our own Maduka Steady has been in.)

Check out the Trailer.

Three Important Business Issues Today

Troma gets a video on demand channel.

Netflix, obviously irked with HBO, is doing its own producing now. Interesting that Netflix is in competition with HBO. Now if they'd only buy 26 episodes of my TV series.
British complaining about the level of background music on TV. The BBC is very hierarchical about audio levels -- worse than any US network. It's a problem because discussing "volume" in recorded audio can get very complicated and subjective very fast.

The Schedule For Robowar

This convienent schedule shows you which character plays on which day. Did I really spell "convenient" correctly?

Welding Shop (6) Friday April 1 1. Foxwell 2. Hammermill 3. Yurra 4. Rathbone 6. Cage 8. Doc Ponce	Fabrication Shop (5) Saturday April 2 1. Foxwell 2. Hammermill 3. Yurra 4. Rathbone 6. Cage	NT Offices (7) Sunday April 3 1. Foxwell 2. Hammermill 3. Yurra 4. Rathbone 5. Tango 6. Cage 8. Doc Ponce
INT Elevator/Lobby (7) Friday April 8 1. Foxwell 2. Hammermill 3. Yurra 4. Rathbone 5. Tango 6. Cage 8. Doc Ponce	Chamber C (4) Saturday April 9 1. Foxwell 2. Hammermill 3. Yurra 4. Rathbone	Guardian Corridor (2) Sunday April 10 1. Foxwell 3. Yurra (depending on how we shoot Rathbone could be here)
INT Ulysseys -- (8 cast) Friday April 15 1. Foxwell (11 days) 2. Hammermill (10 days) 3. Yurra (10 days) 4. Rathbone (9 days) 5. Tango (7 days) 6. Cage (9 days) 8. Doc Ponce (7 days) 9. Bellware (2 days) 10. Westley (not real person)	Robot Rooms (7) Saturday April 16 1. Foxwell 2. Hammermill 3. Yurra 4. Rathbone 5. Tango 6. Cage 8. Doc Ponce	NT Corridor B (7) Sunday April 17 1. Foxwell 2. Hammermill 3. Yurra 4. Rathbone 5. Tango 6. Cage 8. Doc Ponce
	EXT Newark (7) Saturday April 23 1. Foxwell 2. Hammermill 5. Tango 6. Cage 7. Moony 11. Arkady 12. Beckett	EXT Ulysses, EXT Compound (8) Sunday April 24 1. Foxwell 2. Hammermill 3. Yurra 4. Rathbone 5. Tango 6. Cage 8. Doc Ponce 9. Bellware 10. Westley?

Getting guns for us

I just got a couple of these M249 airsoft guns.



They're pretty nice. They look good and have the right weight to them. One issue though is that although it says they're only $19.95, the shipping is another twenty-five bucks. So yeah. There's that. But it's worth it as a $45 gun.

Now the man with the plan Brian Schiavo is going to do some makeup on the guns so they look more right for us.

We have to have guns for:
Foxwell
Hammermill
Rathbone (unless he uses David Frey's Autogun)
Doc Ponce
Cage
Tango

Battle: New York, Day 2

So we have an official title for the movie previously titled "Day 2".

Battle: New York, Day 2

David Ian Lee came in and did the voiceover (in the first person) for the new North American trailer:


Battle: New York, Day 2 Trailer North America from Ralph Boswell on Vimeo.

Costume Notes

FOXWELL (F) Tight leather pants, tall black boots, a bomber jacket over a sleeveless undershirt, a BLASTER strapped to her thigh. She scans the horizon with BINOCULARS.

To her left:

HAMMERMILL (M) Black fatigues and flak jacket, he has a RAIL GUN slung over his shoulder and his eyes are down, intently reading his SCANNER.

TANGO (M) Communications specialist. He has a BACKPACK with an ANTENNA sticking out. He wears a HEADSET.

CAGE (F) Sniper.

MOONEY (M) Heavy weapons specialist. Carries a quad-mini gun with 50-caliber incendiaries.

Other than Bellware, who wears a star, and Doc who wears a faded RED CROSS, they wear no identity badges or insignias; they're ghosts.

They're also, each of them, battle scarred and in some way BIONICALLY ENHANCED. Clearly, they've seen some action.

Doc Ponce, the medic - holds a TABLET. The computer projects a 3-d hologram of a transvestite stripper. PONCE salivates, adjusting the PROSTHETIC EYE PIECE that is attached to his head. The stripper will be played by your mom. UPDATE: this bit of business has been cut.

Here's a list of Russian Swear Words. 

It's implied that Rathbone carries a grenade launcher. And they're apparently carrying explosives. So a couple knapsacks are in order.

Mao

Hey -- are you an actor with a Law & Order credit? I was speaking to a guy who was a very high - level member of SAG the other day and he said that you can get all your L&O stuff from the production company. It'll cost you like 30 bucks.

I don't know another actor who is aware that Law & Order will give you material for your reel. You don't have to tape it off the air. Back when we were doing reels for people we used to tape actors' L&O episodes so that they'd have them.

We didn't need to do that.

So, I don't know exactly what steps you have to go through to get your stuff from Wolf productions or whomever -- I just know that it can be done.

_____

The Mandarin Chinese word for "cat" is "māo". 貓 or 猫 

See? It kinda looks like a cat. Well. That's what I tell myself anyway.

Script notes

You're sitting around thinking to yourself  "Boy I'd love to see the raw, unedited, script notes you get from David Frey about the robot war screenplay which, apparently, you have to finish before you start shooting the movie in 10 days."

The ISS. Note the complete lack of visible stars in the BG. It's like a bad composite.

So I'll help you. We'll start with a question I asked to the guys:

Why isn't Doc Ponce with the rest of the guys when they save Prince Beckett? Is it because we don't like the actor playing Doc Ponce and want to have fewer days with him on set? Is it for some other reason? Is that just a legacy issue in the script? 
That's a good question. One would assume that the team have a medical person with them, although Predator didn't have any medical people around. Doc Ponce not showing up until later didn't bother me, although you may be right, you might have to explain why.
Ending version 1:
Foxy is running back to save Yurra. Foxy begins rescuing yurra, but it's too easy, the trap snaps. Foxy learns the A.I.'s evil plan.
Foxy says "you'll stick that thing in me over my dead body". Foxy and Big Bad start battling it out. Foxy is kicking the bad bots ass, until, bad bot rallies and gets the upper hand. About to have the chip inserted,
A.) Yurra sliders her laser sword to Foxy and foxy strikes the final blow
B.) Yurra comes flying through the air striking the final blow
C.) Yurra says "No Momma bad bot, she's mine" and in Temple of Doom Fashion winks at Foxy and jams her laser sword into the big bad.
Yurra and Foxy make their Hollywood run, jump explosion escape by the bionic skin on their behinds. 
Ending version 2:

1.)Foxy grabs BFG from bellware and says she's gonna go balls to the wall and save Yurra

2.)Foxy stalks her way down to AI mainframe to find Yurra

3.)Foxy get's to main frame and falls into the A.I.'s trap. A.I. explains the thing about inserting the chip to kill all humans

4.) Foxy want's Yurra to insert the chip or Yurra offers to insert chip

5.) Foxy grabs laser sword and kills big bad, or Yurra does "Hollywood Explosion Jump"

Screening

Today we had our screening for Day 2. You know this picture is going to end up being called "Battle: New York, Day 2" right?

Screenings can be harrowing for me. There's always some dang thing which goes wrong. Today the sync in act 5 on the screener DVD went out. Yeah, it's all part of our screener DVD curse.

Other than that, though, it was enlightening to see the picture with an audience. One thing I've always felt about this movie is that the performances are strong. Like S T R O N G. And it's a good little script, which helps.

We probably got a few more laughs just because the actors delivering those lines were actually in the audience. But people kept with the story. And almost everyone dies. Oops. I didn't mean to give that part away.

These are notes on my vampire hunter TV series

You will find them contradictory and arbitrary. But I should give the project a number. I deem it "1103".
_____
There won't be a "Last week on this show" to start the TV show. I know, that's some famous last words for someone who wants the show to be very episodic but also have season-long and series-long character arcs.
_____
Chiaroscuro. No happy Hollywood sunsets or bright days. Manhattan and the outer boroughs are under a permanent eclipse of light when darkness takes the city early with low, grey light.

There is a general unease. The recovery from a world rent from within. Families have been torn apart, children become were-creatures, vampires, or worse. No one knows who to trust anymore. This is a noir New York, paranoid, filled with monsters and dread.

After numerous armed robberies, Gus, the owner of a bodega, hires an eyeless mutant who can see a few minutes into the future to mind the store.
Mediums and Tarot - readers are real now. They really can tell your future.
Casinos hire witches to ward off spells and charms of gamblers.
Airplanes don't work without witches onboard to keep them aloft. Boats and trains are the preferred transportation.
_____
It all happened one night. Over a period of about 5 hours, computers ceased to work, friends, lovers, family, turned into vampires, werewolves, and worse. People saw their loved ones kill their own children. About a quarter of the population changed. They killed another quarter of the population. And now the world lives in an uneasy truce with itself.
Of those who aren't out-and-out changed, about half experience some kind of extra sensory perception.
_____
COPS. You notice how after they make an arrest the police on that show have the smoothest bedside manner? I know it's to get suspects to talk and to not make their lives more difficult but it's a brilliant piece of antidrama. It's all about defusing a situation rather than making it more dramatic.
_____

Why don't I have the complete Firefly series on DVD so I can listen to the commentary? Somebody rectify this right away.