A Fortunate Life

First of all, I get a great comment on my Ash/Bishop post (see below) from the writer of "Spoiler Alert". (Man, I feel so dorky. Of course, I did skip school in the 10th grade so I could walk to the movie theater in Menlo Park and see the first showing of Alien. I've never been the same since...)

Then I saw Greg Oliver Bodine in his one-man Christmas Carol. I was positively weepy throughout -- it's such a beautiful and moving Christmas play. (And what an amazing piece of writing. Dickens is clearly furious with anger at the wealthy who blame the poor for their troubles, but he knows better than to make a simple propaganda piece and makes such a beautiful story about people rather than about the general injustice of the Malthusians who scorn the impovershed.)

Plus, my lastest movie keeps getting reviewed. Not always the best reviews, but they spell our names right!

Signing

Although we don't seem to have the appropriate technology to actually fax our agreement, Bloodmask LLC has signed with Halcyon International Pictures. They'll be taking Bloodmask to the AFM in November.
Clare Stevenson with Ted Raimi. Clare running from multiple androids (Kim Vasilakis), the Terran Ambassador (played by Clare's husband Al DelBene) and Harkness (Ato Essandoh), while Counselor Carrasco looks on (Jeff Plunkett).

Deliverables

For some reason, I'm amused by this picture.

That's Marta fixing Clare's hair, Ato's in the background, and probably me next to the camera.

We're making deliverables for Bloodmask.

Mac Rogers

Who doesn't love Mac Rogers? That is the scripted character name of our newscaster character. We finally shot "her". Yes, Mac Rogers is a female newscaster. Played by Catie Zambri. In the flesh.

That link above is to the actual Mac Rogers' blog. But there's more:

George Hunka has a blog too. He doesn't know it but he's actually covering for me right now, covering for Daryl, at the Source today.

Time to make some holograms. . .

Robot fight day, er, 3. . .

Yup, our third attempt to get this one shot! But we figured out what the problem(s) was and then we promptly broke both of the robot's knees. It was like the Mafia was there. Anyway, we repaired the knees (notice that Mike Kessell, who built the robot, was NEVER on the set for the actual OPERATION of the thing! ;-)
It's going to take a while to build this composite, but here's frame 5 of six seconds of video!

Computer Troubles

Well, it seems we've lost a directory on one of our hard drives. It's the directory called "bloodmask cgi renders for timeline". You can imagine how important that is. I made a backup of that directory last week, and we don't have to do any new rotoscoping -- we just have to render out a bunch of things we've done for the last week. Bleh.
This is a picture of Pushkin which I keep as the "wallpaper" of my telephone.

No Images Today

Look! No images! We didn't take any stills today, but we grabbed a few inserts of Clare getting harassed by a robot. Maybe in the next few days I'll post screen captures of our fun little robot. . .

Two shoes

For some reason, Laura Schlachtmeyer decided to take a picture of my shoes (with me in them) today in our edit suite at Manhattan Theatre Source. I was very busy at the time, rendering out a spaceship landing on Altair IV. I'm not too sure what I think about publishing this picture, but what else am I going to do with it?

I will help out the collection by posting this other picture I took with my camera of a small dog on 9/11 last year.

You'll notice that Laura's camera phone takes better pictures than mine, even if it takes pictures of dumber stuff.

In any case, I'll start out with this picture from my second feature, Apostasy. This is my friend Ernest Abuba lookin' cool as the angel Asriel. That was way back in. . . well, the image properties would imply 1999, but I'm thinking the photo was actually taken in 1997. . . I could be confusing that with another movie though. . .

Robot fight day

Fighting with the robot is slow going, that's for sure! But we got some shots off, with just a few more robot pickups to go. Everyone was very tired today. And Claude had a knee injury, but Laura taped him up and he was back on the field to the delight of the crowd. Here he is about to take a bite out of our alien girl!

Even More Desert

In all these pictures that's Clare Stevenson in costume, and Laura Schlachtmeyer helping her out.

More Desert

We were pretending we were in Star Wars.
1. Andrew Bellware (a terrible picture of me), Laura Schlachtmeyer, Clare Stevenson.
2. Andrew Bellware, Clare Stevenson (obscured), Laura Schlachtmeyer.
3. Clare Stevenson, Andrew Bellware (shemping for Ted Raimi.)
4. Laura Schlachtmeyer, Clare Stevenson, Andrew Bellware (again, shemping for Ted Raimi.)
5. Laura Schlachtmeyer and camera (note the still-camera tripod, not good for smooth starts and stops of pans.)

In the desert

David took these pictures. That's me shemping for Ted. Laura has the floppy hat. Clare's looking not out-of-place!
Clare Stevenson.
Clare Stevenson.
Andrew Bellware.
Andrew Bellware, Clare Stevenson, Laura Schlachtmeyer.
Laura Schlachtmeyer, Clare Stevenson, Andrew Bellware.

Last day of Principal

Laura and I are a bit sad -- this has been so much fun, and now we just have some "B" roll to get! Today we had a bunch of people, including some new characters.
We shot the Attis 19 space station.
The always wonderful Jeffrey Plunkett played Advisor Carrasco.
Christa Kimliko and Sarah Matthay are the androids Chloe and Klelland. They were super-great.
Clare's husband Al DelBene played the Terran Ambassador (or rather, his drone). He barely got a chance to say hello to her before he got whacked. Behind him is Kim Vasilakis as a Maria-Class android.
Christa Kimlicko-Jones, Clare Stevenson, and Sarah Matthay as Clare's about to whack her hubby.
The Maria-Class (Kim Vasilakis) is about to come to an untimely end by the newly - sentient Trelissa (Anna - Karin Eskilsson.)

A Beautiful Day

I feel these are the most beautiful images I've ever shot.
That's Christa Kimlicko as Chloe, first under wraps and in transit, then with Aurora (Clare Stevenson).
Aurora (Clare Stevenson) reaches a dead end!
Clare Stevenson took this picture of me (Andrew Bellware).

A Big Day!

Today was the longest of all of the days on Bloodmask. We went 13.5 hours. In a "real" movie we would have been considered to have gone into less than an hour of overtime (we always take a long lunch.) But for us -- whew!
Lucretia (Olja Hrustic, whom we wrapped today) kills the Neuronecromotron (Don Arrup), while Aurora (Clare Stevenson) looks on.
Anna Ekillsson as Trelisa.
Aurora (Clair Stevenson) and the Androids (Sara Matthay, Anna Ekillsson, Ben Thomas, and Christa Kimlicko-Jones).
Andrew Bellware, with the camera (taken by Clare Stevenson).
Ben Thomas is a dead Edwards.

reel 216

I've lost track of the days. I know we shot about 60 minutes. And right now I'm logging the reel numbered 216.
Lucretia and Aurora on the gantry of the Narcissus. Olja Hrustic and Clare Stevenson.
Lucretia's death scene. Olja Hrustic.
The robot who kills her. Claude.
Laura Schlachtmeyer doing her favorite thing: making a big mess (this time with gold android-blood) on Olja Hrustic
And Mitchell Riggs as Kelly, the technician aboard the Narcissus, with Olja Hrustic and Clare Stevenson.

Pictures from Lindsey

Lindsey took the bulk of these pictures. At least, they're all from her camera. That's Laura Schlachtmeyer, Lindsey Robersts, and me (Andrew Bellware). Then Tony Kenner and Laura Schlachtmeyer. Then me, Andrew Bellware. Then Tony Kenner again (I hate how photogenic that guy is!) And then Lindsey Roberts and Andrew Bellware (I'm living the lifestyle I want to become accustomed to there.)
More vampire alien androids for me!