Amazon

Wow. We only shot an 8-hour day today (with lunch more like 7.25 hours) but boy am I exhausted.

Rebecca Kush pointed out that Alien Uprising is on Amazon for pre-order.

Stuff To Done

I almost made a big scheduling mistake. One of our actors has to leave early from tomorrow's shoot (to do a play -- go figure...) and I didn't schedule his part of the scene before he left. Sheesh. Well now I've penciled it into my call sheet so I don't forget.

I really want to make a post-apocalyptic zombie flick.

Oh, and I coined a new term today: emauled.

Here you can learn more than you ever want to know about Iran's power structure. It would be interesting to make a chart like that for the US: including how the clerics vet candidates for political office.

I finished building the scaffold for the blue screen and setting up the hoverbikes. Maybe in a few weeks we can see how all that looks?

Unicorn Versus Narwhal

Unicorn Versus Narwhal. Somebody's CalArts project. Amuses me.

Revenge of the Aliens

John Scalzi cracks me up.
"Chimpanzees, dogs and certain species of squid have all developed a theory of mind — you can too, if you try. We’re all rooting for you out here."

Oh and look, the preliminary artwork for the Japanese version of Alien Uprising -- "Alien Revenge." This is from the press release from our distributor there (the original requires Japanese fonts in your Acrobat Reader.) The movie will be out in August of this year*

*My Japanese is so bad "How bad is it?" No really, all I know is what little I remember from taking two years of high school Chinese 25 years ago. I keep forgetting which is "sun" and which is "moon". Oh wait, the word they use for "Japan" must be "sun" so the other one must be "moon" or "month". OK. Yeah. August.

What Else?

Video Copilot kinda rools. Don't think we aren't using this disintegration effect as our standard effect for killing robots and such.

So it turns out the IFC channel was the largest buyer at Cannes this year. At least, they bought the most stuff. I suspect they paid the crappiest -- but hey, at least those indy films got something. And it's all about Video on Demand. Who'd have thunk that movies with titles starting with the letter "A" would have such a boost over other titles -- because they're easier to access via the remote control. I guess we're going to do Alien Armageddon after all... Here's an Economist article about it.

Last weekend I wisely postponed three days of shooting because I was sick. It was probably only food poisoning but it was good to be off. We shoot two days this coming weekend: the day with the hoverbikes (which I've actually storyboarded and discussed with Maduka) and the day with the Little Thief.

This week we have to see how well difference mattes are working for us. Next week we're going to find out how well handheld and keyed footage of these damn hoverbikes will work. What I need are some bluescreen blue cinderblocks...

Maduka has maybe as much as 15 minutes of the picture cut together. And he's supposed to deliver a screenplay to me on Friday. Ha! Let's see if he does.

My Dad

My sister took this picture of my dad at his office. See the cases in the lower right corner? Those are full of my camera, grip and electric, and costume stuff. Yup, that's the kind of dad he is -- I have a HUGE pile of stuff in his office and he puts up with it (while we're filming.) He's going to be 83 in September.

Ah, the world.

Here's an interesting article in Der Spiegel regarding stereotypes of America and Americans.

The archetypal Montana survivalist so beloved of the European media -- holed up in his shack and determined to resist the government's impositions -- is as uncharacteristic of America as the Basque or Corsican separatist -- ready to kill for his cause -- is of Europe.

The UN announced a tuition-free online university. It's called the University of the People.

Collaborationists

So what's wrong with Mutant Chronicles? Not the costume design.

The script, on the other hand, could have used a minimum of three more drafts. I say 6 more drafts and we would have been in good shape.

It seems fair to credit designers and such when the design is good, but when the design is bad -- well, that could very well be the director's fault. The director should either fire the bad designer, or have them change stuff so that it's good. I sort of have the same feeling about screenplays. A good director will tend to keep after a script and get it to be as good as it can be whereas a less-than-good director will be all like "let's just shoot what we have here."

Many writers seem to think in terms of other people screwing up their otherwise perfect movies. I'm not one of those writers. I tend to think of collaborating with other people as making my writing a whole lot better. This is why I never write without at least one partner. I figure if Nabokov can be edited, I sure as hell can be edited. The greatest writers in the world have all had strong collaborators and editors. Generally, of course, they weren't called "editor" or "co-author". They were usually called "wife".

But I digress.

This post needs a picture of a bunny.

Oops, no bunny. But a practical LOLCat.

Sundrie

Whatever happens I just don't want to end up like this guy. (Thanks to Bill Cunningham.)

So the interesting thing about Mutant Chronicles is that it got released in the US in two theaters, made about four thousand dollars, then went to VOD and then will get a Sci-Fi Channel Premiere (on June 27th) before actually being available as a DVD (here in the US).

Oh and Tom Rowen has a new website.

Thoughts

So the mailman delivered a couple copies of the Japanese version of Solar Vengeance, a groovy catalog from our distributor and... a check for a few $K. I have to presume the check is for a Thai deal or some such for Alien Uprising. I'll try to find out more.

I was talking about all this with QOM and we were discussing how the Alien Uprising's screenplay affected its sales. At first we agreed that we got the great sales from the great idea in the script but then we realized that no; the movie's publicity (such as it is) has all been from the "It's a low budget version of Aliens" variety. That, and, "It's produced by the same guy who made Re-Animator!" (it wasn't).

Because the awesome part of the story is that sure, it's Aliens, but it's Aliens meets Assault on Precinct 13 which is vastly more interesting than just a knockoff of the second picture in the Alien franchise. That's what the Alien Uprising screenplay is. Especially because the characters are unique (in this movie even if they're an analog of someone in Aliens they are still a different character, they may just serve a similar function.) And maybe there's a bit of that story which has helped sell the movie but it's mostly because of the voiceover in the trailer and lots of people with guns running through the picture screaming.

*************

I think that baobab trees should be outside of Gulliver's office when we first meet him.

More Notes

Gardentone is one of those mixer-less recording studios. It's in Williamsburg. Part of 3rd Ward which has metal and wood shops and artist spaces, all of which would be very interesting to those building sets (ahem...)

Russian Solar Vengeance

The only site I can find for the Russian version of Solar Vengeance is a download torrent site. Ha!

Oh no. It turns out that the dubbing is just them talking over the English language version of the picture.

But at least we know the name of the movie in Russian is Месть солнца.

Wow, you can go here and actually watch the whole movie in Russian. And download quite a bit of porn too. Actually, quite a bit of porn will pop up in new windows if you aren't careful. You've been warned.

Wait What?

OK, so this came as quite a surprise to us. I was just looking at Microsoft's new bing search engine and decided to type in my name. And on page 2 of "images" this came up.

Apparently the movie comes out (in North America) on August 4th. You'd have thunk that our distributor would have told us but maybe in the heat of Cannes they just forgot or maybe they aren't talking to us anymore (which seems to be standard operating procedure for sales reps.)

We've talked to Maverick before but never got any interest from them in distributing one of our pictures. Well, now they are (apparently.)

Congrats everyone!

Day 10

On the callsheets today is day 11 but I can tell from the camera rolls that it's only day 10. I think this is because we postponed a day.

The always brilliant Vincent Marano was on set today as Gulliver.


Gulliver in his "office" (the bluescreen window will at times look out over his city, playback video footage, or reveal a plush background of foliage, depending on Gulliver's mood.)

Ben Thomas watches as Gulliver's nemesis speaks.

David Lee drops a slate.

Angela Funk eats a strawberry.*

*Note to self: more strawberries as part of craft services.