Monday, May 24, 2010
We’re starting to get close now. Two months out! Alex and I had another training session today. He got down a long diving kong over the length of a picnic table. Not bad! I’ve spray painted my old Airsoft gun matte black now, seeing that the silver paint it had was wearing off and starting to reveal the plastic beneath it. I love how it looks now! The only bad part about the gun now is that we broke it while shooting the opener back in February so I’ve had to super glue it back together. Hence the slide no longer works, but that’s okay.
I’m finally happy with the script now, any changes I make from now on should just be minor one, unless I decide to get rid of some of the characters (something I’m actually considering).
The car chase: I promised more info so here it is. The entire chase will be shot with the actors against my greenscreen. We’ll place some tracking markers on it so I can go hand-held. We’ll also shoot the customary shifting and steering inserts. After I’ve shot my actors, I’ll then go shoot some plates in downtown Spokane, driving at normal speeds. These will then be sped up later in post. I’ll also get some POV shots of the road in front of them. In all honestly, I still wasn’t sure how this would look-having the entire chase take place from within the car. It really hasn’t been done before. So I ripped the car chases from the three Bourne films and threw them into Vegas. I cut out all the outside shots, just using shots that I know I can get. Sure enough, the chase is still exciting! This is actually going to work!
Another exciting bit of news is that it looks like Rise of the Beast will be a two disc DVD set. The plan this time around is to include all of the Vlogs for the film instead of doing a regular BTS doc. Because of how many Vlogs I’ve done (and will continue to do), the entire collection will run well over three hours. So disc one will have the movie and a few extras like the trailers and the commentaries (History of the film, director, actor, and theology). Disc two will be all the Vlogs strung together into a three hour BTS doc.
-Also (and this is cool)- My neighbor gave me an older surround sound system for free! Thank you Mic! =) I’ve hooked it up and have been enjoying watching some of my favorite movies like Bourne, Jurassic Park, and Transformers. There’s just so much there that I’ve never heard before. The experience has convinced me to go with a 5.1 mix for Rise of the Beast. I did some tests in Vegas and thus far I have not been disappointed. I had to read up on 5.1 mixing, to learn where to stick dialogue, sound fx, atmos and music, but I feel like I’ve got a good feel for it now.
On the funding front, still looking. Please pray for us that God delivers us the budget we need. I’m hoping to raise about $100k but I’ll take whatever we can get. Even just $5k would allow me to get an HD camera and a production rig (seeing that I’m currently car-less). If anyone is able to help, please contact me via my website at starspictures.info. I’ll make sure we hook you up with a DVD or Blu-Ray, tickets to the premiere, and a poster or shirt.
God bless you all-
El
