It does help put things in perspective. Anytime, any place, anything could happen. In a New York minute, everything could change, so the song goes. It makes me thankful for what I've got and that I'm still breathing.
I'm not a soldier at war, or a cop on the streets. I'm not homeless. I don't live in a dangerous war torn region, or a place prone to horrible typhoons or powerful tornadoes. I've got all my limbs, a functioning brain, an amazing wife and family and friends that care and support me. I could bitch about the money I don't have, or how I can't do this or that because I don't have this or that. Instead I'd like to focus on how lucky I am, and what an amazing opportunity I have to do something amazing and create something great, simply because I'm alive, and I can do so with what I've got.
I'm alive and breathing. That's all I need to make something truly great happen. For me that great thing is that same great thing I've always dreamed and worked for, to make movies. To tell stories with images. And as cheesy as it sounds, to help inspire a bit of love, laughter, and wonder, to help maybe reduce the negativity that fuels atrocities like the one that occurred today at Fort Hood.
And I'm trying. Trying to take those steps toward making something great, something fun, something to take you out of your everyday, and put you in a place that will hopefully help give you that release from your so called reality.
It's a bit of a Fairy Tale I'm working on. I've posted before about this re-working I'm doing on the Red Riding Hood story. It's an action, horror, adventure, version with Red Riding Hood as the heroine. It's called REDD. That's April in costume holding a gun.
As soon as Halloween had past we dove right into it. Tuesday and Wednesday turned out to be quite productive. This past Tuesday I met with two of the actresses. April Crum will be playing the title character REDD, and Ashley Angelo will be playing one of the baddies. Immediately got through there costumes and set them on some fight choreography which they picked up quickly. Special thanks to April's Mom for being there to help me wrangle the girls and keep things organized.
Also got a look at Chris in his new Ninja outfit. Yes, this short will feature Ninja type warriors as well as Werewolves, Vampires, and Zombies.
Here's the first bit of test footage. April Crum in costume walking through the forest. Color grading and compositing with Sony Vegas. Going for that dream like feel, as if she was walking through a painting. Played with the score a bit as well with some help from ProScores and Acid.
Another test cut, trying out some visual fx in low light. April was lit with a single light. Cut again on Sony Vegas, Scored with ProScores and Fruity Loops, Gun flashes from Detonation Films. Use them for all your explosion/gun flash needs http://www.detonationfilms.com/
It's clear that in order to capture the look I'm aiming for at night, we'll need about 8 lights around 500 watts, as opposed to the 4 or 5 I was thinking. This is mainly because I really need to light the background. I want the forest setting to be somewhat of a character as well, especially at night.
We're going to have to fight to get those daylight shots. There are alot of scenes in golden daylight at dusk, especially the big Lycan Battle. Speaking of Lycan's Richard Gaither is helping out with the Werewolf FX, I'm currently putting one together. I'm confident we can really achieve the giant hulking beasts I see in my head.
The entire plan here is not only to really create something spectacular for no money, but to hopefully help display what we can do on a cinematic level, and not just on a guerrilla/documentary style shoot like Monster Cops. Hopefully this will help get more traction in funding my feature, Bobby's Closet. Overall I'm just anxious to show what kind of cinematic style movie magic we can achieve with our talent and the resources we have.
And now here's the final cut of Archangel. Submitted this one to the Assassin's Creed II Video Contest. Quite fond of the editing and audio mix I did on this one.
Would like to have done more on it, more fights, more action, but I'd rather have this mock trailer wrapped so we can concentrate on working on Monster Cops and making REDD as great as humanly possible. Hopefully we can include a final cut of Redd to go with the Monster Cops series 1 DVD next year, which will of course be used to help raise money for Cancer Charity.
