Thinking About A Werewolf

 One of the major components in what's going to make The short film REDD impressive is how the creatures look. Specifically the Giant Wolf Beasts. 

The creatures vary in the actual feature script. We'll see some zombies, vampires, demon like creatures, but since it's a spin on Red Riding Hood, then it's the Wolf Beasts that must be our heroine's "Stormtrooper."



I'd like to show that there are all manner of Wolf Beasts in this dark and evil forest, quadrupeds, bipeds, wolf-men, wolf-women, smaller wolf like creatures, and giant beasts of all kinds.  Right now, for the short, I can really only express one kind and I want it to be the biggest, and most menacing.

I've posted some of these pics before on my progress. Built the head out of cardboard, duct tape, and faux fur, and fashioned the giant claws out of giant monster gloves I bought on sale, and stuffed them with paper and cardboard.

Then I did some test shots with Brandon White so I could get a feel for how I needed to fashion the rest of the body.

And here are shots of Richard Gaither being goofy next to April Crum. I needed to get a live perspective on how tall the head would be next to April. It already towers over her without Richard being on the stilts.

It's just that pesky body and torso I need to get around. One thing's for sure, we'll have a complete Werewolf before December.

Really this post is just so I could lay out what I've got so far, and really look at what needs to be done.

Cookies by Douglas Adams

Cookies by Douglas Adams (author: "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy")

This actually did happen to a real person, and the real person was me. I had gone to catch a train. This was April 1976, in Cambridge, U.K. I was a bit early for the train. I'd gotten the time of the train wrong.

I went to get myself a newspaper to do the crossword, and a cup of coffee and a packet of cookies. I went and sat at a table.

I want you to picture the scene. It's very important that you get this very clear in your mind.

Here's the table, newspaper, cup of coffee, packet of cookies. There's a guy sitting opposite me, perfectly ordinary-looking guy wearing a business suit, carrying a briefcase.

It didn't look like he was going to do anything weird. What he did was this: he suddenly leaned across, picked up the packet of cookies, tore it open, took one out, and ate it.

Now this, I have to say, is the sort of thing the British are very bad at dealing with. There's nothing in our background, upbringing, or education that teaches you how to deal with someone who in broad daylight has just stolen your cookies.

You know what would happen if this had been South Central Los Angeles. There would have very quickly been gunfire, helicopters coming in, CNN, you know. . . But in the end, I did what any red-blooded Englishman would do: I ignored it. And I stared at the newspaper, took a sip of coffee, tried to do a clue in the newspaper, couldn't do anything, and thought, what am I going to do?

In the end I thought, nothing for it, I'll just have to go for it, and I tried very hard not to notice the fact that the packet was already mysteriously opened. I took out a cookie for myself. I thought, that settled him. But it hadn't because a moment or two later he did it again. He took another cookie.

Having not mentioned it the first time, it was somehow even harder to raise the subject the second time around. "Excuse me, I couldn't help but notice . . ." I mean, it doesn't really work.

We went through the whole packet like this. When I say the whole packet, I mean there were only about eight cookies, but it felt like a lifetime. He took one, I took one, he took one, I took one. Finally, when we got to the end, he stood up and walked away.

Well, we exchanged meaningful looks, then he walked away, and I breathed a sigh of relief and sat back. A moment or two later the train was coming in, so I tossed back the rest of my coffee, stood up, picked up the newspaper, and underneath the newspaper were my cookies.

The thing I like particularly about this story is the sensation that somewhere in England there has been wandering around for the last quarter-century a perfectly ordinary guy who's had the same exact story, only he doesn't have the punch line.

(Excerpted from "The Salmon of Doubt: Hitchhiking the Galaxy One Last Time" by Douglas Adams)