jegner
Site Admin
Joined: 30 May 2003
Posts: 2144
Location: Texas, USA
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 Posted: Tue Jul 05, 2005 9:01 am Post subject: Update 7-5-05 |
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First of all, many thanks to everyone that came down on Saturday. Great job! I know it's hard to carve out the time, and to get up early just to sweat your butts off in those suits. A special thanks to Larry for making the drive all the way from Kilgore, and to be early, and to bring Judge D. a former student, who is currently working in the movies as a set designer. Judge manned the 'B' camera, and got some great 'Saving Private Ryan' type shots.
After the July 4th holiday weekend events I wanted to let everyone know the latest news. We were able to get about 6 scenes shot on our early morning shoot and overall I think it went very well. We had some issues with the fog machine, and no blaster impact 'squibs' yet, but I'm pretty happy with the steady-cam footage we shot. I'm editing the footage down, and to be honest, there is a lot of good stuff! It's going to be hard to trim all that good stuff out! I'm still of the mind set that what we are shooting is test footage that we can recycle for use in the fan film. This Summer, that was the goal, and I think we are right on target.
We had some wardrobe malfunctions. Larry's leg armor had some problems, so I kept them and I'm reworking them. The thighs have shims that keep coming off so, I'm going to rivet them into place, and add one side velcro [industrial] Also, I'll add shims to the calves. Those Kitchen boys sure have some big legs! HA! Lance has some issues with his forearm, and Herb had some problems with his thighs. We were running and falling down, so thats going to be hard on the parts. We may need to get the Nacogdoches suits in for some review and adjustments. Lance, I noticed, has one thigh that is shorter than the other, so you might need a new one.
Heath is working on his helmet and upper body armor, and is making good progress, and his holsters and pauldrons look great! These are going to be a nice addition to the costumes. Thanks Heath for all your hard work on the vinyl parts and working behind the scenes! Heath may try to sew the armor parts together!
Ever since the first pulls came off the vac-machine, I made extra parts whenever I could. I kept them in a box, and over time, managed to make almost a complete suit. Herb has them right now, and is finishing the trimming, and assembly. [Note to Herb, I now have the forarms!] This will be a stunt suit, or a suit for an 'extra' warm body. It's made of a different thicknesses, and from 'less than perfect' pulls, but I think will look great with a nice heavy weathered paint scheme. Weathered suits is something we all will want eventually, and we can use this suit as a test. Thanks Herb for taking the time to pull this extra suit together!
I brought my armor to the filming location, but did not suit up, and what I learned is that it's good to have extra parts while on location. You never know when a trooper might leave his blaster or small armor parts back at the barracks! Lance used a plastic clothes hamper to transport his armor around in. Good idea to keep all the armor parts together, and to check your gear. If we are missing anything, it's better find out before hand, and to have extras on standby. Thanks Lance for that great idea, and for being there to bounce ideas off of!
We filmed at 'the cliff' location, and Larry got some good progress towards a matte painting done. I'd like to see some Mayan like ruins in the background, or some sort of abandoned space port. We need this opening shot to establish the 'look and feel' of the planet, and to define the 'concrete and jungle' sets we have. Larry, bring your matte painting to the July 16 movie review and we can look at it and talk about it.
In other news, I pulled some of the Rebel Fleet Trooper helmets. The mold works great, and the basic shell of that helmet is done. Now I'm working on the back swoop, comm box and chin cup. I should have these ready to pull in a few days. I ran out of plastic, so I will have to place another order soon. [Donations are accepted, you can paypal the wife's account ssegner@cox-internet.com .] Thanks! Just kidding, but any help on this would be appreciated.
I've also started working on the Rebel Fleet Trooper blaster, and it's starting to come together. I'm scratch building the scope, mount and barrel tip, and using the E-11 Stormtrooper blaster parts I already have molds for. My goal is to have most of this costume ready to show by the July 16 movie day. I don't know if I'll meet that deadline or not.
Speaking of the July 16 meeting, I need a list of all that plan to attend, so that I will know how many burgers to fix, and how much pop corn to make. I'd prefer to keep this number to just the folks in the production, as, even though this is suppose to be a fun day, we will have some work to do, and some of the movies are not rated for small children. Plan to arrive around 11:00am, and we will go until Shanna runs us off.
I'm really excited! I think we are making some really good progress. We now have the troopers and some good locations, and a series of scenes I's like to see on film. What we need to do next are to build a few set pieces, like an Endor looking door hatch, an X-wing fighter canopy, and smoldering X-wing debris, the diagona [trash compactor monster] and some 1/24 large scale models of the X-wing and Imperial Shuttle, and flush out a storyboard and/or script. We will try to do some of this on the 16th.
Some final thoughts:
Blaster hit effects both on surfaces and on the armor needs more research. I tried several options, but so far Heath and Herb think a black paint ball shot at the wall, ground or armor will give us some good results. Only problem is black is not a paint ball paint color. We will have to make our own. Also, a 'bleeding trooper' effect needs to be worked out.
Coy, how goes the monster tentacle? Any progress or news? If you are having issues with that, let me know. I'd really like to have one in the film, but if thats not going to happen, we will need to rethink some of the water sequences, with an alternate monster or other threat.
X-wing pilot helmet and costume are planned next. We only need a few of these. The hardest part is the helmet. An idea for a hand-to hand combat sequence between an unarmed trooper and a downed X-wing pilot is planned.
This fan film just keeps growing! |
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