WHAT DID WE LEARN ON THE SHOW TONIGHT, CRAIG?
- Don't shoot from a rough draft! Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen suffered from this.) Think through any plot holes or story points that don't make sense (in which TSX has several MAJOR holes), and, use any available moments (during the first 5/6th of the story) to find humor! TSX should of had a LOT more comedic moments in it due to the premise (just as Multiplicity took advantage of it).- Pay attention to the cinematography! Crew in reflections, light stands in the shots, ect, ect
- Use the external, portable AUDIO RECORDER!!!! The director's heavy breathing is annoying.
- Use the dang Glidecam that steadies the hand-held shot thingy!!!! The creaking, squeaking sound of the camera moving while hand held is VERY annoying!!
- No matter the temptation, wait until the very end to score the music in order to maintain some consistency in lieu of the one track every few months approach that was taken on this project. (When spread out this much, my mind is in a completely different place when starting a new track, almost as if scoring a whole new movie instead of a scene in the same movie.)
- Regardless of the time-crunch, direct the actors 100% of the time instead of 40% of the time. Performance consistency is vital.
- Yes, this was a ridiculously silly comedy, however it IS a short story. What makes or breaks a good action/adventure? A good story is only as good as the VILLAIN!
In hindsight, even with such a silly premise, we would have been served better had we made the villain a little more complex. Some test audiences couldn't even remember what the goal the villain was trying to accomplish my the time the climax happened. ALSO, STAKES! The protagonist had very little at stake PERSONALLY! Yes, the end of all existence is big stakes, but that is the difference between the writing of low budget indie films and big budget studio films: your protagonist MUST have something at stake (emotionally and consequence-wise for any of this to truly matter to a passive audience!
A young man named Ralph has coping issues. One day, he is visited by someone who looks identical to him. This man opens the eyes of our Prime-Ralph to an entire multiverse in which he never knew existed.
Ralph is introduced to the concepts of time travel, parallel dimensions, and an invention called the "Respawn Hat".
The Respawn hat allows the person who is wearing it to "respawn" if he/she is killed, basically like what happens when you die in a video game. The other technologies of the multiverse include a hand-held device that allows anyone to travel between parallel dimensions. There is also a stolen kazoo that allows the owner to travel through time. The Respawn hat incorporates all three technologies into one device. The respawn hat is not actually a hat, but it appears as such due to a chameleon circuit that enables an outer shell to assume any shape.
Apparently, in the future, Ralph will turn evil and become so disillusioned with life that not only does he want to kill himself, but he will take the entire multiverse with him. Thus, he will embark on a rampage of creating paradox after paradox, straining the space-time continuum to the point it will implode and erase all of existence. Our young hero Ralph must somehow stop this from happening. No pressure.
THE CAST
The prologue stars Phoebe, the 7 year old daughter of director Shannon Shaw's room-mate. It also stars Shaw's beagle, Buddy.
The series stars Michael Fuqua, who will play all 13 main characters. (Not to mention a sequence wherein an all-out-battle/war zone sequence when many Good-Ralphs appear on screen at the same time with many Evil-Ralphs! ...or at least, that was the original intention - time constraints and eventual attitude prohibited that vision from being taken to its logical conclusion until a future date when it is feasible to accomplish in the eventual remaster.)
THE MUSIC
The prolonged post-production that included time-consuming, tedious effects, added with Shannon's ADHD (and his penchant to jump around on the to-do list in order to keep from getting bored), resulted in an eclectic musical score. Sure, there is a recurring theme or two that was suggested in the prologue, but, as a whole, the musical score is too varied and DRASTICALLY jumps around in style too much to be considered a traditional soundtrack. (Though the parts do not equal the sum for a feature film, as individual musical pieces, the score contains the director's more favorite attempts at motifs.)
Just chalk this up to another aspect of production that suffered from the not-taking-this-seriously-AT-ALL approach to this project.
Again, Shannon found some wonderful songs using creative commons license to sprinkle throughout the soundtrack.
DELETED SCENE (A note from Shannon....)
Writer William Faulker once said, "In writing, you must kill all your darlings." Basically, this means even though you have written an exceptionally brilliant or witty piece, whether it be one line or an entire scene, if that wit is unnecessary to the characters or the story, take it out.
Some of my FAVORITE movies - particularly Back to the future, Terminator 2, and Donnie Darko - all have one thing in common to me: EVERY SINGLE LINE OF DIALOGUE, everything seen or heard throughout the movie is VITALLY important to the plot or service the characters. There is NOTHING included that doesn't eventually come into play during the course of the movie. I LOVE this type of story telling. Sure, there is not only room, but enjoyment and entertainment derived from Quintin Tarintino's style of "casual talk" - in fact, one could argue this small talk helps give more insight into the character speaking - but for everything there is a time and place.
Even way back with my very first short film, My Brothers Keeper, I practiced this "EVERYTHING IS ESSENTIAL or it's taken out" policy. HOWEVER, I do realize, I am NOT a professional, nor do I have any delusions that I ever will be. I am writing and making films the way I want and putting them out on the internet so maybe a few other people may be entertained by my hobby (or use their brain during and after a particularly thought provoking flick - in which I have yet to make, haha). So, as much as I like to PLAY PRETEND when making movies, it's only the internet, dude!!
During this particular story, there was one ENTIRE scene that, for all intents and purposes, has NO REASON TO EXIST! I am referring to a filmed scene in which the ReSpawn hat's chameleon circuit is visually demonstrated. This fun little factoid has no impact on the story, characters, or anything significant whatsoever so it was deleted - before visual effects were completed - albiet quick, rough placeholder effects can be seen in the "deleted scenes." I thought it was kinda cool and I like it, but it interferes with pacing and adds another layer of unnecessary confusion to the already-dragging setup to our tale.
Other notes of non-interest:
* There were tentatively scheduled to be TWO deleted scenes which would have been filmed and released in a separate video later. I LOVED these two scenes for various reasons; I love them so much I was actually going to film them, on purpose, knowing very well that they would not be in the final cut of the film due to story pacing and being unnecessary to forwarding the plot. The first of the never-to-be-filmed scenes was basically one long joke of a conversation between a bunch of clones.
The second, dropped deleted scene is actually the alternate ending to the movie. In the final , released version, the story ends with a homeless, slow Ralph entering the front door of a house: The End. The alternate ending would have expanded on a subplot that was dropped due to it being too confusing to the target audience. In fact, this subplot - based on the original source material, which was later privately explained in detail by Wil Dixon himself - was confusing to viewers of the original that this film is based on. But this subplot/ending did add some layers to the story and added great depth to an otherwise extremely simple and silly plot. Alas, Dixon has chosen to move on from silly comedy skits into music, so the premise will never be expanded upon.. And, we ran out of time and patience (let's just get this over with!) and never got around to actually filming those deleted scenes. The first never-filmed deleted scene was used as a separate short film, "Bob", that was finally filmed years later independent of Timespawning but using the premise of a bunch of people that look alike & have the same name but inexplicably know who is talking to and referring to the other.
* Timespawning is the third entry into, what was at the time, dubbed the LoneStar Pictures' SILLY TRILOGY - the first being Overly Dramatic Breakfast, and the second being Duel Control. These three projects were made to be purposefully SILLY. The attention to detail that LoneStar Pictures strives for (and will one day have) is TOTALLY absent from these three projects. We did these simply to have a good time, to simply "make a movie" - nothing more, nothing less. It was a necessary evil as Shannon had been getting even more depressed due to the much-extended production time on Insanely Sane. Insanely Sane is a very dark story with complex, time-consuming visual effects. Shannon desperately NEEDED a break from that dismal regime. And, since it was determined that Insanely Sane would not be finished for some time, a break in the monotony was warranted. After the release of the Silly Trilogy, Shannon can focus on finishing and finessing Insanely Sane while also getting back to filming some more serious, but simple, short films in the meantime.
* This project proved once and for all how valuable and important a CREW is, even on a "little" home-movie made for you tube! Shannon did everything himself: setup the lighting, work the camera, and direct the actor. He WOULD have also been monitoring the audio however, after the ENTIRE first day of filming resulted in NO AUDIO RECORDED on the portable recorder (!!!!!!!!!), it was decided to just go ahead and use the crappy on-camera microphone for the entire shoot. Had we had a crew, Shannon's hectic pace/stress levels would have gone down and he would have had more time to concentrate on directing the actor and the composition of the shots.
* This hectic pace led to several goofs in the composition of shots. There were a few instances when Shannon could be seen in a mirror (blurred in post); and also many, MANY instances wherein the set lighting and light stands are clearly visible in the shot! This would NOT have happened with a crew present as Shannon would have caught it in time. And, this will be the final project with "production equipment visible in shot" goof. For a laugh, we OWNED those mistakes and even "hung a lantern" by directly pointing out the mistake, adding lens flares from the production lights seen in frame. With a movie this ridiculous, why not?
* Finally, Shannon noticed, in post, the "scheduled time vs. quality" factor in film-making. The majority of the time, the young actor did an AMAZING job, in Shannon's not so humble opinion. However, there were a FEW key moments in which he COULD have benefited from another take. Also, the "one more for safety/luck" motto of Peter Jackson will forevermore be used on our set (even though the "safety" aspect is for checking the gate, in which there is little use for that in single-lens digital camcorders).
* Filming took a total of 10 dayz - approximately 4 to 6 hours each day, start to finish. Had this been a NORMAL project, it would have been done in HALF that time, but wasn't due to the nature of filming CLONES; wherein, an actor does the scene from one character, changes his clothes and re-does the entire scene again from the other character, and so on.
The death of the Terminator w/ machine-gun character
The Ralph wearing the gray t-shirt with sunglasses that bursts through the front door and opens fire took FIVE tries to get it right. Each attempt took over 3 to 5 hours of preperation. The first: we used WAAAAAY too much duct-tape and had not bothered to review how the effect was successfully done years ago.
The second attempt: done the proper way, but the only-4 lb. fishing line snapped in mid-string.
The third attempt: semi-success (using 40 lb. fishing line). The biggest regret was we should have taped the condoms of blood to a shirt UNDERNEATH the grey shirt (or directly to his skin.. muhahahaha) Unfortunately, the LIGHTING was not done correctly and, aside from days and days of computer-rotoscoping work, the footage was unusable (and the clothing was being pulled from the shirt so a new method was needed.)
TIMESPAWNING
The fate of Earth, all parallel worlds, past, present, and future, the whole of existence is in his hands. No pressure.
VIEW PROLOGUE
WHAT IS IT?
Timespawning is a video response to a mini-series made by You Tuber WillsOdyssey.
Much like the original, our TimeSpawning series is, at it's core, a COMEDY. This is, in fact, only the third foray into the comedy genre by Lone Star Pictures. (The first being "Overly Dramatic Breakfast", the second being "Duel Control".)
Due to the clone and time-travel factors, it was absolutely necessary to use a script during the making of this project. However, this is the second to last time scripted dialogue will be used in a Lonestar Pictures production utilizing non-professional performers. ALL future projects, after Clonemageddon, will be 99% ad-libbed and improvised by the untrained actors in order to get a more natural performance.
The tone is very light. For various reasons - the main one being, we had no intention of taking this project seriously in any way whatsoever, the shooting script was also the ROUGH DRAFT! Had we spent more time on a 2nd, or even 1st draft, the plot would make some actual sense, the characters would have all had VERY unique personalities, the lighting would have been more dramatic, better sound, no light stands in the shots, much more consistent directing, performing more than one take the vast majority of the time, and... well, had another pass been written, needless to say, MUCH, MUCH more care would have been taken on making this film more than what we originally and ultimately made it as: a quick (in terms of shooting clones) SILLY diversion with no attention paid to detail - on screen or off.
VIEW TRAILER
This video was made a few months before the main series simply to clue the potential audience in on the mechanics of what they are in for. The tone of this short entry into the world of Timespawning is two-fold. The first half is a very, VERY dramatic and emotional scene of a little girl, Phoebe, who must part with her dog, Buddy. Phoebe has found a new, but unconventional, owner and home for her canine friend: another Phoebe in a parallel dimension. Once there, the second half takes on a very lighthearted feel as we are clued in to the other mysteries of the multiverse that await us in the coming main entry.
A fifth attempt was made. Using the original idea of packets of condoms under the shirt, this time the condoms were taped to a weight-lifting back brace belt thingy. Unfortunately, the lighting was again forgotten by the one-man crew as he was concentrating on the actual effect. Thus, the footage was unusable.
Later the condoms-filled-with-blood were filmed in front of a white background, bursting out from behind a white sheet on another set.
The blood was composited over top of the actor. (A similar technique was later used for death scenes in Clonemageddon.)
Unfortunately, we needed a sixth attempt in order to track where the bullet holes are on the shirt. Doing it without tracking was next to impossible. Thus, Shannon's desire to use REAL fake blood instead of CGI-digital blood in the scene was, in a way, still realized.
Unfortunately, even the tracking of all the bullet holes, for each and every clip, proved POSSIBLE, but way too time consuming. After WEEKS of work, not even two gunshots of footage was complete, and we had 56 gunshots in total, so it was deemed to be taking much too long, even with this approach. It was decided to go back to the footage of the clean shirt on location (from fourth attempt) and composite the blood over that footage, but only the few frames of when the bullet impacts the shirt. No lasting gunshot wounds were to be composited.
Admittedly, it looks nowhere near as cool or good as it would have otherwise, but frankly, Shannon was eager to get this "silly", "learning" phase behind him and just wanted to FINISH these movies so he could move on. The idea would get across and that's the only thing that really matters at this point. The final shot, showing the dead terminator dude would have all the gunshot wounds composited, so that would have to do.