Hello Interwebs! Hope you’ve had a pleasant October (I, for one, had enough of scary things for this year). I welcome you to this month’s news update! Be sure to read ahead for some fun behind-the-scenes stories, pictures and project updates!
Retribution Isle Set Stories
Another month- another couple of film days completed! It feels great to say that! Have I mentioned this is our most consistent filming schedule in… ever? I love it. I mean, it’s tiring, and it’s hard work, but I find our efforts rewarding. Hopefully you will too once you can actually see them.
Our main focus these last few outings has gone to the big climax! We’d planned to have this sequence done by now, but it’s taken a lot longer than anticipated. On the first day, we lost light and had to hike back through the woods after dark. That wasn’t very fun. We also began to run out of light again on the second day… If you’re asking “why don’t you idiots film BEFORE evening?” I respond: our work schedules prevent filming till at least the afternoon, and it takes us a while to get set up each time we arrive on set. Maybe we can do a bit better but we’re still limited.
It also didn’t help matters that I had an accident on set which strongly impacted our progress for Day 2. For context– one of the shooting locations is down a steep hill. As I began the descent, I slipped on a patch of mud and nearly bashed my head off a rock… What made the situation worse is that I was holding the tripod with the camera on top! Because the tripod was already broken, the camera literally flew off the tripod and into the air before landing on the ground next to me. I nearly broke $1000 worth of equipment with one fall…
Thankfully the camera was OK, but the tripod broke further, rendering it effectively toast. This might not have been so bad had Justin not started taking our equipment back to the car already (that was my mistake. I didn’t think we needed him anymore). Lacking a tripod and a dedicated camera guy, Matteo and I were extremely limited as to what we could do. But I’m proud of the work we accomplished under the circumstances!
Even though we couldn’t get the big final set-piece finished (we will soon), we did pull off one stunt which I thought was pretty cool! To be vague– one of the characters gets their foot impaled on a sharp object. For this, we brought a spare pair of shoes– the exact same as our actor’s– and cut a hole in the bottom of the soles. We then stuck the sharp object inside and covered it with fake blood. From there we placed a sock on our hand and placed the hand in the shoe. One close camera angle, a hard push down on the shoe and voila– a shot of an impaled foot! Add this to some other quick cuts and we’ve got ourselves a solid special effects sequence. I mean, you be the judge when the film comes out, but I think it turned out nicely.
All in all, things are going smoothly enough, though the crew is growing worried about finishing our outdoor scenes before winter. There’s still a lot of work to go on this film but we’re powering through. Wish us luck! We’re gonna need it.
Pre-production Projects
On the pre-production side of our great big media empire, Justin’s concept, Below Zero, has been our primary focus of the month. Justin is currently brainstorming loads of fresh ideas for the film! Because he doesn’t have a blurb ready to share yet, I’ll just tease the story and say it’s a claustrophobic exploration of desperation. I don’t want to declare anything, lest it be inaccurate, but we’ll hopefully begin production on this film sometime after the new year.
Post-production Projects
If you read last month’s update, you’d know that post-production hasn’t been very smooth of late. We’ve actually had to halt post-production for ALL our projects due to technical issues with my computer! However, I’ve ordered the parts for a new desktop, so we’ll hopefully be able to edit our films again in the near future. Justin and I just have to build the thing. How hard can that be? But for real– we’ve done this before. We’ll be fine.
Graphic Novels
Besides Retribution Isle, I’m particularly excited to begin work on a long-term graphic novel endeavour with Matteo. He and I have started plotting the stories for multiple original tales of epic proportion.
Matteo’s story is called The Tales of Sesom. He sent me the following blurb to include in this article:
“In an age mysticism, one young wizard with a spiritual power must rebuild his order to combat a dark lord.”
Ooh! Intrigued yet? Matteo has planned an intricate and original fantasy world for this novel so, if you’re a fan of the fantasy genre, stay tuned for more updates on this topic.
My story is titled Champions. Here’s the description for that:
“Twenty years after the third world war, a fragile peace is once again threatened; A powerful evil from the past re-emerges to finish what it started; The world’s greatest heroes have disappeared… To face these challenges: four young Champions of truth and justice who possess the power to make a difference. But will their idealism be enough to inspire hope in a world that has long since grown cynical of the concept? And can this inexperienced team contend with the true nature of heroism? They’ll find it’s not as easy as in comic books…”
Champions is a science-fiction story intended to serve as both a love-letter for the superhero genre and a deep exploration into “heroism” as a general concept.
This has been TPM’s October company update. If you have any questions about what I’ve written today, or have something you’d like to see addressed more in-depth in next month’s update, let me know in the comments. Also, if you have any ideas for future articles, or any general questions, let me know that as well. Be sure to like this article on Facebook and share if you enjoyed!
Till next time
Joe Morin
