Dead By Dawn: Zombies take 1.

Back at Northwood Stables for more zombie work. This time around we had a great turn out. Had a ton of zombies and all of them were great to work with. Allow me to share some photos.

These were taken by the amazing and very talented Julie Keels.

Sundown at the Northwood Stables.

Let the make up begin!

Brian Tally, jack of all trades.  Today he is filling in on make up duty.

Assisting Brian, Deanna Kelly.

You go Deanna!

The essence of a movie set.  Pure waiting.

More waiting.

and standing

and joking

Digging through the gear box. Pick your guns people!

Rehearsing formation

Nicole looks like she wants to shoot Brandon in the back.

Patrick, yelling at people

Patrick left.

Trying to figure out the beats, waiting for zombies to finish with make up,

and waiting for the sun to go down.

pretty

Brandon attempts to shoot Nicole in the back.

Richard Gaither on the left, Nicole Nastazzio on the right.

Directing zombies, fun.

It's night time

The best part is making them fall.

The cops, waiting to kill.

Directing Nicole.  No Nicole you can't really kill them.

Firing order.

BANG!

LOOK OUT BEHIND YOU!

(she spins) BANG!

Ok everyone up!

It's always a good idea to shake hands with your zombies before killing them.

Nicole turns into a zombie.  No wait she's just hugging everyone.

More waiting.

Deanna finishing up on Cat.

How very vogue.

Work it Deana!  Work It!

Some fun shots.  Brandon in constant character, as usual.

Action Brandon

this one cracks me up.  i think it's because of the wagon.

Brandon decides to shoot Camera Chick Julie.

Action Chris!

SPIDER!!!!

Quick kill it!

It WON'T DIE!!!!

Lethal Weapon pose.

Alright, All zombies altogether now!

The zombies wait for Patrick to get his crap together.

Richard on the left, Jacob Hauser on the right.

Everyone back in position!!!

READY!

Now stand.

Zombies prepare for death.

Honestly, great numbers that night.  Thanks to everyone who showed.

NOW FALL!!!

play dead

once more, with feeling.

kill em.

Gotta get that master shot.

The guys pointing out my baldness.

Ok now, die.

Finish em off Jacob!

Brandon went rabid.

Seriously, thank you to everyone who came out and helped.  To all the zombies, to Megan for getting all the signatures, to Brian and Deanna for applying the make up, to Arlanda who although couldn't make it provided the make up, of course to Kelly Emerson and Fam for letting us take over their place yet again, To everyone else for falling down on the grass over and over again mainly because I'm a sadistic bastard and I like to watch you all get injured.  I had a great time, I hope you did too.  I hope there was plenty of drinks, pizza, and cookies (which disappeared in the first hour.)  Of course thanks a bunch to Julie Keels, last time for filling in the Vampire Vixen role, this time around for your amazing photos, it's such a relief having an actual proffesional photographer on set.

Ok  hope to see most of you again for our next few big shoots. 

And thanks to everyone for voting on projectbreakout.  It was a close one, but unfortunately not in the cards.  It's all good though, winning contests, although a nice bonus for Monster Cops, is not part of the overall plan.  But it's nice to know there is much support for MC.  Thanks everyone.

Quick Before Midnight Tonight!!!!!

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Thanks to everyone who have voted. Thank you for your kind words and all of your support. It means alot.

- P

Vampire Brides, Take 1

The Dead By Dawn episode requires three Vampire Brides. 2 of which I had cast for sure. The third, I'm still looking for actually. I wanted to stick with the traditional look of the Vampire Brides (aka Dracula's Brides) each girl very beatiful but with different looks. Normally each girl has different hair color, dark, red, and blonde. I have a few choices right now for a blonde, but I have yet to actually talk to those choices. We'll see how it works out.

Let's focus on the two we've got. Kelsey Granger, our dark haired vamp. And Cat Degroot, our red head. I was going to wait til I had found the blonde and shoot the three altogether, but Kelsey had to head back to school soon, so I decided to go ahead and shoot Kelsey and Cat together. Now I didn't have the location I wanted yet so I had to do something I was trying to avoid. Green screen.

Green screen means shooting your actors in front of a green (sometimes blue) screen, and then do composite work in editing. Meaning I remove the green screen from behind the actors, and then place any background I need behind them. I've seen it done very well, and I've seen it done badly, and I've done it both well and badly. Either way, for a project like monster cops where I'm trying to get the most realistic feel possible, using a green screen wasn't something I wanted to do (you never see any bad cg fx on Cops now do ya?). I was already rolling my eyes at the crappy cg'd gun fire I put in The Midnight Special. This time around, I was determined to keep any cg or compositing to a minimum, and try to do every single effect practical and on set.

But in some cases you are left with no choice but to do the best with what you've got. So some cg and compositing would now be required. The thing about The Midnight Special was, I didn't have the best computer resources in the world. I was using a somewhat satisfactory program for my fx work, and I'm quite surprised I was able to edit a 90 minute movie on that frickin computer (80 gigs/256 ram, I pushed it to it's limits.) Now I'm blessed with a computer that is entirely too powerful to exist, oh, and a little something called Adobe After Effects CS3. So now I'm ok with doing a bit of CG and composting if I can do it well and only where it's needed.

Did you hear that Hollywood? WHERE IT'S NEEDED!!!!

Majority of the FX would be done on set. Any monster fx, most of the blood squibs, any gore, etc. would be done live. CG would be used if absolutely necessary, and only as a tool to help tell the story or achieve the scene if we couldn't achieve it any other way, and not just for the holy hell of it (see Van Helsing 2004).

So a green screening we went. Sadly I had to use the same green material I used back in the days of Living Dead Girls. Does anybody remember my Living Dead Girls series? Either of the 2 of you reading this? No? Me neither. Thankfully the creases in the sheets won't matter much. The solid green background is going to be helpful enough in compositing. Also most of the pitfalls you get when green screening on a low budget can be avoided since many of the Vampire Brides scenes are fairly short, and also take place in deep dark hallways and tunnels. Hopefully you won't even be able to tell the difference when I actually start editing.

Here come the pics. Including a few frames where I decided to play with the compositing software a bit.

Two of the three Vampire Brides in front of our amazing green screen. Cat on the left, Kelsey on the right. Aren't they adorable?

Arlanda doing the make up thang.

Me directing Kelsey

I think I made some kind of joke about Vampires making bunny ears.

Could our green screen have anymore creases?

Not only does Arlanda do make up but she knows how to fix costuming issues as well. She rocks.

Still messing with the costume.

Cat is trying to seduce the camera.

Arlanda applying more make up to Kelsey's arms. Because a Vampire with a sun tan just isn't very realistic.

She had a very even tan.

Cell Phone Camera Pics.
The fangs are great, but ya gotta hold em in place forever.

If you didn't know already, there's always alot of waiting around on set. Brandon and Chris on set as well.

Cat being Cat.

Kelsey minus the green.


Threw in a bit of a glow here.

Cat minus the green. Although I do notice some of it, but that's me being picky.
Horrible edge work here, something you won't see in the final cut.

Did a color correction just to see if I could bring out her hair color. Make it pop.

Just a little test to see what you can do with a green screen. Here are the two girls in front of our crease filled green sheets. Let's take out the green. You can see a bit of an outline of the green, especially around the hair, but it's fine.
Let's throw in a public domain photo of a cemetary.
And let's smooth it all out with a few filters. Black and white, with a blue tint. Went for that old, old, antique film look. Really we could have done much more, but you get the idea behind using a green screen.



A few more shots.






Overall I had a good time shooting that day. Hopefully the girls had fun too. They were wonderful to work with. I'm confident we got some great shots, and the footage should look fine in the final product. Ah the final product, can't wait to see what that looks like.

And if you haven't yet please help us out by registering at project breakout and voting for the monster cops WOLF HUNT short. Everyone get's 15 votes a day, so feel free to vote for us 15 times every day. Click the banner below.

Master Of The Macabre

I entered the Wolf Hunt video into Project Breakout's Master Of The Macabre, horror video competition. If you get the chance, please click on the banner below, register, and vote for Monster Cops. You get 15 votes a day, so if you wanna vote 15 times everday for Monster Cops, I'm not gonna complain.

Dead By Dawn pics!!!

A few stills from the other night (and by other night I mean like weeks ago, i think). Got some initial shots of some of the officers. Got in some tactical footage. Stuff looks great with the guns and the gear and such. Here are the shots I took with the digital still.

Richard Gaither joins us once more. And this time around former zombies turned soldiers get in on the Cops action, Arlanda Robinson and Jacob Hauser. Enjoy the hotness. ;)

Look mean.

Now smile.

Show me sexy.

Now shoot me, yes shoot me.

Show me Charlie's Angels / Star Wars.

HOLD THAT POSE and look sexy!

Patrick get in there!

Love this pic.  Richard is giving us his Blue Steel, Arlanda is auditioning for En Vogue, I look like a bridge troll trying not to laugh, Lord knows what Chris is aiming at, Brandon is stuck in an R. Kelly video, and Jacob just saw a comet.

Yes, we have fun on set.

Price Drop

Monster Cops: The Midnight Special is still $15.95 on Amazon.com, but if you buy through our creatspace store, it's now only $13.95.

If you haven't already, check out the trailer:


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CALL FOR ZOMBIES

When: Saturday, August 30th, 6:00 pm

Where: Northwoods Stables, Winston Salem, NC.

What?: Zombies for indie movie project MONSTER COPS.

We need people to play zombies. Yes that's right, the living dead. Slow (and some fast), moaning, flesh craved, zombified, walking corpses. So if you don't mind us putting some make up on you, or even have your head blown up, then by all means come on out.

Notes: Wear clothes you don't mind getting messed up or bloodied, especially if you want to die or get shot. Our blood may stain some clothes. Please nothing with any print or logos.

There may be much sitting around waiting while we set up shots, so feel free to bring a lawn chair of some sort.

We'll be doing this whether it rains or not, so be prepared to get wet as well as bloody. Bring an umbrella if you like.

No pay, but there will be snacks and refreshments, and you will be credited, and you'll receive a DVD copy of the final product.

Address:

Northwoods Stables
5225 Murray Rd
Winston-Salem, NC 27106

Feel free to google maps the address or click HERE. (opens in a new window)

First Official Selection

MONSTER COPS: SHADOW COMPANY

OFFICIAL SELECTION

DARK CARNIVAL FILM FESTIVAL

BLOOMINGTON, INDIANA

Got back a few hours ago from shooting Dead By Dawn.  Just got the email a little while ago from the fest organizers.  It's always exciting to know your movie is going to screen somewhere.  Even more so when it's a fest.  Honestly I was getting a little antsy, waiting for somekind of notification from a fest,  so it's nice to actually get this news.

Horror icons Ken Foree and Tiffany Shepis will be there.  It really looks like it's going to be a fun festival.  Definitely going to try to make it out there.  Very exciting.

Building The MKX300

Finally got this segment done. Only took me 2 days, but somehow it felt like forever. Editing this video seemed to be more complicated than editing the actual episode. I think it was just due to trying to put all the right pics in order.

This gun was fun to make. It's amazing what you can do with what you've got or can get for cheap. The most expensive things on the gun are the camera, which I already had, and then the spotlight, which was about 30 bucks. Aside from that this gun cost about 30 bucks to make. Put a second one together minus the camera and spotlight for about 20 bucks more. And I'm putting together some new weapons using these same techniques for the next Monster Cops webisode.

Monster Cops: Shadow Company update

The short/episode that we've been working on for the past few months, Monster Cops: Shadow Company is finally completed. Edited to a final cut, QC'd (quality control, that's what that means. ;)) and is ready to be burned to DVD and submitted to screenings and fests. I hope to get copies to those involved. The overall short/episode is 24 minutes.

I'll be taking a small break from shooting, but then we go right into the next Monster Cops project, a 5 to 6 minute short called Monster Cops: Dead By Dawn. This one I hope to have monster filled as you may have geussed if you read previous postings on One Spartan.

Ooh I'm excited for people to see this last one. Even more excited to show you this next one.

Because it's monster related ...

but mainly because it's frickin cute as hell.


http://view.break.com/254362 - Watch more free videos

MC Video Blog Scene 28

I had alot of fun shooting at the stables. All the cops, all the zombies and everyone in between were a blast to work with. It was really one of those nights that was very productive and extremely fun at the same time. And here's a video blog to show you just how fun it all was. Thanks to all the zombies for getting bloody, and to Kelly Emerson for letting us shoot there.