What started out to be "a short flick of no more than 15 to 20 minutes" turned into a nearly feature-length film, and in the mad scramble to finish HOUSE OF FLYING SQUIRRELS in time for Chinese New Year, this blog had to fall by the wayside.
Out of my way, blog!
While the deadline indeed looms close (the movie premiers February 9), student filming is finished. Only scenes with squirrels and The Evil One remain to be videoed, then comes the final, herculean task of post-production. We'll make it. Just. By then, I'm sure that sleep will be just a pleasant memory. Meanwhile, the official movie trailer is done
and the city of Belen has requested a showing of HOUSE OF FLYING SQUIRRELS, which just goes to prove there is no accounting for taste. Time to return to the post-production salt mines. Oh well, it could be worse. I could be a donkey.
I’m deep into post-production on HoFS Scene 8, “Fixed!”. When I’m not snorting coffee all over my keyboard (thanks, Natasha, for adding about an hour to our blooper reel, all by your sultry little evil-spy self), I’m desperately trying to figure out a way to save this footage from the wide, chroma-key blue side panels I unfortunately didn’t notice that Ed was sporting on his shirt.
Natasha McGinnis as Natasha Badenov and Ed McGinnis as Ding Bang, Abbot of the Jade Fender Temple
So much for the preternatural observation skills of the martial artist… Derp-derp! Anywho, my philosophy is: when life hands you lemons, plunk down and Google the crap out of lemon recipes! While I was searching, I found the BEST explanation ever for how to chroma-key in Sony Vegas. I rather doubt I’ll have time to go back and implement this on the video I’ve already ever-so-amateurishly blue screen edited, but I’m sure it will make a huge difference in the rest of the editing before me. TOTALLY worth a see-through monk to find this!
During my first attempt at chroma-key, I came to the sudden realization that I would need backgrounds. Movietools.info has a special place in my heart as the source of the motion background for my very first attempt at green screen editing, a "screen test" by Squirrel Connery, who would end up playing Agent 00Squirrel in our school film.
I won't lie. I squeed when it actually worked.
Sorry this isn't getting posted until the following Monday (instead of the Friday it was originally written), but because Blogger doesn't allow me to just enter a link for a video, I had to wait until YouTube's search engine caught up and would allow me to select it. If anyone knows a workaround for that issue, I'd love to hear about it! Many thanks, and happy filming!
PS: Posts have been erratic lately due to a death in the family. I'm a chronic overachiever as it is, and two weeks of down time means I'm buried with stuff that must be done, as opposed to really fun stuff like this Blog that I simply enjoy. Hope to get back to more regular posting soon!
It is no secret to anyone who knows me that I work nearly incessantly. I’m up at all hours, and nearly all of those engaged in one or another of my professions. Only husband, pets, or books (or, occasionally, sleep) can conjure sufficient draw anymore to pull me away from my labors. And while my jobs are work, in many ways, they aren’t. I do what I love. And even money hasn’t been enough to tarnish the luster of my fondness for the things I do to put a roof over my head. If there is another path to bliss, I’m unaware of it.
One of my most especial joys is my students. Martial Artistry attracts the most creative, intelligent, generous, open-minded and fun-loving people in New Mexico. House of Flying Squirrels has been the perfect venue for them to apply their many and varied talents. Every Movie Stunt Class, every filming session has been full of fun and engagement, with ideas springboarding off one another in a veritable Cirque de Soleil of invention.
The important thing is to encourage students to see everything as an opportunity: to explore an idea; to tell a story; to generate a smile.
Our kung fu school in Albuquerque has really great floors: two inch thick, carpet bonded EVA foam. We have 2x4s to hold it in place down the 65 foot length facing the door. Over time, some of the 2x4s have twisted, making the surface a toe-stubbing hazard. I’m not sure who first realized the photo op created by Mr. Baker’s adzing them even, but, hilarity ensued.
“We should have the squirrels chewing the boards!”
Om-nom-nom-nom!
“It looks like James is kissing M!”
"Oh, 00Squirrel! Behave!"
“Uh-oh! Wait until Princess Ai Chu finds out!”
"James! How could you?"
See what I mean by springboard? The ideas came faster than we could shoot.
This is raw video. Once we finish editing it, adding sound effects, music, dialogue, it will no doubt make another hilarious outtake -- all thanks to one student's initial, "what if?".
Our
school’s Movie Stunt Class has among its cast of wild and crazy characters: a
cyborg,
Jackson as Cyborg Samurai
a fairy-princess that launches cupcake grenades with her wand,
Velvet the Cupcake Fairy
and
Natasha Badenov, a spoof of Jay Ward’s cold war spy temptress, Natasha Fatale,
infamous for her bombs.
Natasha Badenov (Natasha McGinnis) confronts Ding Bang, Abbot of the Jade Fender Temple (Ed McGinnis)
You know what this means. Explosions!
What’s a novice girl movie-maker to do? Why, go to an expert!
Enter Detonation Films. Effects stock footage? Got it. Everything from explosions, to contrails, to gouts of blood. Almost every special effect clip you may need on the path to movie destruction is here --many of them free, or almost. Need tips or tutorials on how to build your own green screen, composite in various video editing programs or make your very own explosion effects? Got that, too.
Happy film-making! Oh, and, watch out for those cupcakes.
Natasha Badenov (Natasha McGinnis), Wen Lo Gai (Ryan McGowan) and Ding Bang, Abbot of the Jade Fender Temple (Ed McGinnis)
The first task for the students of the Martial Arts Movie Stunt Class was character creation - a subject near and dear to my purportedly blackened and shriveled heart. So many possibilities! So many opportunities for parodies and paradoxes, outlandish exaggerations and wild and crazy combinations!
Chen Wang (Diana Ma) mixes it up with the catty fashionista, Macy Nordstrom (Mia Burdeau)
This much freedom absolutely paralyzed some of my adult students. Despite explanations and prompts of simple ideas that could become the kernel of a character (animal! profession! parody!), some in the class were completely stymied. For our next movie-making class, I plan to have a good supply of one word idea cards to stimulate the creative juices of those more reticent students.
Grumpy Asian (Kuan Ma) is about to ruin Billy Joe Jimmy Bob Buckett's (Jesse Stephens) day.
Unexpectedly, it was my youngest students that excelled at character creation. Still used to tapping their imagination without fear of ridicule, they created spectacularly detailed and original characters, which I then promptly hijacked and twisted, causing irreparable damage to their tender, young psyches.
Cyborg Samurai was the elaborate creation of young Jackson.
Just kidding. I think.
The-Student-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named came up with this gloriously awesome character, Velvet the Cupcake Fairy. News Flash: Cupcakes are bad for your health. Very, very bad.
Long story short, the character concepts varied greatly. From some I got as little as, “she likes to clean”. Others catalogued everything about their character, from fighting style and tag lines through languages and powers.
Dorothy Stender is absolutely priceless as the (almost) unstoppable Grumpy Tai-Tai.
But, while I gave the students full rein to create their own characters for the movie, in the end, I was the one who would have to write the script. So, after the initial character genesis, I hunched over the wheel of creative control with white-knuckled hands and careened down the road like Mr. Toad, while my students pointed out directions and enthusiastically honked the horn.
Billy Joe Jimmy Bob Buckett (Jesse Stephens), Queen Rilo'a (Ellie Wilson), Neato (April Dawn Duncan) and Ooo Long (Lee Ann Haluska)
I did my best to keep their original concepts intact, but in a necessarily short movie with 20+ “stars”, back story often went by the wayside, and details had to be tweaked, refined and brightened. Still, no one has complained. And I must confess, compared to the delayed gratification of my normal venue, it is great fun to hear the students giggle over their lines, quote each other’s characters, and ruin our takes with spontaneous guffaws.
Grumpy Asian (Kuan Ma) demonstrates to Queen Rilo'a (Ellie Wilson) the hazards of ignoring the "Keep Off the Grass" sign.
Stay tuned as I feature each of the characters from this movie, and talk a bit about the original student concept and how each character evolved.
Whether it's the smacks, cracks and thuds of a fight scene --
-- or the high-pitched laughter of a heartily amused flying squirrel --
-- you've just gotta have sound effects! While there are lots of places that offer royalty-free sound effects for just a few bucks a pop, the fact is that with $5 here and $8 there, those bucks can add up quickly into a great deal more than an amateur movie-maker can afford. Enter Freesound.org -- a great place to get creative commons, attribution and attribution non-commercial sounds. From explosions to whooshes to the wah-wah-wah-wah of the sad trombone, more auditory goodies than you can shake a stick at are all to be had either entirely for free, or for nothing more than the "cost" of an attribution.
to James “Sparky” Esparza’s full length cheesy-chop-socky flicks in the 2000’s,
we’ve been filming since the school opened its doors.
However, the idea of a structured class that incorporated the completion of an actual finished product film was new to us. As I searched on the internet for anything similar, it appeared that the concept was entirely unique: either the idea had never occurred to anyone else, or no one had been able to figure out how to make it work. Either those, or such a program was the best kept secret of teh intra-webs.
I began to see why as I started work on the class concept. Oh, the actual bulk of the class was simple enough - how to sell a hit, camera angles for stunt work, the nuts and bolts of making a not-real fight look real yet stay safe - especially in the hands of mostly raw beginners. The true challenge -- the one it appeared no one else had ever attempted -- was how to take 20+ people, teach them how to develop a character, how to have that character be reflected in their fight choreography and -- biggest challenge of all -- take all 20+ of those characters, and on the spot write a viable script that made each and every single actor a star, not just a bit player.
Promotional poster for the Movie Stunt Class.
I would have to do all this, and not have it interfere with the stuff I get paid to do. This seemed pretty much impossible, so naturally, I couldn’t wait to attempt it. Martial Artistry’s Movie Stunt Class was born!
And absolutely no one was going to learn more from it than me…
A film without music is like a Wal-Mart shopper without clothes. It's just wrong and you never, ever want to watch it. Think about it. Even in the days before talkies, they made sure to have a musical score that went with each movie.
So, what's a law-abiding gal with no movie-making budget to do? Who will save our heroine from the nekkid Wal-Mart shopper music-less movie syndrome?
By the time I stumbled onto FreeStockMusic.com, my search for stuff I could use to jazz up our House of Flying Squirrels had left me jaded and cynical. “Yeah, right, free music”, I thought, “and now for the catch”. You see, I’d already discovered there was ALWAYS a catch. But, the terms of agreement were in plain English, and -- holy crow -- it really was FREE!
“Okay,” I thought. “The music must be horrible. You get what you pay for, and I can’t pay anything.” I cringed and hit the play button on the first song.
And it was good. Really good. As was the next song, and the next, and the next! All the music was coherently categorized, the descriptions so accurate and succinctly detailed that I could find the right music first time, every time.
I can't say enough good things about the helpful folks (big shout out to Evan Powell) and the talented artists who contribute to this site. Thank you, FreeStockMusic.com!
Our very first shoot for House of Flying Squirrels was on June 2, 2012. With the exception of a brief chroma-key experiment with a flying squirrel puppet, I'd never done blue screen before. It seemed simple enough. In the last words of many a dead man, "What could possibly go wrong?"
We shot scenes 1 and 3 with a handheld camera against a blue screen, which was actually comprised of two of the largest muslin blue screens I was able to purchase for less than an arm, a leg and a newborn (someone else's, I assure you. But, still...). The joining of these two screens resulted in an 18' by 15' expanse of seemingly demon-possessed material, which insisted on splitting into fissures roughly the width of the Grand Canyon or your standard-issue plumber's crack.
Only slightly more attractive than a plumber's crack.
You see, I didn't want to sew them together because it might "interfere with the chroma-key process".
Bwahahahahahaha! It always makes me laugh when I'm an idiot.
I also figured that I'd hang the whole affair from a series of giant clips affixed to the wall above the mirror at our martial arts school. This resulted in deeply shadowed, attractive draping for the entire length and breadth of the blue screen -- ever so helpful during my chroma-key adventures in Sony Vegas.
Saggy as my old, decrepit booty. No wonder Ellie is sad-kitteh faced.
Since my last post already dealt with the joy and happiness which results when the color teal meets scalloped blue, I'll move right along to
CHROMA-KEY: TRIPOD = IMPORTANT
Unless, of course, you're really seeking that oh-so-spooky haunted table effect.
Many thanks to freeSFX for the nifty spooky music for this clip.
Let's get this straight. This girl just wants to have fun. Fun is not organizing 20+ people and moving them from location to location. So, I had this brilliant idea. Let's do EVERYTHING using chroma-key! Then I need never leave the comfort of my wushuguan to film, and I can have any background I desire.
In the background, a blue screen, aka. the bane of my existence.
Oh, if only I'd have known to kill myself then. Instead, I have spent the endless days of the editing process praying for sweet death.
Silly me. I thought that so long as my victims-- er, actors -- didn't wear anything close to the shade of blue used by the chroma-key drapes, I'd be golden.
Yeah, laugh it up. I'm glad you find my naivete amusing.
When the beautiful teal color of Cindy's Grand Ninja outfit (below) played havoc with my blue screen chroma-key function in Sony Vegas HD11, I thought I would get around it by investing in a green screen. Boo-yah! Take that, chroma-key!
Hah! Take that, blue screen! I shall defeat you with my GREEN screen-BAM!
All the green in the teal keyed out. Instant unwanted costume color change.
FML
I ended up going with the original blue screen footage, with tons of creative and time-consuming editing to ameliorate both the horrendous ghosting (a result of poor hanging of the screens) and the wave-like rise and fall of the hand-held camera (another lesson learned: chroma-key + hand-held camera = bad).
Oh, Scene 3....
So, yes. That is why the Grand Ninja has teal colored stone inside her stronghold. Also, why I have a migrane.
One fine day, I woke up and decided I wanted to make a martial arts movie. This is not as crazy as it seems. Not that I'm not crazy, mind you - ask any of my friends or family and they'll tell you I'm pretty much certifiable. But, in my copious spare time (snicker, snort) I run a martial arts school, so capturing all this insanity on film was a natural enough extension of my interests. Besides, sleep is for wimps.
