Making the Cut and a Chozo

Last night our 2012 48 Hour Film Project Making the Cut premiered at Atlanta's Plaza Theatre. The audience response was absolutely fantastic and we want to thank everyone who came to the screening and enjoyed our film. We're keeping our fingers crossed for the Audience Award this year!

We won't be premiering Making the Cut on our YouTube channel this week as originally planned- we need to wait until the winners are announced in about four weeks before we can do so- but we have uploaded an '80s-style trailer for the film for you to enjoy in the meantime. Check it out above or go here to watch it directly on YouTube.

Fred Grant's Metroid fan trailer is nearing completion! The above still is one of the stop motion Chozo puppets created by Torey Haas for the trailer; please note though that it is still a work in progress and does not represent the final project. Look for more updates on Metroid as we near its release later this summer.

48 Hour Film Project

Jackson Lewis (Sean Haley) takes aim at securing a new job in a dead world.

This past weekend we once again teamed up with The Collective Project Inc. to tackle the 48 Hour Film Project. We picked genres Friday night, and to our delight we drew Horror, which as you know is kind of our specialty.

Napalm McQueen (Elizabeth Jarrett), Cindy Mayhew (Marie Barker) and Street Rat (Dylan Schettina) assess Jackson's capability for joining their team.

Making a film in 48 hours is no easy feat. Troll Picnic, Jake and Julie Vs. The Boogeyman! and First Date all took over a year to complete, and while there were other factors involved (the former two were on class schedules while the latter was continually forced to the back burner because of professional commitments) movies nevertheless take a substantial amount of time to complete from pre-production all the way through post.

Cindy tries to defuse a tense situation.

Our strategy for finishing a movie in 48 hours was really pretty simple: delegation. Immediately upon receiving the genre, character, prop and line of dialogue Greg Garrison (writer of Mario and Luigi and The Red Herring) started cranking out a draft, which allowed the film's director Torey Haas and its producer Corey Bradberry to make phone calls and rally people together. Once a rough story line was put together, Torey met with the DP Nick Lauinger to flesh out the action sequences that bookended the film while Greg continued writing the script with some assistance from Corey and the film's main cast Sean Haley, Elizabeth Jarrett and Dylan Schettina. By 11 pm our script was written and the action was blocked out.

Haste makes waste doesn't apply when you're being watched by skulks.

Thanks to The Collective we were able to secure a shooting location at Atlanta's the Goat Farm, and anyone who's been there knows it's the perfect setting for a post-apocalyptic world. The main cast and crew met at 9 am on Saturday, and Corey- an accomplished theater director in his own right- began rehearsing the cast (which in addition to Sean, Elizabeth and Dylan also included the very talented Marie Barker) while Torey ironed out the shot schedule and prepped the crew for the shoot. By noon we moved to our first and primary location and began shooting the long dialogue sequence that composes the majority of the film. As expected, shooting did go a bit slower than usual- hey, we still only had a few hours to prep a very ambitious project- but we were able to make up a good bit of time by shooting with multiple cameras (Canon would be proud since at one point we had an entire family line-up: a 7D, a 60D and a T2i) and covering several close-ups at once. Thanks to Corey's rehearsals only minor adjustments needed to be made to performance while on set, and barring sound issues most shots were accomplished in 2 or 3 takes. Once each camera card filled up Jay Holloway (director of Crowscare) dumped the footage and begin transcoding the H.264 files to ProRes using 5DtoRGB- this was of course slower than Compressor or MPEG Streamclip, but it allows for better color correction, which Torey was adamant on having to squeeze more production value into the film. As the footage finished transcoding Fred Grant, the film's editor, began putting a cut together while we were still shooting the final action sequence. Shooting wrapped at 12:30 am- not bad for 30+ shots with extensive special effects, light gags and minimum prep time!

A skulk (Nick Beutell) watches for its next prey.

Our make-up artist Ricky Hess and his assistant Katelyn Brammer knocked out some amazing make-up and creature effects, crafting the film's "skulks"- zombie/mutant hybrids- with a strong Italian zombie vibe. Our very patient extras Mariam Abazeri, Nick Beutell and Willam Dwelle all donned the extensive make-up (which took over an hour to apply), and Katelyn even filled in as a skulk as the night drew on. Ricky also brought his patented blood pump, which enabled us to once again shoot (with a gun, not a camera) Dylan Mario and Luigi-style. Prop master John Holbrook literally brought an arsenal of guns and knives to outfit our actors and later helped out on grip duty with Kevin Hicks, and together they were able to come up with ingenious solutions for hanging lights and covering windows that allowed Nick to get some pretty amazing shots. Lastly, Greg and Erica Sato helped out with wardrobe, catering and other miscellaneous task throughout the day. Erica once again baked cookies, which the cast and crew most definitely appreciated.

Jackson springs to action as the skulks close in.

After shooting wrapped Torey, Fred and Jay stayed up all night on Saturday to work on the edit, and by noon on Sunday a full cut was complete and sent to Quyen Tran for sound design. Pillage and Plunder's Hsiang-Ming Wen began writing the John Carpenter-inspired synth score while we were still shooting on Saturday, and on Sunday he simply tailored what he had already composed to fit the timing of the edit. Sunday afternoon was devoted to color correction and title creation (Torey and Hsiang respectively), and upon receiving the final audio mix from Quyen around 6:30 we put it all together, exported a ProRes and slapped it on thumb drive, which Greg and Erica dropped off to the 48 Hour team right at 7:30.

The shoot was not without its casualties- Greg severely damaged his car during the opening shot and Ricky contracted a nasty case of pink eye- but overall it went as smoothly as it possibly could have thanks to all the delegation. Everyone from both MonsterBuster and The Collective really put their best foot forward to get this movie out the door in 48 hours. Were we successful? Come to the Plaza this Saturday, June 23rd at 7:00 pm to see Making the Cut and decide for yourself! Tickets are available here (we're in group F), and since there is an audience choice award voted on at the screening we would definitely appreciate it if you are able to come. Making the Cut will also premiere on our YouTube channel next week.

Summer 2012 Production Update

For a no-budget film production company whose members all have day jobs we sure are managing to stay busy this summer. Here's an update on all of our upcoming productions- there's been a lot of changes since our last production update, so please bear with us!

First off though, our "How to Survive the Apocalypse" PSA will be screening at tomorrow night's Splatter Cinema, before Lucio Fulci's classic House by the Cemetery! This is a huge honor because 1.) we're sharing a bill with an awesome Italian horror film and 2.) we're screening at Atlanta's historic Plaza theater, which will most likely be closing down before the end of the summer. We've screened there before (our Grindhouse-style trailer for Werebum played before last year's showing of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2) but knowing that we're part of one of the last shows at this historic venue is a humbling experience. Thank you Luke Godfrey and Splatter Cinema for giving us this opportunity.

For those of you who've never been to Splatter Cinema before, they're easily the best time you'll ever have at a theater, especially if you're a horror buff like we are. The movies are always screened in 35mm (no DVDs or digital projection!) and the crowd is always energetic while still being respectful. The director of the PSA Jay Holloway and its cinematographer/MonsterBuster founder Torey Haas will both be in attendance tomorrow night, so please join us if you're free!

As for the promised production update, here goes:

H.P. Lovecraft's The Statement of Randolph Carter - We were planning to shoot at the end of the May, and this was contingent on securing a permit to shoot at an absolutely PERFECT location we found in Macon, Georgia. Unfortunately, we have been unable to secure the permit as of yet, meaning the shoot has been pushed back to an indeterminate start date. Anyone who has read the story knows that it's very location-centric, and until we find a location that will do the story justice (we don't want to make another bad Lovecraft adaptation!) we won't be moving forward with the production. We're currently scouting different tomb and cave locations throughout Georgia, and if anyone has any leads send an email to Torey, the film's director, at torey@monsterbusterentertainment.com- I'm sure he'd love to hear from you, especially since he wants to shoot it this summer before he gets caught up in...

Invasion of the Undead starring Desmond and Jake, Paranormal Exterminators - We'll be launching an IndieGoGo campaign later this summer to help finance our first feature film, and we'll be shooting an all-new and totally rad video to accompany it. If you went to the MonsterBuster Film Festival last November you saw the teaser trailer for Invasion that closed the evening, and while this teaser will be part of our upcoming IndieGoGo video it is by no means all we have planned... there will be a lot more monsters, rockin' music and obscure video game references! As always stay tuned to this blog for more news since the Invasion IndieGoGo campaign will necessarily become a big focus of this summer. And for those of you wondering, the Invasion teaser will appear on the MonsterBuster website and YouTube channel (along with Jay Holloway's Werebum) very soon- we're still working on replacing the copyrighted music and audio!

Horror Hotel - We've received a ton of wonderful story submissions for our upcoming web series and we're still looking for more! If you're interested in writing a script send an email to the show's producer Ricky Hess at ricky@monsterbusterentertainment.com and he'll provide you with the series bible and some guidelines. In other news we're hard at work constructing the set (our first!) for the hotel room and it's coming along quite nicely:

Jay Holloway's The Ghoul - The script is almost finalized and Torey is currently trying to convince Jay to cut down the number of shots featuring the ghoul so that it can be a stop-motion creature and not a super-expensive full body make-up appliance. We're looking to shoot this one either in late July or early August.

Super Mario and Luigi - Mario, Luigi, Jerry and Peach will all return, but not this summer... as you can see we already have a lot scheduled for these next three months, and Super Mario and Luigi will consequently be pushed back until Fall 2012 at the earliest.

Metroid - Fred Grant's fan trailer is almost complete! Most of the CG work is nearly finished, and Torey has promised that he will post pictures of the completed Chozo stop motion puppets by the end of next week (if Fred will allow that, of course).

Lastly, the 48 Hour Film Project is this weekend, and we're teaming with our friends at The Collective Project Inc. to make an awesome short film! Greg Garrison of Mario and Luigi and The Red Herring fame will serve as the lead writer while Torey will direct and Nick Lauinger will DP. Look for a blog post early next week after we all catch up on our sleep and have a moment to reflect.

Thanks for reading, and we hope to see you tomorrow night at Splatter Cinema!

How To Survive The Apocalypse

Our "How To Survive the Apocalypse" PSA is now up on our YouTube channel!

Originally premiering at The Collective Project Inc.'s "7 Months To Live" party, our first PSA follows our spokesperson (Matt Strach) as he offers advice for dealing with several different apocalyptic scenarios ranging from zombie attack to alien invasion. It was directed by Crowscare's Jay Holloway and written by Ricky Hess (a.k.a. Mick Feathers from Werebum). Our second Red Herring trailer is online as well, so be sure to check it out if you haven't already!