Well it’s over. Until we actually make it. Principal photography for the New Saxony trailer wrapped last night in a flurry of snow, bonfires, and Nordic wild men. The concept trailer, created in collaboration with 10 West Studios will soon be edited for use as a pitch piece to (hopefully) secure funding for a full length feature film.
In the meantime have a look at this short BTS of our work-in-progress.
As you may know, we’ve brought our film production from Grand Rapids, Michigan down to Saltillo to assist our friend and director, Joel Vallie, in producing a feature film, a microbudget experience with a hundred headaches but a thousand grins. So when he writes a scene that has 100 demons in make-up running down Mexican streets, I might be tempted to say, “Oh, Joel. That ain’t gonna work. How are we gonna feed them? Where are they going to make their water? No one is going to show up anyway…and if they do who is going to do the demon make-up?” And his response was always the same, “Don’t worry about it. I’ll get on it.” So we didn’t worry, trusted his favor, and sure enough, he delivered by bringing Hawgfly Productions on to set last week.
This movie has some intense special effects make-up and we needed a team that was up for the challenge. Meredith Johns (co-owner) recently finished up working on “Spy Kids 4″, this year’s Coen Brother’s movie “True Grit”, and last year, she was the head make-up artist on Robert Rodriguez’s “Machete” (which by the way, if you haven’t seen, is a 2010 gem that was overlooked). So what is she doing on a film where we’re paying people in tacos? Cause she loves film and helping directors reach their vision…on any level.
So, she brought down three amazingly talented, patient, hard working make-up artists with her and they worked magic on a very small budget, utilizing freaky contact lens, patented Hawgfly blood, tattoos of veins, and dentures that would scare even your father. We would’ve loved to have spent $5,000 dollars on face molds and all that good stuff but unfortunately it’ll have to wait for the next time.
See a very brief picture show of the process here:
A relatively clean Ben Chamberlain
Applying some vein tattoos h'yeah!
He passes it to the man...
And BOOM goes the dynamite!
Pretty cool, huh? And we also had to make up our 27-year old production assistant as an old lady demon:
Ah, yes. It’s been good times down here. We’re on Day 19 of 20 today and everybody’s about to roll out of here tired and exhausted but, we think, rewarded. We have 5 days of film production for this movie scheduled in Michigan in April that we will need some help on (and by help, I do mean “free labor”). So who’s interested?!
More later.
PS. Somewhere on this trip, our little Gorilla van that can has developed a new rattling somewhere in the undercarriage, but she’s still running like Prefontaine. 2,800 miles and counting on this trip…
Eric Johnson and Eric Machiela have left the snowy Michigan confines of the Gorilla offices for the warmth of Los Angeles. For a couple of days anyway. They are attending an educational seminar on film financing in Santa Monica with Evan Koons. In speaking to one of the Eric’s last night, they told me “Everything is going good so far, we just raised 4.3 million in the matter of an evening.” Okay, so that’s a lie. The conference is actually designed to help you understand the process of events that need to take place to finance a film.
Gorilla is currently looking to fund their feature film Camp Manna. While the conference isn’t a meal ticket by any means, it will provide a deeper knowledge of how to raise investment capital — and once raised, how to properly manage the investor and his capital. Enjoy the snow, suckers.
