From the Director-

We are shooting a short independent film entitled “The Green Machine.” The film is narrative-driven and will be in the style of a children’s live-action television show. Similar shows include any of the Sid and Marty Krofft television shows (”Land of the Lost,” “Electra Woman and Dyna Girl,” “Sigmund and the Sea Monsters,” “Bugaloos,” “Far Out Space Nuts,” etc.) and “Dr. Who.”

The film will be shot on location at Camp Fairlee Manor in Chestertown, MD from March 17th-19th, 2006. While we cannot pay actors or crew, we can provide them with comfortable sleeping accommodations and meals.

Currently we are looking to cast 3 parts:

1. a male lead,
2. a female lead, and
3. a male or female supporting character.

Because of our tight pre-production schedule, we would like to hold auditions for the roles as soon as possible, either this weekend (February 4th and 5th) or next (February 11th and 12th).

Any interested parties should feel free to leave a comment if interested.

Its a done deal - the check and the contract are in the mail. Protozoic Film’s has the camp for March 17@10am until March 19 @ 7pm. We are staying in a cabin that holds 12 people. Get out your sleeping bags bitches.

Thanks to the efforts of DJWebb we have a location to shoot “Ameviathan: The Green Machine”. Not only is it a location, but it is a location that reaches far beyond my wildest dreams.

Tentatively, on March 17th, 18th and 19th we will be shooting at Camp Fairlee Manor. I’ll be posting a schedule Sunday or Monday of what will be happening leading up to the shoot. Stay tuned.

Thanks again Thom.

The past weekend was a good weekend and a simultaneously frustrating one. Rather than ending on a sour note however, I’m going to get the bad out of the way first.

The bad is that the Thompson-Neely Gristmill is a no go for a location. After weeks of phoning the people at Washington’s Crossing, they’ve finally gotten back to me and told me that filming there will be impossible due to recent flooding. So it is back to the drawing board with locations.

Without harping on about it, this means my initial plans to start on the construction of the Green Machine this weekend will be postponed at least until next so that I can scout for locations this weekend.

This, however, brings me to the good news, the Green Machine itself. Previously I lacked any real plans by which to build the machine. Thanks to meticulous efforts of Peter Kisner (Dragon) and his recent post, I now have an excellent set of plans to work from. I can’t begin to express just how excited I am to build the Green Machine. I hope I don’t hammer any nails into my feet.

The other good news is that the boxes are done. Currently there are about 45 green boxes in total. While I’d like to paint more, at this point I doubt I will because of transportation and manageability considerations. About the only thing I’ll probably do to them is give them a second coat of paint at some point in the future.

The movie, however, calls for more than 45 boxes. Tim’s suggestion to address this issue was to try digitally compositing some extra boxes into a shot. So over the past weekend, we filmed some boxes and did some tests. You can view our tests here.

Box Test in Quicktime 7

Box Test in Quicktime 6

In the first part of the clip there are some boxes that aren’t really there (on the left side), while the second half of the clip shows the original shot without the composited boxes.

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I started writing this review at least six months ago but got side-tracked at the time. Since the subject of video games is again on my mind for other reasons it seemed like now’d be an appropriate time to finish it off.

Warning: Minor spoilers.

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At Loki’s suggestion I did some designs for a potential green machine last week. The major parameter for this work was that the machine should be able to eject or “throw” the boxes that were painted last week. Also, if possible, it should be machine-ish in appearance and have a part which appears to break off in a jagged crack at the end of the scene.

(click picture for detailed view)

Hopefully the following diagrams, along with accompanying text, will assist in achieving those meager goals.

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