All posts by Mike

The Green Machine – Production Completed

Production on “The Green Machine” has come to a close and we have officially begun post-production. Post-production on “The Green Machine” will last until or around April 22nd, at which time we should have a final cut of the film. At that particular juncture, we will then seek out someone to score the film and tentatively have the whole thing in the can by May or June.

Overall, production on the “The Green Machine” was successful. Going into it we had three major goals:

  1. To shoot a more technically advanced project

  2. To cast and work with trained actors

  3. To work full shooting days (i.e. 12 pages a day – the script was actually 25, so we did a 12-page day and a 13-page day).

Not only did we accomplish all three goals, but as Tim indicated, we did so 21 minutes ahead of schedule.

There were some minor mishaps along the way, such as the fire alarm we set off with a fogger and a near brush with the Chestertown Fire Department, but otherwise everyone walked away from the weekend relatively unscathed. Even temper wise, there weren’t any major fights. Tim and I (rather amazingly) only came close once to really going “gallaghers” on each other. The greatest cause for worry the whole weekend was a certain “seasoned beef” smell in the cottage, which we later learned was human waste in one of the trash cans.

There is still a lot to be done on “The Green Machine” and a whole lot more to be reckoned with. But the worst is over. I can’t even begin to communicate how much I’ve learned working on the project, nor can I communicate how fun it has been. It has truly been one of the greatest experiences in my life so far.

Love Widgets

Protozoius! Theology Girl, at [http://www.theologygirl.com](http:// www.theoloygirl.com), has just put up the first installment in her new podcast, Love Widgets. Host Adrienne Kisner guides her listeners through a wide range of off-beat topics, ranging from geek love to RPGs. It’s savvy and whip smart, and if you know what’s good for you, you’ll tune in now. Here’s looking forward to episode number two!

Click here to visit Theology Girl.

Click here to listen to Love Widgets.

Rehearsals, Green Machines and Howard

This weekend we held our rehearsal for Ameviathan: The Green Machine in Chestertown, MD. The rehearsals went extremely well. Our cast is excellent and I can’t wait to shoot.

We also built the Green Machine according to the blueprints Dragon posted, here, on Protozoic. However, you’ll have to wait until to the movie to see it.

Finally, we scouted Camp Fairlee Manor’s facilities for the buildings we’ll be using for the shoot. Camp Fairlee is more than going to provide ample space, room and structures for the shoot.

Over the next two weeks, we’ll continue script breakdown, blocking off dialogue and deciding when and where to shoot what. The biggest hurdles to overcome in this next stage will be day and night scenes and mother nature.

In the meantime, here’s a goodie to tide you over. The music is courtesy of our producer, DJ Webb.

Click here to watch a treat

“Proem: To Brooklyn Bridge” from “The Bridge” by Hart Crane

How many dawns, chill from his rippling rest
The seagull's wings shall dip and pivot him,
Shedding white rings of tumult, building high
Over the chained bay waters Liberty--

Then, with inviolate curve, forsake our eyes
As apparitional as sails that cross
Some page of figures to be filed away;
--Till elevators drop us from our day . . .

I think of cinemas, panoramic sleights
With multitudes bent toward some flashing scene
Never disclosed, but hastened to again,
Foretold to other eyes on the same screen;

And Thee, across the harbor, silver-paced
As though the sun took step of thee, yet left
Some motion ever unspent in thy stride,--
Implicitly thy freedom staying thee!

Out of some subway scuttle, cell or loft
A bedlamite speeds to thy parapets,
Tilting there momently, shrill shirt ballooning,
A jest falls from the speechless caravan.

Down Wall, from girder into street noon leaks,
A rip-tooth of the sky's acetylene;
All afternoon the cloud-flown derricks turn . . .
Thy cables breathe the North Atlantic still.

And obscure as that heaven of the Jews,
Thy guerdon . . . Accolade thou dost bestow
Of anonymity time cannot raise:
Vibrant reprieve and pardon thou dost show.

O harp and altar, of the fury fused,
(How could mere toil align thy choiring strings!)
Terrific threshold of the prophet's pledge,
Prayer of pariah, and the lover's cry,--

Again the traffic lights that skim thy swift
Unfractioned idiom, immaculate sigh of stars,
Beading thy path--condense eternity:
And we have seen night lifted in thine arms.

Under thy shadow by the piers I waited;
Only in darkness is thy shadow clear.
The City's fiery parcels all undone,
Already snow submerges an iron year . . .

O Sleepless as the river under thee,
Vaulting the sea, the prairies' dreaming sod,
Unto us lowliest sometime sweep, descend
And of the curveship lend a myth to God.

1927, 1930

“Shine, Perishing Republic” by Robinson Jeffers

While this America settles in the mould of its vulgarity, heavily thickening
    to empire,
And protest, only a bubble in the molten mass, pops and sighs out, and the
    mass hardens,
I sadly smiling remember that the flower fades to make fruit, the fruit rots
    to make earth.
Out of the mother; and through the spring exultances, ripeness and decadence;
    and home to the mother.

You making haste, haste on decay: not blameworthy; life is good, be it
    stubbornly long or suddenly
A mortal splendor: meteors are not needed less than mountains:
    shine, perishing republic.
But for my children, I would have them keep their distance from the
    thickening center; corruption
Never has been compulsory, when the cities lie at the monster's feet there
    are left the mountains.

And boys, be in nothing so moderate as in love of man, a clever servant,
    insufferable master.
There is the trap that catches noblest spirits, that caught -- they say --
    God, when he walked on earth.

1925

Lilliput

Lilliput is a very short DV film about the Lilliput robot. Manufactured in the 1940s, the Lilliput robot is believed to be the first mass-produced robot toy in Japan. The Lilliput in Lilliput is a replica and yes, he/she/it does have a hard time walking. That, however, is the Lilliput’s charm.

Besides being about a Lilliput, the idea behind shooting the film was to try some lighting techniques. Boo-beep-boop.

Kettle Kittens

In answer to “Luppie”, the log and a puppy, I present Kettle Kittens. While both find common ground with their nod to domestic pets, they are also starkly different. Like electrum, a Luppie is a kind of alloy, an alloy of a log and puppy (not a dog-log or a log-dog). However, Kettle Kittens is not an alloy, but rather a divide, or even the divide, like space and time, realism and naturalism, or Chloë Sevigny and Kate Beckinsale. In total, Kettle Kittens is a very short DV film about a kettle cut off from irresistible kittens. I pray that Kettle Kittens wins Sundance. If it doesn’t, all I can say is what do they know of kettles and kittens or the magnifco “Luppie”?

Nada 
el 
gato 
woof 
woof.

For Kettle Kittens, Tim manned the camera and did the editing, and I wrote the music and the story/plot line. The film was shot on the same camera we will be shooting The Green Machine on.