I’m happy to announce that we have cast Ameviathan: The Green Machine. Matt Folker will be playing Jonathan, Jen Friedman will be playing Cecily and Stephen Young will be playing Roy. Not only are the actors perfect for the parts, but judging from the auditions, we’ve been afforded an incredible opportunity to work with some real talent. I can’t wait to film.

I would also like to extend special thanks to John Schratwieser, Executive Director of the the Prince Threatre in Chestertown, Maryland, who allowed us to hold our auditions in the historic Prince Threatre. Originally a vaudeville theatre and movie house, the theatre was a beautiful place in which to hold our auditions. I would also like to thank the staff of the Prince Threatre for toughing out the blizzard, and Matt Folker for recommending we hold our auditions there. Next time I’m in Chestertown, I’m catching a show and scrutinizing that Zebra-man at the door.

And of course, where would the auditions have been without Dick and DJWebb, ‘crew’? Nowhere. Thanks for driving, eating subs and talking about lighting and the ‘Bury.

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.

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.

Continue reading Faking Boxes →

I painted 30 boxes (part of the props for Ameviathan: The Green Machine) this weekend and I am officially very nervous. While the boxes are looking good, I keep wondering how I’m going to pull the rest of the movie off. And to be honest, I really don’t know.

On a slightly unrelated note, I thought I’d plug Celtx, a freeware scriptwriting program which I have been currently using to write up the final draft of the Ameviathan: The Green Machine script. While Celtx doesn’t read your dialogue in Mac voices or do format in styles ranging from Warner Brothers to the TV show Alias like Final Draft, it also doesn’t cost $250 for Final Draft.

Celtx also comes with a bunch of other neat little perks, like reports (for organization on shooting days) and scene and character anaylsis. Of course, as freeware, the program isn’t without its bugs. For example, I’ve had some trouble backspacing and editing written text. Nonetheless, as freebies go, it gets my seal of approval and is making my script look far better than anything I could do in MSTurd.