Troy Dennison's Blog, page 13

Making Movies: Part Three

Summer of the Mess

 

I found out the hard way that sometimes projects fold. You can put your heart and soul into it and despite everything you do it doesn’t work out. Some things fall apart very early while they’re just being talked about. Some die after pre-production has started and some fall through after you’ve begun shooting. I learned over the years never to count on a project until you’re actually there doing the job – and sometimes not even then. It’s a sad fact of life that some people talk the talk but they can’t walk the walk.

While I was shooting The Clown I received a phone call about a horror film re-make. It was being produced through a horror magazine and they wanted me on board to provide the gore FX. I got the screenplay by horror author and nice guy Gary Charles and enjoyed it. It was a straightforward killer in the wood with some nice touches and some opportunities for cool effects. I met with the director and not long after I get an email.

The first day of shooting would involve the death of one of the characters; bludgeoned with a sledgehammer. Easy stuff for me until I read the email which enquired – Can we rip his genitals off? Of course I replied with an emphatic yes and then worried about how to do it. That ended with me sculpting and casting a prosthetic penis and pubic area (complete with gaping wound! And the penis was rigged so it would gush blood. I had a terrible time painting the thing and having to hide every time one of my kids walked in the room.

So on day one I drive 100 miles up to Northampton to meet the cast and crew. We had a major trek ahead of us lugging the gear deep into the forest where we would be filming. It was a sunny day and it was fun watching the actors going through their paces. I even rigged an on the spot FX so it looked like an actor was taking a pee. When it was my turn to step up to the plate properly it got entertaining for everyone else and rather embarrassing for me. I ended up on my knees with this poor actor gluing a prosthetic pubic area to him. It looked very dodgy indeed and of course someone filmed it and put the damn thing on the internet!

That first day was brilliant and I had so much fun. One of the coolest things was meeting world kickboxing champion Zara Phythian. She’s an amazing martial artist and one of the humblest people I’ve ever met. Sadly on the second day things went downhill. Fast.

It started in the same way with the 100 mile road trip. It was raining and the forest was a quagmire but we were undeterred. Unfortunately the director had a former Big Brother contestant in to film that day and called a photoshoot before filming. So we waited and got wet and cold and muddy and then we waited some more. We ended up starting without the director and his actor and shot a couple of FX scenes. In one poor Zara had her hand nailed to a tree which I accomplished with a nifty little prosthetic piece.

The other involved a poor actor getting their guts ripped out which involved lots of blood and intestines that I made. After that we waited again. The final part of that day involved the Big Brother “star” who along with the director was the worst for wear after spending the photoshoot in a pub. We shot her scene and then called it a day. The cast and crew were all miserable and disheartened about what had happened. On their way back to the cars the director and his “star” got lost and apparently spent hours wandering around, lost in the forest.

The film died after that, stillborn and sadly never completed. It floundered for a while I was still attached and then took a bizarre turn for the worst when an American FX artist/director got involved. In the end it became the re-make that never was but I still came away from the failed project with some hard learned experience. One thing I learned was how not to direct a film and I put that knowledge to good use when I directed my own short film recently.

The other cool thing came from a simple question; Vic, Zara’s partner asked me “Can you do broken bones?” I gave my usual answer of “yes” and not long after I received the screenplay for a cool Brit ‘B’ movie thriller – Furor: Rage of the Innocent. The experience didn’t put me off making indie films but it did serve to highlight one of the sad sides of the game. I suppose the other thing I got from this disaster movie was a terrible distaste for working with reality TV actors. On a positive note I had a great new project to look forward to…

The end of Part Three

In Part Four: The Rage Takes Over

Tales From The Lounge #20

Sweet Dreams

Making Movies: Part Two

Clowning around

As a make-up artist I have a process when I receive a screenplay. I read it through once over a coffee to get the feel for it. Then I go in and start making notes on every single make-up and FX shot in the film. Sometimes that can be easy and sometimes it can take forever. I’m never happy though unless I’ve got a pile of paper full of notes, thumbnail sketches and scribbles at the end of the second read through.

One day a new script turned up in my inbox called Punchy the Clown; a nice serial killer romp with a twist of dark humour. There was plenty of blood and guts in the movie but one scene in particular had me in stitches as I read it. It also had me scratching my head about how I was going to accomplish it on camera. This would later become known as the “lasagne shot” and featured about a gallon of blood!

The premise of the film (which was re-titled to The Clown) involved a crazy Clown bumping off a group of friends in a series of gruesome and interesting ways. As an actor I had a small role as the coach of a women’s soccer team and of course filming my scene wasn’t straightforward. We chose the hottest day of the year for me to be acting and running round on a football pitch coaching a training session. I think I lost ten pounds that day! The rest of the film was a breeze for me because there was no more running, there was however blood; lots and lots of blood.

We had day shoots, night shoots, shoots in houses and in forests and a pub (best location ever!). Our cast were being bumped off one by one as we progressed in a series of delightfully inventive ways. We shot the film out of sequence (a common practice) and by some fluke I ended up in the Clown outfit on a couple of occasions. It was cheerfully entertaining killing my friends and a death in a shower scene with CJ was memorable for all the laughing that we did trying to be serious.

We had people getting strangled and chopped up with axes but we had exotic gags too like a water pistol full of acid! That involved some interesting attempts to make skin bubble and foam as it melted.

There was also a surreal dream sequence featuring Sandra Marie Lees where she is playing with her belly bar. She rips the bar out of her stomach and then plays with the bloody hole it has left. With her fingers probing the wound she then proceeds to slowly pull out her own intestines! It was trippy to film and the amount of giggling that went on as I applied the prosthetic and make-up made the process take about twice as long as it should have!

One scene in the script had made me laugh out loud when I first read it:

Mark takes a swing at Punchy. The clown grabs Mark’s arm and twist’s it round.

MARK (CONT’D)

Ow fucking hell.

The pair struggle for a few moments before Punchy yanks on Mark’s arm, ripping it out of its socket. Mark cries in pain and falls to the floor.

MARK (CONT’D)

Oww fuck!

Mark tries to crawl away. Punchy takes the DRIPPING LIMB, reaches into the wet end and pulls out the BONE. Using the bone he clubs Mark to death.

So easy to write! Not so easy to achieve on screen. We shot the scene in stages with a variety of prosthetics and about a gallon of blood. Ripping off Mark’s arm was relatively easy and I made a prosthetic arm for that. Of course you have to see the stump of his shoulder so that required a second prosthetic. And there obviously has to be TONS of blood which meant rigging the arm and the bloody stump with tubes to spurt and pump the O Neg through. On top of that I needed to devise a delivery system for the blood from scratch and then the bone being pulled from the stump of Mark’s arm which required yet another custom piece.

Of course we chose to shoot the scene on a suburban street late at night. Despite the complexities it was great fun to do and the cast and crew had a good laugh at how stupidly gory and messy it got. We finished off with the Clown slamming the bone (also custom made) into a bowl of blood to get it splashing nicely over him and in front of the camera. From a couple of lines on script, through hours of design and building and two nights shooting we get around a minute of actual screen time!

We also dealt with the challenge of filming in a working pub which raised all sorts of interesting issues. The cast were great and I had an absolute blast filming The Clown. Like all the classic bad guys he’s still around at the end of the movie so I keep hoping for The Clown 2. Maybe one day.

While we were shooting The Clown I received a phone call asking if I would be interested in a horror film re-make project. The producer/director had seen images of my work from Last Time She Lived and wanted me to provide FX for his film. I said yes and that led to a very interesting experience and some sobering lessons about this business.

The end of Part Two

In Part Three: When things go right and when they go wrong

Tales From The Lounge #19

Frosty Friends

Making Movies: Part One

In the Begining

Once upon a time…

I’ve been involved in independent film for several years now. It’s an interesting industry where there are limited (or no) funds, but there are great ideas, amazing people and lots of fun to be had. Sometimes things don’t work the way they were planned, projects fall through or grind to a halt. Sometimes it’s hard work and silly hours for no return other than enjoying making something. Sometimes it’s more than that.

I’ve been lucky enough to be involved both sides of the camera in a great many roles. I’ve done lighting and sound, camera work, make-up and Special Effects, I’ve acted and most recently I had the pleasure of writing and directing for the first time. That’s the great thing about indie film; if you want to you can get involved on every aspect of a production and you can learn so much and gain a greater understanding of the processes involved. I’ve even been lucky enough to act in scenes that I’ve provided the FX make-up for; which is quite a strange experience. The bottom line of course is that I love indie filmmaking completely.

It all started for me one day many years ago. I was teaching Performing Arts and one of my students introduced me to her brother Dominic Holmes. He was making a zero budget thriller and my name had been mentioned as a potential actor. I jumped at the chance and ended up playing a South African criminal called The Boss! That was the start of a long association with Loosecrew Productions that’s still going on today. I got to wear a suit, wave a gun around and menace people and I got shot; not as fun as it sounds.

The Boss was a mean guy with a thin veneer of civility who had a nasty habit of menacing women. He slapped them around, screamed and shouted, threatened them with a gun and in the end got his just desserts. It was a mad, fun ride shooting on digital video with a single camera whenever we got the opportunity. One of my favourite moments was when I was holding a reporter played by Simone Dunne hostage. I was using her as leverage to try and get back money that had been stolen from me.

We were in a cafeteria and Simone tries to escape from me. I pull my gun, walk after her, punch her in the nose and drag her back to her seat. Nice guy eh? During the one take I overextended and clipped poor Simone on the nose! She fell apart laughing and I fell into a panic; it was all fine but it went to show that the unexpected can and does happen.

The other standout scene for me was when I got shot. I was rigged up with a pneumatic system that had a large hose running down my back. We did the scene several times and let me tell you that no matter how cool it looks on screen there’s nothing more unpleasant than having cold film blood running slowly down your chest. All I could think at the time was “My Calvins!” as the blood seeped lower on each take. Good times. As soon as we wrapped that day I had to rush off to the theatre where I was providing make-up duties for a show all week. Never a dull moment and never a minutes rest. The Courier also has a great surprise cameo from a rather well known Hobbit, which was a brilliant example of seizing an opportunity; guerrilla filmmaking at its finest.

The next Loosecrew venture was Last Time She Lived a film about murder and witchcraft. I got to play the complete opposite of my previous character; this time I was DI Haker, the man investigating the murders. I pulled second duty as the make-up artist for the film, providing a string of bloody FX make-ups that would get me noticed for another production. One of the most entertaining make-ups was for a resurrection scene where I put together a series of FX showing the muscle and skin growing back onto a long dead witch. The poor girl started rotting and decomposing later in the film and I had great fun film showing that process too.

We had stabbings galore, a whipping, a hanging and I got to work with some great actors. I still laugh about the long day we spent on Cannock Chase shooting the finale in blisteringly hot weather. The entire cast caught the sun and as I was bald I ended up rather red by the end of it! I saw a deer on the Chase for the first time ever that day too; which was rather cool. During one scene I spent a happy afternoon conversing with a skeleton and ad-libbing my lines over and over; a bad habit I still have to this day. In another I got to play hero and save the girl.

It was giggle city saving kidnapped popstar Savannah played by pageant Queen and model Sandra Marie Lees. She collapses into my arms; I rush her to my car, throw out a quip and run off to save the day armed with a hockey stick. But it’s hard looking cool, concerned, determined and heroic when you and your co-star keep falling apart laughing. It’s a good job you can do multiple takes for a scene.

Rise of the Rebellion was a Star Wars fan film I got involved with, providing a host of aliens and acting again. There were green screens, awesome locations, lightsabers and Darth Vader! I even got to play two characters; an Imperial Officer and Jedi Knight. For the Jedi I shaved my beard and donned a wig, huge horns and a prosthetic. I always feel that knowing what it’s like to wear prosthetics, wigs or FX make-up and then have to act is an advantage for me as a make-up artist. I understand the process and I can empathise more with an actor that’s undergoing that type of make-up. It can be uncomfortable, it can take hours to apply and remove and in amongst all that you have to remember your dialogue and perform; not as easy as it sounds. Having said that…seeing yourself transformed into a completely different person is awesome!

The end of Part One

 In part Two: Killer Clowns and an unexpected surprise.

Tales From The Lounge #18

Do’s And Don’ts (Of Zoo Construction)

Tales From The Lounge #17

Math Class

50 Shades of Grey – A Male’s Perspective.

This is NOT a review – merely my own personal observations. For those intending to read the novel there may be spoilers ahead. You’ve been warned…

50 Shades of Grey seems to divide people into one of two reaction:

“I want my own Christian Grey” – a majority of the female readers.

“50 Shades of Shit!” – quite a few men who wouldn’t read it even if you held a gun to their heads.

There is a third reaction of “I’d never let a man do that to me.” But the general consensus seems to be that the ladies like Mr Grey.

I’m of the opinion that you shouldn’t judge something if you have no experience of it. That was the attitude that led me into reading the Twilight books (and my opinion of them never changed).

I read 50 Shades of Grey this week over two days with the assistance of a beer or three to help me along. I’ve had the book a while and speed read it once which drew me to thinking it was as terrible as I’d expected. But I figured it deserved a chance so I went for it again.

Bear in mind that I know I’m not the target audience here.

So…

It’s not a bad book and while it certainly isn’t great literature I can see some of the appeal it has. It has flaws certainly and I felt the first third was clumsy with stilted dialogue that would have been more at home in a Brontë classic. I felt it needed another re-write and some tight editing.

There were missed opportunities too. The most glaring for me was when Ana and Jose met for a coffee after his clumsy pass at her. That could have been developed into a great exploration of the character’s friendship and how it stood afterwards. Sadly it was reduced to a few lines of dialogue and then skipped completely. There are several scenes that end before they’ve begun and I felt that it would have been a smoother read if this was addressed.

The book certainly picks up after the introduction of Christian Grey. He’s an interesting character; flawed, with dark secrets in his past that may be revealed further down the line. Some of his dialogue seems off at times such as his constant use of the word “baby” which initially seems out of character.

Ana is less interesting to me but I do like her internal struggle with what she is experiencing. Her “Inner Goddess” musings seem to come from left field but after a while you accept them and it gives insight into her feelings.

Highlights for me are the emails which are a fun way to propel the story and offer something fresh. The message titles and the way they are signed off – “Two palms twitching CEO, Grey Enterprise Holdings Inc.” – are entertaining and provide a lighter side to Mr Grey.

The conversations between Christian and Ana can be sparkling and amusing at times and when they are they flow nicely and feel right. Sadly that isn’t the case all the time but it’s early days yet.

The BDSM (which sparked a LOT of comment) sits uneasily at times but is explored adequately. The sex is relatively graphic but it works in the context of the story and doesn’t seemed to be shoehorned in just to titillate.

One danger of this does strike me (sorry) in that with so many ladies saying they want their own Christian Grey men could be drawing the potentially eroneous conclusion that any girl who’s read this book will want kinky sex in their very own Red Room of Pain. That could get kind of awkward.

The book does wear its original source material in plain sight if you know what to look for:

The beautiful but enigmatic male lead with his adopted siblings and successful parents.

The deliberate emotional distance he places between himself and others and how he is drawn against his will into forming a romantic attachment.

The clumsy, unsure of herself female lead, unaware of how beautiful she is.

The childhood friend with a crush on the girl that she does not reciprocate.

The hero saving the girl when she’s in danger and rushes to be at her side.

The list goes on but you’re only aware of the similarities if you know that 50 Shades started life as a Twilight fanfic. It does provide unintentional amusement if you read one of the kinky sex scenes with the characters original names in it though!

The main standout for me was the ending. We don’t get Star Wars where we celebrate and everyone’s happy. Instead we get The Empire Strikes back with a traumatic event splitting our heroes up, leaving us wondering how the situation can be resolved in book 2. It’s a solid cliffhanger and a bold decision that I totally approve of.

I honestly don’t think 50 Shades of Grey is worth the attention it’s received; it’s a flawed book that I felt needed more work. But it’s also not worth the derision it gets from people that haven’t read it (that’s you men I’m talking to now) and as a first novel it a good attempt by an untested author.

It did succeed in one thing; I want to find out what happens next. Getting your reader to want to turn the page is probably the greatest achievement an author can have.

So it’s not the best thing I’ve ever read and I don’t think it’s really deserving of all the attention but it’s also not he worst book I’ve ever read either. And yes, I’ll be starting in on 50 Shades Darker later today – feel free to judge me all you want.

^_^

Tales From The Lounge #16

A Cunning Disguise

Tales From The Lounge #15

Late, Late, Late…