Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything
So I turned 42 over the weekend. I had a nice low-key birthday, just like I wanted. Had some bbq pulled pork for lunch, pizza for dinner followed by a birthday pie and watching THE ALIEN FACTOR and PHANTASM. Simple pleasures for a simple guy.
Checked the DEADLY PREMONITONS dvd and it's so close. Going to work with Mike to try and make sure the sound is in sync. Working on confirming a world premiere for it in August.
Still working here and there to try and finish old projects up.
So I am off tomorrow morning to the Crypticon Seattle convention with my buddies Rob, John and Mike. Here is a card I made to hand out in case I need to.
Looks like lots of cool panels (like Phantasm and The Fog) and lots of cool screenings scheduled. I'll try to take lots of pictures to share.
Sold Out! Second Screen! Platoon of the Dead World Premiere!
Wow! The world premiere of PLATOON OF THE DEAD last night at Salem's Northern Lights Theater Pub sold out! The management finally decided to add a second show on another screen beginning about 40 minutes after the original show. Supercool! Everyone got grossed out at the right parts, laughed at the few funny lines and seemed to dig the flick. John and I did a Q&A afterwards and then additional cast & crew in attendance came up for a few more questions.
DVD menu up on the big screen as John and I take some questions from the audience.
John and I doing Q&A
The PLATOON OF THE DEAD cast and crew take some questions. Chris Keown, Tyler David, Michelle 'Ame' Mahoney, John Bowker, Morgan Mayhem, Rob Merickel and me!
Me and Brother D from the Mail Order Zombie podcast. He interviewed John and I so I'll let you know when the podcast we're in is posted!
Brother D chatting with make-up man Rob Merickel.
Me and Tyler David after the premiere.
Michelle, me and Brent after the premiere.
I am such a ham.
My sister lines up a shot in a game she and I played at Sharky's after the premiere.
Amanda Bounds got all zombified for the screening!
Me with Robert J. Olin and Dori Schwartz, who both appeared in THE SEEKERS
Me with Marie, who seemed to be a prom queen zombie and was showing off her dvd!
Rob checks out Amanda's homemade rotting zombie flesh!
You can order your own copy of PLATOON OF THE DEAD from Tempe Video. Sweet extras include audio commentary with me and John, Behind-the-scenes featurette, Zombie House tour, Tough Tom’s Movie Boot Camp, and Tempe DVD trailers . Plus DVD-ROM content: Director & cinematographer interviews, cast & crew interviews, deleted scene and blooper reel. Cool!
Here is a sign I made to go on the door of a truck for an insert shot in EATER. I've just finished a very rough cut of EATER, in anticipation of some out-of-state friends coming to visit this weekend - their kids are in it with my son and I thought it would be fun to watch while they are down. It's clocking in at about 30 minutes and is a fun, goofy watch. I created three laserblast effects last night by pulling frames out of iMovie into Photoshop, drawing the lasers on, importing the frames back into iMovie and dropping them into the timeline. Next up is a bunch of insert shots plus music. That's all I can hope for by this weekend. After that I can take my time doing credits, fixing up some shots and other fine-tuning.
Meanwhile, I've done a little bit of work on the Welcome Sister segment of TWISTED FATES and will return to wrapping that up in June.
I've also reposted all of my Platoon of the Dead production diaries on my Dr. Squid site so that they could be read in chronological order. Check it out!
The World Premiere of PLATOON OF THE DEAD will be held Friday, May 29, 2009 at 9:15 p.m. at the Northern Lights Theater Pub, 3893 Commercial St. SE, Salem, Oregon. Admission is only $3! Cast and crew will be in attendance. Come on out!
Eleventh and Final Day of Shooting - We were able to get all but one of our zombie army from yesterday for today. Again we met at my house for make-up. Check out the holiday hardware!!
We took care of this shot on the floor of my living room.
Then we headed back up to Macdonald Forest.
It was COLD! At one point, we were hiding out in the cars waiting for the hail to subside! It rained off and on and at one point actually started to snow. Snow! How cool (pun intended) but not good for matching footage to stuff shot yesterday, not to mention a couple of months ago. John and I wracked our brains trying to figure out a way to make it work. We ended up having someone say a line about it being ash coming from the cities when they burn them out to get rid of the zombie army. Pretty clever, I thought. Not sure John will need it though, as it turned out it only snowed for a little while. Joe slipped coming down a hill and messed up his back, but I think that was the only injury we had.
Rob was the smart one, having brought his own chair to sit in, blanket, umbrella, and handheld game system to play as he waited for the next needed fx shot.
Lewis puts the squeeze on Tyler.
Chris is ready to blast some zombies!
Marie, Lewis and Joe are ready to attack! As our fingers and toes went beyond numb, we wound down the shoot, getting the last shots on the list.
It's crazy eye Rob!
Marie apparently loves guns. And was cold.
We said our goodbyes, but it wasn't quite the same as the last day at Marie's house. Tom, Ariauna and Michelle were missing and frankly the bitter cold made us all just want to go home and get warm! It was both thrilling and a relief to be done with the shoot.
As it turns out, I've been lucky enough to work with John, Rob, Michelle, Amanda, Ariauna, Joe and Marie on small and large projects since we wrapped PLATOON.
Once again, my buddy John was able to work his magic to somehow pull together a cast, locations, props, effects and equipment to create both a movie and a movie-making experience I'll never forget. The dedication and heart that everyone put into this thing was amazing. As it turned out, there would be a long post-production road ahead, full of technical problems and delays.
John was kind enough to let me work on editing some DVD extras including cast & crew interviews, behind-the-scenes segment, blooper reel and a tour of the "zombie house."
John also put together a hilarious extra called Tough Tom's Movie Boot Camp - I had a good time putting together this title card!
PLATOON OF THE DEAD is scheduled for release by Tempe Video in June of 2009, about a year-and-a-half since we finished those last shots in the woods. It's going to rock! Thanks to everyone for reading! Now go buy a copy so we can make another one!
Tenth Day of Shooting - John, Rob, Chris, Amanda and Tyler met over at my house in the morning. Lewis had a bunch of guys from his National Guard unit scheduled to show up to play zombies, but once again, he was the only one that showed up!
A few phone calls and trips later, we had one of Chris' friends, Joe and Marie, Lewis' son and two of his friends on board. Luckily Lewis had a bunch of fatigues and gear, so everyone was outfitted and made-up as the zombie army!
'Tis the season for zombie joy.
Three hours behind schedule, we headed out to a place called Bald Hill Park and marched all of our stuff in.
There is an open barn at the top of the hill that we used as our base. The fact that it had no walls didn't help much with the freezing wind!
Though it was windy and freezing, we managed to get what we needed shot and finally wrapped it up as it started getting dark. One more day left...
Joe and Marie enjoyed a moment of zombie love in the parking lot.
Joe went shopping at Safeway in his zombie make-up. He was looking in the meat section for brains.
Tom and Ariauna slept at my house again last night. This morning my wife snapped this shot before I left for work of me, Tom, Ariauna and John. John made the trip to the airport to saw Tom and Ariauna off.
As always, it's bittersweet - fast friendships are made on movie sets and it all seems to end before you want it to. Both Tom and Ariauna were fantastic actors and real troopers when it came to pitching in and working those long, cold hours, even while being away from the comfort and safety zone of home. I'd work with either of them again in a heartbeat.
So it is back to the grind for me until December when we shoot a weekend of pick-ups out in the woods. I'm shivering just thinking about it!
Ninth Day of Shooting - Today was the last day of the all-in-a-row part of the shoot, and the last day for Ariauna and Tom. It's a good thing because Ariauna is ready to get out of this place!
Everyone was getting a bit crazy on this last day of the main part of the shoot.
Amanda and Tom are getting ready to declare a thumb war!
What the hell kind of movie is this?!!
We shot scenes in the bathroom (like Tom getting all creepy, above) and some fighting in the kitchen area and got a whole bunch of cast photos.
Ladies and gentlemen, the cast and crew of Platoon of the Dead!
Michelle shows off her tattoo!
Tyler really loved being a part of the movie, but I don't think John quite understood his idea of "love."
Tyler and Tom are very supportive of Michelle's acting career.
I asked and I asked, but I only got Tom to go topless for this shot.
Michelle spent all day burning CDs of photos from the shoot for all of us to take home. Amazingly sweet. There were a lot of laughs and a lot of hugs today.
Eighth Day of Shooting - We met up at my house (and Tyler took a snooze on my couch while we waiting for everyone) and then bundled up and headed out to Macdonald Forest for a bunch of outdoor shooting.
Johnathan Jacoby joined us and came with his own set of fatigues! Rob set up a gag with a tree branch sticking though the middle of Johnathan and when he started screaming for the scene I would've thought that branch really WAS stuck through the middle of him!
Next up we shot a bunch of scenes with Tyler and Tom in the woods and then Chris met up with us for some more woods scenes. We were scheduled to shoot until dusk but since we had no zombie extras show up, we had shot everything we could by the mid-afternoon.
We headed back over to the Corvallis house to pick-up some scenes with Chris and Ariauna that we ran out of time for on the first weekend.
Seventh Day of Shooting - Another day of shooting at Marie's house and we are starting to get loopy. The long days and lack of sleep are catching up with all of us.
A few of the cast members are dealing with college finals this week, and some are catching cat naps on the floor between set-ups (like Amanda, above). John and I have started laughing a few times over tiny things and have not been able to stop for a while. The worst was that I ended up shooting for a good 45 minutes on a big scene in the living room with the wrong lighting set-up (day vs. night). I flipped out when I realized it and felt horrible about it but we had so few people trying to do so many things a slip up was bound to happen. John chatted with me outside and I convinced him to let me re-light and start over, noting that since we'd already run through it, we'd worked the kinks out and could catch up to get back on schedule. And that is just what we did.
Earlier we shot Ariauna's barfing scene. John made up a mix of graham crackers and water and boy did it look gross!
Ariauna made a special point that she would do the scene but didn't want to see it! Obviously, everyone else did!
Michele, Tom and Jesus.
Tom Stedham wonders to himself, "Why the hell am I here?"
Tom makes fire to keep us warm in the shop.
Ariauna loves a man with a cup full of pudding.
My wife drove out to put the lasagna in the oven for dinner and boy was it good!
Afterwards, Tom had to be made up as a zombie soldier again, and boy did he not like getting made-up again!
