An amazing animated period piece.

Serenade to Miette from Toniko Pantoja on Vimeo.

Shooting Schedule

Hey! It's official. I just paid the deposit on the stage today, and here's the plan.

I would love it if you can watch College, Steamboat Bill Jr. and The General before the shoot. They are all Buster Keaton films and even though we're not going slapstick, I love the performances and the overacting.

My house
Saturday June 4th
4pm to 6pm - blocking rehearsal.

Atomic Studios
2556 East Olympic Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90023

Saturday June 18th
9am to noon - Shooting the opening loading dock
Noon to ? - TBD

Sunday June 19th
9am to noon - Shooting the extras shots
Noon to ? - TBD

Over the next three weeks, I will be figuring out our schedules as some scenes require everyone and other scenes require two or three people tops. Once I get that done, I will publish the call times here.

Atomic Studios is awesome.

I just went there tonight on my way home from work. It's a 24 hour studio that is much bigger than I thought it would be. I tentatively booked it for the 4th and 5th, so hopefully my entire cast will be able to make that date. Ooooh. Now I'm getting excited.

Teresa said "Can you try and shoot everything in one day? That place is really expensive!"

Silly rabbit.

Attention, cast!

We will be using Stage 101to shoot this thing in.

Actually, no, we won't. No wonder I haven't heard back from them. Or rather, in a timely manner. They're out of business. Yep. Got a form email tonight. Went down there to look. Now the building is some kind of dance facility for the neighborhood. Oh well.

We will probably be shooting at Atomic Studios instead. They charge more, but they're still in business, which just goes to show.

I've emailed them and haven't heard back yet, but the facility looks like it should be perfect.

Originally, we were going to have the first shoot the weekend of the 14th & 15th of May but I need to book the studio a week in advance. (That's what all the books say, anyway. I've never done this before- I really don't know for sure.)

I didn't hear from most of the cast until this evening and so I decided to hold off on the shoot until I heard from everyone and then use June 4th & 5th as the first shoot, and follow that up with the 11th & 12th as the second shoot.

I only need the entire cast (and six to eight extras) together on one half day. The rest of the time we will focus on the individual interactions- Fanny and Farnsworth, Fanny and Wu, Fanny, Glowerston and Mulvey, etc. Once I nail the script down completely I will be determining how best to use the time for all of these breakdowns.

Thanks for your patience! Here's to a year and a half in prepro!

Golightly ver. 2.0

So I was perusing the web the other night, looking for inspiration for alternative vehicles to populate my opening shots with and came across this:

This was a logo the wonderful Voyages Extraordinaires had used for a while. It turns out there was this fellow named Charles Golightly who patented an aerial steam rocket in 1841. Though it was never built, (probably because to have done so would have instantly killed any rider brave enough to give this thing a go!) the device became quite popular among newspaper editors and political cartoonists. There is an excellent history here.

From a personal standpoint, I thought this was the very thing my film needed. And so I present the Golightly ver. 2.0!

Truthfully, this thing couldn't really fly either, but it looks awesome and after all, that's what really counts. Right?

Another test for you!

I had to fix Jakes eyes as he was looking at the camera the entire take, and this was the only coverage I had as a close up. It ended up working out anyway and just as a test I added the text of what he was saying.

One of the things I've noticed is that the dialogue cards tend to interrupt the flow of the scene a little. Most times, it's ok. But having subtitles of a sort helps out with that, if they're creative!

Here's a test of the opening scene.

I'm pretty happy with it although there are some issues. The blimp is moving too fast, some of the people look like they are leaning backwards, and several elements are missing. (Live actors up close, more digital people, a car, several blimp like ships and the like. But it's working!