Wild Surprises, Audio Files and Flashbacks

The word surprise usually isn't welcomed in the film biz. Sometimes, it's a delightful surprise like a funding source popping up from nowhere and saving the day. However, most of the time, surprises range from unpleasant to terrifying. A typhoon hits while filming a big budget movie in Hawaii (Jurassic Park) or the Burmese army invades your location looking for monks that escaped an opium farm (The Quest). This past week was one of surprises. Sandy was not the only disaster we had to deal with this week though it had an impact on a lot of what got done this week. All of the principals in Demonspawn are from the east coast. We all have family and friends who were in the path of the storm. The coverage was deeply troublesome as many hours passed without hearing from our loved ones. We spent a lot of time Monday and Tuesday making calls and sending texts. What wasn't time consuming was certainly distracting. The web series script got derailed. Needless to say, the plans to record for the podcasts were shot to hell by mid week. These things happen. We have a new date that should hold up for this week. More importantly, All of our loved ones weathered the storm pretty well.

Meanwhile, Jon is editing the audio files. There's been a lot of cursing which means that there's some issue that's popped up. Still, he hasn't stopped working which means the issue isn't fatal. It looks like we'll go live next weekend. Please keep in mind that the estimation is tentative. This week has hammered home the point that I should be very careful about putting anything in stone. Aside from the upheaval brought by Sandy, a long stalled documentary project suddenly lurched forward. It is a personal project, but it means a lot to a community that is world-wide. I had to seize the opportunity. Aside from this week, the documentary should not interfere with Demonspawn. I don't have any more shoots planned for that until after the web series wraps principal photography.

Flashback Fun

We plan to have a lot of fun with flashbacks of Simon's life in the distant past. I've mentioned that in past blogs that we will be doing Highlander: The Series style flashbacks on incidents in Simon's life that mirror the current situation he is in. That's great, because we can have all kinds of fun with locations and costumes and such. Also, actors tend to enjoy doing period pieces. We've found some amazing sources for costumes. Our Make-up Diva is working on hair pieces and sideburns. It's going to be awesome on it's own. On top of all of that, there is a fiendishly fun twist to the period flashbacks that everyone is looking forward to doing. However, there is another kind of flashback that we want to do that is far more problematic: scenes from the Delphi Project. We're going to have to digitally recreate the isolation chamber which means that movement within the scene would be limited. Re-doing the 'demon box' will depend on how much money we raise. We really want to re-buld it. It would be fabulous to place Owen's Molinar into the origin story. That would generate new promo art and book covers! That's something Jon and our FX guru are working on. Whether or not any DUG flashbacks appear in the web series depends on the results of the research.

That's it for now. I have one more blog obligation this weekend before I can get back to the script. I may do a blog during the week with podcast announcements, so check back here. You can also subscribe for updates at the bottom of the Menu on the right.