Too much of a good thing

 

 

 

Too much of a good thing can be wonderful - Mae West

I'm a nice, ruddy, crisp sunburnt and I desperately need some sleep, but it was a wonderful weekend.

Saturday morning I joined Murray Triplett, Greg Johnson and Brandon Smith in a canyon in Eagle Mountain to shoot the short film Anthems of War. They put together a great production. Several collectors brought in authentic vehicles and weapons, and Dave Larsen's whole family was there doing make-up and effects.

I thought I would just be helping out behind the scenes, but as soon as I showed up Murray had me jump into costume to stand in as Levi Larsen's corpse. So Dave created a bullet exit wound in my head and I spent some time face down in a field.

After I got a chance to clean up, I got back to just doing some general helping out around the set. Looks like this film will be good. Special thanks to Bryon Darby for taking great on-set stills.

Then at 6pm I left the set and met up with Kyle Mallory to film the script I blogged about last week. I ended up playing the part of James, which I thoroughly enjoyed. We filmed just a little farther up in the same canyon, and shot night scenes until 2am.

The next morning at 8 we started up again and shot in the desert all day.

To commemorate the long hours this weekend, and to remind myself that although I may enjoy putting in these kinds of hours, I shouldn't expect others to put in these kinds of hours on my projects on a regular basis, I ordered myself a 12 on 12 off hat.

Channeling my inner nerd

Hi. My name is Jim and . . . I'm a nerd

(Everybody together: Hi Jim)

That's why I was the perfect guy for the job when Kyle Mallory wanted someone to write a script about two people on a road trip arguing about which is better: Star Trek or Star Wars.

I first met Kyle on the set of a Star Wars spoof called Rehash of the Chlorians. He was an actor in that one, sporting a Ewan McGregor style Obi-Wan Kenobi beard. I just helped out with miscellaneous grunt work, like laying behind the set and shaking the droid every time it was supposed to chirp and whistle.

As part of a filmmaker group, Kyle has to make a short film every thirty days. Last month I helped him write the script for his project, and this month he asked me to join him again.

For my part, I'm enjoying having deadlines and a reason to have to get something written. Why do I have to have a deadline to get anything done? I don't know. I don't make up the rules, I just try to figure out what they are and work with them.

This script took a lot of research, but it was also fun to air all my grievances with both Star Trek and Star Wars. I'm very interested to see how it translates to the screen.