Tromadance

Anyway, the Troma visit went well and they liked the movie. However, Picnic at Hanging Rock isn't that well known in America so we talked about cutting some of the trailer into the start of the film and submitting it to Tromadance, which will come out in April.



You can see the excitement on the Troma-ites faces in this photo. "Hey! Come back!"





It was great to see the place but Lloyd wasn't there. I got shown around by his assistant Justin. It was all pretty casual actually. Here's a print for the Toxic Avenger laying on the floor. Justin told me they are just starting to work on Toxic Avenger V, The Toxic Twins.

The Invasion of Tromaville

I managed to infiltrate Troma's top command base in New York






Notice how Lloyd Kaufman's desk is empty.



I took full advantage of this and instantly took over the company.



Here I am having one last look at Troma's collection of 800 films before I had them all incinerated and replaced by my one DVD.

Local Drunk Makes Good!

Fine, but I didn't say those things. Not like that anyway.

They also stuffed up the youtube link.

http://free-press-leader.whereilive.com.au/news/story/the-hills-in-scary-flick/

Peter Weir

Here is a letter I sent off to Peter Weir's PO Box with a DVD.
So if he opens his mail, he'll watch it.

Dear Mr Weir

You may notice some resemblance of the enclosed DVD to your movie Picnic at Hanging Rock. Which is a wonderful film, but seems to be lacking in two major areas.

Firstly, “what happened to the girls?” and secondly, “what does Miranda look like with her gear off?”

We have attempted to correct this oversight with our version of an unofficial “sequel” or “final chapter.”

Our complete failure to resolve these two questions in any form has resulted in this travesty of good film making and Australian culture.

We hope you enjoy it and if we ever meet in person that you do not try to kill us.


Sincerely yours





Clint Cure Kieran Mangan

Sedition Films

Electundra 21st Nov

There's another screening as part of the Electundra Audio Visual Festival.

The session starts a 1pm and goes to about 3pm.
Hanging at Picnic Rock plays around 2pm.

Im not sure yet wether it's at Loop Bar or not. I'll have to wait till they update their site.

Here is the old website from last year;

http://www.electundra.com/

Trasharama Premiere

Hanging at Picnic Rock's official Australian premiere is at the Trasharama A-Go-Go Festival in Adeladie. It then tours with the Fest on the following nights at a few other states. The Festival itself has a few more shows, as you can see on their website: http://www.trasharama.com.au/
but, to my knowledge, these are the nights, dates and venues for the program that includes PaHR in the line-up.

Be warned, Trasharama A-Go-Go is not for the squeamish. PaHR is one of the more mild films.

Adelaide Mercury Cinema 13 Morphett st, Oct 2nd open 7.30pm

Bendigo Newmarket Hotel beergarden, Oct 6th open 7.30pm

Warranabool Loft, 60 Liebig st, Oct 7th open 7pm

Geelong Barwon Club, 509 Moorabool st, Oct 8th films start 8.30pm

Melb Glitch Oct, 318 Georges Rd, Nth Fitzroy, 9th open films start 7.30 & 9.45pm

Hobart Brisbane Hotel, 3 Brisbane st, Oct 10th films start 8pm

Sydney Mu Mesons, cnr Trafalgar st & Parramatta Rd Fri 16 Oct open 7.30pm

Nimbin Nimbin Hotel, 17th Oct films start 7.30pm

Canberra Tuggeranong Arts Centre, cnr Cowlshaw & Reed st, Oct 14th open 7.30pm

Gold Coast Arts Centre, 'Basement theatre' , 135 Bundall Rd, Surfer Paridise, 28th Oct meals from 6pm films 7.30pm

Brisbane The Globe, 220 Brunswick st, Fortitude Valley, 29th Oct doors open 7.30pm

Rockhampton, Walter Reid Centre, cnr East & Derby st, Nov 6th doors open 7.30pm

Perth The Castle Hotel, cnr Newcastle & Stirling st, Northbridge. Nov 20th films 8.30pm

I'll be going to a few nights so I'll report back to the blog.

Also, coming up, is the Electundra Festival at Loop Bar in November.
I didn't even apply for that one they contacted me.
I've sent off to a couple of other festivals so I'll post any other updates.

ABC Gallery Screening

Our cast and crew sreening was a hit (amongst cast and crew). Thanks to everyone who dragged them selves away from their Gran Final hangover and came along. I sat the first screening out with the kids, so I didn't get to see what people laughed at. We didn't want them to be exposed to such extreme violence so we sat in my van and watched Elmur Fudd blow Daffy Ducks head off.



My very own personnel highly trained hit squad (photo by Amy even tho she's in it).



See, in real life Michelle and Priscila are friends (photo by Michelle).



Zak and Michelle get ready to re-enact their funniest scene (photo by Michelle).

DVD disc

It'll look like this in keeping with the theme. I can't afford to print them all so some will be sticky labels.
Hope they are all done in time.

YEP

I think this is best thing I've ever done. One of my friends said "this is the best film any of our friends have ever made", however, one guy said "well I can't say it's good but...".

I may need to raise some money on the night for his hospital bill.

Cast and Crew Screening

On Sunday 27th of September at ABC gallery.
Details soon.

Dodgy, Hand-painted Cover Art which Vaguely Resembles Contents of Movie - Check!

Working on the DVD now. Going for an old VHS look, as with the film itself. I have sent a copy to Trasharama but I think I might get it swapped by the copy I did today.

Which is THE FINAL CUT! on Monday the 31st of August.

Still need to talk to ABC gallery and set a date for the screening.

Almost, but no Banana

I've sent a copy of the film to Trasharama. But I'm not happy with the sound and plan to re-send it.
I basically want to turn it all down and the music up.

I've also started work on the DVD, the cover, I've decided to hand paint (to the best of my ability) in a Frank Frezetta style.

Here's a dodgy photo of it in progress I took with the world's crapest phone.

Trailer

I've whiped up a trailer and stuck it on Youtube.

Good thing someone else is doing the titles cos the one I knocked up ain't so hot.

You can hear how well the music works tho.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KTwlRWgc_80

Music Score

I spent a couple of sessions with Peter Jetnikoff who has composed and performed the excellent music on an old synthesiser called a KORG MS-20. John Carpenter used it on all of his films and so did all the old Atari games. That's a total lie, but it did come out in 1978, the same year as Halloween. Daft Punk use one as well.

We've gone for a "John Carpenter" feel which a few people will notice, as well as it sounding very eighties.

P.J. also runs a film night, called Shadows, at the ABC gallery where we'll have our cast and crew screening of the film. More about that later. There's a link to Shadows in this blogs profile section.

Sedition Films Logo

This is an Ident I designed for Sedtion Films, or, in this case, Home Video. You can have a look on Youtube;

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uiNEX8xVEt4

It's meant to look like a really dodgy home video distributor, hence the horrible colours and crappy music. I also dropped it onto video and wrecked the tape a little.

SFX

Wooh! Does that say SEX? Well unfortunately not. I'm working on the Sound and Special Effects. Mixing a lot of screaming with gurgling blood sounds. I'm also hand doing some of the Visual Effects. Here's a sample frame, which you may be surprised at how well it works moving fast with good sound.



Or maybe you'll think it looks shit, in that case, don't talk to me.

Saturday May 23rd - Last Shoot

That was the last shoot with any cast. I took along one of my more conservative students, Jamie, pictured above. He is a very "special" person and has some trouble distinguishing fantasy from reality. For example, "you're helping on a film" (reality) "this will go towards your final mark" (fantasy). In this picture he mourns the death of his dummy, Steve, who we dressed in drag and threw off a cliff at Mt Macedon. A place very close to Hanging Rock but not Hanging Rock.
Melanie is wondering what it must be like to teach a class of such "special" people.

Hopefully Jamie's mum doesn't know who I am as I made him late for work.

We also tore off Laura's arms and drenched her in blood in the freezing cold wind and dropped her off home with her favorite jeans stained in red food colouring and sticky carob syrup. Aah she'll get over it.

Thrasharama Deadline

It's getting close. I better pull it out.

Cast - Zombies - Melinda and Melanie and others.

Melinda and Melanie? - They kind of play the same person. I couldn't get Melinda back so I asked Melanie to stand in for her. Then I cut out most of her shots. Oh well, (again). You do get a glimpse of her in one shot.
The thing is, I figured I could get away with putting a wig on her and no one would notice that Mel and Mel are completely different people. Melinda has long straight dark hair and Melanie wears a curly, dark purple? wig with a head band? Yep, there was a bit of mix up there. But once again, no one seems to notice. Movies, they are so magical. For example no one got paid in real money! Just pixie dust!





You see? Twins!

Actually Penelope and Priscila also play Zombies in a couple of shots. Why I even put on one of the dresses and ran around in my back yard but I didn't film that. That was a private matter.



Above is Priscila taking some time out to get to know some of the rest of the cast. Hey, don't take her the wrong way. Kissing your severed head is what they do over there.

Cast - Zombies - Lara and Chantelle

OK, so in the film PAHR, three girls and a school teacher go missing, one of the girls is found so that leaves two and the teacher. Well that's just not enough school girls for the "sequel" HAPR.

In this film there's four (or five), hard to tell really, and who cares? As long there is plenty of mayhem, catfights, dismemberment and zombie blood I don't think anyone will really give a rats.

It's just best if you don't think about it. Like the end of Terminator.



Lara Picone - Is one of those rare actors who will do anything I tell them without asking difficult questions like "isn't this dangerous?", "are we getting paid?", "is it really necessary that the director be nude for this scene?". I love those kinds of people. She was quite willing to be kicked in the gut and fall onto a pile of rocks but I decided to put a mattress down for her as I knew I'd need her in a couple more shots.



Chantelle - Was in the script as a Zombie called ribbons. The idea was that she'd get her head mashed and you'd still identify it by her ribbons. But on the day, I forgot to tell her to wear them. Oh well. Still we stuck a knife in her head and poured a lot of goo in her hair.
Here is a quote from an email she sent me after she read the script "no matter which girl I play I'm still going to die a gruesome bloody death. I've always wanted to be killed in a horror flick."

See how happy I made them?

Dodgy FX Master

Here's a shot you'll never see. Pasta head! I'm going to have another go at that one. After Karl's excellent "man ripped in half thing" I've gone rather down hill as far as effects go. I read about Troma using effects such as cooked spaghetti so I figured, "hey I'll use pasta, that'll look like bone?"
Not really, as you can see.
Another bit of 'genius' was using canned spaghetti, instead of the long cooked stuff. I seem to have gotten away with that one. If you look closely at the pic below you may even see the can somewhere.

Note to self: if the FX guy leaves the shoot, get another one, don't do it all yourself.

It's a wrap!

On Sunday 31st at 3:40 pm we got the last shot after 52 takes. You can see from the photo that our hand model, Michelle Clarke, literally sweat blood due to the stress involved from working under such a perfectionist director. Keiran had to interveen as it was obvious I couldn't bring myself to stop. He gently placed his hand on my shoulder and whispered in Latin "is "Consummatum est" in English "it is finished". I began to weep uncontrollably and cry out "Never, Never!" until he spoke the words in Klingon "Dor-sho-gha! Aaron forshak!" or in English "Let's drink Aarons wine".

The wrap party invovled myself and Keiran Mangan dressing up as characters from 2001 a Space Odessy and drinking sherry. It lasted for 8 seconds and the stripper never showed, tho she may have as I don't remember much from those 8 seconds.

The edit is also pretty close to done, just audio tracks, some post FX and a colour grade and it's in the bag!

I'll still review the last 3 weeks of shooting and pop up the single wrap party photo on this blog soon.

I'll have a cast and crew screening in Collingwood and Belgrave when it happens.

So the shoot has taken 4 months. It really should have taken 4 days.

Cast - The Screws - Michelle and Amy

When I told Michelle about the film she asked me if she could be in it. It suddenly struck me that I role I intended to play myself (in drag) would be perfect for a primary school teacher. Although Michelle doesn't have an offical acting career I am fully aware of the teachers need to put on an act in front of a room full of sceptic's who really want you to crack up and walk off crying.
Michelle plays Appleyard who is the headmistress in the "original" film.



Amy plays a gaurd called Porter, which is a dummed down version of the french teachers name, Mlle. de Poitiers, which I can't pronounce properly anyway. And I'm meant to be French.
There's also an Irma, Sara and Marion, who I have changed to Irma, Sarah and Maria. How clever is that?

Amy has been a first AD on a few projects but has given it up to pursue a lucrative career in acting. By some bizarre accident she stumbled onto this film and became sidetracked. Her life is now in ruins and you can often find her sitting outside Young and Jacksons on Flinders street with a bottle of cheap cooking sherry and wreaking of vomit.

Worst Director Ever

This cartoon, by Tilman, warrants some explanation. This might take a while. It's referring to my last student shoot which went quite badly. On our return to school I had discovered that word had already got around that I was wreaking of alcohol, stoned, and that I'd nearly killed my dog.

THE DOG - The shoot was on location in Castlemaine, which seemed like a nice place. I'd booked cast and crew into a hotel and a caravan park. I brought my dog with me as I figured he could sleep in my van at night and hang around with us in the day.
When we got to the GREAT NORTHERN Hotel in Castlemaine it was discovered that out room didn't have a key. "It's OK, we just leave everything open." Of course no one wanted to stay there so I decided to stay in the Northern myself as I'd already paid for it (more of that later) as the caravan park would not take the van in with my dog in it, so I left it outside with him tied to it. One day, I was meant to drop in for a quick meeting and left the dog in the car, WITH THE WINDOW OPEN and a BUCKET OF WATER! After a HALF HOUR! someone noticed so I went and got him out. It WASN'T REALLY THAT HOT COS I HAD THE WINDOW OPEN!

STONED - Apparently the volunteer caterers supplied some "special" muffins to cast and crew on the night of the shoot. I wasn't aware of this until much later but while it was used against me at school some of the crew said "I wouldn't have got through that night if it wasn't for those muffins."

DRUNK - Towards the end of the shoot one of the actors gave me a shot of whisky from his hip flask. OK, I shouldn't have and he shouldn't have been drinking but it was late, cold, we were nearly finished and it was ONE SHOT for fuks sake. It may have been that or it may have been that I'd been up all night in my clothes as the arseholes at the Great Northern would stay up and party all night then their ugly teenage kids would get up in the morning and shout obscene things to each other outside my door.

IN CONCLUSION - What did I learn from this experience? I'm not really sure but I did learn that some people really are arseholes and when you're falling they'd rather kick the shit out of you than help you up. DON'T HAVE THESE SORT OF PEOPLE ON SET!

Crew - Kieran Mangan

Ever heard of "suffering for your art"? Well bollocks to that! Do what I do and get someone else to suffer for you. Kieran has helped me on a number of projects including walking the streets of Brunswick in a blood covered suit, holding up things, carrying things, being attacked by sandflys on a hot beach, holding up things, scriptwriting, taking over direction when I'm too stressed to think, carrying things etc
On this shoot he is doing a lot of D.O.P. work but is quite happy to hand me the camera and carry heavy objects when I don't feel like it.

Kieran Mangan, everyone should have one!

Cast - Prisoners. Laura, Tahnee and Priscila.

Here we see Laura and Karl with Karl's common expression "stay away from my ex" he often directs towards me. Laura wanted to be a Zombie but I made her be a prisoner. She would of made a fine Zombie but I think she has a bit of a bad girl look going on already so I stuck her in the chain gang.

Disclaimer - none of this is true. Karl and I often swap X and current girlfriends at our cocaine fueled orgy's.



This is Tahnee waving goodbye as she is escorted off the set for her outlandish and crude sense of humour. Her vulgar antics are not tolerated on a film of this calibre and so she's being sent back to the more appropriate Channel 31 where she is a host of a children's television show. Apparently kids like this sort of thing.
Tahnee wanted to be Porter but her police record barred her from carrying a gun of any sort.

Disclaimer - of course none of this is true. Just look at her, as if.



It wasn't until Priscila was telling me about life in Rio De Janeiro by swearing at me in Portuguese and holding a knife to my throat that I decided she should be in this film. I also like to hang out with her and see my ex's faces drop when they meet her. I was considering wooing her with my charming ways until I realized she'd rather stay with her wife-beating, crack-head, boyfriend than go out with an internationly award winning film maker.

Disclaimer - Priscila's Boyfriend works full time helping homeless children in impoverished third world countries. He is a close friend of Bishop Desmund Tutu and an award winning chef and state champion steer wrestler.

Crew - Karl VonBamburga (or something)

Karl was in charge of our high budget special effects. In this photo you can see that he's about to dig a tunnel when it was noticed on arrival, on the first day of shooting, that the entire film was meant to be located in a vast underground network of criss-crossing caves and not a sunny forest setting at all.
His job also included throwing goo onto girls dresses which, luckily, he has a fondness for but seemed to often miss and get their faces instead.
Unfortunately Karl had to leave the production, half way through, when he was attacked and eaten by a Gorilla from another shoot.

Props - Vomit Girl

The popular "vomit-girl" magazine was created by Aaron Odonnel and was inspired by a party invite I have somewhere of a cute girl vomiting in the gutter.
In fact it's proving to be so popular that another issue may show up in another film. Watch out for it, it's great!


In the photo above Zak proudly shows off a picture of his mum whilst Tahnee trys to find contact information to sign up as a vomit magazine model. Michelle looks on with approval as she remembers her time as a vomit girl magazine pin up very fondly.

Coincidence or Syncronicity

Is it just me or does Aaron look a bit like Dur Golem in that last pic?

Blood

We are using a lot of fake blood on this shoot (as Penelope discovered). I found a few useful recipes off this site;

http://www.halloween-website.com/fake_blood.htm

This is the one we've used the most (or something like it)

"Homemade Fake Blood

1 c. Karo Syrup
1 Tbsp Water
2 Tbsp Red Food Coloring
1 tsp Yellow Food Coloring

Mix together in a mixing bowl and you're done. Try adding blue or yellow for a different shade."

I've also used the chocolate one, and the gravy one looks easy and cheap. The Karo ones good but a little hard to find bulk Karo Syrup. It also washes out of peoples clothes very easily if you soak them in Napi-san.

We mix three different colours, red for humans and black and yellow for zombies as I didn't want to use green. We're in the bush, there's green everywhere, how much green do you want?

Funny enough, black and yellow, together make green.

I have also found that you need to store the stuff in the fridge or it grows mould after a week or so.

Cast - Samantha Hill

Samantha plays Edith who I describe as someone who really shouldn't be in prison. In fact all I had to say to Sam was "you shouldn't be here" and she got it. I gave her the biggest pair of overalls so she'd look as awkward as possible, which she'd use by pulling her large sleeves over her hands when she was threatened.
A very talented actor, I've never seen someone so "in the moment" and so able to switch it on and off at anytime.
Sam is also the only person I cast who auditioned on tape. I was thinking of putting the audition tapes on the DVD but Sam's was so moving and personnel that I've since decided against it.

Early on, when the prisoners first got together, they decided to work out their own personnel histories. Apparently Edith is a kleptomaniac, not sure what the others are but I'd like to find out.

She also had to scream a lot and get goo chucked on her.

Pick Ups 1 - Stuntman Aaron

OK. So it's a good looking bike but it runs like shit. A few shoots back we took the bike along and tried to get some shots of Penelope and Samantha riding it. It has a few problems and has to be roll started. The plan was to get it going and then get Pen and Sam to hop on. However we couldn't get it to keep running and so tried to roll the bike in with them on it. Hopefully building up enough speed for them to balance. As the bike is really not made for a passenger this proved to be way too difficult to balance, especially for someone who has only just started to learn how to ride a motorcycle.
I decided to have another go, this time with Aaron (an experienced rider and owner of the vehicle in question) and his better half, Michelle.
This was another frustrating day as the old engine just seemed to get worse each time we started it. For some reason the clutch is not holding properly which means that the bike wants to pull away when its stopped and then conks out, which is why we tried to roll it on the previous shoot.
I went back to Wrights Forest as its more hilly and we ran it sometimes and rolled it other times. It was still very difficult to balance a passenger on the back and so I tried out a few different angles.
We didn't get much done and gave up when the light went but when I looked at the footage later, it actually doesn't look too bad.

Shoot Day 7 - April 25th

Well, that's the last big day over. And I had to cut that one short due to the grim weather. Still we got a lot done and even a bit of sun. Most of the cast have finished up but there's still a sequence to shoot where Laura has her arms torn off which requires a few people. I've put that off due to the weather again. I'm shooting some pick ups this weekend but we've really knocked off most of the film now. It's all down hill from here. Yipee!

Music Clip

On a side note. My music clip did play in Fed Square, but I unfortunately never got to see it.
Brad Picken, who organised the event, took these photos.

Shoot Day 6

Saturday, 28th March. At Shiprock Falls again, this time with a bigger cast and crew and a motorcycle wrangler; Rodford Belchur.
Things went well again but we did have had a couple of problems, we couldn't work out how to turn off the zebra stripes for a while and when I looked at the rushes I found that the first shots we took were out of focus.
But the biggest problem was the bike, it would start up but kept conking out so we tried to roll it in but couldn't get up enough speed for it.
I'm thinking of taking it back to Wrights forest where we have more of a hill.

Of the more successful things to stand out was Lara poking out Tahnee's eyes.
It really looks like she's gouging away.
A little bit hard to see in this still but it looks great when its moving.

Locations

I always like location scouting. You start to get into the mood and visualize the film.
I went out with Keiran, Karl and Laura to Hanging Rock for a look around but thought it was just a bit too hard to get to and too many tourists.
Still we had a nice day.

I asked a few people about somewhere closer and it was Dan Burke who suggested Shiprock Falls which is where we've been doing most of the filming.

The other location is Wrights forest near Cockatoo which is where we were the first day. All very picturesque.

You can see most of them on this YouTube clip.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oxFL1-PNfFY