Regrouping

Hey everybody! time to collect our selves and do some more organizing...get ready to do another big shoot....write more, build more dirty-up costumes more.



Here are a few shots from the last few weeks to wrap up our recent progress:

first up the closeup makeup tests.






He I am with jared prepping the floor for the garage shoot.


Kevin and I during the shoot.


Here's Jen hanging out after the shoot, still in costume.



A week later we watched the dailies with the kinder.



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A few days after that we began working on another puppet.. this time out of rolled latex tentacles and an old portable T.V.

Marc started by coating some linoleum left over from our kitchen with the liquid latex.


we soon transfered the project to beneath the orange tree.


Marc sped things up with a hair drier.



Many layers of latex later we began rolling the tendrils.





Who'm I kidding, I'm just posing like a jerk! Marc did it all!


Mike faking it .



Here "we've" (i.e. Marc) attatched the first tentacles to the glove.



And Here's the robots head.


Eventually it will hopefully look something like this...



Thanks for looking!

J.G.Orrantia

First day of live action shooting!!!!!!

Here's our first day of shooting with the actors!!! Finally!!!


Here Danica is doing EVERYONE'S makeup. (I'll post the make up tests soon)


A nice behind the scenes shot with evan and jen and mandy and laurie and myself.


My favorite pic of mike for the night.


The main crew on set!!


And finally... as if you didn't know it ... DON'T mess with jen the security chief!!!


good morning to all and keep looking!!!

J.G.O.

Hey everyone! Another hectic and GREAT Friday! There were so many people at the J4 studio that we all spilled out into the yard! It was ALMOST overwhelming!


The Usuals showed... there's Marc and Kevin!


Our good friends Ed and Mike showed up! And it was Jen's cousin, Linda's last night in town!



We did fireworks with Jared! Here I am lighting one with the buddy.


Marc took somegreat pics of The boy twirling his sparklers through the night air.



Our friend Ken brought by his bitchin' camera for us to do tests with!


Here's Christian setting up the green screen to span the corner of the room. He lit the factory model just right! Some how it does'nt look like it's made out of garbage! The Magic Christian!


Here I am pulling some of my paintings off of the ceiling of the J4 workspace. Jen's cousin Linda's husband Alan is helping me. He will be driving away from L.A. in like 5 hours... good luck Alan... good luck. it's what like 1:30 right here....

Call when you get home!



Thanks for lookin' out everyone!
J.G.O.

Hey every one! Another great friday!

We have a few new puppets on the table, in the first stages of construction. So far only their foam sculls are shaping up.


We did a preliminary costume design and fitting session. The only one that came out of this one really was Danica's costume. Good thing since she's our Captain! Here are a few pics. These are early days yet so we have a ways to go here but... the initial impression so far is good! Take a look...







Amelia Earhart, eat your heart out you sickly little wench!! move over and let a REAL woman through!!


Here's one of the alien costumes for the opening. Again early days here...


And some more gratuitous shots of the city...





Keep checking in!!!

J.G.O.

VIDEO!!!

Hey everybody!
Jen and I finally got most of our ducks in a row and put a video test together! Here we are just dancing around with puppets to a song. It's the first time either of us has really done any puppeteering, so go easy on us... this is also the first time we've built real foam puppets, thank you Project Puppet. As I've written before the greenscreen is simple gartorboard painted with home depot house paint, and nailed to the studio's rafters. We just used the final cut pro color keying settings for this one. Next time we do an after effects pass first. OH Yeah! AAAnd we accidentally left one of the lights off so the puppets are dark on one side! We rock so hard...still it came out all right, I think.

Just to remind us what we're dealing with...

Hey everybody! We had a particularly great Friday gathering. It turned into the first day of shooting! Here's the pics of the surprise effects shoot we had.

Danica, the ship's captain, and Kevin who is playing one of the crew members were the first to arrive.
Danica is helping us keep the paperwork trains for the production running on time, on top of leading our little crew of misadventurers.

This is Christian! He's our awesome new D.P.


Here he's setting up the lighting for the alien city. He called us a couple of days ago, and told us he would have access to a red camera, and thought it would be great, to film some of our miniatures in high-def!!! I spent the whole next day fixing up the city, which had fallen into disrepair, over the years, to get it camera ready.


Our friend Joe Russo stopped by to help spin cities and wiggle fishy ships around. He didn't know, that he was gonna be pressed into service, doing manual labor on his friday night.
He just thought he was coming over for beer and pizza.


Here we are wiggling around the aforementioned fishy ship.


Mike stands ready with the egg whisk... just in case.

You can never be too careful!


Here's joe still waiting for his beer.


Mike jumps into action plying his whisk like a master!

Thank all that is good on this earth, that mike was on hand, to perform such an awe inspiring display of whiskery! Thanks to mikes fast whiskeration, we thankfully, will never know the tragedy that almost occured.


Christian sets up a lighting effect that Joe Russo suggested.



Here, we're rehearsing what it would look like. Marc is spinning the Russo contraption.

It ended up looking great!

Christian behind the camera checking out the shot.



Getting the back of the ship.


We also started figuring our our costumes. Kevin is modeling his crew jumpsuit. It's the only one that's working out so far!!! bummer...



As usual Marc is the last man standing. Here he is on his way out..

Goodnight Marc.


Thank you everyone for a great fun Friday night!
J.G.O.