M of H update

Lots of great stuff happening on all fronts.

First, the second episode of SWIMKATA starts filming next week. A lot of night shoots, which I can't go to because of my job, but I'll try to grab some pics.

And our first full Devon/Andy, Masters of Humility solo project in a while, BABY PALIN, finished its first day of shooting. BABY PALIN stars my girl Zoë as an adorable (and staunchly conservative) toddler version of the Republican VP candidate. Here's some on the set pics...


Tomorrow we shoot Gregg Lopez as a folk singing troubadour increasingly troubled by BABY PALIN's actions, and then Thursday the hilarious Hal Rudnick will be hilariously waterboarded. We had wanted to get the vid out for the V.P. debate on Thursday, but no one gets their civil rights violated as humorously as Hal.

Other big news, our first animated short, THE EMO KIDS MYSTERIES, is moving forward with some great concept art by Kat Bakonyi. (Click on a picture for a larger view. It's totally worth it...)

Devon and I spotted Kat's work at last year's UCLA animation prom. Her short had a real flair for character design and she's added a lot of cool ideas for our short, including this, the Emo Kids' vehicle, the Misery Machine. (The chain-smoking ferret in the previous pic, however, is solely due to my skewed imagination.)

More of Kat's work can be seen at: http://denseminds.lupous.net

And we're working on a new improved, less generically iWeb look for the site. So, keep coming back. More interesting stuff soon!

Yeaaaaaah!

Okay, lotsa stuff happening. Big update coming soon.

Until then, there's this little montage of what happens when you use the same tricks over and over.

I actually used to like David Caruso. In early movies like MAD DOG AND GLORY and even in the first few seasons of NYPD Blue, he underplayed scenes nicely, had a good intensity, and especially had this habit of looking down or away from the other character in the scene as a way of playing up the emotion in a scene. Showing, like a lot of guys, he reflex was to withdraw a little when he had to reveal a little honest emotion. It's the kind of thing people do all the time, but actors rarely do, since they're trained to maintain eye contact with their scene partner.

Now, alas, Caruso's neat little technique has become a crutch and a bit of a cliche. Ah well, we'll always have JADE.

It's posted!

Finally, after tons of technical stuff having to due with aspect ratios and HD codecs, MICHAEL PHELPS IN SWIMKATA!

Episode One: ENTER THE SPEEDO!

This is so exciting! (And why I suck at acting)

Any moment now, Studio Fred will upload episode one of our new webseries MICHAEL PHELPS in SWIMKATA! I've seen the footage. It all looks great.

Well, almost all of it looks great. Seriously, 99% of it is awesome, but the best take we had of a mugger stealing the purse has me (playing a swim judge) just kind of staring into space like a dork. It was always a weird mis-en-scene. The mugger has to shove past me to get to the purse, and I do nothing so Phelps can swim in and save the day. But it's one of the those things where if I look surprised, no one's going to notice. (Hell, chances are, no one's going to notice anyway. That's kind of the purpose of an extra.)

See, this is why I suck at acting. Most of acting is not acting, not doing anything except waiting to act. Or, more precisely, being ready to act at any given moment. Well, I suck at purposeful waiting. My mind wanders. I start thinking of the reason why Kyle Rayner was a better Green Lantern than Hal Jordan, how glad I was that one scene in the DVD extras from THE HOST was cut from the film, why my wife's obsessed with our youngest daughter's height... and, well, next thing you know I'm being filmed, frantically asking myself how to act naturally, which is the last thing a person who is really acting naturally does.

Except the one scene in question, I didn't even do that. See, it's worse when it's a scene you've written. I'm so used to watching the scene from the dozens of times I've gone over it in my head that I forget to, you know, be in the scene. Which is what happened in the one take the director used for a purse snatching. Unless the director used another take in the final edit. I think there was this one take where I lift my hands in shock and surprise. Now that's acting, people.

--Andy

On the Set of: Michael Phelps in SWIMKATA!

Oh wait. We don't just embed cool videos on our blog. We make them too. Within 48 hours, the first episode of our latest webseries, MICHAEL PHELPS IN SWIMKATA! will be posted in all its internet-y glory. It's our second collaboration with STUDIO FRED after the success of our WGA Strike Video ATTACK OF THE D-GIRLS.

We filmed the whole thing at a friend's pool in Reseda (and the alley outside) on Monday, and the director Brandon has currently sealed himself inside an editing bay to have the thing ready before Phelps hosts SNL this Saturday. (Thus beating our post-production record by, oh, two and a half months.)

It's always a weird thing watching a script getting filmed. It's never the same as it appeared in your head. Not necessarily better or worse, just... different. Luckily, Brandon had lots of cool ideas for visuals that will make the vid exceed my expectations.

Here's Brandon directing our Phelps (Christopher Biewer) and Jason Bowers as Chinese dude.

Randall and Brandon - Studio Fred in all their glory -make extra sure their new HD camera doesn't fall in the water.

Bennie and Chris become lotion buddies.



















The joys of guerilla filmmaking. (At least we had someone wet down the alley to protect bare feet from getting burned.)

Chris, Whitney and Jason in our green room (i.e. a garage).

Viral Video Night

Antique-O-Rama was screened at Studio Fred's Viral Video at IO West. Always good to see the show in front of an appreciative audience.

This, however, was the winner. (Can't complain, though, it's pretty funny, as well as creepily touching...)



I was also fond of this vid from The Royal We:



And this screened out of competition, given that it was too funny to compete with other videos:

Kitten suck

Because deep in my heart, I've always known kittens are evil.