Shooting!

Agent Dash barges in with his gun drawn!
Bang! You're sexy.

The most evil leg on the planet.
Agent Dash can't intimidate the Evil Queen. Rock beats scissors, paper beats rock, evil beats gun.
Aw, she's really just a teddy bear.
The evil Queen with her creation, THE ANNIHILATOR!
"Computer chip eyes"
Mike Testin, the Director of Photography
Dirk, the President with Paola our makeup artist
Ursula getting evil eyes.
Steve hard at work not directing
Drew getting his witty one-liners down.
Rehearsing.
Testin', Testin', one...two...three.
Dealing blow aint easy, you always needs a piece.
cramming everything into a hotel room. Thanks Tarzana Inn
John Hays, our sound mixer.
Scott, the Assistant Director pointing a gun at me.
Now he's nice.

Ah, man! Shooting has been going great! We've got three days in the can. Its all been brilliant. Drew has been perfect, Dirk's been funny, Ursula has been evil as hell, Darren's been super awesome, Greg's been hilarious. Its going very well. We've got two more days left and I'm stoked. The next two days of shooting are going to be the hardest, so I need to go over my shots again and really solidify what I want to get for editing. Special thanks to the crew who has been doing an AMAZING job! Enjoy the pictures (some courtesy of Jennie Book).

g@$%ksj helmet *738*@%%

This is my head. Its the night before first day of shooting and I'm a tad nervous. More excited now though. I've got all my props and costumes in order. Shot list looks good. I wish I had more money for a better lunch for my crew, but ya know. That's low budgie filmmakin'. Here's some pics from tonight.

Helmet Soldier

Ladies and gentlemen. It is my pleasure to introduce to you the soldier of the future: Helmet Infantry. The helmet gives them the ability to materialize anything they imagine. For example they could turn a terrorist running at them with a suicide bomb into, say, a Little River Band boxed cd set. Any questions? Yes, Susan Felt from the Republic.
"Why doesn't the soldier just imagine world peace forever?"

Well, of course we'd first have to research the pros and cons of that.

suit and tux

Unfortunately I have no pictures of the tux. I will tell you what we got though. For Trevor, played by Drew, we're going with the classic white coat tux complete with black bowtie, black cumber bun, black pants and shoes. We actually bought Greg's suit. I told him I'd pay what I was going to in rental fees and he could pay the rest and get a sweet deal on a suit. Done and done. The picture is Greg lovin is new suit. Of course, he's only wearing the coat

more props

Here's some more stuff to go on Trevor's bookcase. My favorite is the fat cat. What the hell is that thing? Why would anyone want an obese cat with a faux tuxedo if not for a funny prop? Maybe that's why it was $3.99 at Ross. Geez, nowadays, thats just about the price of a gallon of gas.

BOMB-A-LICIOUS

Check it. Road flares, duct tape, random wires, a keychain organizer, and a belt = scary bomb strapped to my body. I closed the shades before trying this on. However, when I saw my neighbor outside he said, "what are you doing tonight?" I said, "I'm building something that looks like a bomb!" "Well, don't blow up the building!" He didn't get that it was a prop.

Sony Props

Nora Gruber and I went to Sony Props Dept to see what we could find there. Some good Queen's chair choices and some good costume choices.

Prop

Look at this crazy ass black paper mache cheetah I found at Goodwill. I want to put it in Trevor's room somewhere to be featured.

Casting

So, casting took place last Thursday. We rented a placed called the Actor's Creative Space. Or something like that. It was cheap, but the annoying thing was the woman who was supposed to open it up for me was super late and I didn't get in until 28 minutes after I was supposed to be let in. Casting was good. We got our Desert Queen, Annihilator, Terrorist, Stephanie. Our President is none other than our writer, Dirk Voetberg. I saw a bunch of Presidents. Some were ok, one was really good. But, overall, I felt that no one really understood Dirk's comedy nuance like Dirk did. Makes sense, no?

progress

Quite a bit has happened since the last post. I've actually been too busy to post anymore about Helmet because I've been working like a dog (except smarter. I hope) to get this movie going. Let's see. I'll just post some separate entries for specific things we've accomplished.

Auditions

Auditioning everyone next Thur the 13th!

Restaurant

Here's some pics from the restaurant we're going to shoot in.