Shockwave, Darkside - Director's Blog

Home Stretching it!

This is the end of Issue #2. 

We're also in the home stretch for finishing the movie!  This means lots of long hours, lots of final tweaking and lots of pixel pushing, so during this next stretch of time we're going to put the comics on hiatus for a while we concentrate on finishing the film.

Rest assured, there are MANY more stories to tell - including the conclusion of the 'Liberation of Mare Crisium'  - and I can't wait to tell 'em, but as both the comic and the film require many hours of TLC, I don't want one to shortchange the other - so we're going to complete the film and then jump back into producing more comics in a few months. 

So for now, hang tight and thanks for all your continued support! 

-Jay

When the Screen Talks Back…



A Bringer of Both Pain and Delight tussles with a brainless Mr. Spock in Spock’s Brain.

As a writer and (especially a) producer, one would say that I have a unique relationship with my computer – my Mac Book to be exact.   Directing is different.  Directing is motion.  It’s communication.  It’s feet in the sand, walking from cinematographer to actor, or picking up the phone and jawing away for an hour or so to share creative ideas or make strategic plans.  It’s personal interaction.  It’s nuance and inflection.  It’s gauging the voice on the other end of the phone, or reading the body language of the person in front of you.  It’s everything a computer isn’t.  It’s instinct, it’s by-the-seat-of-your-pants, it’s thinking-on-your-feet.  It’s personal.  It isn’t paused or reflective.  It’s in-the-moment, it’s at-the-speed-of-life or whatever the newest evolution-changing smart phone that your wireless company is trying to push on you right now, but for realsies. 

Now my computer is both my work computer and my personal computer.  It is a great tool that nudges Shockwave along, keeps the business afloat, but also houses enough movies, games, URL’s and podcasts to also be a terrific time-waster.  In fact, every morning when I check my first email of the day, I can’t help but regard my little white plastic-and-steel keyboarded buddy as a slot machine of sorts – utterly dependant on those first, early morning emails which inevitably will determine the events that usually shape my day.  Sometimes I roll a few lemons, and others I get cherries.  Sometimes, I even hit the jackpot.

So, like the female aliens who swiped Spock’s Brain in the classic Star Trek episode (aptly) named ‘Spock’s Brain’, I consider my computer as a ‘bringer of both pain and delight’ .  It can make my day or squash my mood like a bug hitting the windshield of a Toyota Camry.  But until now, it’s always been more-or-less a one-way communication.  As a writer and producer, you’re generating things; Screenplay.  Budget.  Even storyboards.  The limit is really my own skills and the curve-balls are all self-induced.  ‘Can I say this better?’.  ‘Can I make this piece fit into that piece...’.  It’s a one-way street and I’m in the driver’s seat.

All this is fine and good, except recently, I realize that my trusty MacBook is now talking back to me. 

Suddenly, more and more, faces are appearing on my screen.  And they want me to do stuff.  I’m no longer controlling the pace of my computational output – my computer actually wants things from me.  ‘What do you think of this?’ ‘Have you had a chance to check out that…?’.  It’s awesome, but weird.  It’s… it’s, well, Star Trekkian in it’s almost-normalcy.  

So things have been very active in Shockwave, Darksideland.  We have turned our attention from the editorial process to the finishing touches.  Effects, both sound and special, music, color correction and 3D convergence, oh my…  It’s actually quantumly exciting because the movie is now really beginning to take shape.  Like a picture slowly coming into focus, all of the decisions and directions are starting to play off each other, resolving into something sorta resembling a finished movie. 

My little garage band of director-editor-producers are now being joined by new members that will build our sound into a full-blown symphony.  I’m reminded of an interview with the great composer John Williams talking about his melody for ‘Raiders of the Lost Ark’.  Next to him was a piano and he started playing, reminiscing about how he had two different themes that he and Steven Spielberg both liked, so they combined it into one. I could just imagine Spielberg’s thrill when he heard that little piano tune blown up and out by way of the London Symphony Orchestra.  And that’s how I’m feeling these days.

Bit by bit, new players of our growing orchestra are putting their effort and care into the finishing of  ‘Shockwave, Darkside’.  And they’re all over the world. 

Yep, that’s right. ALL... OVER... THE... WORLD.  And I’m not kiddin' - so allow me to put on my Ricky Ricardo Band Leader vibe and let me introduce them one by one.  We have Andreas Weidinger Büro (composer) and Stephan Römer (co-composer) in Munich, Germany on Music… Sean O’Neal, sound designer in beautiful Brooklyn, NY… ‘Minnesota Wayne’ Johnson on special effects and animation, with an extra Latin beat provided by Bambula, our Buenos Aries-based graphic designers… Sitting in with the FX section are our muzzle flash and laser beam visual rhythm section of John DeMayo of Harwich, MA and Axel Wilkinson in Seattle, Washington.  Not to mention Benny Powell in Orlando, Florida on comic book editorial duty and our amazingly amazing art team of Weilin Yang (Pencils) Youjun Yang (Finishing) & Kun Song (Colors) in China. 

And oh, yeah, I’m in Santa Monica. 

So, ‘Shockwave, Darkside’ is truly an international collaboration.  And that’s one of the things about filmmaking in general that’s so rewarding because not only do you have experts in every imaginable discipline coming together, but now you can also collaborate with pretty much anybody on the globe.   And with that, everything gets that much richer because everybody brings in a little bit of their regional and cultural influences that somehow broaden the creative palate in ways that I couldn’t even imagine.   Sometimes it could be subtle, and other times, it can spin you off into a new, thrilling direction. 

Our meeting point is always within the LCD screen of my happy little MacBook.  Be it Skype or iChat, it reminds me of a little two-dimensional portal into the worlds of my ‘Shockwave’ co-workers.  What’s the weather like in Minnesota?  It’s right outside Wayne’s window.  Night in Munich, sunny in Santa Monica.  And so it goes. 

Sometimes I forget that we’re miles apart.  We laugh and joke, or sometimes scratch our heads at the challenges of making the movie.  Eye contact is essential for camaraderie and a smile pays dividends.   Other times, I become very self-conscious that I’m having a conversation with a little white piece of plastic on my desk – and that it’s talking back.  And for an instant, I flash back to a youth filled with Bridge of the USS Enterprise view screens, Dick Tracy talking watches and Blade Runner Vid Phones and can’t help but laugh at the fact that my day-to-day bares a striking resemblance to someone else’s imagined future in all of it’s spooky, frustrating, wondrous glory. 

I am making a science fiction movie, after all…

“Superman or Green Lantern ain't got a-nothin' on me…”

‘Sunshine Superman’ Wrtten and Performed by Donovan, 1966

We’re closing in on launching the comic book, so I’d like to take a minute to introduce y’all to our newest comic book hero….

Hey everybody, meet Sam Simms:

I gotta tell you, that one of the biggest thrills of my life is when I saw the first two pages of the comic book traipse across the transom of my inbox. 

Movie, schmovie, I WROTE A COMIC BOOK!

For some reason, that was like the icing on the proverbial cake.  I mean, the movie is truckin’ along, I’m literally finishing up our edit, producers are feelin’ good, editor is satisfied… Sean, our sound designer is adding clangs and ka-chunks, John, our muzzle flash fx guru is muzzle flashing away… couldn’t be happier… 

And lo-and behold, I get an email from Benny Powell, our comic book editor with the first two completed pages… and I nearly had a heart attack. 

See, most kids want to grow up and be a big-league pitcher, or be a defensive blah blah for the gridiron… And often times, those fantasies morph into fantasy football, or even sports camp.  My fantasy (other than being an astronaut - which, lets face it, has already morphed into my little sojourn at Space Camp a few years back) was to write comic books.  I loved comic books.  I remember I had stacks and stacks of ‘em growing up, so when I clicked open that email – it was like two different parts of my life were joined in an instant. 

There it was.  A comic.   Somebody else’s drawing.  But with my words. 

I wrote that thing.  It sprang from my head, somehow got filtered through the hand of Weilin Yang, our very talented artist and wound up looking and smelling like the real deal: the comic book of my dreams…

Of course, I had tons of help.

Enter Benny.  Now Benny has lived a lifetime in the comic industry.  He worked at Marvel, and on a slew of other properties like GI Joe and Transformers.  Currently, Benny is authoring Wayward Sons for Keenspot Comics, which is a pretty cool sci-fi comic, that you should check out. 

Benny is my editor, which is odd to me because other than my movie editor, I’ve never had an editor, editor before.    But above all, Benny is a writer.  He approaches things in a writerly manner, talks story with the best of ‘em and has been a terrific sounding board, co-conspirator and Great-and-All-Powerful Oz in this process.

Now, I had never really written a comic before.  Sure, I played around with the form, but somehow they all came out screenplays – so Benny had to essentially show me the ropes from scratch - and I’m sure that I tried his patience on more than an occasion. 

The very first thing he said to me – which is music to a director’s ears – went something like this:

Benny: Okay, well, you know how in film you have budgetary restraints, time considerations and actor’s schedules that you have to work around….?

Jay: Boy, do I ever!

Benny:  Yeah, you have none of those in comic books.  You can do whatever the heck you want!

I paused.  I didn’t know what to say.  I mean… it… it’s like a creative Christmas!  A blank canvas.  I could do anything. Needless to say, my Spidey sense was tingling.

Jay:  Okay….

I said.  Trying to wrap my mind around the thing that I wanted most… Then, it hit me!  The biggest, Michael Bayest, flashiest, budget-busting story concept that I could think of…

Jay:  Then we’re gonna start off with a humungous battle!

And off we went. 

So, the Shockwave, Darkside comic is actually a prequel.  It covers a big battle on the lonely lunar plains of a place called Mare Crisium that’s actually referenced in the film - kinda like the D-Day invasion of the ‘Shockwave’ universe. I figure lots of ‘kaboom’ would be a whammy of way to introduce our characters from both the comic and the movie as they bob and weave through this awesome canvas, trying to stay alive.

And so far, it’s been a blast.  But it’s also made me respect the art of writing for comics so much more.  And it is and art.  Just as illustration requires a deft hand and keen eye, creating amazing characters, breathtaking situations and hair-spitting escapes within the constraints of a few sentences per panel, per page requires a quick wit and a nimble mind.   Less is more and economy is king when it comes to hypnotizing the reader to keep on turning those comic pages. And it’s a lot harder than you think.  The beats, rhythms and character nuances are so completely different, that it's really like learning a new storytelling language.

This is Sam Simms’ first battle of his first war.  And from the moment he steps into it, he has nothing but his instincts to keep him whole.  As the world around him explodes, collapses and folds in on itself, the only way he can survive is just by forging ahead, figuring it out step-by-step, and trying to avoid getting shot.  

But don’t worry Sam, I’ll be right there with you.   Doing the exact same thing. 

Writing the Ruff Cut

Here’s a screenshot of our rough-cut timeline.  It’s weird to see all the elements being built upon one another like little blocks of data… each representing a shot, a sound effect, a burst of dialogue or a transition.   Pretty cool.

Eric and I burned the midnight oil to deliver a cut to our producing team.  Editing, like the shoot, has been harrowing, hilarious, terrifying and all the flavors in between.

Much has been said about the whole editing process.   ‘You can make your movie in the editing room’, ‘the best part of my performance was left on the cutting room floor’ to the all-time favorite, ‘Aaaaah, we’ll fix it in post….’.  I’ve also heard that ‘editing is like writing’, ‘editing is the only TRUE aspect of filmmaking’ (in that doesn’t borrow from other disciples like photography, writing, music or even – ahem - directing), and that editing is a slow heart attack that occurs over months and months (okay, this last one is from me…).

Be that as it may, I’m very excited as to how the edit is shaping up.

In a way, editing IS a little bit like writing.  Only this time I’m not the writer.  Eric Dow, our editor, is.  I’m more like the project crossing guard.  Making sure my little characters make it across the proverbial street all safe and sound.  How we’ve been working is that we go through the script of the scene that we’re about to cut, talk about my original intention, the plot/character points that we need to get across, any additions or subtractions that came about on set – and he then goes to work slicing and dicing.

During that time, I usually try to occupy myself and not glance at the monitor because I want to save my comments until he’s ready to show me something.  This time is usually devoted to important things like, surfing the web, working on the comic, surfing the web some more and fighting the urge to look up.  At some point, he shows me his version of the scene, I make my comments, we discuss, sometimes agree, sometimes not, rinse and repeat.

Right now we finished our initial rough cut and are working to incorporate the comments that the producers made into our next editorial pass.  It’s odd, because at this stage in the game, I kinda feel the way that I did during the writing process – where there is a flurry of work on my end that I then put forth in front of a few sets of eyeballs for feedback.  Once that feedback rolls in, I determine the commonalities of what everybody is saying/feeling, take a deep breath, scratch my noggin, and dive back in. Again, rinse and repeat.

Clearly what’s happening now is that the film itself is becoming its own, living, breathing entity.   I have a theory, that at some point, the thing that you’re making starts talking back to you.  It could be a soufflé or a symphony, but eventually it starts to dictate what it needs and constructs an internal logic that’s all its own.

I can’t explain it, but it definitely occurs.  It becomes a roadmap to the finish line, and if you listen closely, you get a much better project.  Different from what you originally intended, to be sure, but hopefully more interesting and true to itself.  The tricky part is that sometimes it doesn’t give up its secrets so easily.  You have to try a few things first.  Go down a few blind alleys or weird-in-retrospect-tangents.  Sometimes you have to romance it, cajole it – or even worse, just be patient.

Currently, at any given moment, there is a growing amount of brainpower obsessing over our little film.  Our editor, our producers, our sound designer, our composer, everybody is truly putting their heart and soul into ‘Shockwave, Darkside’.  And all those opinions, contributions and impressions stretch, pull and push the film in surprising and often amazing ways.  As the project instigator, it’s pretty heartening to watch as the final shape of ‘Shockwave, Darkside’ slowly comes into focus.  And, at times, incredibly moving. 

The Third Dimension

Y’know… last week I was asked the innocuous question ‘so what’s it like to shoot in 3D’ , which is something that honestly I hadn’t been asked before.  I spent a lot of time talking about the 3D, and certainly working on the 3D, but hadn’t really thought too much about the differences in shooting a 3D film vs. a 2D film. 

In short, it’s a whole lot mo’ complicated. 

But that’s a very simple answer to a much larger question. 

First off, you have two cameras.  In our case two SONY EX 3’s… Then you have ‘the Rig’, which is this ginormous contraption that these two camera’s mount to.  In said ‘Rig’ is a mirror that these two cameras shoot into.  The idea is that the two cameras roughly mimic the average distance between each of our eyes, and thusly referred as ‘Left Camera’ and ‘Right Camera’.  When projected, the notion is to have a different lens for each of those eyes via glasses (polarized or the two-colored anaglyph) so the light from the left camera reaches the left eye, and light from the right camera reaches the right eye – and then your brain does the rest.  At least that’s the theory.

So practically, you have a rig that, to my eye, looks like a Volkswagen bus on a tripod with two very expansive cameras joined together by a very expensive and delicate mirror in the middle of a windy, misty sandpit.  Oh, and I also am prone to trip over things like very expensive cameras joined together by very expensive and delicate mirrors, so I made it my practice to stay as far away from the behemoth as possible. The camera dept. gave me a nice comfy plastic patio chair, near video village,  faaaaar away from the recording action.

But oh, what a behemoth it was….

Stereographer Andrew Parke and our 3D Rig

The first impression of said behemoth was when it, and our Stereographer Andrew Parke, arrived on location.  I clamored down a flight of stairs to see Andrew, Bob Fiske and Joe Gabriel, our camera guys, standing in a semi-circle around it, rubbing their chins, looking like they just snarffed an oil drum of bad chowder.  Apparently the thing weighed 65 pounds and would make mince metal out of our steadycam.

Now keep in mind that in the weeks prior, the question of exactly how we were to shoot in 3D was very much in the forefront of our minds.  It’s not for lack of preparation – I had spent the last three months before shooting meticulously storyboarding using GI Joe action figures (Yes, I said GI Joe action figures – but I’ll save that little diddy for later), but we were getting so many differing views of what would, or wouldn’t fly in 3D that we were going a little buggy. 

Here’s the thing, bad 3D causes motion sickness, and apparently, Good 3D causes box office returns to the tune of Avatar.  Or at least something like that.

But there was a legitimate concern that our 3D NOT make our viewers sick, so Joe, Bob and myself cracked open the books, asked our friends and perused the interweb to see if anybody had any insight on what would, or wouldn’t keep our happy viewers from lurching in the isles. 

And wouldn’tchaknowit, like most data on the interweb, a lot of that information was contradictory.  Which was both good and bad.  Obviously we had little information to go on – so honestly it did feel cool to be on the cutting edge in a, ‘boldly-going-where-no-indie-sci-fi-flick-has-gone-before’, kinda way.  But on the other hand, it was a bit of a Hail Mary (like how I mix football and sci-fi metaphors) in that we weren’t necessarily certain that our finished product would make our audience’s eyeballs pop out like a Tex Avery cartoon.  

So now I have a camera the size of the Death Star in a medium that, if done incorrectly, could cause nausea, vertigo and lumbago for all I know, except we had no idea what ‘incorrectly’ was.

As production neared, we assigned various code names to the shooting style of various scenes.  ‘This is a Sergio Leone scene’, or ‘It’s David Lean’ – anything to try and wrap our minds around our technical limitations.  “How do you handle a long dialogue scene in 3D?’ So Joe downloaded Avatar on his iPhone.  ‘How do you get a lot of tension when you can’t really move the cameral all that much?’ Let’s borrow our make-up guy’s prized copy of ‘The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly’.  DVD’s were inserted, paused, rewound and ejected.  Heads were scratched.  

Joe Gabriel in Deep Thought.  Trust me, he smiles a lot more than this!

In the end, (as it always does) it came down to two things; people and their skills.  Andrew, our Stereographer, was an invaluable resource to us who joined us in the very nick of time.  Andrew is a ‘done it all, seen it all’ type-o Hollywood guy, so I definitely felt like I had to earn his respect.  That said, he’s also an adventurous spirit and encouraged us to play to our visual strengths and always offered solutions to whatever problem we were facing.  I don’t think I ever heard him utter ‘You can’t do that in 3D’ once – and for that I am eternally greatful.  Joe Gabriel, our DP took the ball and ran.  Always capitalizing on what we learned the day before, constantly pushing the limits of what we could do, while still keeping his sharp eye on the pretty pictures.  And then there’s Bob… Bob Fiske has been one of my best friends for about twenty years now.  Bob is a relentless tinkerer and talented gizmo-iste.  Bob designed and built the in-helmet lighting and sound rigs and a ton of other nifty gadgets that saved our bacon.  He eventually figured out a way to hoist our 65-pound rig into the air via a contraption aptly called ‘The Bob Pod’.

  

Bob and the Bob Pod in action!

So what was it like to shoot in 3D?

The camera rig was huge.  So we had to invent creative ways to move the dern thing, and when we did, it took us more time to do so.   Even to zoom in for a close up, we’d have to re-frame and recalibrate both cameras, and that took more time.  There are considerations on which lenses you can use, how the perceived depth of one image cuts with an other, so not only are we composing to fit a horizontal frame, but also into it.  So now we are stacking the image, playing textures, so the costumes now have to be redesigned to better accommodate… We did camera tests, convergence tests, tests on tests…

So, as I type this, I flash back to all the waiting, all the finagling that we did during the shoot and the next question comes to mind; was it worth it?

Well, I always wanted ‘Shockwave, Darkside’ to be an immersive, dynamic trip to the lunar surface.  The moon is such a character in the story that I felt like I would be doing it and myself a disservice if it was treated otherwise, so from a story-telling device the 3D made sense.  But that notion did little comfort when the weight of the behemoth broke the first version of the Bob Pod at about one in the morning during one of our shoot nights…

Was it worth it…? 

At the end of the camera was a cable.  Connected to that cable was a large monitor.  In front of that monitor was me.  On set, that’s where you would usually find me camped out, in that plastic patio chair, a pair of paper anaglyph 3D glasses either on my face or sticking out of my ski cap (did I mention that it was cold).

The Director's view of the action!

We’d set up the shot, get the actors in, rehearse it a few times, put their helmets on, I’d put my glasses on, the crew would hush and I’d yell action…

Then I’d try to imagine myself in a movie theater.  I’d try to push the cold away, or the pressures of schedule, or the first rays of sunlight that would inevitably encroach over the horizon and try, with all my might, to put myself in the shoes of a viewer, who’s never seen this movie before and has now idea as to what will happen. 

And often times, it was the 3D that sucked me in.  It let me see the movie in a way that I never could, or even hoped to.  In front of me, the moon, my characters were living, breathing things.  Not things that we created or manufactured, but… something to get lost in.  And I smiled.  I smiled because I knew at that moment, we were doing something that not many people on this planet were doing, I smiled because we were pulling it off, in spite of all of the hurdles and machinations we were making it work. 

And I smiled because it was just so damn fun.

The Anxiety of the Man in the Booth

In Hannah and Her Sisters, one of my fav Woody Allen movies, the Woodster plays a (big surprise) hypochondriac TV Producer who is convinced he is dying and subjects himself to a battery of tests to prove himself otherwise.  In true Woody Allen style, the white-on-black title “The Anxiety of the Man in the Booth” comes up and then we cut to Woody in a sound proof room in an ear doctor’s office with a set of earphones having his hearing checked – because, in his mind, hearing loss has a direct correlation to a brain tumor.  

That’s how I feel right now.  We are in the early days of editing the actual movie, and literally every scene that we come across is a grab bag of challenges and triumphs.

The physical act of making a movie (especially this one) is a tsunami of karmic tidal forces all pushing against each other to form a miasma of good and bad luck, happy accidents, crushing setbacks and everything in between.  It’s the job of the director (your truly), the producers, and key production crew to keep the train on the rails, sometimes in spite of rain, snow, locusts, actor’s schedules, early sunrises, late sunsets, dying batteries and hijacked card tables.  And believe me, we experienced all of this stuff (except the locusts – chalk up that apocalyptic biblical allusion to the writer in me – although we did have swarms of bugs sunbathing on our lights as the nights warmed up toward the end of shooting). 

Now all this makes for great war stories.  “Hey, remember when it dipped below 29 degrees for the fourth night in a row” or “Hey, wasn’t it funny when we discovered a new breed of Lunar Moth as one of ‘em kept flyin’ in and out of frame during Rich’s big, dramatic monologue…”   But what it does do is start to drive you bonkers in the editing room because it is here where you see all your temporal victories and defeats.   By that I mean, when you are doing anything, making movies, building buildings, creating widgets (as found in your junior-high school math story problems) one is always constrained by two things:  Time & Money.  That’s an inevitable pair, kinda like death, taxes, peanut butter, jelly, Lennon and McCartney…

So when the Natural Law Firm of Time & Money starts to intercede on a film shoot, you have to make certain choices in favor of others.  And when you’re filming, you pat yourself on the back for getting through another night in spite of the low temperatures, big moths and quickly filled memory cards, while secretly praying to the film gods that everything cuts together in the cold, sober light of your editor's Final Cut pro system. 

Enter Eric Dow, our editor. 

Eric is a talented director in his own right.  His brilliant documentary on a little-known, but violent battle of the Vietnam war, Honor in the Valley of Tears, just won best doc in the Dances With Films film festival a few months back, so the guy knows what he’s doing.  It’s Eric’s job to, as the song says, ‘accentuate the positive and eliminate the negative’, with all our warts-n’ all footage.   It’s his job to piece together – shot by shot & frame by frame – a story in spite of all the curve balls said aforementioned Natural Law Firm decides to throw at you during production. 

That’s why rough cuts are so harrowing, because, at this point – you don’t see what the movie is – you see what it is NOT.  You see a slew of missed opportunities, takes that could have gone quicker, longer, framed more to the left, framed to the right.  But then again, I also see amazing reactions, furtive character moments and inspired camerawork that transcends planetary and budgetary physics, so there ya go….

Now like Woody in the proverbial booth, that ringing in my ears could either just be a bad audio clip or a metaphoric brain tumor…

But that’s how it goes right now.  We’re building the movie scene by scene – and with that, the knot in my stomach rises and dips with the scan of every take, my filmic hypochondria blaring, only to be quelled by the sound of Eric hitting the ‘insert’ key and thusly committing another image into our growing edit. 

OR, maybe it’s all in my head and everything is fine….

The View From the Booth

 

Rich Ceraulo, Yours Truly & Mei Melancon hangin' at the 'Con

Over the past week, a lot of people have asked me ‘How did comic con go?’ 

That’s a hard question to answer because, well, it’s still going….

We went to Comic Con primarily to introduce people to ‘Shockwave, Darkside’.  Not just the film and the comic, but the entire universe.   The heartening thing that we discovered is that people are really supportive of all kinds of filmed science fiction.  Not just the big budget sci-fi that invades the multiplexes every summer, but all sorts of off-the-beaten-trek kinda stuff.  Comedy sci-fi, horror sci-fi, steampunk, etc…  In fact, there’s a hunger for it.  I always thought that was the case, but Comic Con really confirmed it for me…

Over and over we kept hearing ‘good for you!’, ‘It’s about time for indie sci-fi’, and ‘you’re taking on the studios…’

Well, yes and no. 

I do have to admit that it was pretty daunting being under the same, massive roof as Tron: Legacy, Harry Potter, Star Wars & Sucker Punch.  So there I sat, in our Keenspot booth, handing out post cards and dog tags amongst comic writers selling their books and artists signing their sketches, with our trailer playing at full bore, talking to a multitude of Elves, Superheroes and Starfleet Admirals.  But the thing is, most people understood that there was no way that we could ever compete with the big-time studio-presence, so that made us a bit of a curio.  And it brought people in. 

The vibe was very grass-roots and informal – where everybody had a chance to sit down, hang out and talk about the film.  It was a great opportunity for those interested in ‘Shockwave’ to talk to myself, the producers and Benny Powell, our eponymous comic book editor, in a way that larger productions could never support. 

The result was a really interesting conversation between filmmakers and audience, comic book creators and readers, and fan-to-fan.  It was really energizing and affirming.  One guy I was talking to remembers the Comic Con of not too long ago, before people would scratch their heads and think ‘Gee, what’s Glee doing here?’, and summed it up by declaring ‘You just saved Comic Con from itself!’ That’s high praise indeed.

In the end, we received a very nice write up in the LA Times, unveiled our 3D trailer at the Keenspot panel and generally had a great time.  But, as I said -  it really doesn’t seem like the end of the Comic Com experience, it feels like the start of something else. 

I mean, I have a movie to edit for cryin’ out loud…  But more on THAT later!

Comic Copia

Comic Con was a crazy, intense, mind-blowing, human pinball machine of steampunk, spandex and all things cyberocity.  It was like being in an anime blender set to an over-cranked video game score while drinking a red bull through a straw full of pop rocks .

In short, I loved it!

 As you may know, this was my first Comic Con, and I really didn’t know what to expect.  Sure I followed the coverage over the years, and read all the reports on Ain’t  it Cool and IO9, but nothing could prepare me for the sheer hugeness of the event. Everywhere you looked there was something to see.  I saw droids, Harry Potters, Harley Quinn’s and a few Tallahassee’s from Zombieland.

Here’s a few of my favorite pix…

   Kickin' it old school with Darth n' Boba

Dr. Henry Jones Sr. and Jr. (and yes, they are father and son)

Best. T-shirt.  Ever.

The Spokesman for Red Shirt Awareness

A Ghostbusters' Proton Pack that plays (I kid-you-not) the Dropkick Murphy's

Twilight Zone Tattoo - featuring the Mystic Seer

A Robo-Tatt that is also pretty dern cool

Comic Khaaaaaaaaaan!

Y’know, it all seemed so far way two months ago during one of our last nights of shooting, Aimee Schoof, one of our crafty producers, turned to me and innocently said ‘y’know, we should premiere a trailer at Comic Con’….

Sleep deprived and cold, I quickly mumbled ‘great idea’ and wandered back to the set, thinking that there was no way she could finagle us a presence in the Valhalla of sci-fi-ery in that short amount of time.

Of course, I said the same thing when she brought up shooting 'Shockwave' in 3D, so I should know better…

But finagle she did, and about a week after filming, I met her at her place in Venice to pick up DVD’s of our dailies where she happily notified me that, not only will we be premiering our trailer Comic Con, but it will be in conjunction with the launching of a  ‘Shockwave, Darkside’ online comic book. 

At that point, all I could do is blink in amazement. 

Flash forward two months later and we’re in full swing with an all-out comic con campaign.  We have a banner ad in rotation on Deadline Hollywood in conjunction with Keenspot, our online comic book publisher.  We’ve got postcards, t-shirts, dog tags and a snazzily updated website, all courtesy of our resident designer (and my wife) Cynthia, and now I’m staring at an original-scored, fully mixed 3D trailer wondering how the heck we pulled all this off so much in such a short amount of time.

It’s amazing. 

Tomorrow we head out to Comic Con where I’ll be hanging out at Keenspot Booth 1229.  Also, the good folks at Keenspot have invited me and ‘Shockwave’ stars Mei Melancon and Rich Ceraulo to sit down with them at a panel (Sunday,  July 25^th  in Room 4 at 2pm) to premiere the 3D trailer, talk about the movie and introduce the world to our new ‘Shockwave, Darkside’ comic book!

Although I have followed Comic Con religiously over the years, I’ve never been – so I can’t imagine a better way to go!

If you’re around, please swing by and say hi!

See you at the Khan!

The Eagle Has Landed!

We did it! 

On May 22^nd 2010, we wrapped principal photography of Shockwave, Darkside!

On location.  Man, it was cold on the moon!

Been a while, I know.  But the last stretch has been a whirlwind starting with a move from NYC (my home of the last 22 years) to Los Angeles, punctuated by a nice little side trip down a hill in Mailbu which resulted in a broken leg and surgery, and finally culminating with the production of Shockwave, Darkside this past May in Harwich, Massachusetts.  And in 3D, no less!  No 2D-to-3D conversion for this kid, this is the real deal.  Incredible. 

As I said; a whirlwind.  And the ride continues.  In two weeks we’re premiering a trailer and a Shockwave, Darkside comic book at San Diego Comic Con on July 25th!

Lots of tales to tell, I know.  Needless to say, it’s been exhilarating, terrifying  and humbling.  In short, the time of my life. 

Stay Tuned!

 

Jay