Nology5890
Where'd That 6th Toe Come From?
Alright, just got my copy! The notes on the packaging and disk case were awesome; now I've just gotta watch it. XD Thanks again, Ethan!
'Mad Nation' Post-Apocalyptic TV show Megathread
- Thread starter InTheOnlineAsbestosSuit
- Start date
Where'd That 6th Toe Come From?
InTheOnlineAsbestosSuit
Look, Ma! Two Heads!
Hail dark lord Väder said:
Do me a favor and resend your email, and be sure to specify your NMA username in the email so I know who's who. I haven't gotten any in the last couple days and I want to make sure I didn't miss anything.
EDIT: email is perniciousparadise@gmail.com , just FYI. May want to double check spelling as I haven't gotten anything new on my end.
InTheOnlineAsbestosSuit
Look, Ma! Two Heads!
Nology5890 said:
No worries buddy! Glad to entertain, and thanks again! Feel free to post your thoughts on the DVD when you've watched it, I always appreciate both positive and negative criticism either way.
John Merrik
First time out of the vault
Very cool stuff!
Id love to get my hands on a copy of this DVD.
Just watched the first episode... and I will post it on my blog!
You have a link where people can buy this etc?
I do have to agree with some of the comments before me though... You need to be DIRTIER!!!
=)
Id love to get my hands on a copy of this DVD.
Just watched the first episode... and I will post it on my blog!
You have a link where people can buy this etc?
I do have to agree with some of the comments before me though... You need to be DIRTIER!!!
=)
InTheOnlineAsbestosSuit
Look, Ma! Two Heads!
Hi folks!
So the DVD has been a rousing success here and on other sites, and now we are in pre-production for season 2! I'd love to hear your suggestions for how you'd like to see the show evolve and improve, and I expect to be going back through the older pages of this thread and reviewing the feedback from season 1 to incorporate all your new and old suggestions into this next season.
I'm very passionate about getting the fans involved in how the show is to be created, and since this website is at the heart of the Mad Nation fan base, I'd love to get as much input from you all as possible!
Yeah, this is one suggestion that comes up -very- frequently, and we'll be doing much more of this. The costume for Gray is pretty dirty at this point: I've used it for years and only washed it a handful of times. But we'll be revamping it for season 2 and adding some new costume pieces, and I expect to distress and dirty up everything to match. And, we expect to have some kind of makeup artist this next time around, so we'll be seeing grimier faces, better blood and gore, etc.
So the DVD has been a rousing success here and on other sites, and now we are in pre-production for season 2! I'd love to hear your suggestions for how you'd like to see the show evolve and improve, and I expect to be going back through the older pages of this thread and reviewing the feedback from season 1 to incorporate all your new and old suggestions into this next season.
I'm very passionate about getting the fans involved in how the show is to be created, and since this website is at the heart of the Mad Nation fan base, I'd love to get as much input from you all as possible!
John Merrik said:
Yeah, this is one suggestion that comes up -very- frequently, and we'll be doing much more of this. The costume for Gray is pretty dirty at this point: I've used it for years and only washed it a handful of times. But we'll be revamping it for season 2 and adding some new costume pieces, and I expect to distress and dirty up everything to match. And, we expect to have some kind of makeup artist this next time around, so we'll be seeing grimier faces, better blood and gore, etc.
WillisPDunlevey
Mildly Dipped
edit: before anyone jumps on me over this, I am a big fan of his work and I bought 3 copies of the DVD.
I would try applying some filters to make the film a bit darker.... blade runner, Dune, and the first matrix really hold up because of the filters applied to the final production. Making it a bit darker, will prevent it from looking like someone took the footage with an iPhone.
(not saying you did that... but post production work can improve the overall look of the film dramatically).
spend more time on prop guns. I know that california will make this a bit harder, but you can probably find "crap" guns in pawnshops and make them look like they survived the apocalypse.
All the good stuff will get used up first when people are fighting for their lives.
In the years that follow, all that will be left is the really robust and really crappy stuff that nobody wanted to use before.
I remember you having an SKS in the film. it looked brand new. Here is an example of a way to make it look more like it fits in your setting.
Buy a used SKS stock off of gun broker, you can really trash it up. Leave it outside for a while after stripping the finish and distressing the finish. Then rub it with dirt and then refinish it with various oils (old motor oil, vegetable oil etc in different locations to really make it look old.
The barrel can be distressed by painting it with rust colored hobby paint (get the water based paints not oil based) and the colors can be removed easily without harming the gun.
WPD
I would try applying some filters to make the film a bit darker.... blade runner, Dune, and the first matrix really hold up because of the filters applied to the final production. Making it a bit darker, will prevent it from looking like someone took the footage with an iPhone.
(not saying you did that... but post production work can improve the overall look of the film dramatically).
spend more time on prop guns. I know that california will make this a bit harder, but you can probably find "crap" guns in pawnshops and make them look like they survived the apocalypse.
All the good stuff will get used up first when people are fighting for their lives.
In the years that follow, all that will be left is the really robust and really crappy stuff that nobody wanted to use before.
I remember you having an SKS in the film. it looked brand new. Here is an example of a way to make it look more like it fits in your setting.
Buy a used SKS stock off of gun broker, you can really trash it up. Leave it outside for a while after stripping the finish and distressing the finish. Then rub it with dirt and then refinish it with various oils (old motor oil, vegetable oil etc in different locations to really make it look old.
The barrel can be distressed by painting it with rust colored hobby paint (get the water based paints not oil based) and the colors can be removed easily without harming the gun.
WPD
InTheOnlineAsbestosSuit
Look, Ma! Two Heads!
WillisPDunlevey said:
Yes you did, and you're a wonderful guy for doing so
But I doubt anyone will jump on you, least of all me, for providing constructive criticism. I generally don't respond well to trolling but I do respond well to well thought out arguments and suggestions, so fear not. Half the reason why I keep this constantly near-death thread alive is because I want to get input from the folks here.WillisPDunlevey said:
This is an idea we've tried in the past with some success, but I hope to work with it more effectively in the future. When we shot the first episode, the mini feature, I actually did a lot of work on the filters and post to make it look grittier, but there was only so much I could do. The cameras we were using preformed very poorly in low light, so we needed to shoot on clear sunny days: which generally made it tough to give it a "dark" look, obviously.
However this time around we're shooting in HD, with better lights and equipment, and most importantly, better camera people (I'm a fine writer but terrible camera operator). I generally try to do as little in post as possible, and as such the look we're going for will be created largely on set, however I do fully expect to at the very least try to achieve a bleach bypass type effect in post (example; "The Book Of Eli"). So in short, good suggestion and we'll probably be trying to get a look similar to what you're thinking, just maybe more through practical means than post production.
On a side note: Mad Nation #9, the only episode to date shot on HD, used very little additional effects in post production. At the time, I wanted to do more but my DP, the very talented Justin Marra, convinced me otherwise. In hindsight I think he was more right than I was, but I still feel that a bit more could have been done with it.
WillisPDunlevey said:
You've hit upon one detail that I'm taking some personal pride in. Since the conclusion of production of Season 1, I worked in the largest props and weapons rental house in Los Angeles, then worked a freelance armorer and propmaster on low budget indie films for a year, and then worked in the gun industry exclusively for just shy of a year.
Over the past year, I've started snapping up cheap guns and weapons to use in Mad Nation specifically. Such as these:
The last two are guns that I have refinished, and at one time looked brand new, as is the case with the Kukri machette. The meat cleaver, rifle, and Smith & Wesson revolver have all been weathered by age.
The shot gun -was- going to be Gray's new shotgun, but techincal and legal complications have made me decide to put that part off for now: I now intend to reshape and refinish the wood and then use it as is for the time being, until I am in a position where I can -legally- create an registered AOW out of it with the ATF and cut it down to a pistol size 'Sawed off'. Gray's new shotgun will instead be something inspired by the climactic gun battle in the finale of the most recent season of Boardwalk Empire.
The Enfield rifle will see several re-incarnations in season 2: first the wood gets sanded to it's natural color and dirtied up some, and will have tribal warrior accents added, then later it gets cut down to a carbine size and gets the same hose clamps and duct tape treatment that you see on the old school hunting rifles in Fallout.
Some other plans I have are to pick up a few more beater revolvers for general purpose guns. Interestingly, science provides me with a perfectly viable reason for all of the guns in this show to be western-style weapons: smokeless gun powder, which makes semi-auto and full auto firearms possible, couldn't be easily created in a post apocalyptic world due to the major industrial complex needed to manufacture it, and thus a post apocalyptic society would be forced to use only firearms that would function with black powder reloaded ammunition. That would be lever action, bolt action, pump action, single and double barreled, and revolving firearms.
WillisPDunlevey said:
I remember that scene: all those guns were ones we borrowed from family and friends, and thus we couldn't mess with them too much. The SKS is a really obvious one, it was my dads and it's never been fired, but we needed guns and had no money left to buy prop guns.
You're absolutely right though: I've used the same method you describe to distress wood before. Mixing fine dirt with used motor oil makes a great goop for dirtying up wood. I actually plan to buy a beater Enfield stock for the rifle above eventually so we can swap between full-stock and sawed-off stock versions of the gun.
Your suggestion of using paint is another good one that I hadn't given much thought to: I typically just look for guns with an already beat to hell finish, but I have a few that I could stand to use that method on, primarily a Derringer copy and an Uberti Remington 1875, neither of which I really want to permanently strip the finish from.
EDIT:
News! We are officially in pre-production for season 2! We are tentatively hoping to shoot new episodes in the winter. We -MIGHT- start a kickstarter for those episodes, or wait and do a KS to fund the remainder of the season after we've shot one or two. So far we are storyboarding the first two episodes, gearing up in art department, and drafting the third, fourth, and fifth episodes of what we hope to be a ten episode season.
WillisPDunlevey
Mildly Dipped
Something else you can do to make the weapons look old is to copy the type of repairs that indians did on their rilfes in the 1800s. When a stock or barrel band broke they would wrap the break in wet rawhide and after it dried the stock was as strong as ever (or the barrel was now fixed to the forestock).
You could simulate that by wrapping wire or distressed/old looking para cord around the stock (in the grip area... the most likeley place to break after being used as a club) or around the barrel and stock.
YOu could also do it fallout style with duct tape <smile>
I would suggest that the bottom layer is actually two pieces of duct tape with the sticky sides stuck together to keep glue off of the weapon. Once its tightly wrapped (over lapped), tape it together with a small piece of tape and then cover it with more duct tape.
As for knives and weapons, I have recently got a couple hand forged/hand made knives and a hatchett from a local forge. They are definately not factory perfect so I like them even more.
I have a bowie and a hatchett made out of horse rasps (large files used for filing down horse hooves.... will take pix when I get home)
You could simulate that by wrapping wire or distressed/old looking para cord around the stock (in the grip area... the most likeley place to break after being used as a club) or around the barrel and stock.
YOu could also do it fallout style with duct tape <smile>
I would suggest that the bottom layer is actually two pieces of duct tape with the sticky sides stuck together to keep glue off of the weapon. Once its tightly wrapped (over lapped), tape it together with a small piece of tape and then cover it with more duct tape.
As for knives and weapons, I have recently got a couple hand forged/hand made knives and a hatchett from a local forge. They are definately not factory perfect so I like them even more.
I have a bowie and a hatchett made out of horse rasps (large files used for filing down horse hooves.... will take pix when I get home)
InTheOnlineAsbestosSuit
Look, Ma! Two Heads!
^^^
Some weapons I expect to make look like they are pieced together from spare parts, some will be poorly repaired guns using some methods like what you suggest. The wire and leather wraps are ideas that I've been planning to use, I've seen those methods used on antique flintlocks from the Middle East and liked the look. Duct tape probably not because I feel like useable duct tape would be tough to find in the Mad Nation universe as it's taking place nearly two centuries post-apocalypse and thus most things like duct tape would have been used up by then.
We plan on manufacturing a lot of neat new weapons too, but I'll save that conversation for later this month when I'll have more photos to post.
Also, NEW UPDATE EVERYBODY:
Hey all you fans, you should all follow the new Mad Nation facebook page for regular updates on how the show is progressing!
https://www.facebook.com/MadNationShow
Also, we'll have a big announcement in a little more than a month
Some weapons I expect to make look like they are pieced together from spare parts, some will be poorly repaired guns using some methods like what you suggest. The wire and leather wraps are ideas that I've been planning to use, I've seen those methods used on antique flintlocks from the Middle East and liked the look. Duct tape probably not because I feel like useable duct tape would be tough to find in the Mad Nation universe as it's taking place nearly two centuries post-apocalypse and thus most things like duct tape would have been used up by then.
We plan on manufacturing a lot of neat new weapons too, but I'll save that conversation for later this month when I'll have more photos to post.
Also, NEW UPDATE EVERYBODY:
Hey all you fans, you should all follow the new Mad Nation facebook page for regular updates on how the show is progressing!
https://www.facebook.com/MadNationShow
Also, we'll have a big announcement in a little more than a month
InTheOnlineAsbestosSuit
Look, Ma! Two Heads!
Ho-boy, got some news!
So we've been working on Season 2. Like, a lot. Quick rundown:
1: First five episodes written.
2: First five episodes have been officially cast with a whole new pack of fantastically talented actors!
3: We've started building things! Will post photos soon!
4: WE HAVE A FACEBOOK PAGE! GO LIKE IT PLEASE!
https://www.facebook.com/MadNationShow
5: BIG ANNOUNCEMENT IN ONE WEEK! Get your butts ready!
Seriously, many of you may have thought this thing was all done but you're about to see a whole lot more of us!
So we've been working on Season 2. Like, a lot. Quick rundown:
1: First five episodes written.
2: First five episodes have been officially cast with a whole new pack of fantastically talented actors!
3: We've started building things! Will post photos soon!
4: WE HAVE A FACEBOOK PAGE! GO LIKE IT PLEASE!
https://www.facebook.com/MadNationShow
5: BIG ANNOUNCEMENT IN ONE WEEK! Get your butts ready!
Seriously, many of you may have thought this thing was all done but you're about to see a whole lot more of us!
InTheOnlineAsbestosSuit
Look, Ma! Two Heads!
August 27th, 2013
Ladies and gentlemen, I am proud to announce:
THE MAD NATION SEASON 2 KICKSTARTER HAS LAUNCHED. PLEASE SHARE THIS PAGE AND DONATE.
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/290975840/mad-nation-season-2?ref=email
Seriously, share the hell out of this page. Even if you can't afford to donate, please post this page on your Facebook, twitter, other forums accounts, everywhere and anywhere you can. The more exposure we get, the more likely we will reach our goals and be able to make you a fantastic movie!
Our project has a long history here on NMA; we've been posting in this thread since June of 2005. NMA helped us build everything we've done so far on this show, and I want the post apocalyptic fan community both here and everywhere else online to be a big part of what shapes this show in the years to come. I've always wanted to make a show for -you-, and now with your help I can do that even better. So please, join us; donate a few bucks, share our page, help us get our start on our new season. I promise you it will be worth it. It's been rough going so far, but with your help we're going to make for you a hollywood-quality show and have it done within the next year.
Ladies and gentlemen, I am proud to announce:
THE MAD NATION SEASON 2 KICKSTARTER HAS LAUNCHED. PLEASE SHARE THIS PAGE AND DONATE.
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/290975840/mad-nation-season-2?ref=email
Seriously, share the hell out of this page. Even if you can't afford to donate, please post this page on your Facebook, twitter, other forums accounts, everywhere and anywhere you can. The more exposure we get, the more likely we will reach our goals and be able to make you a fantastic movie!
Our project has a long history here on NMA; we've been posting in this thread since June of 2005. NMA helped us build everything we've done so far on this show, and I want the post apocalyptic fan community both here and everywhere else online to be a big part of what shapes this show in the years to come. I've always wanted to make a show for -you-, and now with your help I can do that even better. So please, join us; donate a few bucks, share our page, help us get our start on our new season. I promise you it will be worth it. It's been rough going so far, but with your help we're going to make for you a hollywood-quality show and have it done within the next year.
greyseerco
First time out of the vault
I cannot wait. Backed it already and I am sure with this extra funding you can make an amazing season of good wasteland fun. I can only hope we learn more of the past of the man who wants to never know.
InTheOnlineAsbestosSuit
Look, Ma! Two Heads!
Thanks friend! We need all the help we can get, so thanks so much for backing us.
InTheOnlineAsbestosSuit
Look, Ma! Two Heads!
We've topped 1500! Now is the time to donate everyone, let's keep the momentum going!
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/290975840/mad-nation-season-2
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/290975840/mad-nation-season-2
InTheOnlineAsbestosSuit
Look, Ma! Two Heads!
InTheOnlineAsbestosSuit
Look, Ma! Two Heads!
We've reached 57% of our goal! Also, we have a ton of cool behind the scenes videos on our page! Go check it out!
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/290975840/mad-nation-season-2
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/290975840/mad-nation-season-2
InTheOnlineAsbestosSuit
Look, Ma! Two Heads!
Hey folks, new flash goal on the Kickstarter!
Click here to view the Kickstarter Page!
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/290975840/mad-nation-season-2
Click here to view the Kickstarter Page!
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/290975840/mad-nation-season-2
InTheOnlineAsbestosSuit
Look, Ma! Two Heads!
Only a few days left but we met the above goal so jump in now while there's still time!
InTheOnlineAsbestosSuit
Look, Ma! Two Heads!
It's coming up on your last chance to donate to the Kickstarter! Very cool prizes and the chance to get in on Mad Nation Season 2 could be yours! Counting down the last hours now!
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/290975840/mad-nation-season-2
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/290975840/mad-nation-season-2
InTheOnlineAsbestosSuit
Look, Ma! Two Heads!
Hello again Mad Nation fans! We've been under some radio silence since the end of the Kickstarter while we figure out where we're going from here, but we've finally got enough things worked out to merit an update so here it is!!
Firstly, the Kickstarter was a fantastic success! Most people were skeptical that a web show with no celebrity attachment and only a small fan following could meet it's funding goal but we did it and then some! We didn't reach our stretch goals, but we've made enough money to begin the new season, so here we go again!
Currently our plan is to begin production officially in the late spring. We've got a lot of things to do before then: lots of costumes and props to build, locations to scout, equipment to rent, insurance to buy, oh my god the list goes on and on. Gone are the days of shooting these episodes out in the woods with a borrowed camera: we're expecting to go for the highest production values this time around possible.
Otherwise, we expect to take a short break for the last week and a half of December for the holiday season. Once we're back in January, we're expecting to hit the ground running by beginning our technical location scouting and kicking prop and costume manufacturing into high gear. At that time you'll begin to see new photos and video updates as we progress. So stay tuned in here, if you haven't already please follow us on Facebook and Twitter, and of course a very happy holiday season to you all!
Firstly, the Kickstarter was a fantastic success! Most people were skeptical that a web show with no celebrity attachment and only a small fan following could meet it's funding goal but we did it and then some! We didn't reach our stretch goals, but we've made enough money to begin the new season, so here we go again!
Currently our plan is to begin production officially in the late spring. We've got a lot of things to do before then: lots of costumes and props to build, locations to scout, equipment to rent, insurance to buy, oh my god the list goes on and on. Gone are the days of shooting these episodes out in the woods with a borrowed camera: we're expecting to go for the highest production values this time around possible.
Otherwise, we expect to take a short break for the last week and a half of December for the holiday season. Once we're back in January, we're expecting to hit the ground running by beginning our technical location scouting and kicking prop and costume manufacturing into high gear. At that time you'll begin to see new photos and video updates as we progress. So stay tuned in here, if you haven't already please follow us on Facebook and Twitter, and of course a very happy holiday season to you all!