'Mad Nation' Post-Apocalyptic TV show Megathread

Latest update:

Spent a little time doing some casting and pre production for the big gunfight. Pretty much everything is set in motion to shoot it in mid-late November. Basically, we'll be scheduling the shoot as soon as I have roughly 8-10 dedicated actors for all the necessary extras.

This coming sunday we'll hopefully be shooting another scene, a simple dialogue between Jessie and Gray. Hoping to keep it short as the movie is already a little dialogue heavy but there's some good drama in the scene that I feel will only add to the movie, as long as we keep it brief enough. I'm also trying to edit down the first act a bit so as to cut out as much unnecessary talk as possible. My style has changed a lot since I shot those earlier scenes and I'm finding it's easier to communicate with fewer words now.
 
Well, I made a deal with a friend's production that in return for providing them with props for their western that they'd provide me with extras for mine. I'm -really- hoping they don't stiff me, since the work I'll have to do to help them will make any shooting in what's left of November pretty much impossible. I can only hope that the snow holds off long enough that I can get the gunfight shot by the first weekend in December. Yet another reason why I wish I was making this movie in Arizona.

If the gunfight doesn't get shot in December, chances are it will not get shot for another few months due to weather, meaning my original hope of getting the movie done before next semester at the latest will be impossible.

We shot another scene last week, though we're short three shots and the actor who did it keeps dicking me around for them, so I don't know when that'll be in the can either. I'm getting pretty annoyed that the rapid progress we were making in the last few months has stagnated, but I still have not given up hope. I'm currently working on three different movies plus four classes, so I've been busy as hell, but I've managed to get it set up so that I can use part of Mad Nation for my Post Production Editing final project. All I have to do is edit 15 minutes or so of it together as a logical clip. Since I practically already have this done, I'll probably take this as an opportunity to re-edit a few scenes and get a leg up on the audio work.
 
Well, too bad you're getting your chain yanked, but hey, you might get some help for the movie this way. And, as you said, if the snow holds, then you'll be able to shoot; imagine the feeling of death and desolation caused by a dry early December! :wink: I'll be praying to Mother Nature for you, somehow...
 
Nology5890 said:
imagine the feeling of death and desolation caused by a dry early December!
Click to expand...

Actually, this is the whole reason I didn't plan to shoot this in September: I wanted to wait til october/november so the foliage would die off and all the green farm land would be brown and dead. Hopefully things will work out, it'd be a shame to have to shoot it in the natural beauty of spring :/
 
Any chance of more production stills or sneak peeks? would love to see some action .

great work so far. keep at it. can't wait to see the final version
 
If you have a chance, go mud-running in that sucker! Needs more use to fit in with the post-apoc vibe; that is, unless that was your plan all along. :P
 
We do usually try to run it through the mud and dirt a few times before every shoot. We don't get too into it though because normally it's my buddy's work truck so he doesn't want to risk screwing up the suspension by off-roading too hard.
 
New Update:
Yesterday we shot the gunfight scene for the cult, and it was spectacular. We had about 12 extras, and we were able to make it look like we had plenty more. The downside was that my squib machine was missing on the set so we had to fake the blood as best we can but we can ad more digitally later, as much as I hate doing that. There were a couple shots that I'm not sure if we got, but I know that we got a lot of extra coverage from our second and third cameras in the main gunfight sequence so I think we'll probably be okay. This was also the first three camera shoot I ever directed and I'm very happy with how well it went. I was expecting to be pretty overwhelmed but once we got moving everything fell right into place.

In the interest of remaining spoiler free, I will probably only post a few limited photos of this sequence, and post them as links rather than tagged images.
 
I like what you did in Dr. O, except for the ending. Black and white worked perfectly, why change to colours at the end?
 
In Dr. O, The changing to color was meant as a sort of a reality check. The pizza guy showing up establishes that these villains are not really all that serious about being villains, and the change from very stark, hard, dramatic lighting to the defused, soft, neutral interior lighting of the living room area, as well as the switch to black and white, is supposed to emphasize that joke a little more visually. I know that makes it sound pretentious but it's not meant to be.
 
Newest update: due to inclement weather I've had to push shooting of our exteriors back until its warmer, probably May. But I'm going to be spending the next couple months editing the hell out of the movie and shooting the occasional re-shoots/cutaways/additional whatever might be needed. I'll also be getting started on the musical scoring, as I really want the music and sound work in this to be above average.

The next week or so is finals week so it'll be rough for me to get much done on the movie, but once this week is past and I have a little time to work on the editing, I'll expect to have lots of new clips and photos available.
 
Newest Updates:

We've been making some headway on scoring: two friends of mine, one of whom is also acting in the movie, have been jamming out together and have been coming up with some good ideas. I'm looking forward to hearing what they come up with.

Also, while I've made little headway in editing (long story short, I'm having some trouble finding a new copy of Final Cut Pro after formatting my hard drive for an OS update), I've been making some progress on getting the sets and choreography prepared for the upcoming knife fight sequence.

Will keep you all posted on events as they unfold.
 
Happy News!

It's possible that the shooting will be finished* within the next two weeks or so. *This is not including any possible re-shoots of individual shots here and there that may be required. So far, I've got a rough cut of about 80% of the movie, which is approximately 30 minutes so far.

I'm editing daily now, and fine tuning much of that. We have a loosely scheduled shoot for the weekend after next for the knife fight, which we've been choreographing and practicing, and it is looking like it will be quite impressive. And with spring break coming up, I'm hoping to get at least two more scenes shot, which would leave us only the very brief final scene to shoot.

Then comes a month or so of post production. There will be a lot of sound editing and color correction, as well as some minimal special effects. Also we've got the musical scoring to do, but considering the nature of working with college musicians, I'm not expecting to get anywhere fast with that so I might be forced to release the film with public domain music, leaving the original score for the DVD release.

So far, I know we have one scene which is a minute and thirty seconds long, that's cut down from a 5 minute original cut. This extended scene will be included as a bonus feature on the DVD, as will a very long out takes real, a bonus short if we can get it shot, and a sneak preview of the next movie I make in what I hope will be a series started with this one.
 
Knife fight scene got shot on Saturday. A lot of good stuff. We're moving pretty quickly toward the finish line now. I'm going out to California for the 10th-15th, so I'm hoping to get the next scene shot before then so that as soon as I get back we can shoot the ever so brief final scene and get this thing in the can. We'll see how it goes.
 
Well folks, looks like shooting will be complete shortly. It would have been complete this past weekend, but we had some very aggravating hang ups that cut our time short. However we literally have about one or two hours worth of work to do left, to shoot literally the last 30 seconds of the damn thing. Once that's done, I'll have a complete rough cut, which I will then view with some trusted film maker companions, iron out the kinks in, and then do the polishing work of sound and color correction. I still haven't gotten anyone to give me a concrete commitment to do an original score, though one local band has been encouraging about it, so we'll see where that goes.

Post production is going to be a bitch, but we're going to finish it by August 15th at the latest. That's because on the 20th, a few very good friends of mine will be putting on their annual film festival for south shore Massachusetts film students, "Flim Fest" (yes, it's misspelled on purpose). Links for information can be found below, any of you who are local are encouraged to attend. Actually, you don't have to be local, I know a few people who drive through multiple states to see this.

http://www.kevinthejames.com/2009/05/flim-fest-2009-announcement.html

http://www.notatadbad.net/flimfest09

EDIT: Also, for those that watched the first one, there's a new episode of Dr.O up on my youtube page.
 
Cool, good luck with the last sprint! Looking forward to see it in its full glory.
 
^^^
Glad to see that you're still keeping an eye on the thread. I'm pretty sure there's a few people left that have been following this since the beginning haha.

A couple weeks of rain, as well as some scheduling issues, have been making shooting the last few minutes very difficult. It figures that when we've been working on this movie for nearly 5 years total, it takes three weeks to get the last 30 minutes of shooting scheduled. I'm hopeful for this weekend if the weather clears, but we'll see.

In the mean time, I've been editing a lot. The current rough cut, which includes blank footage that roughly equals the length of the last few little bits we need to shoot, is just under 46 minutes. A little longer than I'd hoped, yeah, but less than I expected. I expect to shave a few minutes off that total: there's a dream sequence that I'd like to re-shoot and cut down, and there's a few scenes that can be tweaked and tightened up. I'm also -still- trying to find a dedicated soundtrack artist. I'm kinda doubting that I'll have an original soundtrack by the time I want to premier the movie in August :/
 
Big Update:

Shooting is complete! We have a rough cut of the movie complete, minus a few last minute cut away/coverage shots that I went out and got an hour ago.

Getting into the post production faze now. I have to color correct the movie, which I started yesterday and as of today will be about 1/4 done. My buddy Kevin James, of Not A Tad Bad Flim Co and Plymouth Rock Studios' "New Kids On The Rock", has been experimenting with Adobe After Effects to create some of the special effects that I didn't have the ability to do on-set, such as muzzle flashes and maybe some blood effects, and he's coming up with some very impressive stuff that I think will add a lot to the movie.

After all that's done, hopefully by next week, I've got to do sound editing. This is going to be the hard part, as the sound quality of my camera is pathetic and I rarely if ever had access to good sound equipment. I'm expecting to do a lot of noise reduction and overlays: I'm going to avoid ADRing the dialogue (dubbing), but if I have to I will. I want the sound design in this film to be just as intricate as the rest of it, if not moreso, so I expect to spend a lot of time on it.

One thing I'm very excited about is the music, however. A couple buddies of mine have gotten together and done a complete score for me. I won't go into too much detail since I haven't heard it yet, but think of the soundtrack from the film Deadman, crossed with the music of Ennio Morricone. One of the artists composing the music has been a friend for many years and has done a lot of musical work for me and friends of mine before, and the other I only met recently but is a very talented guitarist who's even played for The Pope in Rome, so I'm expecting something brilliant.

Stay tuned, folks: we've almost reached the finish line.
 
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