That post title may be wishful thinking, but we're trying to be optimistic here.
Three months ago, I posted about the LEGO store I had opened for the primary purpose of funding my project. It turned out to work very well, and I was able to buy all sorts of parts that I needed with some Paypal funds left over for several non-LEGO related items.
Three weeks ago, Mrs. Mosley became interested in this and proposed making it a family business. We would put forward some money for buying LEGO on the cheap and then selling it in the store. She became very enthused about it, and I myself got excited when I happened upon some massive clearance sales at the K-marts in town. I ended up buying several hundred dollars of LEGO sets (mostly from the outgoing Toy Story line) for less than a third of their normal prices. This was going to be fun!
Alas, just about the time we started this, the sales at the store (which had been fairly consistent since I opened it) suddenly dried up. As of this post, we haven't had a sale since April 11th. It was disheartening, particularly for Mrs. Mosley, but I have reassured her that it's bound to bounce back. We'll eventually make a profit on the sets we bought with the seed money (though most of them have been put into storage and will only be offered several years later when all the store copies are gone).
This post is let you know about the store, and also for myself to keep a list of hyperlinks to the places I need to check for LEGO to buy with our remaining seed money (and if you want to use them too, knock youself out!):
Craigslist
LEGO Store Deals
Amazon
Kmart
Walmart
Toys R Us
Next Week: The Lesson Plan
Saturday, April 30, 2011
Saturday, April 23, 2011
"Ten": The Office (Part Three)
I'm going the full "Gregg Toland" on this project, which means the ceiling will be visible in this room. I was able to take advantage of a fistful of windows I had grabbed at one of my last visits to Pick-a-brick at Downtown Disney. These were placed in a grid pattern inside a frame of black bricks. This is the result.
The ceiling itself is does not cover the entire room but only about 3/4 of it. I need to have some room where the camera is for closeups and the ceiling would have gotten in the way. With this design, it can slide back and forth and hold it's position onto any combination of walls depending on the shot (The two notches of ceiling flanking the window bank are permanent pieces since I won't need to put the camera there).
The final element was the elevator and doors. I had done the swooshy "Star Trek" doors before in the Blast Reynolds short, but those doors were operated individually. This time, I wanted a single control to open and close the doors smoothly at the same time. So, we bring out the gears.
The turning of one gear turns the rest of them and the doors open and close simultaneously. This will make filming a bit easier. And so, we now have our Office.
Finally, here is a test shot, converted to B&W and widescreen dimensions:
Next Week: The Going Concern
The ceiling itself is does not cover the entire room but only about 3/4 of it. I need to have some room where the camera is for closeups and the ceiling would have gotten in the way. With this design, it can slide back and forth and hold it's position onto any combination of walls depending on the shot (The two notches of ceiling flanking the window bank are permanent pieces since I won't need to put the camera there).
The final element was the elevator and doors. I had done the swooshy "Star Trek" doors before in the Blast Reynolds short, but those doors were operated individually. This time, I wanted a single control to open and close the doors smoothly at the same time. So, we bring out the gears.
The turning of one gear turns the rest of them and the doors open and close simultaneously. This will make filming a bit easier. And so, we now have our Office.
Finally, here is a test shot, converted to B&W and widescreen dimensions:
Next Week: The Going Concern
Friday, April 22, 2011
Indiana Jones and "The Chicago Way"
(Earlier this month, my grandfather-in-law Don wrote a post in his brand new blog that was based on a discussion I had with him several years ago on the morality of heroes in contemporary Hollywood films. My response ended up being so long that I went ahead and turned it into a post. Go have a look at his original essay before reading mine. It'll make more sense that way.)
One of the most famous scenes from Raiders of the Lost Ark came about because of dysentery. As the story goes, the original script directed Indiana Jones to disarm a hulking swordsman with his whip. Harrison Ford, however, was suffering from food poisoning that day and suggested to Steven Spielberg that Indiana would more likely just shoot the guy. And so, cinematic history was made.
Spielberg has stated repeatedly that his intention in creating this film was to pay tribune to those old Republic serials of the 1940's. In those films, the heroes very much wore white hats (if not in the literal sense) and the villains were very black-hearted foes indeed. But with the post war period and the rise of film noir, our heroes started to take on a grayer sheen. Their motivations weren't always so pure and their actions weren't always so ethical, but we rooted for them anyway because, on the whole, they fought for the forces of good.
Looking at Harrison Ford's other iconic role of Han Solo in Star Wars, we get a prime example of this. Here we have an independent beholden to no one and not above petty crimes such as smuggling to make his living. In a character-defining scene early on in the film, he shoots a bounty hunter under a table as his opponent holds a gun on him and jokes about killing him.
Is it self defense? Yes, but not exactly what you'd call fair play. Yet in 1997 when Lucas made a modification to this scene so that Greedo shoots first, there was a fan uproar that was deafening. In his book "On Writing", Stephen King wrote that you can write anything as an author as long as you tell the truth. In simpler terms, you must be true to your characters. Lucas's little edit might have made Han's actions more morally acceptable, but it struck a false cord with a character that had been embraced for his flaws.
Getting back to Indiana Jones, the swordsman scene as scripted could have been taken out of one of the old serials that Spielberg loved so much: An honorable fight between two great opponents. And though Indiana is clearly Han Solo's moral superior (he "steals", yes, but not for a profit), his decision to shoot the guy comes at the halfway mark in the film after we have seen Indiana endure so much already. Again, it comes down to character, and his expression of "I really don't have time for this" says all that needs to be said about his character's actions.
Which brings us to The Untouchables. Like Star Wars and Raiders of the Lost Ark, this is meant to be a fun action film. Unlike those two films, it's not the escapism of Sci-Fi or Treasure Hunting Adventure. We're dealing here with real history and real people that once existed. Furthermore, the film is directed by Brian De Palma, who on the whole produces more disturbing films that his contemporaries Lucas and Spielberg. The Untouchables was one of his few stabs (a successful one, most would agree) at a more mainstream popular entertainment.
And yet... and yet we are presented with a scene that causes problems with some viewers. In it, lawman Elliot Ness is pursuing a hitman on a rooftop. The hitman starts to descend a rope and Ness traps him there with his gun drawn. There is a moment of consideration on Ness's face, but he soon helps the hitman up and starts to escort him into custody. While crossing the roof, the hitman brags about killing Ness's friend. Ness then force marches/runs the handcuffed hitman to the side of the building and pushes him off, where he dies on the street below.
This is the scene that Don has an objection to and I understand it completely. Coincidentally, about twenty years ago when I was attending UNF, I had an argument with a fellow film buff about this very same scene. It became very heated as he was angry that we were acting so indifferent to a scene that upset him so. Yet his objection was not to the immorality of the action per se, but rather the action being performed by a character that, so far in the film, had very much been a by-the-book cop. I never asked him about his opinion on Han and Greedo or Indiana and the Swordsman, but I can imagine he would be less bothered by those two scenes because of the characters involved.
Yet one can make arguments in defense of Ness's actions. As my grandfather-in-law pointed out, he seemed to be in a fit of rage when he pushed the hitman off the roof. More importantly, his memory was jogged when the hitman mentioned Jim Malone. As Malone told Ness in a church earlier in the film:
If a man pulls a sword on you, you pull a revolver. If a man pulls a blaster on you over a table, you pull one under it. Malone, it seems, would be in good company with Indiana and Han.
But let me address some other aspects of Don's essay and we'll get back to Mr. Ness in a moment. In terms of sadism and cruelty by heroes and villains alike, I think this is largely confined to the period of the 1980's when our action heroes were played by actors like Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stalone. It's been noted by many a film buff that the Reagan era produced action films that were particularly brutal, such as the unapologetically violent Commando, which is the film where Schwarzenegger holds a man over a cliff edge and drops him. It's a film that really symbolizes the era, and not in a good way.
Platoon is also from this era, but I don't think it belongs in the same group as the action vehicles described above. Yes, there is action, but the film is at its core a drama about how people can lose their moral center when in the middle of a war zone. Yes, the actions taken by Chris are reprehensible, but I think the film is never meant to be looked upon as a white hat/black hat affair. There are too many shades of gray when you’re knee deep in the muck. (Speaking of War films with moral ambiguity, I would point you to my essay on The Dirty Dozen and how it presents us with flawed heroes, only to drive home at the end that they were used to do the "dirty" work that needed to be done while the more noble soldiers fought the "good fight".)
The last example noted in Don's essay was Mel Gibson in The Patriot. Given that this film was made in 2000, it doesn't have the excuse of 1980's excess to fall back on, but it does have Mel Gibson. There was an article that I read around the time Apocolypto came out that reviewed how many of the films involving Mel, whether actor or director, have a measure of sadism.
Mel getting tortured with electric shocks in Lethal Weapon.
Mel getting tortured with needles in Conspiracy Theory.
Mel getting his toes smashed with claw hammer, one by one, in Payback.
Mel getting sllloooowwwlllyyy drawn and quartered in Braveheart.
Then there are his two non-starring directorial efforts: The Passion of the Christ and the aforementioned Apocolypto. Both received generally favorable reviews, but critics were quick to warn off people who have queasy stomachs.
But quicker than you can say "What's my motivation?", you can see the clear line running through most of these films: Threat to family and loved ones. This is the reasoning/excuse that will dismiss almost any behavior by the hero imaginable. Schwarzenegger in Commando going after his kidnapped daughter. Gibson in The Patriot defending his family and avenging his son. With this, you have two age groups satisfied: Young boys who tend to enjoy violence in and of itself are pleased, and older viewers (who should know better) are able to put aside moral objections because they know that they would do anything for their loved ones as well.
But lets look at the villains. More so than heroes, villains are usually of the two-dimensional sort, and that's not confined to a particular decade. That's just a result of poor scriptwriting, which will forever and always be with us. But I'd like to offer evidence that there are glimmers of hope in this area. Some of the most successful action films of the past fifteen years have been impressively nuanced with their villain character portraits. Take The Matrix, where we get a marvelous monologue from Agent Smith on how his actions are motivated not by riches or power or love of violence, but from the desire to escape an environment he finds repellent. In essence, he tells Morpheus that he’s simply trying to complete his job so he can leave work and go home. That’s a motivation we can all appreciate.
Then there is the first Pirates of the Caribbean film, where Captain Barbossa explains to Elizabeth Swann how their quest is not riches but to simply have the undead curse lifted from them. “I feel nothing”, says Barbossa for emphasis. It’s not a haughty threat from an overconfident villain, but the plea of a desperate man. When he finally gets his wish, he is cruelly shot and his last words are “I feel… cold”. He dies, but you get the feeling that he died with a level of satisfaction that he died a feeling human being.
The crazy thing about these two films is that they didn't really need to go this extra length (and they are therefore all the more commendable for doing so). The rise in Sci-Fi and Fantasy have granted filmmakers permission to present bad guys that are embodied in forms other than human, which means that their motivations aren't entirely necessary to map out. Aliens, mutants, zombies, robots and every other hip genre trope allow our heroic leads to mow them down with wild abandon with little thought to moral consequence. One can imagine what a bloodbath a film would be that had the hero fighting rampaging aliens who had also kidnapped his daughter.
But getting back to Ness, I'd like to close this essay out by comparing his rooftop scene with a scene in the Sci-Fi show "Firefly". For those unfamiliar, It is set 500 years in the future where a totalitarian government called the Alliance rules over all the planets that humans have been able to inhabit. A renegade ship captained by Mal Reynolds tries to avoid the Alliance as best he can and make a living doing jobs that are often less than legal (and if that sounds awfully familiar to certain character and ship from Star Wars, give yourself a gold star). Mal once fought a rebellion against the Alliance but lost, and the loss of this war left Mal disillusioned and without a cause to fight for (More on this in a moment).
In the episode “The Train Job”, he and his crew are hired by a ruthless gangster to rob a train of certain goods. After the job is done, Mal finds out that the stolen material was much needed medicine for a remote settlement of farmers. He decides to return it to the proper owners, which brings the gangster's henchmen down on him like a ton of bricks. He and his crew defeat them, and then we are given this scene:
In a number of ways, it’s very similar to the scene in Untouchables: The Hero attempts to do the right thing, but the villain mouths off once too often and compels the Hero to give a little push that results in the (handcuffed) villain’s death. Both scenes are played for comedy (it’s a darker humor for sure, but humor none the less), but it’s overplayed in the Untouchables. Whereas Mal does what he does for very practical reasons (eliminating the need to run from this maniac for the rest of his life) and it’s something he very briefly debates over in his head before doing it, Ness commits his act out of rage and is allowed not one, but two one-liners after the deed is done (“Did he sound anything like that?” “He’s in the car.”). Of course, Untouchables was made in the 1980's, and delivering one-liner’s after dispatching an opponent were practically required in action films of that era.
"Firefly" was sadly cancelled after only one season, but it was allowed to be spun of into the 2005 feature film Serenity that wrapped up most of the major plot strands quite nicely. Mal, who had always exhibited a core of decency in the show towards his friends and the oppressed, finally found a cause to fight for again, and through this he becomes the true hero he was always destined to be. It was a wonderful capper to a wonderful saga, and emblamatic of the rocky path some heroes take. Not all of our movie heroes are that well drawn, but we cherish the few that are.
One of the most famous scenes from Raiders of the Lost Ark came about because of dysentery. As the story goes, the original script directed Indiana Jones to disarm a hulking swordsman with his whip. Harrison Ford, however, was suffering from food poisoning that day and suggested to Steven Spielberg that Indiana would more likely just shoot the guy. And so, cinematic history was made.
Spielberg has stated repeatedly that his intention in creating this film was to pay tribune to those old Republic serials of the 1940's. In those films, the heroes very much wore white hats (if not in the literal sense) and the villains were very black-hearted foes indeed. But with the post war period and the rise of film noir, our heroes started to take on a grayer sheen. Their motivations weren't always so pure and their actions weren't always so ethical, but we rooted for them anyway because, on the whole, they fought for the forces of good.
Looking at Harrison Ford's other iconic role of Han Solo in Star Wars, we get a prime example of this. Here we have an independent beholden to no one and not above petty crimes such as smuggling to make his living. In a character-defining scene early on in the film, he shoots a bounty hunter under a table as his opponent holds a gun on him and jokes about killing him.
Is it self defense? Yes, but not exactly what you'd call fair play. Yet in 1997 when Lucas made a modification to this scene so that Greedo shoots first, there was a fan uproar that was deafening. In his book "On Writing", Stephen King wrote that you can write anything as an author as long as you tell the truth. In simpler terms, you must be true to your characters. Lucas's little edit might have made Han's actions more morally acceptable, but it struck a false cord with a character that had been embraced for his flaws.
Getting back to Indiana Jones, the swordsman scene as scripted could have been taken out of one of the old serials that Spielberg loved so much: An honorable fight between two great opponents. And though Indiana is clearly Han Solo's moral superior (he "steals", yes, but not for a profit), his decision to shoot the guy comes at the halfway mark in the film after we have seen Indiana endure so much already. Again, it comes down to character, and his expression of "I really don't have time for this" says all that needs to be said about his character's actions.
Which brings us to The Untouchables. Like Star Wars and Raiders of the Lost Ark, this is meant to be a fun action film. Unlike those two films, it's not the escapism of Sci-Fi or Treasure Hunting Adventure. We're dealing here with real history and real people that once existed. Furthermore, the film is directed by Brian De Palma, who on the whole produces more disturbing films that his contemporaries Lucas and Spielberg. The Untouchables was one of his few stabs (a successful one, most would agree) at a more mainstream popular entertainment.
And yet... and yet we are presented with a scene that causes problems with some viewers. In it, lawman Elliot Ness is pursuing a hitman on a rooftop. The hitman starts to descend a rope and Ness traps him there with his gun drawn. There is a moment of consideration on Ness's face, but he soon helps the hitman up and starts to escort him into custody. While crossing the roof, the hitman brags about killing Ness's friend. Ness then force marches/runs the handcuffed hitman to the side of the building and pushes him off, where he dies on the street below.
This is the scene that Don has an objection to and I understand it completely. Coincidentally, about twenty years ago when I was attending UNF, I had an argument with a fellow film buff about this very same scene. It became very heated as he was angry that we were acting so indifferent to a scene that upset him so. Yet his objection was not to the immorality of the action per se, but rather the action being performed by a character that, so far in the film, had very much been a by-the-book cop. I never asked him about his opinion on Han and Greedo or Indiana and the Swordsman, but I can imagine he would be less bothered by those two scenes because of the characters involved.
Yet one can make arguments in defense of Ness's actions. As my grandfather-in-law pointed out, he seemed to be in a fit of rage when he pushed the hitman off the roof. More importantly, his memory was jogged when the hitman mentioned Jim Malone. As Malone told Ness in a church earlier in the film:
Malone: "You said you wanted to get Capone. Do you really wanna get him? You see what I'm saying is, what are you prepared to do?"
Ness: "Anything within the law."
Malone: "And then what are you prepared to do? If you open the can on these worms you must be prepared to go all the way. Because they're not gonna give up the fight, until one of you is dead."
Ness: "I want to get Capone! I don't know how to do it."
Malone: "You wanna know how to get Capone? They pull a knife, you pull a gun. He sends one of yours to the hospital, you send one of his to the morgue. That's the Chicago way!"
If a man pulls a sword on you, you pull a revolver. If a man pulls a blaster on you over a table, you pull one under it. Malone, it seems, would be in good company with Indiana and Han.
But let me address some other aspects of Don's essay and we'll get back to Mr. Ness in a moment. In terms of sadism and cruelty by heroes and villains alike, I think this is largely confined to the period of the 1980's when our action heroes were played by actors like Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stalone. It's been noted by many a film buff that the Reagan era produced action films that were particularly brutal, such as the unapologetically violent Commando, which is the film where Schwarzenegger holds a man over a cliff edge and drops him. It's a film that really symbolizes the era, and not in a good way.
Platoon is also from this era, but I don't think it belongs in the same group as the action vehicles described above. Yes, there is action, but the film is at its core a drama about how people can lose their moral center when in the middle of a war zone. Yes, the actions taken by Chris are reprehensible, but I think the film is never meant to be looked upon as a white hat/black hat affair. There are too many shades of gray when you’re knee deep in the muck. (Speaking of War films with moral ambiguity, I would point you to my essay on The Dirty Dozen and how it presents us with flawed heroes, only to drive home at the end that they were used to do the "dirty" work that needed to be done while the more noble soldiers fought the "good fight".)
The last example noted in Don's essay was Mel Gibson in The Patriot. Given that this film was made in 2000, it doesn't have the excuse of 1980's excess to fall back on, but it does have Mel Gibson. There was an article that I read around the time Apocolypto came out that reviewed how many of the films involving Mel, whether actor or director, have a measure of sadism.
Mel getting tortured with electric shocks in Lethal Weapon.
Mel getting tortured with needles in Conspiracy Theory.
Mel getting his toes smashed with claw hammer, one by one, in Payback.
Mel getting sllloooowwwlllyyy drawn and quartered in Braveheart.
Then there are his two non-starring directorial efforts: The Passion of the Christ and the aforementioned Apocolypto. Both received generally favorable reviews, but critics were quick to warn off people who have queasy stomachs.
But quicker than you can say "What's my motivation?", you can see the clear line running through most of these films: Threat to family and loved ones. This is the reasoning/excuse that will dismiss almost any behavior by the hero imaginable. Schwarzenegger in Commando going after his kidnapped daughter. Gibson in The Patriot defending his family and avenging his son. With this, you have two age groups satisfied: Young boys who tend to enjoy violence in and of itself are pleased, and older viewers (who should know better) are able to put aside moral objections because they know that they would do anything for their loved ones as well.
But lets look at the villains. More so than heroes, villains are usually of the two-dimensional sort, and that's not confined to a particular decade. That's just a result of poor scriptwriting, which will forever and always be with us. But I'd like to offer evidence that there are glimmers of hope in this area. Some of the most successful action films of the past fifteen years have been impressively nuanced with their villain character portraits. Take The Matrix, where we get a marvelous monologue from Agent Smith on how his actions are motivated not by riches or power or love of violence, but from the desire to escape an environment he finds repellent. In essence, he tells Morpheus that he’s simply trying to complete his job so he can leave work and go home. That’s a motivation we can all appreciate.
Then there is the first Pirates of the Caribbean film, where Captain Barbossa explains to Elizabeth Swann how their quest is not riches but to simply have the undead curse lifted from them. “I feel nothing”, says Barbossa for emphasis. It’s not a haughty threat from an overconfident villain, but the plea of a desperate man. When he finally gets his wish, he is cruelly shot and his last words are “I feel… cold”. He dies, but you get the feeling that he died with a level of satisfaction that he died a feeling human being.
The crazy thing about these two films is that they didn't really need to go this extra length (and they are therefore all the more commendable for doing so). The rise in Sci-Fi and Fantasy have granted filmmakers permission to present bad guys that are embodied in forms other than human, which means that their motivations aren't entirely necessary to map out. Aliens, mutants, zombies, robots and every other hip genre trope allow our heroic leads to mow them down with wild abandon with little thought to moral consequence. One can imagine what a bloodbath a film would be that had the hero fighting rampaging aliens who had also kidnapped his daughter.
But getting back to Ness, I'd like to close this essay out by comparing his rooftop scene with a scene in the Sci-Fi show "Firefly". For those unfamiliar, It is set 500 years in the future where a totalitarian government called the Alliance rules over all the planets that humans have been able to inhabit. A renegade ship captained by Mal Reynolds tries to avoid the Alliance as best he can and make a living doing jobs that are often less than legal (and if that sounds awfully familiar to certain character and ship from Star Wars, give yourself a gold star). Mal once fought a rebellion against the Alliance but lost, and the loss of this war left Mal disillusioned and without a cause to fight for (More on this in a moment).
In the episode “The Train Job”, he and his crew are hired by a ruthless gangster to rob a train of certain goods. After the job is done, Mal finds out that the stolen material was much needed medicine for a remote settlement of farmers. He decides to return it to the proper owners, which brings the gangster's henchmen down on him like a ton of bricks. He and his crew defeat them, and then we are given this scene:
In a number of ways, it’s very similar to the scene in Untouchables: The Hero attempts to do the right thing, but the villain mouths off once too often and compels the Hero to give a little push that results in the (handcuffed) villain’s death. Both scenes are played for comedy (it’s a darker humor for sure, but humor none the less), but it’s overplayed in the Untouchables. Whereas Mal does what he does for very practical reasons (eliminating the need to run from this maniac for the rest of his life) and it’s something he very briefly debates over in his head before doing it, Ness commits his act out of rage and is allowed not one, but two one-liners after the deed is done (“Did he sound anything like that?” “He’s in the car.”). Of course, Untouchables was made in the 1980's, and delivering one-liner’s after dispatching an opponent were practically required in action films of that era.
"Firefly" was sadly cancelled after only one season, but it was allowed to be spun of into the 2005 feature film Serenity that wrapped up most of the major plot strands quite nicely. Mal, who had always exhibited a core of decency in the show towards his friends and the oppressed, finally found a cause to fight for again, and through this he becomes the true hero he was always destined to be. It was a wonderful capper to a wonderful saga, and emblamatic of the rocky path some heroes take. Not all of our movie heroes are that well drawn, but we cherish the few that are.
Saturday, April 16, 2011
"Ten": The Office (Part Two)
Sadly, the Office was not completed this week, but significant progress was made that I can share with you. As you can see below, the walls were finished as were the windows. You can get a better idea of how dramatic and striking I wanted those windows to be.
I added a free-standing globe to the far left corner, and you can see some parts of the wall with studs on them. I plan on placing some kind of paintings or maps there at a later date. With the studs already there, all I will have to do is stick them on.
And here we have the major furnishings for the office: Two guest chairs, the governor's chair (slightly larger, natch) and a desk roughly the size of an aircraft carrier.
This isn't precisely the genre I'm aiming for with the film, but it could still provide some inspiration on the areas I haven't completely figured out yet. Besides, it should be a fun read.
Next Week: The Office (Part Three)
I added a free-standing globe to the far left corner, and you can see some parts of the wall with studs on them. I plan on placing some kind of paintings or maps there at a later date. With the studs already there, all I will have to do is stick them on.
And here we have the major furnishings for the office: Two guest chairs, the governor's chair (slightly larger, natch) and a desk roughly the size of an aircraft carrier.
This is an exaggeration, but the desk is pretty huge. I had originally wanted to do a non-rectangular design similar to the desk in the Metropolis picture I posted last week. This proved difficult, so I decided to go with a rectangle. For a smooth surface, I would need to use multiple tile pieces which would mean the desk would not have a uniform sheen to it. Then I thought of these massive 10 x 16 tiles I have from one of the Batman sets. It initially seemed too large, but it really started to grow on me and I'm liking size more and more. It suits the room and it's occupant.
One last thing for the week: The family got to all visit Chamblin's Bookmine together this morning. And as I was chasing little C.C. around, I came across a section of hardcover adventure novels for young boys printed in the early sixties. I picked one up for $7.00.
This isn't precisely the genre I'm aiming for with the film, but it could still provide some inspiration on the areas I haven't completely figured out yet. Besides, it should be a fun read.
Next Week: The Office (Part Three)
Saturday, April 09, 2011
"Ten": The Office (Part One)
In Metropolis, the shot of the skyscraper transitions to an office near the top of the building. To further steal, uh, I mean pay homage to the 1927 film, this is exactly what I'm going to do. We've seen the skyscraper already, so let's look at the office:
Impressive. And I wanted to duplicate that feeling with mine. I went through two different sizes for the base floor of the office before I arrived at 32 x 32, which was much larger than the previous two versions. Though the first two seemed to be large enough on a practical level, they simply didn't have the grandeur I wanted to communicate. Now that I have ended up making the room the size of a crater plate, this should no longer be a problem:
Incidentally, those four gray corner pieces with the holes in the sides were used for a reason, which I'll get to in a moment. For now, we need to add a a layer of black pieces to solidify the structure and then, on top of that, the brown pieces that make up my "wood floor". Like so:
This is another case of me being ridiculously anal. It's a black and white film, so you'll never see it as a wood floor because you don't see the brown. Next comes the bases for the walls, which are shown here:
Ah, but why did I build the base for the walls separately? This is why:
The four sides click into place and can be removed individually in order to place the camera for shooting. I used the same method for the Hypersleep room in Blast Reynolds and the town square in Tale of two Robots. With the time I had left this week, I built the walls up to the chair rail that extends all the way around the room:
I hope to have the room done by next week and not have to go into a "Part Three" with the blog posts. I still have some furniture to build, the remainder of the walls, the ceiling with lights and the sliding door mechanism. So I'm not done yet by a long shot.
Next Week: The Office (Part Two)
Impressive. And I wanted to duplicate that feeling with mine. I went through two different sizes for the base floor of the office before I arrived at 32 x 32, which was much larger than the previous two versions. Though the first two seemed to be large enough on a practical level, they simply didn't have the grandeur I wanted to communicate. Now that I have ended up making the room the size of a crater plate, this should no longer be a problem:
Incidentally, those four gray corner pieces with the holes in the sides were used for a reason, which I'll get to in a moment. For now, we need to add a a layer of black pieces to solidify the structure and then, on top of that, the brown pieces that make up my "wood floor". Like so:
This is another case of me being ridiculously anal. It's a black and white film, so you'll never see it as a wood floor because you don't see the brown. Next comes the bases for the walls, which are shown here:
Ah, but why did I build the base for the walls separately? This is why:
The four sides click into place and can be removed individually in order to place the camera for shooting. I used the same method for the Hypersleep room in Blast Reynolds and the town square in Tale of two Robots. With the time I had left this week, I built the walls up to the chair rail that extends all the way around the room:
I hope to have the room done by next week and not have to go into a "Part Three" with the blog posts. I still have some furniture to build, the remainder of the walls, the ceiling with lights and the sliding door mechanism. So I'm not done yet by a long shot.
Next Week: The Office (Part Two)
Saturday, April 02, 2011
"Ten": The Three Month Update
So here we are at the one quarter mark and progress has been good. All of the larger props have been built, and so I must soon advance to the sets. There will be four sets in all: The Governor's Office, the Hero's Jet Hanger, the outside of the Villain's silo (on the moon's surface) and the interior of the silo (underground). The Office will be the first to be built.
Outside of building, business at the Bricklinks store continues on very steadily. I was even able to use some of my profits to get Mrs. Mosley an anniversary gift last March. My only regret is that I didn't know about Bricklink back in 2007. If I had, I would have bought every friggin Batman set Tuesday Morning had. The Minifigs alone would have netted me a 100% profit from what I paid and I would have still had a huge load of bricks left for my collection. Oh, well.
One piece of business to be addressed very soon is the perfection of the green screen. I want to go ahead and get a piece of green cloth for the purpose so that it's large and seamless enough that I don't have to concern myself with shifting around that piece of poster board. The table that I set up for my studio runs right up against some tall, black metal shelving, which will be ideal for hanging the fabric from.
That's all for now. See you next Saturday.
Friday, April 01, 2011
Chiwetel Ejiofor Quote of the Month: April 2011
Mrs. Mosley and I sat down for a movie night recently and watched Angelina Jolie kick all sorts of ass in Salt. It really is a fun ride, and Jolie has a good time with it. Ejiofor plays Peabody, who is the man chasing Salt. The fact that he is an agent in pursuit of a gorgeous woman who is incredibly deadly in hand-to-hand combat was not lost on Mrs. Mosley as she turned to me during the film and said, "So, he's the Operative".
Not quite, but a bit of that coldness came through in one great exchange between Peabody and Salt's partner Ted Winter (Liev Schreiber):
Peabody: "Protocol is clear. We bring her in or we bring her down."
Winter: "Do you have any idea who this woman is? What she's done for this country? Does that mean anything to you?"
Peabody: "Should it?"
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