"Ten": The Cast

So it's about time you've met the cast of my little film, so here they are:

The cast has gone through a number of changes, but this is basically whom I'll be working with. Starting on the left hand side, we have the two outfits of our hero: Standard uniform and Spacesuit. Next we have two of his assistants. Then we have the Administrator, for lack of a better authority figure name. Suffice to say that he's the hero's boss. The next four are the red shirts (or should I say red helmets) that serves as the bad guy's henchmen. The minifig with a wheel rim for a head will be the bad guy's requisite robot. And finally, on the far right end, is Mr. Bad Guy himself.

Some notes on the figs themselves: The torsos range all across the board in terms of LEGO themes. Both of the hero's outfits are from Star Wars sets. The assistants are from Power Miners. The Administrator's suit is from Batman. The henchmen and the robot all hail from a 2004 series called "Alpha Team". And, finally, Mr. Bad Guy himself has a torso that hails waaaaaay back to 1994 with the "Ice Planet" series.

So, enough of the LEGO geek lingo; what are the film making issues with this lot? First off, the original heads that I was going to use were the traditional yellow. It was only when I did my color test and found that the yellow blended too well with the red helmets that I decided to go with flesh colored instead. This wasn't easy as I didn't have a lot of those to work with. Most are from Star Wars, Batman and the very recently purchased Prince of Persia palace set (that's Jake Gyllenhaal's head as the hero).

Another decision I made with the heads was to only use those with pupils. I wanted to get away from the dead-eyed stare of the original LEGO smiley faces, and that eliminated some of the Star Wars flesh heads right off the bat (damned disposable rebel troops). As it stands, I think I'm happy with the heads I have chosen and will probably not have to order more... but that could always change.

That being said, I can't say that I'm entirely happy with the contrast between heads and helmets. It's better than it was, but it's still a little too close. With his white space suit, the hero should be fine, but I may find myself buying extra black helmets for the baddies to better contrast with the faces and also set them strikingly apart from the hero during the fight sequences.

One final detail: As a sacrifice for the sake of film making, I will be slightly hollowing out the hero's head some time soon. This is so I can turn his head easily when performing the stop motion shots.

I just hope Jake doesn't mind.

Next week: The Store

"Ten": The Color Test

One of the first decisions I made about the new film was that it would be in black & white. There were two main reasons for this. The first is that the story was originally going to be a next chapter in the "Blast Reynolds" adventures. Eventually, I decided I wanted to start with a new hero and go for something a little less hokey than the Flash Gordon serials approach I used with the original. Yet monochrome still had a classic and crisp look to it, so that element stayed.

The second reason was a matter of supply. Although I have a generous amount of LEGO, I don't have that much, especially when you consider the scope of this film and the number of large scale sets involved. Doing black & white allows me to use the more garish colors I have buckets of because it all comes out in shades of grey. Besides, when dealing with a story that predominantly takes place on a barren moonscape, color is less of a concern.

The next step, before the building of the sets, was to gauge what colors looked like when made monochromatic. So I performed a test:

Here we have a list of the predominant LEGO colors in my collection. The bottom ten represents the largest share, while the top four I only have in smaller amounts. As you can see, some colors that are strikingly different such as red and blue become nearly the same hue in monochrome.

(And for those non-LEGO people out there, "Bley" is a nickname for a sickly blueish grey color that LEGO recently started using in their sets.)

So I now have a guide for when I'm building the sets so that I have an idea what they will look like in back & white. And not only the sets, but the cast of characters as well... which will be in my next update.

Next week: The Cast

It's a wonderful thing when it finally feels right.

Writing is something I've been trying my hand at for many years now, but most of the time it has been a slog. I have now made two attempts at the whole NaNoWriMo thing and have fallen through both times. If I'm to be honest with myself, I have to admit that the joy just isn't there.

On the other hand, the time I have spent making videos for YouTube have been incredibly fun. The end product has varied, of course, but the process has never been less than grand, and that's a concrete fact that I should pay attention to. I'm a movie person more than a book person, and it should not have taken me this long to finally realize that my natural artistic output would mirror these tendencies.

I decided that with this new year I would make a new LEGO film building on what I have learned from the other three. Previously, I had deadlines to meet that confined my work to three or four months, but this time I'm giving myself until the end of this year; One year to work on a project from beginning to end and ensure that it's as perfect as it can be.

I have a new laptop and new editing software. I have the LEGO. And I have plans (oh, do I have plans...) to make a nice, tight ten minute space adventure to truly entertain those who see it. The past two weeks has been a blizzard of little notes and storyboards and ideas and I've been having a blast. I'll be passing along pictures and updates on the project (which I'll name "Ten" for the time being) for your viewing pleasure.

Tomorrow: The Color Test

Lizzy and Darcy, Together Again!

Mrs. Mosley and I could hardly believe it when we found out Jennifer Ehle played Geoffrey Rush's wife in The King's Speech and we had watched the whole film without realizing it. Furthermore, we were presented with a Pride & Prejudice reunion when she shares one scene with Colin Firth. Now, courtesy of the Austen blog Elegance of Fashion, we have photographic proof!

If you're going to make one remark in bad taste, you might as well make it two.

First off: How many people made this connection when you first saw Jared Loughner?

Yeah, I didn't think I was the only one.

And the other item is this story from CNN about how the folks from Westboro Baptist Church are planning to protest the funeral of the little girl killed by Loughner:

"Threat of funeral protest met by 'angels' in Arizona"

How many of you read that headline and sincerely wished they meant the Hell's Angels?

Stay tuned for "Beck Justice" costarring Robert Davi!

Thank you to Daily Kos for preserving this from Glenn Beck's website.

That poor bastard wants to be Jack Bauer so badly he can taste it.