Well, we finished our shooting of Bubba's Chili Parlor last night. With all the rain Texas has been getting all summer, we were very lucky and didn't get any delays... until yesterday. What should have been a very short and quick series of shots yesterday afternoon turned into a grueling ordeal. About 10 minutes before we started shooting the thunder and lightning started, quickly followed by massive amounts of rain. We ended up shooting when the downpour, or "gully warsher" as they say in East Texas, turned into a drizzle. Those periods didn't last long and what should have taken an hour at most turned into 5 hours.

We did get to witness something pretty cool, though. After the initial downpour, as we looked out from under the pavillion we took shelter in, the ground seemed to be moving. Upon closer inspetion we saw countless thousands of baby toads appearing from nowhere (or from the sky...) and hopping towards high ground. This was pretty damn cool. It also made me think. In the past few months Dallas has undergone torrential rains and flooding, a tornado, a huge amount of crickets, and now toads appearing out of nowhere, or perhaps falling from the sky (as in the biblical stories, and yes, I know they were actually in the ground) and I wondered how many more plagues Dallas would have to undergo. It makes what seems to be an unbelievable Old Testament story seem much more understandable.

Anyway, we finished shooting last night at my house and held a small wrap party afterwards (shhh, don't wake the kids). I was kinda worried about this last shot because it involved somebody running naked down my back alley. No, not like a city alley. My neighborhood is identical to the neighborhood on King of the Hill, which is not a cartoon, but is actually a documentary, lol. The homes around here have driveways in the back and they are accessed by a back alley and all the back yards are fenced in. My neighbors and I often meet and drink beer and discuss things, just like on King of the Hill.

Although shooting is complete we still have a lot of work to do. Editing will probably take as long as shooting since rendering from DV tape to the PC takes a long time. We also need to finish the sound and soundtrack. I'm eager to get into the foley fx. I've always thought that part of movie making was pretty cool. We're trying to get some more money so that we can finish the sound in a studio, but if we can't we can just do it ourselves. The studio would of course be preferable.

The footage I've seen so far looks great. Oh, sure, the acting could be better, and continuity is surely going to be an issue, but it LOOKS good. We used a fairly high-end camera and nearly half our budget went into renting Zeiss prime lenses and a 35mm adapter that makes the 30 fps DV camera shoot at 24 fps which is what film cameras shoot at. This really makes a difference as our movie looks less like video and more like film.

I'll keep you all updated on the progress, and hopefully you'll be seeing me in the servers more now that I can start to relax a little more, lol.

i like the other head better. hope all your hard work pays off bar lookin forword to seein this movie

Here's a pic from our big "Bubba runs the guantlet of zombies" scene. At one point we had about 100 extras, but at this point it's about 50 (and 2 a.m.). The extras are comprised of our friends, co-workers (in our regular jobs), weirdos people we met through Myspace who have "always dreamed of being a zombie", and mostly the good people of Wills Point, Texas who were all incredibly nice and helpful and I think grateful for our being there... all except the one woman who called the cops on us...

dam now there some zombos all you need now is me and my shotgun

So when you are all done are we going to be able to dl this from the MOB forumns LOL.

Wow, glad I wasn't eating when I looked at the first pic lmao, with that blood all hanging off the head, it almost looks real.
Hey Bar, I have a Carl Zeiss lens on my F828 sony digital camera. If you need to use it, just let me know.
Now you have some long hours of editing ahead, enjoy it... before you know it, it will be on the big screen!!



"Hollywood Walk of Fame"

So does this mean that Zombie Boy will be back soon...they do say that making ,directing and editing your first film takes around 2 years of your life, but we know its all worth it Chris.

Looks and sounds like its goner be a good flick ,hope so for you anyways.



can we get a trailor of it yet?

I'm not editing, so I plan on working my way back into the mix very quickly. There is still work to be done, even for me. I look forward to doing the foley fx, for example. But in general my work is done. When all the editing is done we will come up with a new trailer. I've got some ideas for it, but no idea how to use the software and my computer couldn't do it anyway, but I'll throw my 2 cents worth in there.

And I don't plan on being famous any time soon. I'd just love to be able to buy a new computer and play on an equal field with most of you, lol.

Of course I could have bought an amazing computer for what I have so far spent on this film....

Hey BG just saying 'hi'. been a while.
Pic looks more like a convention of COD player keyboard headbangers - like when PB kicks you while you have a record score, vent dies in a twl match, self killed by zooka shot, or Mr.BG is owning you