Digital Video - February 2009 - (Page 14)

CLOSE-UP LARRY BLAMIRE RETRO CAMP COMEDY LARRY BLAMIRE EMPLOYS TOP-NOTCH DIGITAL VIDEO TOOLS TO POKE FUN AT Z-GRADE FILMMAKING. BY DOUGLAS BANKSTON riter-director-actor Larry Blamire’s feature The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra (2001) was a deadon comedic re-creation of low-budget, Bgrade monster/sci-fi movies of the 1950s, complete with corny, stilted dialogue, cheesy special effects, aliens, monsters, a skeleton risen from the dead and ubiquitous gaps in plot logic. The movie became a cult hit, and Sony TriStar picked it up for a theatrical release in 2004. Now Blamire returns (and so does the skeleton) in the aptly entitled sequel: The Lost Skeleton Returns Again. The cast reprises their roles… mostly. Those that were offed in the first picture conveniently come back as “identical twins,” and aliens and monsters once again make appearances. The follow up is an old-fashioned jungle adventure film in which Dr. Paul Armstrong (Blamire), embittered after science let him down, is roped into finding the valuable Geranium-90 that rests in the hands of the Cantaloupe People. (Yes, really.) Cadavra, shot in standard-def digital video with a Canon XL1 and converted to black-and-white, cost a mere $60,000 to shoot and finish all the way to the film print stage. The Lost Skeleton Returns Again cost a bit more. “This new one was about $500,000,” Blamire says. “It’s a few years later, and you have inflation on the one hand, and on the other we had twice as many actors and a different level of special effects. We wanted to up the production value so that it looks different from the first film.” Lost Skeleton Returns Again was produced under Blamire’s Bantam Street production banner and recently started making the festival rounds. “We have interest from distributors and are shopping it around with hopes of a theatrical release,” Blamire says. Because of the precedent with Sony, the studio has the option to match any distribution offer he receives. Blamire secured production funds via investors. “We’re at the point where we go from film to film by seeking out investors,” he explains. “Skeleton is something like eight investors. In the case of Dark and Stormy Night, it was a single investor.” The dramatically entitled The Dark and Stormy Night Blamire refers to is his other new feature, shot on the heels of Lost Skeleton Returns Again, thanks to an opportunistic timing of funds. The cast and crew just moved from one film to the next. Both movies were shot by cinematographer Anthony J. Rickert-Epstein. “A.J. came highly recommended,” Blamire says. “He is a terrific, all-around filmmaker. He’s got a film that’s being shopped around called Fingerman: Dr. London and the Triangle Force. It’s hilarious! We have similar sensibilities.” W Blamire (left) directs actor Dan Conroy on the set of Dark and Stormy Night. Lost Skeleton Returns Again was shot in standard definition to maintain the same aesthetic as Cadavra. However, the aspect ratio was widened to 2.35:1 to suit a jungle picture. “We shot with three Panasonic DVX100s,” notes Rickert-Epstein. “The aspect ratio was an in-camera effect. Panasonic makes an anamorphic adapter that optically squeezes the image into 16:9, and we cropped into that to make it 2.35:1 for the A camera. B and C cameras were in digitalsqueeze mode so that they would look similar to A because we only had one adapter.” With Lost Skeleton Returns Again taking place outdoors — Sable Ranch in Santa Clarita and the Arboretum in Arcadia serving as stand-in jungle locations — modeling the exterior lighting was a challenge for Rickert-Epstein. “I tried to find shaded areas to avoid punchy sunlight coming down through the forest,” he explains. “I would have mirrors or shiny boards 100” away to bounce sunlight into a crevice beneath a tree. I basically imported light from wherever I could find it. It was like ‘light irrigation.’ There was a lot of minute-by-minute adjustment of the shiny boards. My key grip, Axel Llorens, was really good.” The effects ante was upped with a healthy dose of foreground miniatures. “This was the second time I had done miniatures,” notes Rickert-Epstein. “The first was in college, where I made mushrooms appear twice as tall as the actors. That experience helped. Understanding that concept allowed me to move quicker.” “Right after Skeleton we shot Dark and Stormy Night,” says Blamire. “We shot that in HD. That movie is a take on the 1930s murder mystery, an ‘old, dark house’ movie, as they call it. Dark and Stormy Night was emulating an old movie, not a low-budget movie, so we didn’t want to go with standard def on that. It’s also going to be in black-and-white. Tony Tremblay, the brilliant production designwww.dv.com 14 dv February 2009 http://www.dv.com

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Digital Video - February 2009 Contents Stasis Flex Black Diamond Essentials Instant Expert Close-Up: Larry Blamire They Like to Rock the Party Close-Up: Gregg Kita Click to Play DV101 Production Diary

Digital Video - February 2009

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