| The Worst Sci-Fi Prequel Ever! official making of narrative |
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the zeroeth
installment
I had concluded for a while that there would
need to be something
to come after the Worst Sci-Fi
Trilogy Ever! Perhaps The Worst Sci-Fi Trilogy
Misnomer
Ever!, or maybe The Worst Sci-Fi Prequel Ever!. Since
by
now we hadn't anywhere nearly finished The Worst Sci-Fi Trilogy
Conclusion Ever!, I wouldn't allow myself to even consider
it. I
ignored the idea for months. But, at the end of March, 2002, Ted and I finally completed wsf-3. Even though the premiere was a bust, I firmly concluded that we needed to go forward and make the next movie. I planned to direct it myself. I wanted to make it big, ambitious, visually appealing. There were some obvious flaws in wsf-3, produced not as a product of my lack of skill, but merely my lack of experience. Some of the scenes were long, laborious even. Others had bad camera work, or problematic exposure and focus. The effects were obnoxious, and we left a few large plot holes into our story. And, we had some really bad continuity errors, like when characters' outfits keep changing. But, there were some definitely admirable parts, which encouraged and inspired me. I thought, not altogether too humbly, that the Rosebud bridge scenes were great fun, and the Flatirons location shot (with Wagner) was just awesome. I felt that I could do just as well, or better, given the time, energy, and friends with whom to work. the story Without pausing to think much, I launched off into the first treatment for The Worst Sci-Fi Prequel Ever! (hereinafter wsf-0, said "double-you-ess-eff-naught"). But, what came out could best be described as regrettable. For those smart enough to not read it, the story is a typical Star Trek-style plot, in which the crew of some ship goes to some planet and encounters some alien(s) before leaving. The basic characters are introduced, like Captain Proxima, and the Earl of Logan (later the Duke of Altair). There are a few good moments, like the cell phone scene, which make it into the final movie. But, overall, the story is very dull and lifeless. It wasn't unique enough to merit making it. When I realized how bad this treatment was, I turned around and tried to determine what I could do to make it better. I brainstormed a list of typical sci-fi clichés (like death rays), to include in the movie. But, I finally hit on the one thing that would make the story different: weightlessness. If a ship had no artificial gravity, it couldn't travel very far (astronomically) without harming the passengers. Therefore, it would be restricted to the Solar System. Why not have a daring romp through the Solar System? Once I returned from my trip, I wrote up the second treatment, which began to have shades of the finished product in it. Our main characters go to Titan, find the Light Beings, then leave. When I had completed that, I knocked off the first version of the screenplay in one evening. I still had a long way to go, but it was a start. the concept This was manifested in the design of the ship itself. I kept the general rocketship lines of the new/old ship, the Festus, but gave it an older, more utilitarian feel to it. The three upper windows were based on those for the Bell X-1 rocketplane. The overall function of the ship was inspired by Willy Ley's excellent book The Conquest of Space, written when a rocket bigger than the V-2 was just a dream. But the Adams, the lifting-body shuttle, was designed after modern space travel experiments such as the X-33/Venturestar, which use the shape of their fuselage to create lift, without the use of wings. The combination of the two different types of technology, separated by fifty years, created a sort of surreal effect. Well, then, Ted concluded, couldn't The Worst Sci-Fi Universe really be all about the News Monster? It was pure, unimpeded brilliance. I turned right around and incorporated him into my plot. This would recount the tale of the Monster's transformation from an enslaved prison guard to the disseminator of media truth seen in wsf-3. It would be a tale of life, and love, and ambitions. Or at least we could say it would. This single creative decision would change the face of Worst Sci-Fi forever. the Willmarks Obviously, to portray a bunch of Willmarks, I would need some costumes, cheap as they might be. I built the masks (first the News Monster, then the other masks), out of paper mache over a balloon, adding the eyes in with nylons. I thought and thought and thought some more to find some way to make the mouths move, but I never could figure out anything. I finally gave up on that idea. the Festus bridge the actors The most important character to cast would be Captain Proxima, valiant Space Command captain. Bitscape, famous for his role as Captain Bitscape, would be perfect for the part. He signed on without reservation. The next most important character, at least in terms of screen time, was the Duke of Altair. From the start, I planned to play this part myself. In addition to being a very fun part, I had wanted to play a British person for years. For months before we started shooting, I practiced my accent, which was based on various people on television and in movies. By far the most pivotal character was the later addition, the News Monster. While I had played him in wsf-3, I obviously could not reprise my role for this film, since I had already scripted several scenes in which both the Duke and the Monster appear together. Since I had no idea, I eventually let Ted decide. He chose his slightly crazy friend Scott "scottgalvin.com" Galvin, with whom he had worked on a number of (failed) startup companies. In the end, I think he did better at the role than I could ever had, despite various problems during shooting. Since Ted wanted a minor role to play, he decided to be General Rigel, who would actually play the same relative position as his Commodore Jaeger in wsf-3. After a little convincing, we were able to coerce our sister Bethany into reprising her role as the News Bimbo, the memorable role that is the complete antithesis of its actress. With these parts cast, we decided to go with what we had, and "wing it" for any remaining characters. v1d30 The camera we eventually bought, both for personal and family use, was a nice, new Sony DCR-TRV-340, which used the Digital 8 format to both record on and play back old Hi-8 analog tapes. It was an awesome piece of equipment, and I'm still fascinated by it to this day. I have become what some might call a "camera geek," pulling it out at any opportunity, and shooting subjects as diverse as my dad blowing out his birthday candles to wind blowing through the occulus in the Pantheon. Essentially, we would be using the same technology that George Lucas used to shoot Attack of the Clones. Now, that gives one a big head, doesn't it? principal production commences We lagged behind the others and shot a scene during which I shouted over the noise of a nearby air compressor to deliver ad-libbed, unscripted lines. It was a completely pointless scene. But, it made it into the movie. Since we had already shot the random telephone booth scene, we decided, why not go ahead and shoot the "Festus rocketship" scene? I wandered about, asking various people if they knew the location of the "Festus rocketship." Of course, they had no idea. They also didn't know that they were being shot for an amateur film. Reportedly, some of the actors in Star Trek IV did the same trick for a certain "nuclear wessel" scene. I think our scene worked remarkably well to introduce the character. "...imprisoned on a distant moon..." At some point, my being the sole director of this movie morphed into Ted and I being a brother-brother directing team, just like the Wachowski brothers. We, however, would be known as the Logan brothers. We had only finished the screenplay the day before, so none of our actors had any time to memorize their lines. After getting our alien brig set assembled (which was built of cardboard boxes), we shot a few takes, and realized that no one (not even me) had their lines memorized. This first day of real shooting was a little disheartening: we really had no idea what we were doing. We had forgotten many of the tricks we learned during wsf-3. We also thought that, since we had a screenplay, everything would work so much better and run more smoothly. No, only if we bothered to follow the screenplay, and memorize it beforehand. Regardless of that, I got to do some of my favorite acting for the movie on that day. I loved playing the scene in which I forcefully debate with the News Monster, mocking him and making a complete fool of myself in the process. Never mind that I was just acting towards the camera; we shot Scott's part later. It was at this early stage in pre-production that we realized one of Scott's significant weaknesses: he had great trouble with dialogue. We have great amounts of footage of him standing on the set, giggling, trying his lines, messing up, then cussing. A small amount of it is presented in our bloopers reel (which Ted, much to my chagrin, did not censor). But there were some parts about Scott's performance that I believed far surpassed anything I ever did during wsf-3. He brought life into the role, making it even funnier than I had dared to try. The final scene we shot that day was the discussion of the two "bored aliens": Zorbta and Geurg. While the movie ended up being chock full of satire, this was the only satire that I had consciously intended when writing the script. For those who had trouble interpreting it, I was making fun of sports fans. The way I see it, they focus so heavily on the little details of the completely trivial sports world that they totally miss the real world surrounding them. While empires fall and cities burn, all they can think is, Yay! The Redwings won again! And, while mountains and civilizations crumble into the sea, their only shred of remorse is, Good grief, I can't believe the Broncos lost again! on the bridge 23 INT. FESTUS BRIDGENaturally, the "blah, blah," part afforded Bitscape a great deal of creativity. He inserted into a protracted Chris Farley/Saturday Night Live impersonation, replacing "van" with "shuttlepod." Since I was already in a chipper mood, I had great amounts of difficulty keeping a straight face during our countless takes of this scene. Bitscape would finish his perfectly-crafted speech, then Ted would pan over to see me cracking up. Finally, on one take, I was able to restrain myself, and the scene went perfectly until the very end...when someone upstairs flushed a toilet. We decided to go with that, and it's what made it into the final cut. When we shot all that we could for the night, we called it quits, and took a break from shooting for another two days. 5 EXT. FUTURIST-LOOKING BUILDING To create a more dynamic feel for this scene, I decided that the camera should almost always move, whatever was going on. Since we didn't have a Steadicam (and won't for our next few pictures), I simply did a handheld shot, but tried to carry it as steadily as possibly to avoid that dreadful "home video" look that seems to be all too common. Later on, my movement of the camera created a bad continuity error. Whenever we had to cut, we backed up to where we thought the scene had started, then started from there. We were never quite sure. When we went to edit it, though, it was easy enough to cover up our mistakes with "MTV-style editing." "Ahh! Europa!" 18d EUROPA
As is obvious in the finished cut of this scene, we greatly expanded the scope of the scene. Originally, it was supposed to be a dry plot scene. But, we reasoned, why not add some gratuitous humor to it? Besides, we could write it off somehow, right? Why was the Duke acting so crazy while he was collecting ice? Perhaps he was on an oxygen high (and yes, they were wearing spacesuits, but we couldn't see them, since they were "forcefield suits"). Why did he go skiing at the end? Maybe the Duke has aspirations for the Olympics! If so, he probably should learn to put his skis on faster. "I'm British nobility!" 10 FESTUS ENTRYWAY
I'm now happy the way in which I was able to effectively incorporate such social commentary into my movie that would make George Orwell nod in approval. EXT. TITAN From the start, I had realized that we would need to employ some artistic license while portraying Titan on the screen. This would best be manifested as bad science. First off, modern science knows very little about the place. Our best instruments can't penetrate far beyond the garish orange cloud layer. We have no conclusive evidence about the nature of the surface of the moon. But, we can assume that it's absolutely nothing like Earth (excepting LA, of course). It's probably a dark, stifling, noxious, poisonous world. But, we concluded that we could use the official scientific ignorance to our advantage. What if Titan were really hospitable to life. CAN YOU PROVE IT DIDN'T HAPPEN? For a while, we considered filtering the sky to make it look more alien, but we gave up after several experiments showed that the effect wasn't what we really wanted. The next Sunday, a week after we had began shooting, we headed for Red Rocks of Boulder, an awesome cluster of red granite formations. For a while, I had felt they possessed a proper cinematic feel to them. Why not base most of my action around that? But there was one major problem. Scott, the notorious News Monster, had already committed himself to helping his parents build a deck for their house that day. We couldn't not shoot, since time was running short, and this would be our last good Sunday. We pulled a brilliant cinematographic coup. Since we already had Bitscape with us, and now my friend John had miraculously shown up on our doorstep, we had enough people to stage part of the Titan scenes. Why not just shoot some scenes today, then go back to the same place and shoot the other scenes later? We shot the Bitscape, Duke Altair, and sword fight scenes on Sunday, then shot the News Monster scenes on Monday. Amazingly, it worked. This illustrates one of the simple truths about film that shouldn't work, but it does. As long as things are edited together well, the audience automatically assumes that the events are taking place right after the other, even though they could be shot in entirely different countries, weeks apart. The human mind is so pliable, that clever showsmen can get it to believe whatever they want it to. And most of the scenes are flawless. There were a few holes here and there, but overall, the effect was wonderful. I'd be willing to bet that most of our audience would never have noticed it, if we hadn't pointed it out. "Puny humans don't know how to swordfight!" Both Ted and I had been obsessed with the idea of swords for quite some time. We got especially excited after seeing Peter Jackson's first Lord of the Rings movie. And I, at least, got captivated by wild stuntwork after seeing The Matrix. Sure, we're just amateurs, and we don't have any idea what we're doing, but that has never served as a significant barrier before. As long as we were careful, and tried not to get hurt, it would all be okay in the end. This desire not to get hurt was one of the reasons we used copper pipes, instead of real swords, for our props. The other reason was money. How many times would buying real swords exponentially increase our budget? The only real blade we used in that whole scene was that of my Swiss Army Knife, which the Duke pulls out as his last defense. While I realized it was an important scene, I was very sparing in my description of it in the screenplay. In fact, this is how I fleshed out the entire scene: 29 EXT. STRANGE ROCKSThis gave us a great degree in freedom in acting out the scene. First off, we had two cut out one of the aliens, since we could only secure one Stunt Alien: John Chamberlain. Then, we could make the actors do whatever we wanted. "An extensive fight scene ensues." Well, what does that mean? After a few practice runs, we determined the desirable length and format of the fight (our first ever choreographed fight). We didn't determine every sword move, just those that were important. After a few dry runs, we each memorized our relative locations, and made sure to get to them for each take. The dialogue was the product of those early takes. We originally shot Captain Proxima shouting, "And I am Captain Proxima, hero of the universe!", but we cut that line in post. Since we had only one camera, we had to shoot it about ten different times, from separate angles. We actually did remarkably well with preserving continuity (unlike elsewhere in our flick). The end of this sequence was the first time we made use of my favorite prop: the sword/dart gun. I don't know where I got the idea initially, but I think it was an awesome concept that led a great sci-fi feel to the whole thing. I bet that someday, someone will imitate that (just like Bulletime), and claim they made it up. "I never knew Titan had a breathable atmosphere!" But, once we had finished the Titan location shots, principal production for wsf-0 was nearing a close. Timeline Sin-Bee-See As mentioned earlier, Bethany was reprising her role as the News Bimbo from wsf-3. She is absolutely nothing like the character she played, which makes it all the more amusing. She really is a good actress, given the proper motivation, and plenty of time. Her berserk fit was timeless. Actually, most people can be made to act, either naturally or with a little help from the outside. There are a few, though, who can't act to save their life. The News Moron (Irving), seen in the first news broadcast, was played by the same actor who was our stunt alien for the fight scene. I chose him since he seems to have a manifest apathy for all things important in real life. Sadly, it did not carry well onto the screen. He was too happy when we shot this scene; as much as we tried to hide it, he kept on laughing during the takes. But we didn't care, since we were about done with shooting. "I have come, O despicable beings of light!" The look of the set was heavily inspired by the Minbari Council in Babylon 5, although with our budget, we would need to revise it a little. The single light in the middle was meant to be the Light Being himself. To make things look black, we tore down the space backdrop hanging around the Festus set, flipped it over to hide the stars, and hung it back up on the other side of the basement. It was an exceedingly cheap set, but the end result was amazing. With that done, we officially completed principal production of wsf-0, the fascinating, but frustrating, period in which a film moves from a random, sometimes obnoxious assortment of scenes to a rich, coherent masterpiece. The final line shot on tape was mine: "I am the Duke of Altair...but don't ask me..." Post Most of the early part of post-production was simply considering how we would handle each of the scenes, how they would work together, where we would use effects, where we wouldn't, where we would place music, and the like. But, before we could do any creative work, we needed some more equipment to aid us in our creations. While technology is not the most important thing in any endeavor (skill is), it does make things go more smoothly. First off, Ted had to acquire a Firewire card and cable, and the knowledge of how to use them properly. He also collected a suite of free (as in, open-source) Linux programs, including Kino (which we had used for wsf-3) and Transcode, a user-unfriendly program that could do just about anything with any video files known to mankind. To figure out how we might go about fitting all the pieces together, we made a "theatrical" trailer, which we released on the internet before starting on the movie. We worked out the essentials of video and sound editing, digital overlays, titles, and music. It would prove endlessly useful for the editing and finishing of the film. Editing The suspension of disbelief is crucial to sci-fi. As noted by many expert filmmakers (a rank which I will, obviously, never occupy), the audience is naturally predisposed against a movie, whatever it is. It's guilty until it's proven innocent. It's hard to build up a viewer's trust in a picture (through a carefully-planned string of expertly-placed scenes), but very easy to break it. Very simple things (anything) can break that trust, like a car driving by in the background on an alien planet (as in our otherwise excellent shadow scene). With this in mind, Ted and I dove headlong into the challenge. We would take turns making editing decisions, but we would rarely edit when the other wasn't present. Since we wanted the picture to be as good as possible, we agonized over every moment on screen. With a digital editing setup, we could easily step through each and every frame, ascertaining that the events in each coincided perfectly. This became particularly important for the Titan scenes, which we shot on two different days. Especially for the dialogue scenes, we needed to make sure that the characters had enough time to respond to each other. Another of our important shots, which cemented the two days of shooting into one in the viewers' minds, was the sword toss. Scott threw the swords on Monday, but we caught them the Sunday prior. When intercutting those shots, we had to be certain that each of the swords spent the proper amount of time aloft on screen. This delicate mastery of the visual part of the film aided the picture immensely. Can you tell that I'm proud of it, maybe even a little too much? Computer Generated Imagery At first I considered some sort of motion control. Maybe (I reasoned), just maybe, I could use some weird features on the new video camera to shoot elements of models, and composite them together on the computer. It would be pretty hard, to say the least. But then, while still in pre-production, my friend Jani came along, and said that he would love to do the effects himself (in Worst Sci-Fi, he also played the prison guard who got whacked over the head with a wok). He wanted to use a computer generation suite he had called TrueSpace4. He didn't really have any idea what he was doing, but that was fine with us, since neither did we. This was the first time that we had ever contracted a big task on one of our movies out to someone other than Ted or me. It would be very convenient to have him worry about the effects. That way, we were free to work on more of the creative issues. I had a vision for the effects that I wanted to portray, mostly uncompromised, on screen. But how would I convey this to someone who lived a long bike ride away? In "real" movies, the creative staff meets every day or so to keep tabs on the work being done. But how would I do that with Jani, if I couldn't go over to his house every day? The answer was storyboarding. For those unfamiliar with the medium, it essentially consists of translating a movie's key scenes into a long series of comic book panels, thereby illustrating the important elements of a scene. I may be mistaken, but I think that the first place this was ever used was in the burning of Atlanta scene in Gone With the Wind. For some movies (like The Matrix, which was also directed by two brothers), the entire movie, from start to finish, is storyboarded out, before shooting even begins. But I merely wanted to illustrate the effects, in a simple, wholly un-artistic, manner. For each (or at least most) of the effects shots, I drew two panels, one showing the camera's viewpoint, and the other showing an objective viewpoint, which pointed out where the camera and subjects would move. It was highly tedious, and I could hardly stand to crank out the forty or so generic frames which showed the shots I needed. But it really did work. Most, if not all, of the final effects match almost precisely my original vision. Denouement I don't know about Ted, but I started to get sick of post production during the final two weeks, or so. I'd been spending seven stupid months on wsf-0, and what did I get? Forty-two lousy minutes! On the other hand, when I spend seven months on, say, a model rocket, I get a beautifully-crafted, flying machine, which I can hold in my hands, then haul outside and hurl into the atmosphere. It's a gratifying feeling, and I get something completely real out of it. But, the only option now was to work as hard as I could, mopping up every final detail, and finish the film. My last, and greatest, task was to perform the score. Score! After the moody strings theme during the opening credits, the full synthesized chorus breaks forth into the dramatic Captain Proxima theme. When the credits end, it lapses into the Earth theme, a soft melody that accompanies my pull-in to the planet. When we first see the Space Command headquarters, the Space Command theme picks up, before fading away with the arrival of Captain Proxima and General Rigel. Overall, I'm very proud of my score. My only regret is that I had to steal a little bit of Gustav Holst's music to use in the Mars scene. In addition to making my music sound bad, I also feel bad now since I stole somebody else's music. I don't want anybody to steal my work, so I think I set a bad precedent by stealing music performed by someone else, who would never receive any compensation from me. I'll try to never do that again. October 26 Unlike that for wsf-3, this premiere went flawlessly. The audience was completely unchallenged by crummy equipment, so they could fully understand what it was we wanted to show in our picture. It received rave critical reviews afterwards, much to my delight. I excitedly wrote this in my journal: "The audience reaction to the movie was great. They seemed to be pleased with most of the aspects of our movie. Everything, the screenplay and score and sets and locations and props and editing, worked together to make an awesome, cohesive whole. Once you get past post production, making movies isn't all bad. It's hard, hard work, but the results are great."
I have no monumental regrets for this movie. Overall, I believe it was a seven months of my life well spent. I have a slew of smaller ones, but most of them are minor technical or artistic mistakes. First off, I thought that two parts of the movie were far too long. Duke Altair's phone booth scene was completely ad-libbed by me, and we didn't intend to put it in the movie. It did contribute a nice comedic addition to the movie, but we should have cut out parts (like when I started cracking up). Maybe, we should have cut away to an effects shot, in which the telephone booth is at the end of one of the runways at London Gatwick! That would also explain away the noise of the air compressor in the background. Also, the credits went on for too long. This was the result of a creative decision that the credits should move at one pixel per frame, instead of two, which we deemed as too fast. There wasn't any really good fix for that. Perhaps we could have decreased the font, or made it move two pixels for one frame, then one the next. Either way, I plan to not make that mistake in our next movie. Visually, the one thing that I believe detracted signifigantly from the movie were the costumes. Next time, I'm going to supply costumes to the actors, and not let them bring their own. There were also a few problems with the sound. On both days we shot at Redrocks, the wind whipped all over the ridge, ruining a lot of our dialogue. We should have used separate mikes, and looped some of the more problematic scenes. Also, at times, the music overpowered the dialogue. That was all Ted's fault, since he mixed the soundtrack. But, we did manage to eliminate many of the problems we had in wsf-3. There were no really big continuity errors (like outfits changing). We also were able to avoid plot holes that weren't easy to explain away. The camera moves were clean, and we avoided junk in the frames that didn't need to be there (except in the shadow scene). Those are minor, though. Overall, I am highly pleased with what we were able to create. what next? The question I'm most often asked (by girls and boys alike) is: What next? Obviously what they have in mind is a big production like this, to which I will sacrifice seven months of my life. The very next movie I make will not be anything of the sort. Next, I plan to edit some footage I've already shot, maybe from my trip to Rome, or a making-of video for wsf-0, with a similar format to this narrative. But, sometime within the next six months, I intend to embark on another amateur film project. I plan to make this next one, strangely enough, a little more serious than my last few (to maintain credibility). I don't want to make it sci-fi, or at least not space opera or hard sci-fi, like what I've already done. Actually, I intend for my next film to be an earthbound drama, if you can believe it. Most of my work so far (except for the Duke Altair satire) has been very superficial. I plan to dig deeper, to confront issues that concern us all. I might even get religious in my movies. But fear not, it will not be boring by any means. After all, with Worst Sci-Fi under my belt, how could I do anything of the sort? -Willy Logan, January, 2003
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| Copyright 2002 and 2003 by Willy
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