Bloodshots

This weekend our production company was entered in the "Bloodshots" film contest. Much like the 48 hr film contest you had 48 hours from kickoff to completion. However this time instead of open main genres, it was set at Horror. Then you were given a subgenre, method of death, line of dialog and prop. All had to appear in the film.

Once again Linda, Morgan and I were joined by Thad and Stacie Engeling. They provided a location, two of our acting ensemble, Thad's invaluable help in FX and Stacie handled extras casting.

Thad caught both barrels on this one as he had the most dialog and needed to both wear and apply a lot of FX. He held up well, though I know he was glad when we wrapped.
The rest of the cast was top notch as well, we won't say a lot about the film until it is screened, but we had demons, vampires, a succubus, and lots of carnage!

On a contest like this the hours are long and everything is rushed. Getting a crew that comes ready to work and stays til it is over is essential and that is what we had this weekend.
Where our last effort was very short on dialog, this one went VERY far the other way. We had an 8 minute limit on the film and when editing started Sunday morning we knew we were in trouble. We quickly realized that we had gotten very ambitious the day before and we had shot a 20 minute short for an 8 minute contest. Some hard decisions had to be made in a hurry and they drastically changed to face of the film in general. We may go back and recut the original footage and include the full story later, but we had a few hours to finish editing so we cut a few elements completely to make it fit.

The other main challenge was equipment related. I discovered that Camera B wasn't recording sound, and I couldn't get it to work no matter what I tried. So all of my early reaction shots had no sound and were hard to match.

But overall we were pretty happy with the final product. It was a lot better than our last 48 hr piece technically.

As always there were a few hilarious moments during filming. One of the best was at about 11pm as we were filming one of the final scenes. It required one of the actresses to scream a death scream. I was setting the mic levels and manning A camera on the floor while Linda was on B Camera. Others were working on FX for the final scenes and Morgan was on a quest for paper towel. So I ask Alice to scream so I can set the mic level. She lets loose with a blood curdling shreik several frighened explitives are heard from the kitchen and Stacie, at this point kneeling over me with a weapon say "Oh my god, the neighbors are calling the cops right now." They didn't and she screamed a few more times before the night was out. Each time you wanted to duck.

The screenings are at the Alamo Draft House at 1120 S. Lamar in Austin on the 16th 18th and 19th of September. We will let you all know when our times are assigned for those dates. The audience vote can help push us into the finals so please come out and see it, vote early and vote often!

Thanks
Xtian