Heroes

Having just began to watch Heroes, I’ve been surprised with the depth and quality of the show. Now up to Episode 11, I’m just about halfway through the series. From this glimpse of the show I’ve noticed quite a few interesting things happening through the show, including the obvious comic book influences, strong ties to X Men, and even science fiction and Hitchcock-esque draw ins within the show.

The comic book influence is fairly obvious, with the whole structure of the series built upon comic book storylines. The character names and even many of the stylistic elements reinforce this influence, but despite it’s fairly low 14+ age rating in America, Heroes contains quite a lot of themes and adult content - whether it be violence, death, sexual acts and innuendo, and others. This makes the show almost appear to be a comic book for adults. I guess if you were younger, you might gloss over a lot of the adult orientated material, or not even notice it. Heroes seems to have a very large target audience, with a fairly broad age range interested in the show. There probably couldn’t have been a better time to have such a show, with comic book movies popularity the highest its ever been.

Probably the closest comic series this show reminds me of is X Men, with the similar themes of Evolution, Darwin, Us against Them etc. The show even features characters of similar lineage up against each other, a kind of segregation amongst themselves of the ‘good’ and ‘evil’, just as normal humans have these very same separations. In fact the show reminds me of a mixture between X Men and some other Anime series like ‘Akira’ or ‘Ghost in the Shell’, and is an interesting mixture of storytelling elements.

The other surprising element in the show is it’s sense of humour. Although it’s not surprising to have a comedic element in a TV show, Heroes seems to have an almost Hitchcock-esque sense of humour. I read something a few days ago about how Alfred Hitchcock liked creating instances or scenes where it seemed like a huge practical joke was being played on the characters - almost like Murphy’s Law, where everything that can go wrong does go wrong. These moments in the show are quite funny, and although they only function as comedic relief in amongst all the dramatic story building, they add a lot of depth to the story.

Well I’m looking forward to watching the rest of the series, but I’m really impressed at present with the show. It’s about time a decent television show came out that wasn’t another medical drama.

Forest Shoot

Just got back from shooting out around Daffodil bay. It turned out to be a nice day, which was surprising since it was pouring down in the early morning. Turned out to be quite good luck, because a clear day was what was needed for the shoot. Should be heading in tonight to do some editing on it, in the meantime here are a few pictures from the shoot.

Greenscreen Shoot

Just finished doing a greenscreen shoot tonight for a short, the piece filmed will be used as a ghost figure in a forest. We should be shooting the rest of the short either tomorrow or the next day, pretty much been waiting all week for some decent weather. The studio we used was actually a photography one, so most of the already set up lights weren't of much use as they just flash for stills, so ultimately we ended up using the other ones that were booked out - a couple of Redhead's and some Lowell's. Michael got to play the slightly pirate-esque ghostly figure, with makeup that consisted of a piece of charcoal from last night's fire. Did a quick test in the editing program and it should come out fine, hopefully the weather will be good enough to film the rest of it.

Sonny and Donnie Edit

I've put up an edited version of the Sonny and Donnie short onto Youtube, the music has been changed and there are a few more shots in there that help build up to the climax. I prefer this version to the old one, check it out. The link is : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-pPo7sxhSaM

The Missing Tripod

Well I managed to get out copious amounts of gear on Friday afternoon, and lugged it all back to fill up a room in the house. This morning, hoping to do some shooting today, I began to set up some lights when I realized they hadn't given me a tripod. This threw the whole weekend out, seeing how important the tripod would have been for most of my planned shots. I could do some handheld, but I don't even have our homemade steadycam at the moment. I can't believe I didn't notice the missing tripod when I carried everything down to the car, I believe I was rather tired by that stage.

So unfortunately I don't think I'm going to be able to do much until Monday... At least I have the rest of the gear, I can do some pre-emptive preparations.

Slow Progress

Well as the days are churning along, progress on the different projects is slowly but surely coming along. It's been mostly preproduction work, and seeing as the weather has been rather miserable there hasn't been a lot of physical stuff happening at all. At the end of this week I get to secure all the gear, which of course will motivate me to begin preparations for shooting.

Apart from that no much has been happening lately, except perhaps for joining up with Facebook, which is a bizarre site. You can be on that site for quite some time messing about with stuff, but not really sure exactly what it is you're doing. Ah well, before I know it I'll be flat out again shooting movies.

August Projects

Looks like August is going to be a rather productive month, with at least 2 shorts planned. It is during August that I can book out almost as much gear as I need for two weeks straight, so that will come in very handy. There's nothing worse than lugging huge amounts of kit back and forwards over a short course of a few days, especially considering the size of some things - the lighting kits, the dolly, and the newest addition to our equipment the mighty gib arm.

I've had to majorly change around my main script, but now it's a lot simpler and a better story as well. I'm still slightly stuck in terms of actors but I'll try and remedy this situation, I'm still in the process of writing the thing. As I get the gear out next week it'll all have to be sorted before then. I'm aiming for around 10 minutes worth for this short.

The second short is going to be another collaboration between Mike Steve and myself, except this time we're giving ourselves a lot more than a single afternoon to do the shooting, and are doing more planning this time too. Last time didn't go too badly but we lost our roughly written out script right before we starting shooting, which only appeared after we had finished everything @_@

I'll keep things posted of the progress for this month.