Dr. Horrible... a kindred.

The clock is ticking on this one.

As of this writing, there are 29 hours left to watch "Dr. Horrible's Sing-along Blog." on line for free.

Go. Do it now.

Is it after midnight on June 20th? Okay, go to iTunes and down load the episodes (sorry, you'll have to pay).

It's a project that Joss Whedon put together over the writer's strike to prove a point.

As he says in his "Master Plan" he did it cheap in order to prove how much can be done with so little, and that that can be turned around and made profit upon on the internet by the creator, rather than going through a distributor or a network. No doubt, more easily accomplished in his position, but definitely food for thought - there is no doubt that the internet is consuming all other media access routes and the survivors will be getting on board now... the only real question is "How is this going to work?"

It's a question Provost Pictures has asked of ourselves. Our future lies out there too. I still hope we can find a distributor or broadcaster, there's no reason to think we won't. But if we don't... we'll be trying our hand at internet self-distribution. I am excited to try. Maybe some day "Beast" will be available via iTunes!

Anyhow, I hope JW can make it work. It's a fun little show - perhaps 45 minutes long, and very much NOT what you'd expect from someone working under the thumb of a 'system'... oh, wait a second, for "Dr. Horrible..." Joss was already out from under any kind of system. It is exciting. And the 'To show how much could be done with very little. To show the world there is another way.' and 'Proving we can turn Dr Horrible into a viable economic proposition as well as an awesome goof will only inspire more people to lay themselves out in the same way. It’s time for the dissemination of the artistic process. Create more for less.' parts... those sound an awful lot like what Craig and I have been telling each other for three years now.

Me happy.

We go watch Dr. Horrible again, before it's not free anymore.

(And buy the DVD when it comes out.)

More Cutting, More Fun

Oh happy day.

Sat down with Mike to watch the first twenty minutes or so fo the film yesterday.
Significantly there is an aspect of the film which there has been some question about how it should work visually.
Craig and I have naturally talked about it a lot in the past years of preparing the film. We even made a point of showing sample scenes to various people to get a sense of whether they thought it worked or not. For the most part there has been no problem with our plan... but three people on the inside of the production have expressed their own doubts - emphatically. Craig and I decided to give Mike a chance to solve the problem his own way in the editing room... though I have to admit we were both skeptical. Yesterday we got to see if it was going to work.
It works. I am very happy about that. There is no need for any argument. Yay!

In other news...

I was sent a fun link this morning. I admit, I'm a Firefly fan. I've actually watched a shamefully small amount of Stargate considering the David Nykl connection... in fact I made a point of watching a few episodes THE VERY DAY we left for the Okanagan last spring, just so that I wouldn't be totally clueless should it ever come up. Only one of them had Dr. Zelenka in it.
I'm getting WAY off topic here, but there is actually a shot in the existing cut of Beast where David and I are standing on the boat having an argument. It's taken from quite a distance, so the audio is actually lifted from other close up takes. If the audio could have been heard - David and I were actually arguing about Stargate. I should have never opened that can of worms. I made some random comment about Wraiths - one of the few things I had grokked from those two episodes. Within a sentence David was pwning me.

Anyhow - back to the REAL point. Another Firefly fan sent me this. The juice is around the four minute mark.

An 'Expert' Invite & the Sighting of the Beast

Well, this is amusing.

I've been invited to speak about the Ogopogo at the Vancouver 'SkeptiCamp' this up-coming month.

It should be fun comparing and contrasting the views of both the credulous and the skeptical with a host of people whose hobby it is to delve for evidence and pick apart irrational belief. I am after all, just an artist who, with some friends, made a movie about the mysterious beast - heck, it can be argued that really I re-made Moby Dick, and the Ogopogo just played the part of the great white whale. But Keith's original idea began with 'Pogo, not Moby - it just morphed towards the literary parallel as we gradually began to see the connections.

But it makes me wonder how/where I stand in the spectrum of Ogopogo experts. I don't know the minutae like Arlene Gaal, but at the same time I'm not the sort to accept flimsy evidence either. I would love to find out that there is something significant in the lake that has yet to be recognised by the biological record, but I find it hard to believe that if such a find is ever made that it will prove to be a 40 foot serpent - but that doesn't make me ideologically or methodologically Joe Nickell, either.

Yet, let's say that a deep dwelling species of fish (possibly evolutionarily stunted, like a sturgeon) that has yet to be discovered lives in the depths of Lake Okanagan. Let's say it surfaces in great numbers to spawn, and THAT is the explanation for the Ogopogo that isn't either boat-wakes, beavers ferrying logs, otters, pranksters or any of the other answers which most readily survive a close shave with Occam's Razor. That would be amazing, and awesome. But I fear that anything less than a pleisosaur or basilosaur will fail to excite the ardent believers.

-----

As to the secondary topic;

When I say 'sighting', I do mean that we have had our viewing of the rough cut of the film. It was great to finally have the chance - almost a year after we finished filming. I have of course seen most of the footage, but some of it is new to me.
I can't actually say a lot without giving things away, but from a film-maker's perspective we learned a lot, both about our craft and about the project itself in watching what currently exists. Naturally there are pick-ups to be done - in a month or so, and it shouldn't take more than a weekend.
We also discovered - or in fact Mike, the editor, voiced a viewpoint of our narrative that we had spoken of previously in different terms. But what Mike said - I'll have to talk about it more specifically at another time - was not at all a surprise, though it does bring a narrative issue into focus in a way which answers the very problems it necessarily presented by it's very nature. (Could I be more indirect?) Significantly, this is exciting as it presents an aspect of our film to us that we had previously not fully grokked. THAT is cool - and the sort of discovery in editing that I have been looking forward to all project long.

Something to See

Just got news yesterday that at long last there is a cut of the film ready to be viewed. There have been a number of bumps between production and now which have slowed us down unfortunately, but so it goes. Mike has declared that he is ready for us to see what he has done with the existing scenes (a number of scenes were taken directly to first polish for a number of reasons several months ago) and the remaining until now un-touched footage.

Very exciting from my perspective.

In other news, I did some work this past week on Stargate: Atlantis - the show our own David Nykl plays Dr. Radek Zalenka on. I was actually working with the animatronics team. It was very fun, and I can't really say any more than that without ruining my chances of ever working for them again. (Not to mention I'm actually not familiar with the show, so my info would be sketchy at best if you were seriously interested and water-boarded it out of me.) Oddly while on set this week I crossed paths with every current Stargate cast member I can actually name except one - the one I actually know.

Also - to end on a real high note - one of our other cast members, Gordon May, won the best supporting actor award in the (Damn, I can't find it, but I think this info is right.) North Island Zone, Theatre B.C. Festival. I can't say I am surprised. He is a tremendous actor, and will break people's hearts when they see 'Beast.'

New Website!

Seeing as one of the easiest ways to find this blog is to link through our website, this seems a little strange...

But we have a new website.

It's pretty - and way more functional than before.

Like I said in the last post - things are starting to happen!

Check out the new trailer on the website - it's not a final trailer... no sir - it's actually a trailer we threw together last year between our advance shoot and the main portion of production. It recently screened at the Okanagan Film Festival.

www.provostpictures.com

What the Boys are Doing....

After literally months of slow progress this past month has suddenly shot to life. All kinds of stuff happening in Provost Pictures world.

Legal stuff, editing stuff and more.

Just last night David Nykl was interviewed on This Conversation. Funny thing, the crew for TC is made predominantly of former members of the 'Beast...' crew. Seems they've formed a solid relationship, those boys. (Many of them already had started down that road before we shot.) As a matter of fact they went up to the Telus Filmmaker's Showdown earlier this month and made it into the top ten with a parody of '24' called '4'. It's fun and I gotta say there are parts that I am really impressed by - so glad we had these guys on-side.

Bye Bye Brodie

Roy Scheider died today.

Makes me wistful.

Jaws was one of Keith's favourite films. It's one of mine.

"Beast..." owes Jaws a huge debt.

Once, years ago, Mr. Scheider was in town shooting some movie... (I've forgotten what, but for som reason I also think that I did make a point of seeing it.) ...Keith and I discussed trying to find him and see if we couldn't get him to do an interview on camera that we might find a use for. This eventually led to what is now the 'expert interviews' in the film.

Anyhow, it's been a long time since a post. I felt like this event was worth acknowledging.

- K