Kiwi Space Patrol Crew

For our sins, most of the KSP crew reassembled last weekend to shoot a 5 minute film for the V48 Hour Filmmaking competition.
The gods gave us the genre of Musical, and we came up with Savage Tron Love Wrongs, which was a musical interpretation of an unhappy episode Liz had with a man whose name starts with C.

If I had checked that Ulead 11 could handle high def footage before finding out that it actually can’t, thereby condemning Cormac to editing it all in three hours, it may have been better than it was. It certainly would have included the key money shot of his tongue giving what-ho to Cath Morrison’s tonsils. (Well done Cath, brilliant acting and solid gag reflect control). Alas, that is somewhere in some folder languishing. It hindsight it seems a basic kind of preparation, but it just seemed to elude my planning schedule, which as with most things, means grabbing everything five minutes before Go Hour and saying it’ll all be fixed in post.

Anyway, the Saturday was a long day and everyone dug it in and provided some great shots.
Ali Murray and Millie Wilson were there too, Millie doing makeup, Alison as runner and painting a large obscene message on my back lawn, in the name of art, Gemma Crouch-Gatehouse, Aaron created the sock puppets, and there was Shane Wilson, Janet Glenn, Chris Nixon, with Liz Cossar singing the song to the music written by Max Apse. Ask me about checking audio recording gear as well, one day. Steven Qian did a fab job of creating printed props, and Cormac was awesome in his mullet. All we needed was Alex T. next time, should there be one.

Rough cut version that it was I think the outro could have been dropped. The V competition stipulates certain elements be included in it, and we did the required freeeze frame but I think it would have been better left on Cath’s face by the sea.
I’ll post a link when we YouTube it. In fact, we’ll probably do the show cut, a Cormac cut, and my version. For no other reason than to flog this dying horse.

Of the 10 movies shown at the premier’s last night, I think ours was in the middle of the pack. A couple were obviously beaten by the time limit. Janet liked Baddass, which was a clever take on the body switch gentre, and it probably was the slickest and most entertaining.

We didn’t get many laughs. I blame the audience.

Well, we’re still talking Turkey

By that, I mean while I did an entry on Wikipedia about SAMBT, just for the record, the minions of Satan who feel like they should allow or disallow that for the world to see decided it wasn’t worthy.

Anywho, and I can’t explain the exact process, I clicked on a link to this entry on the Turkish language version of Wikipedia.

Here’s the links, and in case the Turkish Wikipedia folks want to save disk space by not having it forever, I post a screen shot below,complete with the original typos.

 

I for one am forgetting all about that Chunuk Bair thingy.

Au Contraire

This weekend (ending today, August 29)  is the Au Contraire Science Fiction convention in Wellington.

Due to circumstances involving random generation of events, I ended up on a panel yesterday talking about amateur film making with Peter Friend and Norman Cates.

My contribution was minor, being but to go off on weird gibbering tangents to whatever was being said. But it was also good to watch some of the vids that Mr Friend and Mr Cates had.

http://www.youtube.com/smallblurryfilms for some of Peter’s bits vids.

Also in attendance was costume designer Gemma as she had been at the previous panel on Cosplay and I was happy to show off a couple of her SAMBT costumes.

PLUS! I had burned about 15 dvds of all the episodes and I think I got rid of 14. So if you were one of the lucky attendees at that panel, you have a rare, numbered and signed special collectors edition. I think they went up to about number 44.

A lady came up to me afterwards and picked one of them up off the table. (I shan’t do her German accent) and she said in as friendly a way as you can say the following statement:

“This is free because it isn’t very good?”

I didn’t have the heart to disappoint her by saying, No baby, it’s free because it’s Frikkin Awesome!!! So we just smiled together. Then I stole her purse.

Nice con. I have been stricken bya virulent Man Flu and unable to see much but its like all the best cons –  loose, friendly and a crapton of events.  You gotta love fandom!!!

SAMBT script. Well, most of it.

Here is a link to a text file version of the full script for Super Awesome Mega Battle Tank.

http://www.box.net/shared/e2ob9bhvfj

Not everything in it appears in the finished product (bits calling for special effects, model work, high class acting, for example) and not everything in the finished product had a script.  (For instance, the flashback stuff with Cormac and me cutting the wires and injecting the flooby gooby stuff in episode 11 were pretty much ad libbed to pad out the time.)

Red or blue man, red or blue? I can't tell, the whole fucking flashback's in black and white.

For those who have downloaded Celtx (the link is amongst the other links I think), the Celtx-formated script is here.

http://www.box.net/shared/uhxsvgtsve

We didn’t do a lot of adlibbing so most of it is all here. There is one bit that I added later and even shot, but forgot to put in, and it was after the Commander got hit by the Hoolie Doolie spear.

It turns out that as the result of a treaty settlement for the taking of minerals from their planet, their protest attacks were to only use non-lethal spears. “But they still hurt if they hit you in the nuts”, the Commander was to have said.

The other ad lib was during the flashback after the spear attack when Cormac does the hot teaspoon thing on Alex after talking about the rusty trombone. (By the way … about 18 takes because one of them laughed every time the words “rusty trombone” were said. Unbelievable). That came from a game Corm played with Paul Banks and Adrian Holland when they flatted together. I never got tired of watching them do that to each other.

 

Copywrite for the script is all mine, mine, mine, bwahahahahahahahaha. 

 

 

Bill O’Byrne  2010. 

 

 

 

Alas Mr Mutch …

Lindsay Mutch. Poet, writer, journo, clever bastard.

Lindsay Mutch, a great booster for Super Awesome Mega Battle Tank, died on Monday, June 28, at Wellington Hospital. I had dropped him off a couple of hours earlier after what he thought was a chest infection proved to be something much worse. He suffered a fatal heart attack in the hospital, though he was chatting to the nurses while he was being seen to. He always did like the ladies …

Anyway, Lindsay went out of his way to promote SAMBT. I think his critical faculties always got suspended for his mates, which was the sort of person he was.

He also helped out with some props, such as the one visible behind Alex and Cormac during the Rusty Trombone flashback.

This is the text that he did with the smaller story, Space Patrol investigates catering IQ shocker to make up the space. He banged it out in about five mintues. Lindsay was a funny, generous guy who was a great writer as well. His loss is so rottenly sad.

Space Patrol investigates catering IQ shocker.

Unnamed sources in Kiwi Space Patrol have revealed a secret probe into how a catering crew with “the combined IQ of a mentally-challenged brick” came to be in charge of one of its battle tanks.

“The worst thing is, they’re still out there,” the KSP official said.

It is believed one of the crew only passed his microwave oven operation test on the fifteenth attempt. The test involved the heating of a meat pie. Allegedly it was not until the sixth try that the trainee managed to get the oven’s door open.

“Oh yes, I remember him,” said cuisine tutor Dep Freud, “he kept pawing at the microwave like he’d never seen one before. It became less like trying to teach him to cook and more like trying to train a monkey.

“In fact, at one point, we called NASA officials to get some tips from their chimp handlers from the 1960s.

“On learning they had actually taught chimps to pilot spacecraft we seriously considered replacing this particular catering crew with apes. Sadly most of NASA’s apes had long died of old age, and those still alive demanded more money than we’re actually paying the crew in question.”

Rumours at the Farquiddity Base suggest one of the crew needs to be slapped on the back of the head just to get his brain operating enough to perform simple tasks.

The alleged investigation will endeavour to uncover how such incompetent simpletons managed to get into the corps in the first place.

No answers yet.

A Salute – to the Super Awesome All Whites

Next it is Paraguay, then Uruguay, then Youraguy and Imaguy and then who knows. 

Well done those men. In a non-exclusive or gender limiting way.

Finishing Touches

Ms Cossar singing SAMBT the Lament version.

This is how we do it on Super Awesome Mega Battle Tank … singing to a broomstick with the mike taped to it set against a silvery backdrop held up by duct tape.

It was a nice way to end the production … and it is available for free download from here. Suitable for singing along when under sustained heavy enemy fire, or when being dealt to my your own forces.

Oh, and The All Whites one-all with Italy. Wooo Hooo!!!!!

Final death battle

Last night [being the now-hallowed 10th of June] was the final night of what shall be rather grandly called principal photography.

It was a chance to unveil one of our hitherto secret weapons … the mighty, and mighty goddam hairy torso of Alex Tashkoff.  He wanted to go Bruce Lee on our arses, and I said that was acceptable, if rather tangental to the rest of the plot, if he would unleash the beast within. Actually, it is pretty well on the outside as well, as you can see here.

Afterwards the crew, sans Janet who was at some poncey deputy principals’ dinner, went to the General Practitioner’s to congratulate one another for another damn fine night’s work. Mr Tashkoff and Mr Cossar talked about metaphysics and things of a higher philosophical plane while Mr Qian and myself engaged in the conversation with bon mots as they were appropriate. Or something completely unlike that.

Episode 12 is out Monday, and Episode 13 a week after that.

I might have to cop this one sweet …

On the other hand, the synchronicity of the university can be a weird thing.

I was watching South Park before I went to work this morning, and it was the one where the boys set up the Super Awesome Talent Agency. I think Janet was just about to leave, and did that raised eyebrow thing.

No, I thought of it myself, I said.

But I know I have seen it before, mainly because it features Wing, and it WAS done in 2005, and since I only wrote the Super Awesome Mega Battle Tank screenplay 18 months ago …

On the other hand, I had the idea for a funny teenage werewolf movie in 1982. And fucking Teen Wolf came out in 1986. So it just goes to show.

There’s always a chance to add to the magic

I was digitising episode 11 last night and I realised that it was just too damn short. I mean, too short to build up that sense of wonder and fun that is compulsory in every episode.

So Cormac and I shall retire to the bowels of the building tomorrow at lunchtime to shoot a couple of ad hoc bits which should beef up not only the time, but the full fledged gloriosity of the episode. Which will still only run for three minutes. 

Anywhos, here is the the mailout that went with this one. Happily I managed to remember to put in the link, and it also includes a bit of the script which might clarify that which is happening on screen. Sometimes even I am a bit puzzled what is going on, and that probably shouldn’t be happening …

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"Call me fucking numb nuts again and you'll die in an even worse imaginary way."

Scene 11

The Super Awesome Mega Battle Tank is toast. Ext: there is smoke and flames on the armour, the tracks don’t look so great.

Inside the tank there is smoke, sparks, wires hanging down, strobe lights, and Gunner Gossamer and Sous Chef Bill are screaming over the top of each other incomprehensibly. Both are ostensibly yelling out the readings they see, but this isn’t actually the case. Only Commander isn’t phased by the looming catastrophic failure of the armour, and thusly, his mortal body.

Commander

Gentlemen, one at a time.

[Cormac and Bill look at each other (beat) then burst into more shrill gibberish. Commander reaches over and puts his hand over Cormac's mouth, allowing Sous Chef Bill's outpourings to be revealed. ]

Sous chef bill

… and every season I just hope against hope that the goddam  Black Caps have got their acts together, but they always always play like bunnies and year after goddam year we get our arses kicked by the fecking Australians. And if they win two matches in a row  I start hoping once, just once, they’ve got a team with a bit of talent and some balls and won’t go out on the piss and behave like drunken arseholes before big games but they always screw it up and then it’s all about how they’re in rebuilding phase or they’re aiming towards the next tour to England or some such pile of absolute shite …

Commander

Time and a place for lamenting New Zealand’s crap cricketing performance. The time is (checks watch) later. Now is the time for returning fire and preparing for one last assault on Bryce the Destroyer. Who so far seems to be having the upper hand in this …

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Happy Queen’s Birthday everyone. Trust you all received some gong from Her Majesty. I am sure I’ll get something as soon as the postie arrives …

 http://www.kiwispacepatrol.co.nz