I love movies.
Not only that, but for most of my life, I’ve wanted to be involved in making movies, as an actor, director, stunt man, pretty much as whatever, so long as I was involved.
The first distinct memory I have of myself wanting to be involved in filmmaking, was when I was very young, probably 8 or 9 years old.
I had a friend over, and we were playing war with Micromasters and my Mega Man X3 gashapons.
We built a fortress out of cardboard blocks for one of the 2 factions, and basically spent the afternoon yelling at each other through the action figures splayed out across the basement floor, occasionally throwing a figure at the fort to simulate a death on the battlefield or an attempted siege.
Oh yeah, for whatever reason, we had Killer Cuts; the soundtrack CD that came packaged with Killer Instinct on the Super NES, blaring from a boombox.
I remember setting Jago’s theme, “Do It Now,” on a loop for the majority of the day:
Whatever man, it was the mid-90’s, America was culturally fucked; and therefore my friend and I were as well.
Still, I’d like to think we turned out okay.
Anyway, at some point during our “play date,” my mom overheard us, and decided to bring down our beefy-ass VHS camcorder to record some of our goofy bullshit.
While my friend and I kept playing as normal, barely even acknowledging my mother’s presence; I distinctly recall several instances where I asked her to film specific aspects of the action, from very specific angles.
While it was basically the equivalent to calling out, “Hey mom, watch me jump!” in many ways, this served as my first experience in playing director.
Over the years I’ve been involved with a number of film projects, mostly in front of the camera; but outside of a handful of stop-motion movies that I made entirely on my own, I feel like I’ve never really directed a movie.
Hell, I made every frame of this movie myself, and somehow I managed to not direct it:
Sure, I’ve been in-charge plenty of times, usually because I was the only person enthusiastic enough about the project to step up and do it, but I can’t recall an instance where I really took the time to take a step back and focus on getting exactly what I wanted for each shot.
Hell, when it comes to filmmaking, I don’t think I’ve ever taken my time with anything.
At this point in my life, pretty much every movie I’ve made has been an single afternoon/evening affair with my friends, usually amounting to little more than a single scene as opposed to an actual complete thought.
Pretty much every movie I’ve ever made with my local neighborhood buddies has involved guns, fighting, and very little, if any; dialogue.
Needless to say, we never worked from a script.
If that wasn’t ghetto enough, we always reserved all instances of bloodshed for scenes taking place in the bathroom so as to ease the clean-up process.
As silly as it seems, I treasure those memories.
The reason I’m making this post, is because last week I met with my buddies and proposed to them that we get together to make a movie again.
It’s been several years since any of us have made a movie together, and being as I am finally back living in Seattle; I figured now was as good a time as any for a reunion of sorts.
Anyway, we spit-balled a bit, and came to the conclusion that we’d like to remake a past work of ours called “Get Stingray.”
Basically, it’s a melodramatic and violent revenge movie, with the “Stingray” of the title being the beastly man on whom revenge is sought.
As with any movie I have a hand in from a conceptual standpoint, the plot and characters are pretty much paper-thin, serving as lame excuses to include gunplay and hand-to-hand combat scenes whenever possible.
You remember how exacting and critical I was with my evaluations of the fight choreography in all of my movie reviews?
Well, I’m hoping I can finally bring those perfectionist qualities to the fight work in “Get Stingray.”
What can I say, I know what I like; and this time I really look forward to being happy with the end results.
I hope to spend the next several weeks fleshing out “Get Stingray,” with filming starting ASAP.
Filming will hopefully be an “every weekend” sort of thing, with as many weeks as necessary/possible being utilized in the process.
I’m in no hurry, so long as it gets done.
I’ll keep you guys posted with plot summaries, storyboards (if I make them), production stills, and probably a trailer or 2 if I’m feeling up to it.
Filed under: Kung Fu, Movies, Uncategorized, Action, Azn Badger, Capcom, Fighting, filmmaking, gashapon, Get Stingray, gun fight, guns, Jago, Killer Cuts, Killer Instinct, martial arts, Mega Man X3, Micromasters, Movies, Nintendo, Revenge, SNES, stop-motion, Super NES, Transformers