On Friday we’re shooting a crazy scene where the main character chances upon a haphead party, where the party-goers are all showing off their physical skills they learned from playing videogames — martial arts, BMXing, parkour etc.
We’ve rented out a parkour gym (pictured above) made from a refurbished warehouse at St. Clair and Keele. If you’re free Friday evening and want to see a variety of tricksters do their thing, as well as be on film, drop anthony@lofiscifi.com a line!
(Reblogged from No Media Kings)
About a month ago we got the word that Haphead, our near-future videogame subculture webseries, received funding. It’s a lot of the same folks I’ve been making lo-fi sci-fi no-budget films with since 2007 — except this time we’re getting paid a living wage for it! Pretty wild. Having a budget also means we can consider renting locations (like the train car above!) as well as accelerate the process — we’ll be releasing the first 45-60min (AKA “Season 1”) in January, instead of the 3 year odyssey that Ghosts With Shit Jobs was. I also won’t be wearing as many hats (just three: executive producer/creator/writer) but I know from the awesome proof-of-concept trailer our team produced with minimal interference from me that it’s in very, very good hands.
If you want to jump on the Haphead train before our mid-August shooting begins, this is what we’re still looking for!
If you have a lead on any of the above, please drop our producer Anthony a line at anthony@lofiscifi.com and he can give you more details.
Rolled into Sacramento on the train yesterday for the Movies on A Big Screen event. It was great — probably about 60 people, warm and diverse crowd. Really fun q&a afterwards where the first question was whether Sanford Kong was a trained mime — they were as spellbound by his performance as the doctor as we were.
Toronto-bound folks will be thrilled to hear that it’s a lovely 13 degrees here & sunny. The people I’m staying with have an orange tree in the backyard, and I got to eat one for breakfast. Tasted pretty much the same, but it was still pretty awesome.
Last week’s run at San Francisco Indie Film Festival saw close to 200 folks come through on the three nights. Got to hang out with Jamie, a fan of the film, at the amazing goth bar he owns called the DNA Lounge. And I met with the guys who are working on Overgrowth, a rabbit-ninja fighting game, and they seem open to working together on a future project. So lots of interesting developments developin’!
Terry has mocked up a draft of the poster art for Ghosts. Of all the jobs, digital janitor seems to resonate the best, so we put that one front and centre. It will probably go through more iterations, so any feedback appreciated.
There seems to be a fair amount of international interest in the project, and to facilitate/encourage it we now have Chinese (thanks to Jen Chin’s mom) and Italian subtitles for the trailer. Do you know another language, or someone who does? Get in touch!
Also, our sound post-production supervisor is in need of work. She’s from France and due to some kind of immigration nonsense she can no longer work at her audio production job. I’ve worked with her for a year now on Ghosts, and I can say she is an extremely talented, accommodating, and always hits her deadlines. As well as doing wonders with our sound directly, with us she also managed a half-dozen or so other sound people in a respectful and effective way. Feel free to ask me for extra details or email her directly at founitchi@hotmail.fr.
Hi Folks,
I’ve recently become enamored with the ancient Asian game Go, and it got me thinking to how Chinese culture may influence western culture, now that they dominate us economically. How could we background these influences by showing instead of saying. For example, perhaps Anton and Toth could be playing Go in their make-shift home at night, or when they go to trade in the webbing they caught for water, Harry might initially be sitting down with a friend playing Go before he gets up and does the water trade with them. Maybe there’s a Go club or Go games at the bar the business folks play in Serena’s scenes. That said, I’d like to offer my services as a Go consultant to the movie. (I just watched A Beautiful Mind, because I knew it had Go scenes, and I found it disenchanting to see how they got some elements about it wrong). Go’s influence on western culture today, limited as it is, is mainly from Japan and Korea, but it was invented in China and is still immensely popular there (as evidenced by the included image). In Korea, they have TV channels dedicated to Go (the way here we have Golf TV channels).
About ten years ago I spent some time in India volunteering, and one piece of clothing I brought back that has stayed with me since is a “lungi”. It’s a sarong that either middle and upper class men wore in place of pajamas, or as very casual house clothes, or that lower class men could wear at any time. Indian locals would get a kick of seeing me, a wealthy westerner, ignorantly wearing a lungi around the town. I still wear one today (and in fact, only recently bought a pair of regular pajama pants at the urging of my son, who I guess wanted me to be more “normal”, or at least more like himself). They’re very comfortable (and cheap and simple to make). Perhaps Oscar could wear one when hanging casually around his home (i.e. drinking beer in the evening). I thought I had a good image of me wearing a lungi, but I can’t find it. Included is an Indian man wearing a lungi down, and a westerner wearing a lungi up (a common way to wear it, especially in hot weather).
Sean
Got an older uncle or a relative who’d like to be in a movie? Check out the roles below!
So we’ve finished the pre-production meetings and will be starting to shoot in a few weeks. We’re trying to fill a couple of last roles/positions, so please feel free to forward the following URL to interested parties:
http://nomediakings.org/vidz/help_us_destroy_toronto.html
…as it’s visible to the public. Or just forward them this via email.
Actors
Art Dept./Crew
Locations
We have insurance.
Get in touch at casting@ghostswithshitjobs.com/productionblog.
I’m vacationing at my mom’s place this week and took a break from insurance research to snap some pics along the lake for possible locations. It’s at Port Union and Lawrence in Scarborough and a few years back they opened one of my favourite parks in the city here.
I specifically came out here to see if I could find a place to matte a giant buddha onto the bluffs but then we came across this very photogenic bridge above water that would suit the Anton/Toph section well.
There’s a footbridge near it that allows for a bunch of different angles.
…and a bunch of nooks that Toph could be hidden in.
I made a little 360 vid under the bridge too.
Just like we found with Infest Wisely, Scarborough is a treasure trove of great underexposed locations!
I was talking to a Dad at my son’s school. He’s a professional Toronto scout for movies, so I hit him up for location ideas. He seemed to be fond of construction sites, but I think they denote progress, what with constuction going on, which this world isn’t about. He suggested new condo sales offices for futuristic looking buildings. He also told me about Absolute.to, a database of locations around the city. Perhaps out of our budget though. It’s at http://dla.absolute.to/Login/Login.asp
A friend and I made a day of it and traveled around the city taking photos of suggested sites, and found sites of our own we thought were neat.
Here’s some photos… More
Sanford and I scouted some possible locations for establishing 2040s Toronto. Based on conversations with people and previous exploring, we’ve hit upon the idea of using alleys that have front doors leading onto them — there’s something inherently strange and inverted about them to begin with, and the narrower scale and ramshackle construction gives the feel of a third world country.
On revisiting them I realized a lucky thing — that the laneways with front doors were also public laneways with street names, as opposed to the majority of the private laneways. The private laneways require releases from the owners to clear E&O, while the public laneways do not.
The permits are free but you need to be a production company insured for $2M to get them. I talked with Patti at the city today and she said that while hypothetically you can be fined for shooting without a permit, it’s more an issue with liability — if someone trips over a cable, you can be sued. The day we visited was really quiet, however, no cars or people in sight.
We held auditions yesterday in the basement auditorium of the Parkdale library, seeing nearly fifty people in five hours. Having gone out for 300 auditions himself, Anthony masterminded the session, getting folks to try out for all the principal roles via ads on craigslist.org, aactionauditions.com, and Mandy.com — Mandy really brought in a lot of talent, and is quite a resource.
For me, it was the first time I’d been to an audition in any capacity, so I found it pretty fascinating. It was very cool to hear the actors bring the characters to life. There’s a ton of talented and focused actors in this city!
We’re still looking for DOP/director types and older Asian men who can speak Mandarin. Let us know if you have any leads!
