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TV Ghost log - Page 2

post #51 of 89
7/24/03 at 11:47pm
Thread Starter 
Fortunately and unfortunately it will probably go on hold again. I got confirmation today that I am doing make up effects for a film called "The Nomad". It will probably keep me busy until late fall or early winter. It is a film about the struggles of the Kasakhstani people against waring tribes. It will be cool, but I'll have to go over there for several months, unless something changes. I plan to get back on TV Ghosts when I get back. The problem is that this movie takes place in the summer and fall and that is when I'll be gone. I'll have to play it all by ear.
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post #52 of 89
7/25/03 at 10:18am
Quote:
BillJohnson:
Fortunately and unfortunately it will probably go on hold again. I got confirmation today that I am doing make up effects for a film called "The Nomad". It will probably keep me busy until late fall or early winter. It is a film about the struggles of the Kasakhstani people against waring tribes. It will be cool, but I'll have to go over there for several months, unless something changes.
That sounds like an unusual but very cool project.
Hats off to ya Mr. Splat.
Let us know how it goes over there when you get the time.
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post #53 of 89
7/25/03 at 11:03am
Thread Starter 
I'll keep you posted. I actually may try to vist England while I'm over there (On the trip back). I'll let you know. On a side note, I just got a call that the movie was pushed back a month, which means I may be able to get my summer exteriors shot before I leave. That would be great.
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post #54 of 89
9/21/03 at 11:24pm
Thread Starter 
Well, proving how unpredictable everything is, I may start shooting some of the project soon. The job in Kazakhstan has run out of money again and that means that I am not going any time soon. (They owe me a lot of money) So I have offered the job of the lead of "TV Ghosts" to Nathan Mobley, the star of my last one. Nothing has been worked out yet, but I hope to film my fall exteriors soon. I have decided to not tie the film in with "Don't Worry..." because of the changes of appearance of the locations. I know that Nathan will do a good job, so it is all pretty logical. I'll keep you posted.
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post #55 of 89
9/23/03 at 5:40am
Quote:
BillJohnson:
Well, proving how unpredictable everything is, I may start shooting some of the project soon. The job in Kazakhstan has run out of money again and that means that I am not going any time soon. (They owe me a lot of money) So I have offered the job of the lead of "TV Ghosts" to Nathan Mobley, the star of my last one. Nothing has been worked out yet, but I hope to film my fall exteriors soon. I have decided to not tie the film in with "Don't Worry..." because of the changes of appearance of the locations. I know that Nathan will do a good job, so it is all pretty logical. I'll keep you posted.
Good to hear from ya Bill.
Will this be along the same time length as DWIOYI?
Can you give us any details about the plot for TV Ghosts?
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post #56 of 89
9/23/03 at 1:03pm
Thread Starter 
I plan to keep it shorter than "DWIOYI", but that may change. I may actually persue backing on this one. Here's the story in a nutshell:

Minor Spoilers....
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Jeremy is a landscaper who is recently separated with his wife, Julia. She has decided to dedicate her life to her job as a tv reporter. After a violent storm, Jeremy starts to notice something odd about his reception on his tv. It has ghosted images, but they seem to be more than bad reception. He begins to notice that the ghosted images seem to resemble the people that they are ghosting, but they are rather disturbing in nature. He notices that the reception on older movies seem to be ok, but occasionally a ghosted image will show up. Finally it dawns on him... he is seeing the souls of those on the television. He realizes that this is a huge event and tries to tell his ex wife about it so that she can do the story and maybe get a second chance to patch things up. She blows him off. In a fit of anger, he decides to videotape her image on the news and gives the tape to a friend to separate the ghosted part to enhance it, so that he can show her how evil she really is. In doing so, she wanders off from a live remote that the station is shooting and disappears into some deep woods nearbye. When Jeremy finds this out, he realizes what has happened. They had captured her soul and unknown to him, killed her in the process. In his time of grief,from her disappearance, he goes into a deep depression. About a month passes, and no one has found his ex wife. Then one day he gets a call. It is his friend who did the imaging on the computer for him. Strange things are happening around his place. It is swarming with vultures and he is freaking out. That is the last that Jeremy is to hear from him. His body is found days later, his place has been torn up and he apparently was badly decomposing from infections that he had recieved from some sort of a violent attack. Jeremy will soon discover about what the vultures were following and what really happened to his close friend. Julia is coming home.

That's pretty much how it all goes without going into all the details or ruining too much.
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post #57 of 89
8/12/04 at 7:01pm
Thread Starter 
Here's the latest....
I hope to shoot it this fall. I am about to start work on "Dreamer", but I think that my time on set will be pretty limited, so I sohould have time. I am now planning on making it feature length. I have added a lot of scenes that involve the main character's having relentless nightmares and also a scene with a morgue, that I am building, and a pretty grizzly murder, that I will keep under wraps for now. It will take a much more surreal turn than originally planned, but I think that my new ideas will be pretty freaky. It does tie in with "Don't Worry...", but is not a continuation. More to come.
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post #58 of 89
8/17/04 at 11:19pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by BillJohnson
I plan to keep it shorter than "DWIOYI", but that may change. I may actually persue backing on this one. Here's the story in a nutshell:

Minor Spoilers....
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wow. just wow. this sounds like a great story idea, Bill.
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post #59 of 89
8/19/04 at 8:04pm
Thread Starter 
Thanks. Some things have changed though. I am having it where his wife's body is found and is brought to a local morgue. They perform an autopsy to try to determine the cause of death. That night, her body disappears and the coroner is found babbling. This means that her zombie form will probably be nude and that makes it very tricky for me, but I like the direction it is taking. The whole morgue scene should be really creepy. More later.
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post #60 of 89
9/9/04 at 9:38am
Thread Starter 
I won a morgue on Ebay and it is being delivered to me next week. It consists of a 2 drawer freezer unit , 2 trays for bodies and an autopsy table. I've already gotten the autopsy surgical instruments , toe tags, and surgical lights. It is going to be a realy cool set, but will take me a little time to build with my current movie schedule. I'm quite excited about it, though.
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post #61 of 89
9/9/04 at 10:02am
Quote:
Originally Posted by BillJohnson
I won a morgue on Ebay and it is being delivered to me next week. It consists of a 2 drawer freezer unit , 2 trays for bodies and an autopsy table. I've already gotten the autopsy surgical instruments , toe tags, and surgical lights. It is going to be a realy cool set, but will take me a little time to build with my current movie schedule. I'm quite excited about it, though.
Awesome. Any pictures from the auction?
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post #62 of 89
9/12/04 at 9:29pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by L7 Productions
Awesome. Any pictures from the auction?
Here is a link to the page.
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...e=STRK:MEWA:IT
It should arrive this week, just in time for Ivan to hit us here in GA, if predictions are accurate. I hope that it doesn't get damaged.
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post #63 of 89
10/7/04 at 11:39am
Thread Starter 
Well my morgue is in and I am in the process of taking it apart so that I can fit it through the door to the basement. I have cast my 2 leads. The male lead will be Mathew Myers and the female will be Lindsey Ryan. Both are local actors and Mathew was the star of Andrew's film. Thanks Andrew for sending him my way. Lindsey is used to wearing horror make up (which she will have to do for most of her part) and has a great attitude about the whole process. Both actors are good with improvisation and that is going to help a lot to help keep thing flowing. I think that both are going to be a really good addition to the project.
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post #64 of 89
10/21/04 at 1:26am
Thread Starter 
I officially started shooting today with actors. They did great. I had to fake a news vehicle for the scene, but even after a real pain in my butt to get the right car, I got it and it worked out fine. I also have found someone with the right recording of owls and have ordered that for a scene. Next I will travel to the mountains for some fall foliage shots and then I plan to film the big vulture scene in a couple of weeks. Once all that is shot, I will wait a month or so before I get into the heavy stuff. Mostly, I am trying to get my fall footage done. So far, so good.
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post #65 of 89
10/21/04 at 4:05pm
pardon me , but I have a ton of questions. I'm working on putting togethor a short film myself and have been working for months on getting all the hardware togethor. I don't have a lot of the stuff that most people have but I have some very very high quality hardware (not film sadly) for production. So, I apologize for having a lot of questions, but its neat to see someone actually making something.

first, whats your budget? I checked out your ebay auctions, you dumped some cash.

How are those lights you bought working out?

Are you paying your actors, if so, may i ask how much?

Are you still using the XL1 or are you using an XL2?

and the most important question is this: How are you doing your post?
Are you using firewire? What capture card are you using? What software do you use to edit? And especially, how do you capture your video, what codec do you use or are you storing uncompressed, and what resolution.

Also, do you have any footage online? Thanks in advance
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post #66 of 89
10/21/04 at 5:42pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Lucidz
pardon me , but I have a ton of questions. I'm working on putting togethor a short film myself and have been working for months on getting all the hardware togethor. I don't have a lot of the stuff that most people have but I have some very very high quality hardware (not film sadly) for production. So, I apologize for having a lot of questions, but its neat to see someone actually making something.

first, whats your budget? I checked out your ebay auctions, you dumped some cash.

How are those lights you bought working out?

Are you paying your actors, if so, may i ask how much?

Are you still using the XL1 or are you using an XL2?

and the most important question is this: How are you doing your post?
Are you using firewire? What capture card are you using? What software do you use to edit? And especially, how do you capture your video, what codec do you use or are you storing uncompressed, and what resolution.

Also, do you have any footage online? Thanks in advance
I really can't say what my buget is, I'm just doing what I can with what I have. I have dropped around $2,000 to $3,000 on just the morgue set. I have bought a great deal of equipment over the last several years for this. I would estimate that at $10,000. As for everything else, I am just dealing with it as it comes. Since I freelance, it is pretty scary putting out so much cash without an income coming in. That is why my credit cards are so bad. How did you check my auctions?

I used the lights for the first time last night and I love them.

I am not paying the actors. Some are getting to keep their lifecasts, etc but that is as far as it goes. If the movie ever sells for a profit, I'll get them some money then. I wish that I could pay, but like I said, I am doing this on my own with no backing. The thing for them is that I WILL get them some decent exposure to some of my film contacts.

I am using a XL1S with a MA200 attachment and a manual lens. I am filming it in frame mode.

All my post is being done in Premiere Pro and After Effects. I am capturing it through a Pinnacle 500 card and saving the footage as AVI files. Once edited, I will dump the scenes back to a tape and then dump the footage to save room. My computer has two 200 gig drives, which helps with space. I believe that the footage is at 720X480 pixels.

No footage is on line and I'll probably keep it that way. I may post some still frames here.

I hope that this helps.
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post #67 of 89
10/21/04 at 7:38pm
So, do you have a pretty big break in your schedule or is it still gonna have to be done in sections around any upcoming make-up/effects jobs?
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post #68 of 89
10/21/04 at 10:27pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Starving Dog
So, do you have a pretty big break in your schedule or is it still gonna have to be done in sections around any upcoming make-up/effects jobs?
I am shooting it between jobs, but the way work has been, I may have a ton of time to shoot it. The reason that I have delayed so long has been due to my work schedules hitting hard over the last several falls and the main part of this one takes place in October.
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post #69 of 89
10/22/04 at 10:34am
holy crap you answered all my questions, Thanks a ton man!

First I'll answer your question, you asked how i looked at your purchases on ebay. Somewhere in this thread you linked to the morgue equipment you bought, I visited the page. I just clicked on the number next to your name to look at feedback and clicked on all the various items to see what you'd bought.

Now, a bit about me.

I've been working on a project for a little while. I haven't actually contacted any talent or scouted any locations yet because I just don't know how to go about doing that. However, I've been a writer for about 6 years now seriously, and have a host of short stories. I have one in particular I've adapted to screenplay that I would love to put on the screen.

The problem I'm having is I don't know if the stuff I have is good enough to shoot with. You have to understand me, I'm not someone who wants to shoot something on camcorder and just be happy with it. I do stuff 110% and if it won't be good I usually don't do it. If you don't terribly mind, could you review some of the things I have currently and tell me if I can make a half decent production?

Some background: I work for a company that designs robotics for studio equipment. As such, over the past few years I've accumulated an interesting array of objects either purchased or otherwise.

I've been lucky enough to stockpile camera blocks and lenses over time from bad units, and repair them when I had time. The camera block I have is a dxc-950.
It does 750 horizontal lines of resolution - compared to 600~ with xl1s
2.000 lux - same as xl1s
Signal to noise ratio is 58 db (don't know about xl1s)
The CCDS are 1/2 inch and put out 380,000 pixels each - compared to 1/3" 270,000 in the xl1s

So the block is extremely high quality.

Its equipped with a YH18x6.7 lense An image of the lense Which is wonderful except in really tight shots. For those I have a smaller YH13.

I have 2 5.6" tft monitors and one 15" panasonic video monitor.This is a link to the TFT Monitor I have

For switching I have a sony dsc-1024 g
Ebay Link here
This thing is really sweet.

The big hitch to all this is I have no physical recording device. No dv, no nothing. What that means is I'm tethered to something (either laptop or PC) which isn't a huge deal, and I'm capturing native to computer.

For capture, I use this:
capture card
Its a great card

I also have adobe premiere but couldn't get afteraffects.

I'm lookin at getting a shotgun mic as soon as possible. For voiceover I have a samson R11 which is pretty ok.

I think thats all the hardware I have. Of course I have some small keylights and some 300 watt lamps with barn doors but they are pretty cheap.

As far as cameras are concerned I have 5 working blocks with lenses, and since I'm lucky enough to have soo many I've been building rigs to permanently mount them on so that whenever I want to make a shot I have the rig ready, plus I can get multiple angles of the same scene.

The main thing I've designed is this: Images of my camcorder setup I'm going to redo the outside with a mold but for now it works. On the left side is a 5.6" tft monitor that can swivel or rotate so I can see the monitor no matter how I"m holding the camera. Its ugly I know but it works pretty good.

Anyway, what do you think? Is this enough stuff to put out some respectable footage? Or would you recommend saving up for some higher quality merchandise? By the way I really appreciate your taking the time to read this.

PS, I'm in jacksonville, so if you ever shoot down here let me know
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post #70 of 89
10/22/04 at 10:51am
Thread Starter 
When it comes to equipment and what is good and what is not, I am pretty much a novice, so unfortunately, I really can't say much about the equipment that you are talking about. If you have a question about make up effects, then we are pretty good to go, but all the tech stuff, is not something that I am too familiar with. It sounds like you have a good hold on it. My last film was shot on a little Sony camcorder and what you have sounds a lot better than that. Sorry that I can't be more help in the tech arena.
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post #71 of 89
10/22/04 at 11:17am
thanks a lot for the reply. I'm still working out why my video doesn't look as good on computer as it does on my confidence monitor. Its a damn 2400$ capture card for cripes sakes!

I would love to just START shooting, but I have no idea where to start or how to find talent in my area

Plus I think my first short may be too ambitious, who knows.
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post #72 of 89
10/29/04 at 11:53pm
Thread Starter 
I ended up recasting the lead part today, due to a sceduling conflict with Matt. The new lead is going to be great from what I can see and he'll start tomorrow. It's an interesting business, that's for sure.
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post #73 of 89
11/5/04 at 11:48am
Bill, this was so interesting to read! I had no idea you had been working on this film for so long. I am so happy that it is finally being made! This has been really fun to be a part of and I am looking forward to my upcoming zombie-ness. (For those of you who are wondering this is Lindsey and I play a tv reporter-turned zombie in the movie)
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post #74 of 89
11/6/04 at 12:30pm
Thread Starter 
Yeah, the project kept getting delayed because of my work schedule over the last 2 falls.
So here is the first official frame of our zombie. This is stage 1 and is only make up. This is from a scene where her dead body is found standing in the forests of the north Georgia mountains. It gets much worse.

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post #75 of 89
11/7/04 at 11:43pm
Oh baby do I look hot or what!! That turned out really creepy - it freaked out my mom!
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post #76 of 89
11/17/04 at 3:37pm
This movie combines my 2 favorite things: zombies and the North GA mountains. Bless you, Bill!
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post #77 of 89
12/9/04 at 7:22pm
Thread Starter 
We got my big vulture scene filmed and most of the exteriors. So far so good, but I have a lot of digital adjustments to make. We will pick up filming after the holidays. Meanwhile, here is on of the props that I made for a scene.
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post #78 of 89
12/10/04 at 4:37am
That's pretty cool. How did you make it?
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post #79 of 89
12/10/04 at 11:53am
Thread Starter 
It's made from PVC, real tree parts, prop body parts and a fake bark coating. Once everything dried, I then painted it and glues some moss on parts.
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post #80 of 89
12/13/04 at 7:25am
Neat. Thanks.
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post #81 of 89
3/17/05 at 3:12am
how's the progress?
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post #82 of 89
3/20/05 at 5:19pm
Thread Starter 
I had to stop shooting and try to find some work. I hope to start back up when my personal finances get better. Right now, I am branching out into the graphics thing and see if I can supplement my income between movie gigs.
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post #83 of 89
3/28/05 at 6:47pm
Thread Starter 
Well I just got messed up on one of my scenes. One of the guys working with me informed me that "Ring 2" has a scene where a videotape screams when it is burning. I had the exact same thing for this film and we have already filmed it. That really stinks, because if I leave it in my film, I will be accused of ripping off "Ring 2". Oh well, I'll have to find an alternate.
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post #84 of 89
12/12/05 at 6:30pm
Thread Starter 
It's been a long time since I've posted here. I totally revamped the whole thing and have recast pretty much everyone, and I started filming again. The difference this time is that I am supposed to have some backing coming in next year, which takes some of the pressure off of me. It is going to be a much different film, but I think everyone is going to dig it. It is a lot more intense than "Don't Worry..." and will have a ton of effects that I will be creating over the next several months. It's a little spooky to see the scale that I am going with, but i think that it'll be worth it. More later.
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post #85 of 89
12/12/05 at 6:52pm
Hey Splat! You've been missed bud. Question, can DWIOYI still be purchased somewhere? I gifted the copy you mailed me to another Chewer and I want that scary goodness in DVD format.
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post #86 of 89
12/12/05 at 7:16pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Capt. Eucalyptus
Hey Splat! You've been missed bud. Question, can DWIOYI still be purchased somewhere? I gifted the copy you mailed me to another Chewer and I want that scary goodness in DVD format.
Thanks.
I don't spend much time on any boards lately, but it's nice to be back. I think that you can get DWIOYI at:
http://www.rakmedia.com/rakorder.htm
I guess that will work. I have never seen a dime on the movie and don't really know what is up with it anymore. If you have a problem, PM me.
Later,
Bill
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post #87 of 89
12/12/05 at 9:05pm
this year's Halloween just wasn't the same without a pics thread from Splat (or did you post some and I missed them?)
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post #88 of 89
12/12/05 at 9:40pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Disciple_72
this year's Halloween just wasn't the same without a pics thread from Splat (or did you post some and I missed them?)
No, I didn't post any. It's been insane for me since July. so I have been scarce everywhere.(I wish that I could equate busy with lots of income, but unforunately, no such luck.) Anyway, I dressed as a corpse this year (Halloween) and laid in a casket in my driveway with a basket of candy on my stomach. When people would come up, I'd sit up and say "Good Evening" and watch them scatter. I may have permenantly scarred some small children, but their parents loved it. If I get a chance, I'll post some pics in the artist section.
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post #89 of 89
12/13/05 at 12:57pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by BillJohnson
If I get a chance, I'll post some pics in the artist section.
please do, that sounds cool.
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