Welcome back grapple fans! I warn you now, this is going to be a long one. Theres alot in here..I want it finished!
At long last this week sees me reach the 2nd to last blog of the current series. What are we on now? 12. That means that in my reality you wont read this for another 4 weeks! I finished the armour about 3 1/2 weeks ago so that means by the time this goes out it'll have been 7 1/2 weeks.
RIGHT I had succesfully scared everyone away from my make shift workshop so I set about spending the week casting out all the various pieces of armour. I wasn't particulary looking forward to this & new it would be a slog. At least I'd be left alone to get on with it in peace. Or so I thought. I should have known better really. First I got told off for locking the door by some dude at the college. The whole point of having the door locked was to stop people coming in..obviously.
A) So I could get on with it without interuption
B) To reduce the risk of getting caught & severely bollocked.
This guy didnt seem fussed though really. He thought I was a student & kept telling me that if I started feeling woozy at any point then I could feel free to leave the room & get some fresh air. Er thanks I'll remember that. I was actually wondering if I'm allowed to leave the room. To be honest though this big fucking respirator I've got strapped to my head should help me out on the wooziness front. He only came once a day. There was however a woman showing prospective students & their families around. She came about 3 or 4 times a day. Each time with the same fucking sales pitch. And she was American. Just to wind me up. I have no problems with Americans by the way but the last thing I want to hear when I'm hot & bothered & itchy with fibreglass whilst wrestling with a big mold is a whiny, screechy voice saying "(big inhalation) MMmmm it even smells of Sci- Fi in here!" What the fuck are you going on about? What does sci-fi even smell of? Fibreglass? The thing that you can smell is highly toxic so the last thing you want to be doing is coming in here & taking in great gulps of the stuff. She must have been trip
ping her tits off.Trouble is it turns out that my little workshop was becoming something of a selling point for the university. Oooohhhh!! Look at that talented student of ours with all the wonderful & intersting stuff he's making. Its good here isnt it? By the end of the week all I wanted to do was say "I'm NOT a student here. Thank fuck. Your facilities are SHIT - you cant even open the fucking windows. If I were you (pointing at the entourage of prospective students, shocked parents & crying children) I'd go to The National Film & Television School in Beaconsfield." I didnt though. I just nodded at them & gave them & muffled 'ello hoping that the sight of the respirator I was wearing & the obviously toxic fumes eminating from the room might hasten them along.
So after a hellish week of casting out fibreglass pieces I had before me the beginings of MY ARMY. I now had one week to tidy up & finish all six suits of armour. This was alot of work but luckily help was on its way.
My best mate Andre surpised me during one of our regular Skype sessions by asking if I fancied some help with the armour. He'd just finished working on 'Clash of the Titans' (lucky bastard) & wanted to help out. This was a fucking god send. Finally someone who knew what the fuck they were doing. I had constantly been requesting that Jobin put another add up on mandy.com asking for artistically skilled people with common sense & initiative to help me out. Jobin would just smile awkwardly & go yeah yeah we will. I knew they wouldnt though. Their ridiculous secrecy act made sure that help was at a minimum. Jesus! It's a student film not the next Batman!Anyway I told them that Andre was coming & that was that. Or no armour anytime soon. I outlined that with Andre helping me out it would be equivilent to having 20 students helping. Not to be rude or anything. I think Paul felt a bit put out & mumbled away like a granny asking stupid questions like "will he know what to do?". Youre kidding? He knows more about this then all of you. I've known him since college - I've worked with him on real films before, ones that people see.......well, depends how late you stay up or if your local DVD reatailer is the petrol station (Gladiator Cop £2.99 etc etc - i didnt work on Gladiator Cop im just giving you a point of reference for the calibre of film) I did once see two films I've worked on in blockbuster.........it took me about half an hour to decide if I could be arsed to spend the eight quid. I did in the end but only because there was nothing else - not really a good sign.
I used to fantasise about what a buzz it would be to see something you've worked on at the cinema or in the shops. When it actually came to pass my reaction was less than I had dreamed of all those naive years ago. It was kind of a tut that morphed into an inward sigh which exhaled into a perfectly executed under the breath fuckin' 'ell.......Boy Eats Girl. Unfortunately its not a porno. And no, I haven't me
t Samantha Mumba. The ot
her film, Isolation, wasnt actually that bad & I believe has a small cult following. I think it even got some prizes. Probably a king size snickers & a day out visiting The Hawes Ropemakers - Matron! Surely they must be aware? - Its real you know:http://www.ropemakers.co.uk/v_guide.asp?slid=29&mid=5,
What was i going on about????????
Yes, Andre was coming to help for the week! Smoke break.....
This was good. When Paul was helping me I sometimes felt that I was babysitting him. This was fine at first as there was no real rush but now I didnt have time to be showing people how to do simple things. Well simple to me & others of my kind. I knew that I could set Andre a task & he'd just get on & do it. Also it would be interesting to see if it was just me or is this place fucking odd or what? We had a plan. Andre set to work sculpting, moulding & casting out the essential shoulder armour that would complete the exaggerated proportions of the upper body & make him look mean as fuck. I cleaned up the armour pieces with my tools of death that I'd made Jobin buy to get the job done. Dodgy as fuck. I asked for a powerfile & a vibra-saw. I sent them links to stuff. I got the powerfile but I'd melted that after day 2 of its short, furiously painful life with me. Cheap tools, man. I didnt get a vibra-saw but I did get a black & decker electric saw/jigsaw/maimer of limbs. This was NOT the right tool for the job but I had no choice. Fuck me that shit me up. Near misses were common & it became second nature to move with cat-like reflexes as it ripped & slipped & hacked through shit in an attempt to cut my arms off or at least mangle my fingers like a possesed little shit. I won in the end though & it soon yielded in the face of righteous zeal. We worked at the workshop during the day doing all the heavy duty stuff & the nights would be spent in my kitchen lining the armour on the inside & putting rubber trim round the edges & painting helmets, attaching tubes to them & putting the helmets on & taking
silly photos. That kind of thing.So getting serious for a minute this is what we had:
Fibreglass helmets, torso, shoulders & battlepants
Helmets & torso lined with nice fleece material for niceness inside. Edges of the pieces were lined with that rubber stuff from round the edges of double glazing.
All this went over the top of the motorcycle body armour. The front & back of the Battlepants were secured with an adjustable strap whilst the torso clipped together with parachute clips (sounds good - isnt. Just those plastic clips on your bag) that were cable tied onto the suit. The shoulders were cable tied on also. Strategic tubing was attached to the motorcycle armour that andre sorted out so that it looked like it had a purpose - running up the legs & arms & into the back pack etc to look like functional equipment & make it look cooler. Your mind makes up the rest of the info for you.
All that was missing was the paint job...oh & the guns but Paul was doing them, kind of. I say paint job but it was more of a weathering & distressing job as the armour had been made with alluminium filler in it so when you buffed it with wire wool it came up in a metallic finish. The motorcycle armour needed painting though as that was black. Enter Martin. The painter & profesional Warhammer 40,000 fanatic. You know those little Games Workshop stores dotted about that have displays of loads of teeny tiny little monsters & tanks & stuff in the window & are full of nerdy looking boys & men drooling over elves & griffins & trolls etc? Thats Warhammer. And its fucking wicked.
I'll try & summarise. Besides you'll get a psychological insight into the inspirations & influences for my kind of stuff & others like me. Interesting eh? Warhammer was created in the mid 80's in Newark of all places by fantasy war gaming fans as a result of their boredom of the relativly clean cut american Dungeons & Dragons. They wanted something more dark & gritty & real. There are 2 main types of Warhammer. Warhammer Fantasy which is all goblins & elves & assasins & barbarians & dragons & lord of the rings type stuff & Warhammer 40,000 which is the sci-fi equivalent set in the grim darkness of the far future (the year 40,000 which is well into the future) where THERE IS ONLY WAR!! I love it! This shit doesnt fuck about. It is dark. Ironically I've never played the game but the universe its set in is
an IMMENSE resource of artwork, models, comics, computer games & novels that is revered the world over for its sheer awesomeness. While their are many imitators nothing comes close in comparison. Not even World of Warcraft which rips Warhammer off on a massive scale. Although its set in the distant future everything on the human side of things (The Imperium) is a blend of sci-fi & ultra nasty gothic. It works perfectly & I've spent far too many years of my life since the age of 11 just looking at it. Ive been into it for 21 years! I'll be here forever if I start on about it so in addition to the snippets of imagery I'll have placed about here I'll see if I can show you some stuff that sums it all up.If you thought that was cool & you want to watch it again then you get where I'm coming from. If not, fair enough. Its not everyones thang......especially if you're female. The ultimate point is the people that are really into this, I mean play it, paint it, read it, draw it & live it every fucking day.....they're REALLY REALLY into it. I mean I think its absolutley wicked & I'm into it massively........check out the helmet for gods sake! But these guys are fucked up. And they'd sent Martin.
Martin - early 40's, looks like a particulary nasty bouncer, is actually quite sound, into warhammer 40,000 & probably thinks he's a space marine.....which could go either way really if you know about space marines...or Astartes, to give them their correct title. Anyway he was here to paint apparrantly which was good. I set him to work at painting the motorcycle body armour to match the stuff I'd made. He did this after spending about an hour talking to me about Warhammer. Its my fault for sculpting the helmets like that. It didnt take me long to figure out we had a serious warhammer fan in the building. I'd have to be careful or I could be in for some loooooong days of one topic alone. Its difficult cos you dont want to get trapped in hours of debate about the Horus Heresy but at the same time you cant just sit there & not join in! Its like crack. I imagine. It wasnt long before we were discussing Dreadnoughts, Marine Scouts & Crusader pattern armour (MARK IV PLATE ACTUALLY MARTIN!!!). The inevitable happened within 24hrs.
I had said to Martin that I was happy for him to do pretty much what he wanted as far as customisation went as long as he didnt go all warhammer on my ass. Sure use it as inspiration but don't copy it. WE'RE NOT MAKING SPACE MARINES. Feel free to add any kind of rank or markings that will enhance the armour in a way that doesnt draw too much a
ttention to itself but also marks them out as individuals. I suggested that he paint the trim of one of the suits shoulder pieces a specific colour to mark him out as the leader & something on the helmet too. He kept getting his warhammer books out though. Yes yes I know but it cant BE that! Thats Warhammer, this isnt. Then he came in with his models & some scenery! He spent all day trying to convince Joey that it should look like this & that. Thing is...all of his ideas were good, none of them were shit at all but they just didnt fit into the style of Joeys world. I understood this & accepted it about 7 months ago. Unfortunately Martin didn't. He was losing interest & it was his 2nd day. Martin was supposed to paint the body armour & weather it & the sculpted stuff.His progress had slowed to a point where I took a helmet home to weather it in the hope that it might re-kindle his excitement upon seeing it. My supposed master stroke was the fact that the paints i was using were from my full set of Warhammer paints & inks that come in their own special flight case & everything. Using those would, I thought, get him painting. The weathering itself was a simple process. I covered the whole thing with watered down dark metallic paint (boltgun metal for the 40k fan) & padded off
the excess. Then I did the same thing again but with black (chaos black!!). Then I scratched it all up with the wire wool again. Done.It failed. Martin spent the whole morning going through my paints one by one & talking about them. Once he'd done that he quickly sprayed up the last body armour & buggered off never to be seen again probably cursing us for being such idiots for not making a space marine. "Heretics! By His righteous word the wrath of the Imperium shall rain down upon them for their heresy in a storm of purifying fire & purge this world of their foul taint and in their final moments they shall know His name & they will fear it!"....... he might have said to himself as he teleported back to his ship.
I spent the rest of the day weathering up the other helmets & armour......& body armour as Martin had basically just sprayed them silver. Then we had our first official test fitting of the almost completed suit. We grabbed some dude in a Hell'oween t-shirt from next door who was the right height & build. He was there to help build the set. That's another story.We got some footage of him so we could see what was what. Some minor adjustments were made & some last minute additions in the way of foam under the shoulders to stop the torso digging in as much. The following day one of the actors came in for a fitting. Steve Hooper is his name & he's sound. He is exactly the right person for this. Not only is he the perfect height & build but he just fucking gets it. As soon as he's suited up HE BECOMES THE POWER ARMOURED ELITE WARRIOR. He really didnt need much direction at all. Funnily it was me & Andre telling him how to be & not Joey. He just stood their grinning. I got loads of footage of Steve as
everything he did down to the way he walked made the suit look fucking hardcore. Success at last. Then another actor came in for a test. He went nuts! But in a good way. Once he was in it he was off. Storming round like he was indestructable. Another success.Luckily Andre had convinced Jobin that only 3 suits would be possible in the time we had. Andre had just finished a 4 or 5 month stint working on Clash of the Titans & as a result was till in pro mode. He wasnt fucking about. He explained matter of factly that they could have 6 suits of shit or 3 of cool in less words. Jobin caved instantly. So we had the 3 finished suits of armour stacked up all neatly in a row ready for action. We'd fit them on the 2 actors & another guy who im not sure if he's an actor or one of Joeys mates. He's quite lanky but it still works.......just. Theyd been tested with the camera that was to be used for the actual filming & they looked cool. Sorted. We were mostly done. All they needed now was their Plasma Rifles.
We hadnt seen Paul since he'd been on the recieving end of a rather unfortunate yet, im afraid, needed outburst from Andre. As you know by now Paul is a bit of a defeatist. Nothing can be done. These people are not found in the film industry...anywhere. Nothing would ever get made. I'd tolerated it in the hope that after watching me do all this stuff that he thought impossible he'd realise that actually, you can do alot of stuff. Obviously it requires a degree of skill but first & foremost your attitude has to be right. You've been asked to do something,
youre not sure if you can sometimes; but you do it anyway to the best of your abilities & with your pool of resources & contacts to advise & help with the stuff you dont know yourself or can't find out about.I'm not going to get technical: Andre had sculpted the shoulder in a way that Paul hadn't seen. "Ive never seen it done like that before" not in an inquisitive way but in a way that was trying to say youre doing it wrong. Andre explained what he was doing. "That'll be interesting!" Which basically meant - that won't work. Andre ignored it. I looked on warily. Lets just say that for a while I had an animation of a lit fuse of a bomb on my phone that represented a call from Andre. He's not mental or anything. He just hasn't got time for shit. Do it or fuck off basically.
The next day he was demoulding a shoulder pad whilst Paul looked on. Now, if Paul had any real experience
he'd know that it was going to be a little bit of a tussle to get this pad out of the mould. Nothing abnormal at all. Go into any fx place & somewhere there'll be someone wrestling with a mould. Sometimes there'll be groups of people heaving away at a giant claw or something. Anyway, Andre was on the floor tugging away at the shoulder with me holding onto the mould & pulling in the opposite direction. "Looks like thats fucked up" came a voice. Oh shit! I was used to it & had stopped caring. Andre however....lets just say he outlined the very valid point that in less than 24 hrs he'd sculpted, moulded & started casting out shoulders whilst also making sure that Paul knew that his stuff could..........benefit from further attention. I'll leave it at that. I felt a bit bad but he needed to hear it really. If he wants to be serious about doing this for a living he's going to have to get his shit together. He's not shit he's just inexperienced & a bit sloppy as a r
esult.To his credit though he did a nice job of the Plasma Rifles & they look pretty sweet. This is good mostly because it's given him a boost in confidence. So hopefully this whole experience with the suit has helped him out. I must also point out that on top of the guns he's pretty much built the set by himself & just about everything else to do with props. So hats off to him for that. He's gonna HAVE to get rid of his company t-shirt though. Hes got a T-shirt especially made that has the word STAFF written in big letters on the back. This is funny mostly because he's the only member of said staff. He's doing his thing though so fair play to him. I just hope that if he ever works on a proper film set he doesn't wear it or he'll get the shit ripped out of him. Andre & I gave him some friendly ribbing but it didnt go down well. Shit!! it was nothing compare
d to what he'd get for real!Anyway enough!So we were done!! At the last minute Robin had asked us if we could make an exploding gelatine head. Now, Robin. I've avoided going into detail about Robin but I'll give you the jist of it. When I first got involved with this back in December '08 Joey told me that the Producer, Robin, has a background in special fx. He'd done all the stuff that I do & had worked in the industry. Cool, I thought. Turns out that about 15 seconds (NO exaggeration) into meeting him for the first time I had concluded that this was complete & utter bollocks on such a scale that its borderline insulting that he could even think that anyone who has ever worked in FX would ever believe him. The shit he comes out with......... Based on my experience of him I deduce that Robins Special FX knowledge is based on some really old Fangoria magazines & possibly some DVD special features here & there.
At one point whilst discussing how to create a tentacle bursting through a body he came out with the immortal line " It's easy! We'll just Tom Savini it! - we'll just pull it out of the bag!" Joey was none the wiser so I jumped in & explained that what he meant was Tom Savini was able to create some nifty shit seemingly from nowhere with little money or time. What Robin had failed to grasp was that yes, he pulled off some cool shit back in the day but.......he knew what he was doing, he had a team of people that knew what they were doing, he had resources & materials & facilities & a budget that whilst considered miniscule in movie terms was actually quite a few grand. Essentially he had a BAG to pull stuff out of. Jobin did not. A few months on he had confessed that his career had consisted of a week of work experience cleaning moulds. The equivalent would be......I dunno.....the pot washer in a restaurant claiming to be a michelin star chef based on the fact that he cooks his own dinner when he gets home. Dont get me wrong, I'm no industry master...far from it, I've barely had a career myself, in fact I couldnt in all honesty call it a career at all.....but I dont go around claiming to be something your not - especially if you've got people in the room with you who are! So y
eah thats Robin & thats all I need to say on the matter.So, sorry guys you aint gettin your exploding gelatine head....you wouldn't even use gelatine! Anyway you haven't got the stuff to do it with!! Also, even if you did... what you'd end up with in the time we've got would be so shit even you would raise the issue. And besides......I've been working for you for free for seven fucking months.......youve got 3 suits of cool as fuck looking (if I may say so) armour FOR FREE. Enough is enough! Robin then asked if we could do a breaking glass effect. He did have the stuff to make this so we agreed to but mostly because we'd never made fake glass before & we were intrigued. We just fancied having a play.
Andre asked how big the piece of glass needed to be. Robin sat there. And he sat. Then after a bit more sitting he looked up at the ceiling. I got the impression that he was hoping that if he sat still & quiet enough for long enough we might forget that he was there & that we'd asked him a question. We looked at each other & got up & went home. In his defence though, I do believe that he might have been awake for over 48 hrs at that point as it had suddenly dawned on him that actually stuffs not that easy & he had fucking shitloads to do & he really didnt know how to do most of it.
So, glass making. We used this stuff called wax glass. It comes in big solid chunks & you melt it down in a saucepan to liquid. Then you pour it into your mould & when its set you have a VERY fragile sheet of fake "glass" which is just clear wax which you can then smash away. Obviously we had no mould...Robin had seemed to forget about that one slightly, massively important thing but he had provided us with a curved bit of wood. He wanted us to pour the wax over the wood to get a curved bit of glass. "Its easy...all you need to do is........" As you can imagine this was just fucking stupid.....but we did it anyway to see what would happen. And so after making a useless piece of shit I donned my monster head & we ventured into the garden.
And so ends this special bumper edition. It means that next week I can finish!!! I NEED CLOSURE. If you've lasted to here then well done. Its 3:34 am - great.
Next week:
- The alien I was going to talk about here gets talked about
- Filming begins.................just 4 days late at about midnight
- My Facebook profile becomes the scene of a Joey rant
- Facebook wide ban on photographic material relating to the shooting of the film
- The end of the affair - for now at least
Bye for now!
Michael
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