episode 9 production stills...

well. sadly, because of the extreme time restraints we underwent to produce this episode--despite having THREE months to use during the channel102 break, we shot and edited the whole thing in 14 days--we only have TWO production stills.

that's right.


two.

so here they are. our TWO production stills.

so. this is captain ultra playing the drums on the streets of Capital City to raise money since he hasn't paid taxes in 4 years. the difficulties of this entire shooting day (which included drums on the street from which a lot was cut for running time, the outdoor scene between stan and captain ultra from three angles, the jib shot on the roof of the building into which shadows were later composited, the exterior of dr. mindbender's lab/capital city copy, and the background plate for Stan Kong jumping off of a building and walking up the road) were only magnified by the fact that shooting with a one person crew (meredith) makes for rough audio-posting. stupid cars that keeping driving by. and let's not forget the sheer number of people who, luckily, feel obligated to stop and shout out of their windows or honk whenever they see a man dressed in a super hero costume playing drums like it's "new" or "weird" or something.

actually, my favorite encounter of the day was the elderly couple walking their dog. as they walk past me on the sidewalk, they split up. one went behind, one in front. i apologized to them, because elderly people tend to like it when you apologize for "inconveniencing" them, and the gentleman said "oh, it's alright. we always make room for super-music."

comic gold. i kinda wanted to get that guy to help us with last minute rewrites.

ok. so this shot, which we didn't even take because we suck (this was snapped by Brian Long...thank you!), is our first glimpse at Stan Kong. A lot of math went into this. fo' real.

we figure this: Stan Kong is roughly 4 times the height of Stan. This way, he's big and scary but not "we-need-a-wide-angle-lens" big and scary.

the wall on the plate (the background) is 14' high. the camera was 6 feet up. multiply by 12, divide by 4, divide by twelve, and factor in that our tripod will only go as low as 2'5" or something, we have to raise the wall up to compensate. it made sense at the time...shame i didn't save our storyboards or shitty calculation drawings. then you'd REALLY think we were losers.

anyway. we end up with this. lots of frame-by-frame rotoscoping went into this; for composite purpose, shading and highlighting purpose, etc. and it sucked bad. the final shot is about 12 layers of things all going on at once to make one 'seamless' shot.

but enough, i'm ranting. maybe one day i'll do an effects breakdown or something.


maybe.

the pod people...

really quickly...

just wanted to send a public "thank you" to the following:
-mike, tyler, and all the guys at W.I.T. for trusting us with their camera.
-the guys at fanboyplanet.com for mentioning "The Defenders of Stan" in their latest podcast somewhere around the 44:30 mark

also, i should have one or two production stills up sooner or later.

we didn't want to ruin the suprise...

we didn't post the cover to this episode of "The Defenders Of Stan" before the screening this month, even though we usually do because we just didn't wanna ruin the ending for those of you that like that sort of thing.

but, it's been almost a week. why not?


also, because we're lazy--it's part of THE BiG HONKIN' credo--we are wishing "The Defenders Of Stan" a belated happy birthday. "...Stan" premiered August 28th, 2006 at Anthology Film Archives in channel102, taking first place of twelve.

we've been doing this show for over a freakin' year! we can't believe we have gotten the opportunity to go for as long as we have. so thank you! and happy birthday, Stan...ya douchebag.


in other news, we've shot and edited one of two web-pilots for some new friends of ours, and we just finished writing what seems like our 3rd draft for the second. we're excited and really hope the opportunity comes to show everyone our work. we hope to have more info to share soon.

we're really proud of these two. it's good to know we can still be funny not dressed in primary colors.

LASTLY, the aforementioned documentary is about to go into post-production. we're all anxiously awaiting the arrival of new equipment to get the (foot)ball rolling. more on that soon too.

on top of that, we have a few other things in the works...but we can't give out ALL of our secrets just yet.