We recorded this over the Internet between two states, so please excuse any garbled audio or quiet points. Turn down the lights, crank up the sound, grab some popcorn, and enjoy the commentary!

And now that you’ve finished watching it, what’d you think? Leave a comment and tell us!

We’ve been discussing the idea and have decided that it would be a great chance to share some of the fun stories from production. We have also learned a lot since making iSundae II, and we think this will be a way to share some insights into what we would do differently now.

So keep an eye out for the iSundae II commentary. It’s coming soon!

The first two videos in the series will launch in March, with more in the works. Until then, get a sneak peek at the show on their videos page.

But! On Friday we found time to sit down over the Internet and discuss an idea we had in November. I came away from the meeting extremely encouraged with the direction of the project. One thing that came up was all the other ideas we had to play with. We counted at least five story ideas that we might work on later.

Don’t worry, by the way… We’re still planning on doing the DragonSpell teaser. Just gotta get this seminar done first.

By the way, we do realize that the whites are a little hot in this shot (my fault!). The rest of our footage turned out much better.

Drastic times called for drastic actions. We chose the handle from the sword of Chocolate, and the blade from the sword of Ice Cream. Tremble, world, there will never be an iSundae 3 ever because the swords of Ice Cream and Chocolate have been destroyed. They were thrown into the firey Mount Doom known as the craftroom and reborn as this sword. (Please hold applause until the end of the article.)

Not too shabby, eh? Now, granted, it still doesn’t look like something out of Weta, but it does look better than a Halloween prop.

In case any of you want to try this at home, let me give you a quick walkthrough of sword disassembling. First things first, find the little screws hiding in holes all over the handle and start unscrewing. You will need a ridiculously small screwdriver. Every single screw needs to come out. All of them. Otherwise the handle will snap while you’re removing the blade. (Why do you think I know this?) And, while this may sound ridiculous, that was actually the first time I had used a screwdriver for a prop. Big things were afoot in the prop world.

Once you unscrew both handles and carefully pry them apart, they should open up just fine, revealing something rather like this.

For both Ice Cream and Chocolate, the blades were barely glued into place. A quick twist and they were out. (Ugh. Sounds like getting a tooth pulled. Let me try that again.) A light yank and they parted ways with the hilts.

Then the idea was to take the good blade and stick it into the good handle. Easier said than done. I had to snap off the hidden end of the blade to make it fit, which, thankfully, made the “Made In China” nightmare vanish into the depths of the handle, never to be seen on film. (Permit the prop maker a satisfied chuckle.) Then, because one blade was thicker than the other, I had to resort to stuffing bits of cardboard and fake leather (to disguise the cardboard color) down inside the handle before screwing it back together. It was a bit wobbly after that, but sturdy enough for hero shots.

Once that was done, we still had to address the nasty plastic look of the handle. Now, here let me state that I was operating off of an over-arcing principle for all the props and costumes. I had very little detailed visual references, so I applied this simple rule: Tell a story in the item.

Kale’s costume, for example, had specific tears and rips because of what may have happened to her the day before. The mending had various stitches because of what the mender was possibly thinking. You get the idea. With this sword hilt I wanted to tell a story about Dar, the doneel whose sword it is. So, due to the doneel’s furry nature, a metal sword hilt would be rather slippery. I wrapped it completely in black leather. Dar is a rather dressy fellow, but he’s also a good soldier, so I made the leather have a somewhat fancy weave while keeping it fairly serviceable. A good grip, and all that. Copper accents and a jewel for a bit of bling, and there you have it. A Frankenstein of a sword that doesn’t look half bad.

You can insert the usual disclaimers here. Don’t go about snapping plastic blades without adequate eye protection. Refrain from running with the screwdriver, even if you’re excited about using it. Keep your fingers away from the crack between the rapidly tightening handles. Don’t eat any of the fake leather strips. You get the idea.

DragonSpell (Dragon Keepers Chronicles, Book 1) (Paperback)
by Donita K. Paul
ISBN: 1578568234

Price: USD 10.07
106 used & new available from USD 1.49

DragonSpell is our trailer project. We all love Donita K. Paul’s books, and this one is the first in a series, so it was a logical choice.

Our goal here is to pretend that DragonSpell is being made into a movie by us and to show what a trailer would look like if that were the case.

Although we are currently busy editing a seminar for Simply Charlotte Mason, we are half-working on our DragonSpell teaser. Stay tuned for posts on the shooting, on the props, and on the general progress of the project.

Right now, I don’t really have any idea when we’ll get to the book trailer. We’ve discussed a few possibilities, and even wondered if we should come right out and say what we’re doing because it will likely be awhile. That way, we could post behind-the-scenes stuff more freely. Tell us what you think.

Here’s one more less-spoilery photo to tide you over. My brother Ben getting a makeup job:

We don’t have much time left before the Northern branch of Phantom Moose heads back home, but we think we’ll be able to pull it off.

And no, we’re still not going to say what book we’re doing. But we’ll drop some hints both here and in our new About Us page photo.

Rebekah is hard at work on the needed props and costumes as I type.

Yesterday, Ruth and I did a bit of location scouting and found a nice creek that will work perfectly.

Well, almost perfectly.

We’ve also been working on a new idea. Actually, we’ve tossed around a lot of things, but we have a neat story that we’re really excited about.

And that’s just one day! We have more things planned for the rest of this week. For now, we’re importing away as quickly as we can. (With, you know, breaks for food and movies and things like that…)