Until now. Read on to see what changed my mind.

I had heard how on indie films people had used a green or blue screen outdoors. This supposedly had the advantage of even lighting without any real work. I’d always wanted to try it, but I had no frame and I couldn’t think of anywhere else to hang the screen.

My dad came to the rescue last week with a great idea: Grab a few clamps and hang the blue screen from the gutter on our house. Hanging the screen in front of the garage door ensured enough room to back off for a wide shot.

I hurried outside to try it. The day was pretty windy, so the screen was constantly in motion. This is unfortunate, since that messed up the key a little. But still, I got results at least as good as those in iSundae II with about ten minutes of work. Compare that to the hours I spent on a single shot for iSundae II!

Here’s my test video:

I’m looking forward to seeing what I can do when the wind isn’t ruining my shot!

By the way, on the subject of chroma keying, I’ve been messing around with the demo of DVmatte Blast recently. It does a very nice job!

There are good sequels on occasion, but generally these come from well-developed stories to begin with. If the original film was lacking in development, the second (or third) installment suffers from the poor beginnings.

This was brought home to me while sitting across the table from Rebekah and Ruth. We were chatting about nothing in particular and iSundae III came to mind. Within fifteen minutes of goofing around, we had the semblance of a plot that, at an earlier time, would have had us scurrying off to write a script.The plot was somewhat of a Lord of the Rings spoof. Just to show how easy this is, here’s what we came up with:

As the power of Chocolate begins corrupting him, Stelen discovers that he can escape Reyshar’s fate if he and his fellow wielders destroy the iSundae swords in a microwave. Enlisting the help of Gwenanda the so-called enchantress to build a microwave, and hindered by power-obsessive Kitty Cone, the wielders embark on a quest to destroy the powers before it is too late.

You can see that the story is already rather weak. All we’ve done is take some of our existing characters, make them mirror characters from Lord of the Rings, and add a dash of silliness.

And that was where we stopped. In our minds, we stopped there because we have matured as writers to the point where such a story is no longer appealing. Not only that, but the iSundae series has a lot of random baggage in the root story that prevents us from handling it the way we would like. iSundae II is a testament to that fact. It could have been so much better if we’d gotten iSundae right to begin with.

Not only that, but iSundae doesn’t really need another sequel. Many films are this way. While reading release dates on Box Office Mojo, I was surprised to discover how many lame first films were receiving the sequel treatment this year. Seriously, do you (and we) want to be in that camp?

So this is my encouragement to you to leave those sequel ideas behind. Start something new, something that doesn’t need to be attached to the old work with its flaws. Come up with a new idea, which will hopefully have fewer flaws than your previous story. And then repeat the cycle.

There are exceptions, of course. Sometimes a good sequel idea shows up. When that happens, I’d recommend sitting on it for some time before going ahead with writing. Then, if it still seems good, be very careful to make it new and fresh. Don’t be tempted to ride on past success for the sake of making a movie. Instead, make sure the story is worthwhile.

The Guard Movie from Phantom Moose Films on Vimeo.

You can also watch the video on YouTube.

Have you ever been bored and brilliant in the space of a minute? You’re sitting there, minding your own business, and suddenly lightning strikes. A large part of the iSundae II script came about in that way. The whole concept of Fonsuger being after something, and what that something was came out of a bored doodle during a movie discussion. And Reyshar’s hat.

I stopped and looked down at the paper. Now, that prop looked cool. How could we fit it into the movie? And the piece on top . . . where have I seen that shape before? “Hey,” I said, “What if the thing Fonsuger is after has something to do with the first movie? Relating back to why Reyshar wore that weird helmet thing.” The idea took fire and we soon found ourselves with a slidey-puzzle box that contained something that could make you immune to being utterly vaporized. Granted, the “relating back to Reyshar” part changed a bit in the finished movie. We didn’t explain that what was in the box was kept in the point on Reyshar’s helmet, but the general idea mushroomed out of that.

With the storyline in place, I was assigned the task of coming up the visual side of the prop. What would a medieval slidey-puzzle box look like? So many possibilities! Thankfully, on the original doodle page, along with a snail wearing sunglasses, was a pretty good concept sketch of what the box would look like. Tall, thin, pointy top a la Reyshar’s helmet. The concept for what was inside the box was there too, but I’m not going to give that away.

The next task was to find a giant slidey-puzzle to stick on the front. Big slidey puzzles are hard to come by! We finally found a four pack of small ones in the party favors section of Party City. I took them home and disassembled them, then reassembled them into a bigger puzzle.

The Secret Item itself is, of course, cardboard. I also used a plastic spring, a pebble, and one of the empty slidey-puzzle backs. Pebbles make great push buttons if you use the right shape.

I put the whole thing together and gave it a few coats of paint, during which I also managed to effectively adhere the puzzle pieces to each other. We solved that problem with a razor blade and some patience.

It was time to film! We mixed the puzzle pieces up and set to work. As the movie progresses, and Fonsuger gets closer and closer to solving the puzzle, we had to show the puzzle slowly coming together. Why we didn’t think to film it backwards is beyond me. Trying to solve a 40+ piece slidey-puzzle so we can film the next scene is so tedious! Finally, we cheated. I took the entire puzzle out of its holder and put it back in correctly. It took time, and we had a couple close shaves with losing pieces, but it worked.

And then another problem rose up and made us kick ourselves. Due to some special effects that had to be added later, and the lack of any sort of marks on the Secret Item, motion tracking became a pain. Dark paint, dark room, how are we supposed to know which way the item is moving? Thankfully, our wonderful special effects guys made it work. And Fonsuger came one step closer to the discovery…

Alright, tell me frankly, what would you do if you were confronted with the problem of creating an army of extras that serve the badguy? If I had to start completely from scratch I would probably flip out. Thankfully, I got lucky on iSundae II’s “The Norse.”

The concept of the Norse had been in the script since I don’t know when. Maybe it grew out of a scene in an earlier version, or maybe it got thrown in randomly. I can’t remember. But I do know that design concepts for their “look” are all over some pretty early sketches. There’s an axe with a symbolic icon right next to a costume sketch for Emcracy and a cloak clasp next to Cone armor. I got pretty fancy with some of the sketches and concepts, but one thing I didn’t think about: These were background characters. Extras. A generic “set-dressing.” Thus, no fancy costumes or props! Awww, man. Here’s what we ended up with.

For costumes—Oversized, white, long-sleeve t-shirts with the ribbing on the sleeve cuffs cut off. Simple, cheap, and you can dirty them up all you want. Or cut holes in them. (We didn’t do that.) Then we topped them off with raggedy vests, cloaks, and coats made from whatever we had available. We used everything from an old plaid blanket to a sleeveless polo shirt. A little cutting, a very minimal amount of sewing, and you’ve got it! We didn’t even hem most of the cut edges. These were Vikings, not fashion statements. Oh, we also threw old belts on some of them. Thankfully we weren’t going for historical accuracy, a general look sufficed.

Of course, we had to throw in some axes. Store-bought ones. (Guess who was planning to make all the axes? Cough, cough.) A bow and arrow set a la Stelen from the first movie (re-use your props; they come in handy!) and a few swords. The Norse had to look semi-fierce, after all.

I did get to make some fancier props, though. There’s a rather ornate horn.

And the battering ram. 

I also made some Celtic-knot style clasps for the Norse with cloaks, but they never made it on set more than once. Which is probably a good thing, because the “Celtic look” was strictly for the Cones. And who wants to add ten minutes to the movie length just to explain what Cone stuff was doing on the Norse? 

We discovered that the mix-and-match abilities we ended up with lent themselves to a plethora of Norse really, really well. It also allowed us to create more Norse than we had extras. (More about that later.) But let me just say, if you’re going to have a specific Norse (or anything) show up in more than one scene, write down what his costume is like. In detail. What color is his helmet? How about the thingies holding the horns on? What size is his shirt? What else did he have on? Was he wearing a blue or green shirt underneath? Etc., etc., etc. Trust me, it saves a whole lot of time. You don’t want to leave the film site, run upstairs to turn on the computer, launch your editing software, find a clip that has that Norse in it, run back downstairs and forget what he looked like. Things can get messy.

iSundae II – Part 1 of 10 from Phantom Moose Films on Vimeo.

You can also watch the movie on YouTube.

Stay tuned for behind the scenes articles coming this week. Also, you might want to check out the iSundae II page. See you next week for part 2!

 
iSundae Bloopers Reel from Phantom Moose Films on Vimeo.

“He’s right, Somindeo…”

We did this scene on a stool, because Malfhok had to float down from the ceiling. I’m wearing a green box so that I can’t wave my arms around, and so we can key it out for the floating head effect. Well, it’s really hard to step off of a stool with a box that comes down to your knees! Needless to say, the box got the worst of it.

Clocks

This was one of the worst interruptions we had while filming iSundae. Normally, it’s perfectly lovely to have a clock that chimes every quarter hour. But when you are trying to finish a scene ASAP, a chime every fifteen minutes is quite annoying. We learned our lesson and ran the clock down before we started shooting iSundae II. My advice? Think carefully about what makes noise in a location before you decide to shoot there, and if you can, silence them.

Weather Conditions

Man! We had such a hard time on that day. The place where we were filming was right next to the road and right out in the open. Plus, as you can tell, that day was windy. So we shot in between cars going by and gusts of wind. However, it was fun to watch all the people in their cars turning to look at us while they went by.

Sword Belts

This was a recurring trouble. The belts were made of cardboard covered with fabric, so they tended to spring open a lot. For iSundae II, we used real belts.

The Garage Cave

Yes, we know. That scene was shot in a garage. Shocking, isn’t it? Now you know why we darkened the scene so much.

“Have you seen my DVD collection?”

This is what happens when you tell your actors to have a conversation, and then tell them that the audio won’t be used. Consequently, I’m the one with the remark about the DVDs.

iSundae: The Way of the Wielders (Part 7 of 7) from Phantom Moose Films on Vimeo.

You can also watch it on YouTube.

Here are some posts on Phantom Moose that are related to part 7:

• Somindeo’s Costumes
• The Chocolate Box of Your Dreams
• Sword Sheaths

And some that are related to the whole film in general:

• Music of iSundae
• Fun on the Set, Part 1
• Fun on the Set, Part 2
• Movie Making Tips

So, what did you think of iSundae? We’d love to hear from you. Just leave us a comment.

 
iSundae: The Way of the Wielders (Part 6 of 7) from Phantom Moose Films on Vimeo.

You can also watch it on YouTube.

We’ve broken the movie into seven parts for faster download, and we are posting a new part each week. So be sure to check back next week for part 7 and the exciting conclusion.

Here is a post on Phantom Moose that is related to part 6:

• Somindeo’s Costumes