Red Rum Wolf

Format: mini DV
Length: 30 Sec.
Completed: 31 July 2008
Budget: $20.00

Log line
A RedWolf Airsoft Commercial: One super soldier obliterates his equally mega-charged enemy with superior firepower.

Blog

Pre-Production
This was made for the "RedWolf Airsoft Make Your Own Commercial Contest." It had to be less than a minute and a half, and the prize was a replica machine gun (Redwolf distributes toy guns). It made it to the top 20 out of about 500 entries, but then lost.

Back in 1998, I was making backyard action movies with faux guns made out of PVC, cardboard, and junk from the alley. Occasionally I would find crazy neon squirt guns that I could spray paint paint black to look real. Then I discovered the Japanese had been making 1:1 scale working replicas of firearms that shot plastic pellets. Perfect.

I could always use another machine gun. So I had the basic (not very orginal idea) of two guys fighting with guns and one jams because it isn't quality. To make that tired idea stand out, I thought it would be funny if the guns had realistic bloody consequences. As I drew the boards, the idea became about this surreal overkill (like a video game). I spent money on plastic tubes for blood effects, and some green fabric.

Production
I hate doing green screen effects with DV, but its all I had available. It only took half a day to shoot all the foreground action in a sweaty garage. It's good to have brothers who are willing to kiss the brink of heat exhaustion while wearing gas masks and getting covered in fake blood. Later that day I shot other green screen elements: such as more blood squirts, guts exploding, and casings flying through the air. The next day Mike and I shot all the background plates driving around in a car in an alley.

Post-Production
Rotoscoping the eyes took me a day (thank god for a Wacom Tablet). The Song took about a day and set the pace for the editing. The Wolves howling was Jordan and myself with some simple reverb filters. I had made an entire sound design with foley, gun shots, impacts, ambience, etc. But the gunshots took the song's power away. It just works best as a music video. Shaun says the it's like a Russian snuff film (prolly because of the techno).