Nash, TN So I'm coming home from Murfreesboro...

... after a long weekend on the planet P3X-976 filming for Stargate SG-Delta. I've still got my jungle camoflauge pants and the remnants of camo face paint on. I'm doing about 80 in a 70 zone, and passing everyone with ease. "Sure are a lot of slow drivers around here," I think to myself. Then I go under a bridge and see two police cruisers against the center median. All of the sudden I realize why everyone is going so slow... I'm going through Lavergne (probably the biggest speed trap in Middle Tennessee, with the possible exception of Lakewood).

"Maybe they're only looking for people going very, very fast," I silently hope. Then I see two pairs of headlights turn on from the center breakdown lane. The headlights were shortly followed by red and blue lights. "Oh, crap!" I think to myself. Besides my appearance, which was dreadful, I had two pistols in the back seat of my car. Well, they asked the questions that I'd expect: "Where are you headed? Where are you coming from? Are you in the reserves? What were you doing in Murfreesboro?" So of course, I told him about the movie we were filming.

His partner was on the other side of the car, looking through my back window with a flashlight. It was a good night for me -- not only were both pistols well hidden under piles of junk, but my Metro Police winter coat (which for some reason I've never taken out of my car since last winter) was laying on top of the pile, patches-side up. You can imagine my relief when one of the officers said, "Man, we're just not having any luck tonight... you're the third cop we've pulled over tonight!"

No, I didn't get a ticket. You can all glare and/or throw things at me, now.

 

I always thought that police officers had a kind of "professional courtesy" agreement when it came to the ticket issue. I'm cool with that.
I noticed alot more of the small town/city police have started setting up on the interstates, what's up with that? I thought that was generally left for state and county police to handle.
West of Nashville, Kingston Springs PD is set up right around their 1 exit with a speed trap, South of Nashville, Brentwood and Franklin PD are also popping up in the center median with radar guns.
Don't get me wrong, I have a great respect for officers of the law, but I am curious why Andy and Barney have set up "Check-Point-Chickee" down on the interstate in Kingston Springs when the city is paying them to protect, uh, let's see, the city of Kingston Springs. (Yes, I know the bottom line is the all-mighty dollar, but hey, it doesn't have to be so obvious).
Hope filming went well. Can't wait to see the finished piece.

 

That's funny! At least it was YOU that they pulled over and not one of the other guys all dressed up like that.

I'm anxious to see what you guys did for your Star Gate film. No offense, but it surely has to be better than "The Quest for Vengence". Since Brian said that you guys would have a rough cut by Dragoncon, I hope it will be available from their website.

 

hehehehe...I went to food lion in my bdu's and boots...it was funny...I think I still had my "bruise" on as well!

 

The good news is, I probably drew their attention from any other cast/crew also heading into Davidson County behind me.

Don't know if it'll be better than QFV or not:

• The bluescreen had quite a few wrinkles -- but at least keying out the wall won't key out our faces as well.


• Our Jaffa costume budget is about the same as our Stormtrooper armor budget.


• I had to dodge "land mines" in Jay's back yard for QFV and in the cow pasture for SG-Delta.


• Once again, I'm a major character who has to wear face paint throughout most of the movie.


• The blooper reels for both movies reaches epic proportions.

Both films were a lot of fun to make and I'm looking forward to seeing completed projects on both, as well as making a sequel.

 

Kir Kanos, I don't see how you can critique "Quest for Vengeance" right now when all you've seen is the first two segments of it which totaled 22 minutes. The entire movie is over two hours long. Beginning in the next couple of weeks, we are going to post a segment of the movie a week, beginning with the first segment and going to the last. We didn't have a budget at all and didn't use bluescreen, but we definitely will use bluescreen for its sequel, and will have a lot more people working on the sequel from the very beginning, unlike QFV.

 

I'll show him the full version on DVD when we get it done. Maybe I'll change his mind.

EDIT: Anyway, it's pointless to compare the two movies. They're part of two completely different sci-fi "universes" with completely different character types, special effects, etc. A better comparison would be SG-Delta vs. the British "Call it a Stargate" movies, which we aim to improve on.

 

I mean, c'mon. Who wouldn't like Jon Bon Nebula and all his awesomeness?!?

Yeah, I don't think it's fair to state criticism on a movie that hasn't been released for viewing yet. Granted we didn't have bluescreen, I think the storyline beats most of those fanfilms out there.

 

You mean its not finished? From the impression I got, I thought you guys scrapped it and just decided to film the sequel instead of continuing to work on its predecessor. Its been going on what; almost 3 years now? It is pretty dog gone funny. I just love the guys having a trial on the back porch and the moving blaster shots on the stormtroopers are a hoot. I did enjoy Jon Bon Nebula too. I guess I'll have to wait and see it when its finished.

 

No, it's just taken much longer than we'd hoped. I'm actually working on the last couple of lightsaber scenes now.

But hey, if LucasFilm takes three years to make a SW movie, why not us?

 

The movie was basically finished two years ago. We decided at that time that without bluescreen, the movie wouldn't look as good as it should have, so we had a premiere and then didn't mess with it again for a YEAR. Then we decided that we would go ahead and put special effects into it, even without bluescreen, cause we realized that the movie had a good story and characters and that WE could watch it and have fun with it, even if OTHER people couldn't get past the fact that it was a no-budget film.

Last year we finished the first two segments and posted them, but then we decided we would wait until the movie was completely finished so that we could put up a segment a week. Well, the movie was finished MONTHS ago, with the exception of one thing: rotoscoping the lightsabers, a very time-consuming process. There were a few people who were going to do them, but most of them either couldn't figure out how to do them or didn't want to spend that much time on them. Dylan was one of the lightsaber people who did work on them, and he has now graciously decided to finish all the sabers himself. So by the time the segments with the unfinished sabers are due to be posted, Dylan will have them ready.

So no, we haven't worked on the movie for THREE YEARS, and it would have been posted a LONG time ago if not for the lightsabers not being lit up. And for the sequel, we won't have trials on back porches, because we'll be using bluescreen, and we won't have moving blaster shots on stormtroopers, because we will take time to do the effects right because now we know how to! And I mean, we don't want to go back and re-do every special effect perfectly for QFV now that we know how, because THERE IS NO BLUESCREEN! To rectify THAT problem, we would have to cut all the actors out FRAME-BY-FRAME and change the background! And don't give me any "garbage matte" crap, because it still wouldn't be perfect doing it that way, and after all, it's supposed to be perfect!

But anyway, I remember talking to the guy who plays Lex Nova one time (who doesn't go to theForce.net) and telling him that the movie wouldn't be hosted by TFN because the production values weren't high enough. And he laughed out loud and said "I don't understand that. These things are just for fun, nobody can make money off of these, so what's the big deal?" I told him that the main reason they can't host everyone is their "limited" server space, but still yet, it put it into perspective for me. These copyrighted projects are for FUN. And QFV, you could say, was a "test" movie, and now we're ready for the "real" movie.

 

So Tracy... when are you going to hit it big in the casinos so we can have a big "Broken Allegiance 2" sized budget?

 

Well, if I played more slot machines instead of card games, I might have a better chance of hitting it big. As it is, playing Blackjack I usually only win a hundred or two at a time.

(Funny you should mention that though, cause Ted has said that if he won the lottery, he'd use part of the money to fund our movies! HAHA!!)

But hey, with Tennessee's new lottery coming up, we could all go in together and buy a bunch of tickets like the factory workers and law-firm lawyers do, win the jackpot, and then we'd have ourselves a movie budget! They'd say that the jackpot was won by the Dramedy Productions employees! LOL

 

Dylan: I'm glad out of all of us it was you that dealt with the local PD. There was a THP car on 840 last night when I went home. Even with my less agressive costume I had on last night I'm glad I didn't attract some police attention. I was a little nervous taking my film in for development, & warned the photo guy that we were doing a movie and weren't a security risk. The photo tech (different guy) asked if we were doing a film because he couldn't figure out why modern military was fighting Roman soldiers. Got my photos back tonight and I need to use the red eye feature on my camera b/c you, Britney, Ken and a few others appear to be Goa'uld! I'm slowly recovering from the intro that Ken's truck gave me to the road pavement. Hopefully I'll lose the limp by morning. I guess I've "earned" the first Stargate-Delta Purple Heart.

 

Got my photos back tonight and I need to use the red eye feature on my camera b/c you, Britney, Ken and a few others appear to be Goa'uld!

I knew walking through that creek was dangerous!

 

Actually, one of those shots was taken on the first day (group shot of Delta Team), well before entering the water. Now we must determine if you are a god or merely a child of the gods. Come to think of it, it actually looked more like Mystique from X-Men. Hmmm........