Blackwell gave us the footage for episode nine, filmed entirely with green screen background. David chose to do physical models for these shots instead of digital. I was in charge of making the models, while David was responsible for prop designs and postproduction effects.

Our assignment was to create a columned great hall similar to one in Star Wars and a large impenetrable door. We had a few recyclables to choose from so David decided that Gatorade bottles might work.

While he got busy designing the concepts for the door, I began cutting the bottles to form the base of the columns. We were going to use 2” PVC pipe and caps for the columns from Home Depot. I figured we were only going to use the top part of the bottle until I tore the labels off and discovered a more interesting top for the column.

After cutting and painting the various parts of the Gatorade bottles, they looked like this:

The door was constructed of mainly foam core, matte board, balsa wood strips, and various parts from a plastic model tank kit placed on quarter-inch masonite for strength. It had three height layers for dimension and the appearance of sliding open.

Once the door was painted, it was photographed for postproduction.

All the parts to the hallway were now finished and needed to be assembled.

David wanted to do that on top of a table so he could get the proper angles for the shoot. I was a little nervous for fear that we would accidentally knock one or more of the columns off the table. The columns looked good, but they were quite fragile and barely put together with super glue. We carefully spaced each column in two rows and hot glued a 1″x3″ board with decorative trim across the tops…so far, so good. Next, we placed the ceiling arches and hot glued them. Once we did that, we felt fairly safe that the whole thing wasn’t going to fall.

Several sheets of poster board were layered across the arches to enclose the ceiling. More foam core was painted and added behind the columns as walls. A 2’x8’sheet of Masonite was placed for the end of the hallway. Now were ready to set up the lighting for the hallway shots.

After weeks of running around in the Arizona heat for supplies, much hard work, and a few other minor setbacks, we finally got the shots we needed (at least David thought so). Now it was time to carefully deconstruct our model to be used possibly in the future for another project. Unfortunately, sometimes your greatest fears come true. As David was removing the arches, he hooked one up on the column bridge. The whole thing fell! Oh well, easy come… easy go!

Episode nine of Voyage Trekkers with hours and hours of David’s postproduction work will be up beginning September 12. We invite you to come see our efforts at: http://www.squishystudios.com/voyage-trekkers-web-series/

Three days before the shoot, I was sent on location to view our prospective time machine. A grimy, un-restored Austin Healey Sprite needed to be rolled out of the garage, hosed off, and cleaned out before we could even begin to figure out what we were going to do with it.

After clean-up, the ideas began to flow…

David had a lot of ideas, but since we had a limited budget, whatever we could recycle was what we used. As with the death ray, we scavenged the trash bin for parts looking for interesting shapes and sizes. Small plastic bowls were sprayed with glass frost paint (a tip from my son, Todd) to cover holes in the dashboard. Lights were then hidden behind the dash.

I was busy covering the bare console with fun foam and distressing any “metal” pieces to look old. Sitting on hard concrete and bending over for hours can kill your back. OMG! I just had to rest for a minute! The pipes were now ready and glued in with hot glue making everything easily removable later.

Quarter-inch foam core board was painted and added to the roll bar along with anything else we could find that looked interesting. A spiral disc attached to an invisible hand crank gave the appearance when it turned that the car was going back in time.

David wanted to keep the continuity between the death ray and the time machine by creating parts to be swapped out. The night before the shoot, David and his son, Nathan, created a generator looking piece complete with lighting to fill the empty passenger side of the car. The duel canisters from the death ray would be placed on top of this when the scenes using the ray gun were completed. Unfortunately, the shooting schedule was such that these were never used in the actual scenes of the time machine.

The web series “Normally This Weird” is scheduled to resume airing in October. It will be exciting to see how Nathan Blackwell creates his magic on these shots. Until then, the first two episodes are up at http://www.normallythisweird.com/

 Hats can really add to the completeness of a costume.  I have made outfits for frontiersmen, renaissance,  and pirates.  None of which would have looked finished without a hat. In some cases, I was only required to make hat when the rest of the costume could be pieced together from thrift store items or forgotten old clothes.

For example, in both of my son Shaun’s student films, he did not have the budget for a complete wardrobe so in order to set the theme, I made hats. In the Chupacabra movie (see Family page), Shaun needed a pith helmet for the main character to wear in a jungle scene.  Trying to find one was not easy (although later we learned our next-door-neighbor who was a mail carrier had one), so I formed one over an inflated balloon out of paper maché, white glue and cloth strips. Khaki fabric was cut and sewn to fit the molded pieces.  I spent a lot of time watching and rewinding scenes from The Mummy in order to get the look that Shaun wanted.

The next film, Atlantis 2032, needed Russian hats for several of the players.  After making a slew of coon skin caps for Shaun’s Boy Scout troop, this was a less challenging project. The pattern was basically the same as the coonskins only I needed to add “dog flaps” to the sides and an emblem to the front to distinguish it as a Russian hat.

Up close and personal these hats did not have that professional look, but on film they passed.  For any costuming in the future, I’ll have to up my game for the new high definition film.

For the sheath, David painted the upper half gold to match the sword handle.  I drew a pattern on some vinyl for the cover, cut it and sewed it with the sewing machine.  After sliding it over the plastic sheath, I didn’t quite like the way it looked so I decided to whip stitch along the edge by hand.  I finished up the top of the scabbard with another strip of black lacing.  Now all we needed was a belt or something to hold the sheath so it could be worn.  At Goodwill, I found this great old leather belt that I thought would be perfect for a pirate because it was laced together in sections.  This gave me an opportunity to be able to expand its length while still keeping the integrity of the belt intact.  With a scrap piece of leather, I created a frog and attatched it to the belt and the scabbard with the same lacing technique.  In the end, I think we managed a pretty decent accessory for David’s costume.

A couple of years ago, I had the opportunity to make a pirate costume for a friend, David, who had always wanted one.  Although I was responsible for the majority of the clothing, it was a very time consuming project.  Therefore, I thought it would be more fun to have David work on some of his own props.

As soon as The Halloween Express stores (www.halloweenexpress.com) were open we decided to scope out the various pirate pistols and swords. The sword was from Disney’s Pirates of the Caribbean line of costume accessories.  It is about 32 inches long and has a really nice heavy plastic sheath.  Unfortunately, I don’t think it is still available for sale anywhere.  Hopefully it will make a return when the new movie is finished.

David bought a couple of pistols and quickly disassembled them to sand any imperfections in the molds.  After putting them back together, modeling putty (I think JB Weld might work better) was applied to fill cracks and holes that shouldn’t be there. With various latex paint mixtures and David’s talented eye for modeling replicas, he had some really nice looking prop pistols.

The sword, on the other hand, was a little more involved as it had a sheath cover that needed sewing.  That was left up to me.  I will cover the makin’ of the scabbard in the next post.