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WHAT'S ON
MY BRAIN - FEBRUARY 13, 2006
The "Fistful of Blood" adventure part one!
Hey Guys,
Sorry to have dropped of the radar for a bit there, too much going on
these days. I was feeling a bit saucy over the weekend and got up on the
message boards for a bit--will try to hit it again this week --looking
forward to catching up with you all more in the future.
The main thing I've been working on is the live action "Fistful of
Blood" film, which has been funded to a point, and if all goes as
planned the rest of the funding will fall into place this week (all money
is due in by February 15th) and we'll be on schedule to roll film May
1st. Of course I'll keep you posted, and once we have confirmation of
funds we'll roll out a special section of HM.com just on the film, and
weekly updates up to and through the shoot.
As you know I created the "Fistful of Blood" project to do with
my best mate, Simon Bisley, and we had a blast doing it. From the start
it was intended to be in Black and White, and serialized in Heavy Metal
magazine before we did a collection--which was one of the first continuing
graphic novels I've run like this since owning the magazine. Glad it was
this one.
The idea came from my love of Sergio Leone Westerns, mainly "Fistful
of Dollars" which was pretty much directly copied from the Akira
Kurosawa film "Yojimbo." (Almost shot for shot in many cases!)
Loved both those films, and liked quite allot the Walter Hill version
called "Last Man Standing" done in the mid-nineties. Anyhoo,
thought it would be cool to Heavy Metal-ize it, making the lead be a female,
set it in an old movie location western town, put Zombie super soldiers
on one side, and Vampires on the other. Ta Da--and what fun it was!
As with all the projects I do with Simon, I pretty much come up with the
concept, talk it over with Simon for a few months to fine tune it, and
then do the layouts/storyboards. Simon then takes those and does his magic--and
in this case all in pencil. Quite a nice change of style, and well received
by the fans.
 Even
during the writing/layout process I always thought if I was ever going
to direct a film, something I've wanted to do for a long time, this would
be the prefect one. It had allot of interest as a film project from the
start, and the originally it was going to be as an animated film, and
I spent a bunch of time designing it as that--but in the back of my head
I always hoped I'd find the right team to help raise the funding for me
to direct it as a low budget live action film. Photo one,
is of an early live action movie poster concept I created with Mike Tristano
(one of the original advocates to do it as a live action film)--in this
case we used Julie sister Lizzy as our star "Blondie" I'm the
stand in for the Vampire, and Mike was the Zombie. Lorenzo Sperlonga what
the genius on the computer that pieced it all together and made it look
so cool! |
| So
here we are. I was approached by Producers Josi Konski and James DeMasi
last year who told me they were the ones to pull the deal together and
the long road began. First I needed to polish the script I developed,
and brought in long time pal Paul Jenkins to help. I flew him to LA, and
we spent allot of time jammed in a hotel room in Hollywood hammering it
into the current state it is. Paul is a great guy to work with, and I
hope he had as much fun as I did bringing it to a new life. Photos two
through seven are of Paul in I at the Belage Hotel, working on
the script, starting the storyboards and even some cool sunset shots--which
seemed the right thing to do as the hotel "IS" on Sunset Strip!
Cool beans! |
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From
the beginning I knew if I was going to direct it, I needed to be the
one that knew the project better then anyone else, which means I would
need to storyboard it. Being the huge task that it would be, I brought
in Paul as a business partner, and really talented artist Rob Prior
to assist. We decided I would do the first pass, pacing the story and
roughing them out in ball point pen, then Rob would do a pass adding
the gray tones, and I would do a final clean up.
 The
last shot for part one is Rob in the hotel room sinking his
teeth into the first section of the boards. Up to now, we've finished
more than 100 pages of boards, which brings us to about page 40 of the
script. With the May start date looming, we're about to crank everything
up into high gear, and we should wrap them all up by mid April. Wish
us luck, and I'll show you a bunch of the boards in future postings.
Ta Ta for now, part two coming in a week.
Best, Kevin
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