Morte A La Sewer

Morte A La Sewer was the first stop-motion movie that we made for a MIFA film festival. Running ten minutes, the movie depicts a battle between the combined forces of Gi Joe and Cobra against those of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and the Foot Clan. As for more on the plot, well, that is pretty much it. There is a lot of bloodshed and carnage, if that counts for anything. Morte is a silent movie; the only audio that is contained in it is a soundtrack, but there are no voices for the characters. This is because A) at the time we made this we did not have the time to do voices, and B) nobody we knew could do the cartoon characters proper justice by attempting to do their voices. I mean, seriously, how many people do you know who could do a good Cobra Commander impression?

Episode II: The Search for Hawk

Episode II was the sequel to Morte, which was a huge hit at the first MIFA film fest. I gave it this title for one reason and one reason only: I wanted to beat George Lucas in releasing a movie that had "Episode II" attached to it. And I succeeded. (You probably think I am joking when I say that was my motive, but no, I really do have sad goals like that sometimes.)

Anyway, as for the plot, well, it opens much the same way as Saving Private Ryan...minus Tom Hanks, the good acting, the Nazis, and the sounds of battle, among other things. The combined Joe and Cobra forces speed along in LCI (Landing Craft Infantry...those boats used by American troops during WWII to assault beaches). They hit the beach, and are immediately pummeled by a volley of lasers. The beach is manned by Imperial forces, and the Joes must climb their way up to the bunkers and fight their way into a Star Wars stronghold. Once inside, their objective is to save General Hawk from the Empire. Really, that is pretty much it for a plot.

This movie was also a silent movie in the same manner that Morte was; however, Episode II did have two new additions. Using Photoshop, I was able to draw in green and red quasi-linear blobs that were representative of lasers. As for the machine guns used by the Joes, I was also able to add in muzzle flashes. This movie originally ran thirty minutes, but I decided to speed the movie up for all future viewings.

Images coming soon.

The Fifth Horseman

The Fifth Horseman was solely Josh's work; the only part I played in this project was to let him use my computer for editing purposes. Horseman was quite different than the two previous movies. Yes, it was stop-motion, much like the other two, and yes, it was a silent movie with a soundtrack. However, where as the previous two involved the use of copyrighted toys, the "actors" in Horseman were actually made by Josh. They were completely original, although one character was based off Josh and another off of a friend of ours. They had functioning elbows, knees, shoulders, necks, and interchangeable hands, heads, and clothes.

Plot: Guy works for government. Guy builds kick ass robot for military. Kick ass robot is hit by a surge of electricity and goes on a killing spree. Guy has to stop robot. That's pretty much it. This movie was about ten minutes long, and was shown at the second annual MIFA film festival.

Images coming soon.

The Good Doctor

Doctor, like Horseman, starred characters that were made by Josh and myself; the two main characters were actually representations of us. So, we basically made little action figures of ourselves, decked out in space marine and mechanic armor, which we proudly display on our bookshelves. And for some odd reason it took both of us twenty years to get girlfriends (and there's a good chance those are still part of a plot for a really lame reality tv show about dorks who make figures).

Anyway, the plot: Take the movie Aliens, in which a bunch of Colonial Marines are sent in to explore a complex that has ceased communications for unknown reasons; now, take out the hardcore marines and substitute in their place a plethora of trigger happy, bad joke slinging, inept soldiers (including Josh and myself). Also, take out the aliens in Aliens, and put in their place a number of genetically altered freaks and monsters engineered by a wacko doctor. Oh yeah, and add a bit of seasoning, and VIOLA! you have The Good Doctor. This movie was also very different that the other movies. For one thing, it was shot almost entirely using the still photo option of a digital video camera.

There was a figure cast of around 22 characters, and almost all of these actually had voices. Also, this was the first movie in which we used both blue screen and green screen for flight and outdoor sequences.

Night of the Living Dead Man on Campus

A lesson in what can be put together in a matter of about a month or two, and an even bigger lesson in what can happen when you do not have someone around to check for continuity errors, Night, despite these flaws, proved to be a success at the April 2002 festival.

The story occurs during a zombie outbreak on campus, and two individuals (played by Josh and myself, who can only play ourselves, it appears...) must try to escape amidst legions of the undead and an onslaught of bad jokes. Designed more to be a comedy (but not a campy b-comedy movie, surprisingly) the movie featured more than a few references to The Good Doctor, which was shown right before this movie. The whole reason why I originally wrote this thing, though, was so that I could use this title for a movie. That's it. Zombie makeup was a mixture of acrylic paint, white face paint, and flour. Sounds god awful, I know...and it felt that way, too. However, the flour, when mixed properly with the other two components, gave off a decaying, pealing flesh look on camera.

Images coming soon.

Mneumonic Devices

Mneumonic Devices was the most recent stop motion film produced by Josh and myself; this is the prequel to The Good Doctor. The original idea had nothing do with creating a prequel; I always thought we made pretty nifty robots, and I thought about how neato it would be to create a comedy that had an entire cast of robots, but no humans. And yes, I just used "nifty" and "neato" in a sentence.

Anyway, this idea was quickly scrapped when we decided that it would be fun to tell how our characters from Doctor met; there's much more I could tell about the plot, but fortunately, it is one of the two movies I have online, in its entirety.

As for technical improvements, the figures had several improvements over their counterparts from Doctor. These are described on the design page. The other significant improvement was the use of cartoon drawings for exterior locations, which saved us much time on the creation of set exteriors (since, well, we didn't have to create them...)

Images coming soon.

Everyman: A Romantic Comedy

Prior to the creation of this movie, all of my films revolved around robots, zombies, comical violence, or a sad combination of these three. These were perfectly fine for the audiences that I had been trying to entertain, and I did really enjoy making movies of this...ummm...fine of caliber. However, I finally decided that I wanted to do something different...something that I had never tried before. So, seeing as how my only two options were to use heroine or any other number of illegal substances, or to make a romantic comedy ... I decided to go with the more rewarding (and legal) of the two.

I will spare you a plot description, since the movie can be found online. However, I would like to add that when I was writing it, I wanted to make a romantic comedy that everyone, guy or girl, student or non-student, adult or teenager, could relate to at some point or another. I never intended for everything in the movie to strike a note with an audience member, but I at least wanted the viewer to be able to walk alway saying "Yeah, that part about ... really reminded me of this one time ..." To that end, I do believe I was successful.

The title came as a last minute edition to the movie. I was having difficulty coming up with an appropriate title, when I thought about the purpose of the movie (its "everyman" aspect), and I recalled the morality play Everyman that I had to read in high school Literature class. It fit perfectly; for the record, I was "Good Deeds.")

This was the first live action movie that was entirely a CYLMAF production; when this was made, Josh had already started medical school.

Images coming soon.