Final Preparations for the Premiere

Hookman: Redemption is finished, and final preparations have begun for the premiere on Thursday at The Charles Theater.  The final rendering/export/encoding of the film to Blu-Ray for the screening took 36 hours of compute power to make sure everything looks as good as it can up on the big screen.  Then, we went to The Charles Theater to talk to the manager and test out the projection system to check image fidelity &  lens calibration.

It looked great! In an exclusive interview, the director said, "It's really exciting to finally see the finished product projected in a theater, like a proper movie. This is by far the most complicated and involved project I've ever undertaken.  It's almost surreal to see it finished because for several years now the end has seemed to be so far in the distance I didn't even think about it.  Now that it's really here it's hard to believe.  I think probably about halfway through the premiere it will finally hit me and then I'll be sad it's all over.  Thursday night will definitely be bittersweet because it marks the end of such a large and creatively satisfying project."

This is auditorium two of the theater, where the premiere will be held Thursday night, and where Hookman: Requiem also premiered six years ago.  Do you think 260 seats will be enough?

The screening starts promptly at 7 p.m., so be sure to get there early and grab a good seat. There will be a table in the lobby to purchase tickets (cash only). More details will follow regarding the DVD release, but we will begin taking pre-orders for them at the show as well.  Blu-Ray copies will be $12, DVD copies will be $10, and CDs of the soundtrack will be $8.  See you there!

Countdown to the Premiere

Unofficial movie poster created by Crazy Rachel

The Hookman: Redemption premiere is only 18 days away! The world is anxiously awaiting what has been touted as "definitely a feature-length movie" and "a sequel to some other movie, I think." With all the buzz about the movie itself, many have lost sight of an important part of the Hookman experience.  True fans know that often some of the biggest laughs come after the credits in the form of outtakes.

Past adventures in Hookman filmmaking have indeed included many quotable lines and gags outside of the main film, the most notable of which has got to be the Alfonso "alpaca" line.  The best part is even though he finally gets the line right, it was cut from the final film.  So here you have a joke that was arguably as funny as anything in the movie, is still referenced today (and Robbie still gets ridiculed for), yet it wasn't even in the finished film! (if you haven't seen it, check out the video below)

Hookman: Redemption is breaking new ground in a lot of areas for the world of Hookman films, not the least of which in the outtakes department. To give you an idea of the scope of these outtakes, let me give you some numbers.  We are going through all of the raw footage in sequential order, starting with the footage for scene one, finding the funny outtakes, then going on to scene two and doing the same thing, etc.  After going through the first 15 scenes like this, we have 20 minutes of outtakes.  That works out to a little more than a minute of outtakes per scene.  And with 52 scenes in the film, that means there should be over an hour of outtakes!

It is entirely possible that the outtakes reel will be longer than the film itself, which has a running time of 88 minutes. This poses a small problem for showing them at the premiere.  The Charles Theatre has allotted us two hours to present Hookman: Redemption (7pm on December 27th, by the way).  Therefore after the credits at the premiere, there will have to be an abbreviated outtakes reel - but don't worry, that will still be half and hour long of only the best and funniest slip-ups, gags, jokes, and lines that we could never get quite right.  The full-length outtakes reel will be available to watch (along with other bonus features like director's commentary and behind-the-scenes goodies) when the DVD and Blu-Ray are released.  

So be sure to stick around at the premiere through the credits to see what may be some of the funniest parts of Hookman! 

Hookman: Redemption premieres Thursday, December 27th at 7pm at The Charles Theatre in Baltimore.  It is open to the public, and tickets are $10 at the door.

The remaining post-production schedule, of sorts.   The outtakes are due to be edited by 12/19.

Premiere & Trailer

At long last, the premiere of Hookman: Redemption is upon us!

After more than two years of work, the feature film Hookman: Redemption will make its premiere on December 27, 2012 at 7 p.m. at The Charles Theater in Baltimore (Directions). Tickets are $10 at the door, and all proceeds will go towards the theater rental.

Hookman: Requiem premiered here on the same date six years ago.

'Wow', you say, 'that's awesome, I can't wait! What will I do to get my Hookman fix before then?' Well, do not fret.  Here for the first time is a trailer for the completed film:

So mark your calendars and tell your friends, Hookman is coming to the Charles on December 27th!

Post-Production & Visual Effects

This is the first post to the blog in a long time because we've been focusing on finishing the movie.  We are happy to report that principal photography is wrapped on Hookman: Redemption!

Now begins the long process of editing, visual effects, and audio mix for the film.  In this Hookman movie, we've really stepped our game up in terms of visual effects.  Hookman: Requiem had a grand total of three greenscreen shots - meaning actors were shot against a green screen and composited into existing footage to achieve a desired effect.  Bonus points if you can name all three.

Now, in Hookman: Redemption, we eat simple greenscreen shots for breakfast.  This week we're going to look at a shot where we put an entire car on a greenscreen stage inside a studio, shot a dialogue sequence on steadicam, then composited it to make it look as if the car were driving on a bright sunny day.  Let's break that down a bit to show how complicated it is.

wow, we're getting fancy

Step 1: Shoot the stuff.  In this case, it's four people talking in a car, pretending to drive.  We used a steadicam to shoot the opening shot of the scene because we're awesome.  That means the camera is seemingly floating around the car while it's driving.

Step 2: Remove the "green" from the background and replace it with what you want.  This is where we stopped in Hookman: Requiem, and can be fairly complicated.  But in this new shot, the hardest parts are ahead.

what the turd?

Step 3: Track the camera in 3D.  In order to make a shot look realistic that has a 'floating camera,' we need to create a virtual camera in 3D that moves EXACTLY the same way the real camera did.  This is impossible to do by hand because it has to be very precise.  We run it through a 3D camera tracking program that picks out hundreds of small details in the frame then tracks each one through the entire shot to reverse-engineer the camera move in a virtual environment (huh?).

Step 4: Backgrounds. So now we've got the car cut out from the green screen, and the virtual camera move matched.  For the background of the shot, we want the car driving on a nice country road.  So we physically go out and shoot 360 degrees around a nice country road while driving.  This required rigging a camera to shoot out of the trunk, side door, and on the hood of a minivan while driving 40 mph.  We shot this roughly six months after shooting the original car in the studio.


Step 5: Build the virtual world.  Now we bring those 2D background plates into the 3D world and line them up so they're seamless.  Do some final color tweaking, add a lens flare and some motion blur, and the shot is good to go!

I may have lost you after step one.  That's okay because you don't have to really worry about it.  If the visual effect succeeds, you'll never even realize it was a greenscreen shot anyway.  Hopefully you'll just watch the film and say to yourself, "Oh, they're driving down a nice country road, isn't that lovely."  

This shot took roughly 10 hours to get it to a "good enough for Hookman" quality level.  Watch the video to check out the original footage and the various stages it goes through to get to the final shot (watch it in HD or suffer the consequences):

Leaked Set Photos!

This week we have super top-secret photos from the set of Hookman: Redemption that offer and unauthorized look behind the scenes of the epic production this past weekend!

Pre-Visualization

Making a movie requires a lot of planning (duh), but certain types of scenes require more than others.  For example, a scene where two characters sit and talk isn't all the complicated.  For something that will require visual effects or very specific editing, it's better to figure out the blocking for the actors and cameras ahead of time.  Case in point - a fight scene.  

A frame from a not-so-well-planned-out fight scene.  Notice her face, which seems to say, "Gee, I sure do wish we had pre-visualized this scene in some sort of virtual environment that we could then refer to on set!"

There's a confrontation at the end of Hookman: Redemption that is slated to be shot one week from today.  Rather than waiting until we're on set to figure stuff out, we assembled a crack team of pre-visualization artists and utilized state-of-the-art techniques to figure out just how we're going to film that scene.  Below is posted the final edit of the pre-visualized fight scene, with lifelike analogs of the major characters.

Warning: This video contains mild spoilers that will not necessarily give away the end of the movie, but may ruin some small surprises (if you aren't privy to the shooting script or haven't read it yet (Robbie)).

Special Double Update: Jim-Bob

This weekend we have a special second update because news this hot can't wait until next week!
A new character will be introduced in Hookman: Redemption, a character who plays a key role in the early part of the story: Jim-Bob.  Up until this weekend, that role was to be filled by Molly (aka Tum-Tum) because she has such a good dramatic range.  However, an opportunity arose to cast that character with another actor who is well-known as a creepy character actor in B-Horror movies: John Karyus.

John Karyus as "Freddie the Holy Hobo"

"Scaryus Karyus" has been in such films as The Summer of Massacre, Poultrygeist, and Silent Night, Zombie Night, among others.  We are lucky enough to catch him after he wraps acting as a demonic clown in a new Full Moon movie.  You can see his partial credits here.


Look for "Jim-Bob" in Hookman: Redemption!

Progress Report

Mr. Robert Downs, Jr. on May 15, 2011 - Day 1 of shooting Hookman: Redemption

May 15th marked the one-year anniversary of the first day of production on Hookman: Redemption - and what do we have to show for it? Well, quite a lot, actually.  We started out with 52 scenes to shoot. As it stands right now, there are 26 scenes left. When you look at page count, we're at about 32 out of 60 pages.  Crap, that's like half the movie!?  

Well, sorta.  We started out with seven poker scenes to shoot, and they're ALL complete, thank god.  We also started out with ten songs to shoot, and eight of those are complete.  Songs in the script occupy about 2 lines on a page, but can take up to four minutes of actual screen time. Plus they take much more time to shoot than a standard dialogue scene.  So maybe we're a little over halfway done.

That's good, because as of this past week, everything that has been shot so far has also been edited into a rough semblance of a movie, and that clocks in at about one hour. ONE HOUR OF HOOKMAN GOODNESS.

The edit in its current form - clocking in at 56 minutes with half the movie left to shoot.

Two weeks from now, we'll just be wrapping up a three-day shoot aimed at knocking out the rest of the scenes that require all the main cast.  In three days we plan on completing nine additional scenes, totaling 18 pages of script - comprising two fight scenes and two songs, among other things.  Therefore, in two weeks time there will only be about 12 pages left to shoot over the course of four or five short pickup days with only partial cast - the scraps.

That's pretty good progress, I'd say. It still needs a TON of sound work, and many hours of visual effects work put into it, but that's what the fall is for.

Here's the edit in it's current form (sped up twenty-five thousand percent):

The Many Faces of Hilary: Part 1

This weekend, the actress who plays Mrs. Svletfanzi is graduating from college.  As such, we thought this would be the perfect time to launch the first in a multi-part series, "The Many Faces of Hilary."

Hilary has this special gift whereby she can seemingly turn her face into plastic and mold it into strange and grotesque shapes.  The plasticity of her face allows her to achieve a wide range of expressions and shapes not normally found in nature.  What follows is a glimpse into her unique talent - moments often caught by accident in between takes, or when she didn't know the camera was rolling.  This is but a small sampling of her facial tableau; her true range is so full and diverse we could never dream of taking them all in, nor could we be lucky enough to have a camera rolling to capture them when they spontaneously occur.  And keep in mind: these are just from one scene!

How-to Horror: Blood FX 101

Spatula getting a face full of blood spray

The one thing lacking from most mainstream movies is good blood spray, preferably hitting other actors, making neat patterns on the walls, or covering the lens.  Hookman: Redemption will of course have good blood spray.  But how do we do it? It's easy! 


Today we'll teach you the simple way to get quality blood spray for under $10, in no time at all!


The first thing you need is a sick sense of humor. This cannot be bought or obtained, you must be born weird.  Then, these items:
- A turkey baster 
- A couple feet of plastic tubing 
- Corn syrup
- Red food coloring
You should be able to find all of these at a grocery store, except the plastic tubing.  It's typically less than a dollar per foot at home improvement stores (Hookman Top Tip: plastic tubing is free if stolen off of IV drip bags in hospitals!)


Next we'll deal with assembly. Mix a bottle of red food coloring with 16oz of corn syrup. Add about 2 oz. of water to dilute it somewhat for easier spraying. Then jam the plastic tubing onto the end of the turkey baster (electrical tape might help secure it if it's not a perfect fit). Pour some fake blood into the turkey baster, stick the end of the tubing where you want blood to spray from, and you're ready to rock!


As you can see here, we wanted blood to spurt from this hook-hat, so the tube ran up Jimmy's back and up to the tip of the hook-hat.  All he has to do is squeeze the bulb and blood shoots out.

This is the correct face to be making while spraying blood for optimal effect, and fun!

Other ideas for blood tube placement are:
- under clothes
- inside pumpkins
- behind your car
- behind the showerhead
- fridge
- toilet
- your desk at work
- in "the cloud"


It may take you a few tries to get the blood to spray properly.  Try practicing on a friend who doesn't mind being sprayed. It's better if you have a relative who feels compelled to be shot with blood in order to complete a movie.  Just mock up a video camera and go to town!


Here is a look at what it took to get the effect right on the set of Hookman: Redemption. Enjoy!

Disturbing News

This week's post was going to be a brief discussion on the merits of alpacas vs. llamas, but something in the news this week caught my eye.  If you read the Baltimore Sun online, you may have also seen this story on Tuesday - before it was taken down on Wednesday!

luckily I had the blog in mind so I took these screenshots

It's easy to miss it at first, but the middle story at the bottom of the homepage for Baltimore County reads "A Monster at the Loch: Mysterious deaths at Loch Raven Reservoir, manhunt begins..."  When I saw this, my jaw dropped.  I clicked through to read the story:

The article is astonishing - two brothers were fishing at the reservoir when they were attacked and killed.  The attacker apparently used a fairly blunt object to stab them repeatedly, and the forensics point to an ice pick or hay hook, just like we use for our Hookman!  This was too crazy to be true! 

The article goes on, saying that one of the permanent patients in psychiatric custody at Sheppard Pratt had escaped his handlers just twelve hours before the attack occurred... check this guy out:

holy crap - an eyepatch?

The article ended by saying that the manhunt continues, and seeing as how the article was taken down 24 hours later, it must have ended...? I had no idea why the Sun would have taken down the link without comment, so I emailed the author.  Mr. Ronald O'Neill said he was legally bound not to comment on the article because, basically, the police don't want open investigations reported on, and that he had (in their opinions) disclosed "too many gruesome details."  The only thing he would say is that last he knew, the police were still looking for this guy, and weren't reporting any more deaths. 

I think the most overlooked part of the whole story was that the guy carved an "H" into a tree, then filled the carving with blood and dumped the bodies below it.  I asked Mr. O'Neill about that, and he just said "it was a disturbing piece of vandalism."

The original "H" - still stained red from the blood reported to have been rubbed into the carving

This was crazy, I thought.  There's a guy running around Loch Raven killing people wearing an eyepatch, and possibly using a hook. Not only that, but no one was being allowed to report on it!  I thought this whole "H" business was the icing on the cake - like he was taunting the police, or marking his territory.  Apparently the suspect's name is Christian Danielsson - why would he be carving an "H" (I immediately thought Hookman!).  So I did something incredibly stupid - I know the trails around the dam pretty well from filming there for the movie, so I decided I'd go check out a real Hookman crime scene!

I went into the woods Thursday afternoon around 4pm.  There were signs everywhere about trails being closed, and a lot of reservoir police trucks patrolling the roads, so I hiked in the long way.  I got close to the original crime scene, but that was swarming with cops so I took a different trail.  I wasn't 500 feet down a side trail when I saw another "H" and took a picture:

"H" number two

Holy crap.  I probably should have turned back, but I kept walking.  Another 500 feet, another H, then another:

This was without a doubt the same trail the psycho had gone down at some point, marking the way.  I found another "H" that looked more freshly carved than any of the other ones and was about to take a photo of it when I heard someone coming from down the trail, so I ran away.  I didn't know if it was a cop or the hookman, but I didn't care - I didn't want to meet either of them!  I took a side trail to shortcut back to my car (it was getting dark by this point) and I kept seeing "H"'s on every couple of trees, and they were all fresh...

I stopped to catch my breath for a second and noticed the next tree was bare except for one letter, but it wasn't another "H" - this one was an "O"... The next tree, another "O" carved into it.  This was it! The guy was about to spell out "Hookman"!  Man, I wish I had my video camera! 

Click to the next page!

Covert Ops

Mrs. Svletfanzi looks worried about something... maybe getting caught shooting a horror movie in an old folks home?

One of the easiest ways to identify a low-budget film is to count the number of locations used in the movie.  That's why a lot of low-budget horror films are just "in a cabin in the woods" - they couldn't afford to shoot it "in various office buildings in Manhattan," and in a lot of ways this practical constraint has shaped the genre. Conversely, one of the easiest ways to add production value to a low-budget film is to bring the characters into new locations. Hookman has been plagued by that problem in the past, though we've been lucky enough to have a nice big house as the main location, and easy access to the woods.  In Hookman: Redemption, we're making everything better across the board, but it can be tricky to do...

The hospital in Jacob's Ladder.  Sort of what we were going for.  (super creepy & you should go watch it now)

When the opening scene called for a sparse, creepy, nightmarish hospital a la Jacob's Ladder, we sort of scratched our heads for a couple of minutes, then had the best/worst idea ever.  My grandmother lives in a nursing home for older folks in various stages of medical need.  Several floors look like they belong in a hospital wing.  My initial thought was, "Oh, well, it will just look like a really nice hospital that happens to have a bunch of old people."  But that turned out not to be the main concern.

The hospital we wanted to use. Kind of a different look. Also, they feed the old people to alligators.

So as not to spoil the scene, I can't divulge all the details as to why the cast was more than a little reluctant to try to film the scene, but some of the pertinent reasons were:

- we needed to "borrow" a wheelchair from an elderly woman

- certain costumes were extremely embarrassing/revealing

- Stella Maris is a Catholic institution that would frown upon just about every aspect of the scene
- the hospital wing is very busy

- we neither had permission nor intended to ask permission to shoot there

As such, we went inside in plainclothes, stole borrowed the wheelchair, and decided to find a less-populated area of the fine establishment. We ended up in an elevator, and quite by accident found a disused service hallway... PERFECT!

Svletfanzi still looks unsure about the situation

We got through the shooting with only some slight hiccups, such as when a couple who was at the hospital to visit their sick family member stepped into an elevator, only to find a bunch of kids filming a horror movie with a stolen rented wheelchair and a scantily-clad woman... oh well.

Making skin with a balloon and a hair dryer (duh, how do you make it?)

For our next trick, we needed to finish up the scene with some prosthetic and blood effects.  Naturally, we did that in the loading dock of my apartment building (for which we also had no permission).  It was hot and there were bugs and Hilary doesn't like screaming when people might actually hear her.  Also, when it comes to throwing fake blood around, we found out that Kelly officially has the worst aim ever (see the video below).

In the end, everything turned out GREAT!  Plus we WEREN'T caught & thrown out of Stella Maris!  And despite Kelly's best efforts, the blood ended up looking semi-okay, I guess.  Big respect to Hilary (a.k.a. Mrs. Svletfanzi) for putting up with probably the worst shoot conditions of any Hookman shoot ever.  You'll just have to wait until next winter to see the final scene in all its budget-defying glory, so stay tuned!

Taken shortly before Hilary murdered Kelly for having to get sprayed in the face with fake blood twice in one night

He's Alfonso

Who, me?

One of the many original songs written for Hookman: Redemption is entitled "I'm Alfonso (Pop Pop Pop)" and features Alfonso exclusively.  Fans of Hookman: Requiem may recall Alfonso on several songs, even his own "Robot Rap," but in every song except one, he just rapped his verses.  The only song where we got a glimpse of his singing voice was "I Could Be Your Lover (Forever)" - but that was not Alfonso's actual voice! 

Ted Nichols (in the blue shirt) before a gig with his band.
Notice Captain Awesome in the pink? (R.I.P.) 

Instead of getting actor Robert Downs, Jr. to sing his own song, the director felt his singing voice was sub-par, and therefore enlisted the help of Foster "Ted" Nichols, who was the singer for Funky Foster and the Charles Street All-Stars. Ted did a great job.










This time around, however, we wanted more.  The "I'm Alfonso" song was being written in the style of late-90's boy band songs (think Backstreet Boys) and needed a real personality, so we convinced Mr. Downs that he had to sing.  It took many hours and roughly 100 takes, but finally we had something that could be reasonably salvaged with copious amounts of pitch correction, robot effects, and auto-tune!

Fruity Loops: where the magic happens

Before: Listen to the rough mix here




After: Listen to the "fixed" sample here 





The shooting of the music video was slated for the first day on stage at BlueRock Productions in Baltimore, MD.  It took a while...

Mr. Downs has a special talent wherein he can sing the same two verses nearly a hundred times and yet manage to forget them all within two weeks - so that when we get to the studio, he has to re-learn everything in order to get passable lip-sync!  In the end we got some great footage by utilizing a teleprompter, so he could literally read the words off a screen during his dance. 


See a world-exclusive sneak peek of the final video here! (Be sure to watch on YouTube for HD quality)

Background dancers were choreographed by Kelly Szpara. Bim Mamber and Chris Hill provided the lens flares, while Joe Davidson ran playback (and wrangled the stool).  Special thanks to Faith Erline for running the teleprompter so Mr. Downs didn't have to memorize anything!


Stay tuned next week for more updates!