Nightwine Lo-down

The Best Film Camp Ever.

Thu, 6 Aug 2009 00:46:39 -0400

We finished up film camp last Friday and I must say that it was the best film camp we’ve ever had in our six years of doing this.
Everyone had a great time and everyone was definitely interested in putting together a great film.
To see more action on the set, check out Kim Kenney’s Blog, Curator’s Corner. It’s the best source of information on what happened at the camp. CHECK IT OUT!
Kudos to the Nightwine crew: John Gerren, Derek Dyer, Jeff Heimel, Matt Persons, Bob Herro and myself, Jim Gerren. No one can match our enthusiasm when it comes to producing this film camp.
Kudos to Chris and Kim Kenney, who not only help us contain the enthusiasm of the students (so things don’t get out of hand), but also partake in the filming festivities themselves.
I have begun the task of importing the remaining footage to begin editing. Once the importation is done I will had off the footage to our SFX guru, Jeff Heimel, and he will begin to add to the Nightwine magic.
October will come fast and post-production has begun. Before long the world premiere will be upon us.

I’m sure it will be as great as was the film camp!

The Film is taking Shape

Wed, 29 Jul 2009 22:40:39 -0400

After all was said and done today, I can look back and see that we’ve made progress. My head SFX guru, Jeff Heimel, was able to get the green screen up and running and we began green screening with a Canon XL2.
My Mechanical FX guru, Matt Persons, made a appearance today and I quickly put him to work creating a special gun turret for one of tomorrow’s film scenes. It’s unbelievable what he can do with a little bit of help from Home Depot.
Our Make-up FX guru, Derek Dyer, did his first rendition of Darth Hideous and it was a success.
The kids did a great job acting and directing. We are making progress on the script and hopefully will finish it on time.
One negative, as you’ll see in the above video, was that one of the lego kits I bought had missing pieces. Not cool.

Everyone wants to be a Star

Tue, 28 Jul 2009 22:05:49 -0400

The above video shows how even the ordinary person off the street is willing to be in the movies. We interrupted filming to let her pass and on a whim I asked her if she wanted in the movie. Her response is displayed in the video - classic.
One other aspect of today is that our group of students are really interested in film-making. I have never had a group like this. This can be attributed to filming our last scene for the day. We had finished 10 minutes early and I did not want to start another scene where we couldn’t finish it before leaving. Everyone asked to continue, even though that meant working over. With that kind of enthusiasm, I couldn’t resist and we filmed the escape pod scene with the entire group. Everyone had a blast!

That’s what makes it all worth it.

Lucas - Watch Out

Mon, 27 Jul 2009 21:22:48 -0400

Today was day one of our five day Film Camp. Our working title is “Star Wars: Battle of the McKinley Monument”. We have 16 students in our camp this year and they all are excited to be apart of this movie. We picked characters to play, filmed two major sequences and worked on models for the many blue screen and green screen effects that will be incorporated into the movie.
Above is an intro of the kids who are destined to become film stars (of course, courtesy of Nightwine Productions)!

With homage to Indiana Jones

Sun, 13 Apr 2008 19:50:02 -0400

With the new Indiana Jones movie coming out next month, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, we felt we should add to the hype. Here is a promotional movie we did a few years ago. The movie is called Indiana Dave and the Temple of Diebold and involves Indiana Dave and his sidekick as they try to retrieve a sacred artifact.