The long-neglected livejournal of vangelis film... quickee recap of history

Hola to all, wishing you all a great new year- Thanks to especially lj friends who have stuck with this livejournal--- which I confess is probably one of the worst-maintained ljs on the web and it's only me to blame!

Sorry for the lack of updates, will share a bit more of what's going on.

Basically, aside from boring bad health issues that slowed things down to almost nothing- one pretty unfortunate thing happened with the vangelis project.

A Recap of what's happened with this project after we got principal photography shot:

FEBRUARY 2006
* Iniitially when this project was preparing to go to San Diego Comic Con in 2006, it was a rushed cut that, at the time, I felt only needed an original soundtrack to be ok to show/enter to SDCC (although I was sure it would make it in time). The amazing Kristy Bratton , co-creator of City of Angel was extremely generous when I asked about this information to be shared, and Simon at Whedonesque and Kevin Guyer and his excellent radio show Week-in-Whedon (http://weekinwhedon.libsyn.com/)were great about promoting this as well, for which I'm very thankful.

The archive that still exists on Whedonesque:
http://whedonesque.com/comments/9452#more

(At the time, I didn't realize that you don't HAVE to have something to say at each at every post: there's a lot of me blah blah blahing, if time were reversed, I probably would say less and just say 'thanks' for everyone who took the time to comment.)

* Suprisingly, Scott O. Moore and CautionNetwork, who I'd never met before, apparently simultaneously was working on an Angel parody at the same time! Cherub supported us as well, and generously continues to share a link on their site:
http://www.cautionzero.net/cherub/

Since then, Scott and his company not only have met all their deadlines for one season, but produced a second one, and continues to put out a great website with updates of what the creative folks are up to now.

Henry Burrows also about who created the first Buffy/Angel parody film, "Fluffy the English Vampire Slayer"
http://www.foiled.co.uk/ - ((*and is continuing to make great parody films, with "Big Chimp" a parody on King Kong, which I'm personally looking forward to- )) also gave some great support, and shared a few tips on the whole internet fan reaction thing (good/bad) that I wasn't ready for for the most part about this time.

Oliver McNeil as well, who did and does the admirable "Barry the Demon Hunter", that I tip my hat to. (( It's not a parody, but a serious venture on that has gotten a lot of positive attention in the u.k. . http://www.barrythedemonhunter.co.uk/))

Anyhow, in a nutshell, made a lot of nice acquaintences via Vangelis (not to mention the friends at lj... and apologies for not catching up with friends ljs in 2006, will try to be better in 2007) and shared some back and forth experiences with these folks soon after the announcement came out. There was a chance that we might have been all featured in the official "Angel" magazine, but sadly, the editors weren't interested at the time. (*sigh* That would have been equivalent to getting an Academy Award or a personal note from Joss Whedon or David Boreanaz or Tim Minear that they liked the fan film)

* In the meantime, I was incredibly lucky that CityofAngel put me in touch with 20th Century Fox's music clearance department, and the folks there (especially Ted Spellman, executive director and Fran Block, manager of Fox licensing) were extremely gracious and wrote personally, granting the paperwork for a legal license to use the "Angel" soundtrack music if we get into SDCC for a showing there.

So- in case one was wondering, Fox is actually very fan film friendly, extremely so, from my perspective! The department is very friendly and supportive!

* God, I'm long-winded. Anyhow, Paxomen wrote a great wikipedia entry that was accepted for awhile on us, cast photos, a nice writeup... that later on got shot down by a new wikipedian who found some technical grounds to not include us, but mainly I felt bad for Paxomen who put the time and effort into a really nice set of articles. Plus, I really dug the look of them, too.*sigh*

MAY 2006
* We also put a rough (ugh....why didn't I clean up the title card first?) Vangelis trailer that's still up at youtube--- should be, there's no copyright infringement at all there...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w6d9P0ZtspQ

Also, while I never ended up getting to finish either the Muffin comic book adaption freebie nor the Vangelis prequel comic freebies (I am now more realistic about my time: probably won't... the comic project I'm working on is Buffy/Angel related, but I can't talk about it now, but can just say it is related)--- sorry for saying it would be here and never finishing it. Getting slowly better about not overcommitting/overpromising...slowly...

SEPTEMBER 2006
* But, as I was saying, while I never ended up finishing those, I did cobble together scenes (some of which would have been reshot for sure- if Vangelis was on a tight deadline, these were extremely rushed) of the aborted prequel "Muffin the Turtle Killer". I'm happy with some, but some other parts just weren't developed that well and time ran out. I put these out for those curious about what was in the works.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H_AcxlpEXx8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ENvy--gIBsM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Us6gwSwF0Lg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8JD19pnIRp0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Nch3mqa5vk

These got a really nice writeup in Whedonesque,
http://whedonesque.com/comments/11277#more
but as I said, if time permitted, I would have refined and reshot a good chunk. Vangelis was rushed, all of the Muffin bits were done in two days, without time for any real rehearsal. (*No, this isn't bragging... it's frustration that there wasn't more time, but what can one do?)

OCTOBER 2006
There was a push to try to get the original music completed (we have a main theme now), and finish post for entering into the student section of Cinequest, but the deadline passes and there was/is still too much post work that needed/needs finishing. (which I'll explain later)

DECEMBER 2006
In looking at the footage and tweaking here and there, I'm able to fudge some reshoots and some new second unit footage. Some footage I shot against a white background ended up with some rather poor compositing.

In addition to that, most of what we shot was EXTREMELY 'guerilla filmmaking'--- many times it mostly would be a 'one person shoot/crew'-
in a battle to get all the footage needed to tell the story from folks who also had to juggle school/work/and a personal life.... and, guess what? Most of these folks moved out of town for school shortly after shooting, the ending was even modified to accomodate the leave. (*The original ending everyone liked, including a scene with an elaborate car chase and a pizza guy, but maybe I'll share the storyboards here another time).

Anyhow--- what's the result of a fast fast fast shoot and sometimes one-person crew and people moving out of town (and state?) Fast building of cheapie sets (on the cheap), sometimes camera mike (the absolute no-no of filming!!!), and a good number of painful compromises.

Anyhow, whine whine whine. Complain complain complain.
The argument is: "fan films now have a new standard"- well, ok, fine.
There was a whole thread on Whedonesque where 'how should fan films be judged' discussion.

In the beginning, I was extremely thrilled to share (what at the time I thought was) the only attempt at an Angel parody fan film (*not the only Buffy attempt, Fluffy was there first years ago, I believe)- and that it wasn't just a trailer but an actual story (albeit intentionally silly) made me feel it was trying to be everything but the kitchen sink (but there's what you aim for and what you can achieve, of course) at the time.

I wanted to include as much Angel trivia as possible but still have a story that you could more/less follow and go with. I compared the model to "Mad Magazine", which more or less is true for their parodies, but also "Airplane" might be another one.

So.... where does that all lead?
JANUARY 2007

After some serious health issues, and knuckle-dragging work on post for Vangelis (some audio cleanup is possible, some not some picture and effects the same)---- the main track is complete, but the rest of the soundtrack is not even started on yet (partially my fault), and a new issue of technological glitches have set in on the many many many shots of Vangelis.

The deadline for SDCC this year is coming up, and I'm darn tired of this project, but it is close to finishing. I did send a few rough copies out to those who asked, and thanks to those of you who kept our project away from the net until wer'e finished.

There's a lot more about the headaches of being silly enough to try to do a rushed 40 minute long fan film that I'll share in this journal this year, but thought since this lj has been so anemic, I'd share what's been going on and a bit of a recap.

Best to all, thanks for reading!
HC