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    • Christmas- Music for solo piano
    • St. Mary's Choir Favorites
    • SLIM Original Soundtrack
    • SLIM >
      • SLIM- Accolades
      • SLIM- Letter To The Viewer
      • SLIM- Behind The Scenes
    • Why Are Comedy Films So Critically Underrated?
    • Disorder In The Court
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5/21/2017 2 Comments

A Day With Wilhelm

Part 3 of the truck chase was completed with Jake present. For the chase itself, it was simply shots of Jake in the vehicle reacting to already filmed shots.

After the chase, we filmed more angles of the swordfight. This time, all showing Jake's face.

This same day, we filmed Wilhelm giving a speech to a crowd that was not even present. I framed the shot tight enough so that it would appear that Jake was in a closeup surrounded by a crowd. I was impressed by how well he could remember the entire speech in one take.

Another scene involved Jake looking through binoculars at troops charging (another shot that had yet to be filmed).
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5/7/2017 1 Comment

Good Old Fashioned Car Chase

Even without a budget, SLIM boasts 2 "car" chases. The first involves riding lawnmowers and the second an SUV and ATVs.
This day's filming captured the second of these chases.

For the truck itself, my friend Annie allowed me to use her sturdy SUV, which conveniently had running boards and a roof rack. The same friend owned a camp in a remote area of Maine. This meant we were able to use the seldom-traveled camp roads as the setting for our chase.

In order to give the illusion of great speeds, I set the camera to record a lower framerate. This meant that when the footage was sped up in the computer, it would appear to be playing back at a normal framerate.

The details of the scene were simple-- the truck drives by, Slim jumps on the truck, replaces the driver, and gets chased by an ATV. We basically filmed the entire chase in order. For the exterior shots, the camera was either mounted on an ATV or from someone standing and using the sunroof of the car. The interior of the car was easy to film with the camera in the front passenger seat.

Of all the different sequences filmed over the years, this one could have been quite complicated, but it went off quite smoothly. Over the next several weeks, filming of the sequence was completed through days of filming insert shots and additional angles.
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2/20/2017 0 Comments

Costumes: Bring Your Own

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As the title suggests, for characters in ordinary-looking clothes, describe the style of clothing and most amateur actors can bring clothes that they already own. This is how most of the costumes worked for Slim. My friend Kalee brought her own cheerleader uniform. My friend Angel gave us the use of a gorgeous, sparkly dress. From my own clothing collection came Slim's hat, a trench coat, and a tuxedo.

My Mom was responsible for crafting Slim's "body". It may look like a simple pillow down his shirt, but it was more complex than that. The inside shell was actually an old T-shirt. Pinned to the T-shirt was a large pillowcase stuffed with fiber fill that was shaped to resemble a big gut and man boobs. Attached to the sides of the T-shirt were two hand towels stuffed with fiber fill. These were Slim's "love handles". On the back of the shirt were two hand towels stuffed with fiber fill to represent Slim's big fanny. The next step was to find clothing large enough to fit Slim's new frame. For all of this, we browsed the local Goodwill Store. We found a very large polo shirt with arms that I needed to keep pulling up. For Slim's formal attire, we found a massive dress shirt with very short sleeves and a great big sport coat. Slim's tie was the ugliest I could find.

For the nun costumes, I asked my friend Annette to be the costume designer. I chose her because she had a good fashion sense, knew how to sew, and had a sewing machine! She figured out how to take large sheets of thin, black material and to create simple black dresses. Some had sleeves and others did not. Extra material became belts and/or holsters. For the veils, we used pieces of white cardboard with a safety pin. The safety pin allowed the veil to be resized for each actor. Wilhelm's costume was actually a grim reaper halloween costume, while Sudden's costume was a black graduation gown.

My first thought for Snarion was a classic maid costume. However, as we searched, the only maid costumes available were naughty adult costumes. It was then that Annette realized that Snarion is kidnapped from her home, so she would not have to wear a work uniform.  For Tubba, Annette found a colorful blanket that worked as a sash for the character.

Overall, the costumes were not difficult to imagine and collect. Once again, when you have no budget, ask your friends for help!
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