guys!

For the past month I said I'd put up some new bloopers, or SOMETHING on here, but I have been pre occupied with other shit.... Like eating food, moving, buying a car, and generally being a moron.

I am almost moved into the place, and then I will be able to get back to business and do some more shit on the movie. It doesn't really matter anyways, because we are stuck at a standstill YET AGAIN. No worries, we are very close to the end, we just have to figure out another way to get over another stupid bump in the road.

Clips this week hopefully.

Hey Yo!

I'm just giving a little update here on what's going on. The movie is coming along pretty good. Got a lot of shit done in the past month, but we still aren't at the end. What's good though is we can finally see the light at the end of the tunnel, as opposed to a month ago when we were stalled and couldn't see shit.

I've been slowly but surely getting back into editing the shit. I have one of the scenes we've done like 90 percent done. I need to add a lot of sound and stuff to it, but as it is right now, it looks pretty good. I am also about halfway through another one. I haven't been able to pump through the stuff like before, but I have been extremely busy/burned out recently so cut me some slack here.

We are taking the next two weeks off to recharge our batteries. I know I need it, although I can't speak for everybody else.

Either way, when we start back up, we have 4 things to take care of that we could theoretically do in a weekend, and then we have one more huge part to do. Either way, it's SOOOOO close to being finished as far as shooting goes. We are almost there so all three people that read this, bear with us here.

Also, I still gotta throw some new bloopers or something on here, just so there is SOMETHING to put up.

We're Making Progress

Hi, everybody. We've all been asked the same question lately: "Are you guys done yet?" The answer to that is: "No, but it will be worth the wait." We have all been putting alot of hard work into this movie and for us it will be a great accomplishment to finally have an opportunity to show it to all of you. The past few weeks have seen alot of progress. Some great scenes are being put together and I feel that every time we film something new we get a little better at what we are trying to do.

On Saturday we filmed some TV news footage/press conference stuff with Chief Coffeestache. It was very fun to do and hopefully comes across that way in the movie. We also shot a "special effects masterpiece" on Saturday followed by a "stunt spectacular" on Sunday. Very fun weekend indeed. You'll have to see the movie to find out more about those though!

If you are on myspace we have been adding some pictures to the page periodically over the past couple of days (like the two Barry posted below), so go check that out: http://www.myspace.com/lawsonwhiteheat

If you aren't on myspace and you can't see the pictures then fear not. Here are a few of them to whet your appetite for the upcoming movie:










We hope you like them and hope you like the movie even more. It will be alot of fun when it's all done. Thanks for showing interest in the movie, being patient while we finish it, and for reading the blog!

-Tommy

*This just in*: Apparently Lawson has a posse!

messing around

Two pictures I messed with in iphoto and came up with this shit. I have a few more to post, I just have to clean out my flash drive.

HAHAAAA!

Update

SUPPOSEDLY getting in the warehouse space this weekend to do some shit. We will see.

I have a shit load of footage to start editing again, which I am VERY excited about. I have 3 scenes to cut up and piece together and see how we did on. I am pretty confident we have some good shit in there.

Browsed the photos the other night from the photo shoot. Longest picture slide show in history, but there are some beauties in there.

When I am editing the footage, I will probably piece together another set of bloopers so we have more clips to show, and you can see some funny mess ups. We finally did something with Leeann, who replaced our old female in the movie. She was awesome, and was (as we all agreed), a much better actor than any of us, and made it look easy.

Either way, finally making progress on the thing again makes me so excited. This is gonna be pretty entertaining (knock on wood) once everything is finished. Hopefully people will enjoy it as much as we will.

Effects Test

I just learned how to do this today using a tutorial from the cool guys at detonationfilms.com

Either way, I realize after the fact that I should have put a before and after on the clip with and without the music, flares, and sound effects, but whatever. Either way, this is just a ten second sampler or so of what the movie will hopefully be like effects wise. AWESOME!

Also, I realize the machine gun in the background has nothing yet, but it will, dont worry.

Barry

Saturday highlights

just a couple little things from the two shoots over the weekend.

We had a very productive reshoot, correcting a bunch of mistakes I made on the first run through of the scene several months ago. The whole thing looks much more coherent and natural thanks in part to Barry's eye and a bunch of people who didnt mind waking up early and being background actors.

Afterwards, we fed an injured sparrow donuts for like twenty minutes, Kyle went to work, and the rest of us went to grab lunch back in dorchester. It was a pretty typical time at Gerard's, with us musing over highlights from the day's shoot, a couple worries about the upcoming night shoot, and talking way too much about the police academy movies, mexican wrestling, and debating the merits of fart jokes. On the way out Tommy spotted Kevin McBride, a local boxer who defeated Mike Tyson a couple years ago, sitting by the door, playing Keno. We spent 2-3 minutes debating whether to ask him to be a generic bad guy in a fight with lawson in the weeks to come. We ended up just walking by him and saying "hey, how's it goin?" Then we all split up to crash/recharge for a couple hours.

At dusk, we showed up at the location, spent some time setting up shots, figuring out the schedule and waiting for actors. The shoot went pretty smoothly, other than a couple problems finding the best lighting, and some of our effects not working as well on set as they had throughout testing. At one point, while we were shooting this very intense speech by the chief, behind this warehouse, somewhat in the middle of nowhere, at about 11pm, the real cops drive through, but dont even give us a second glance. Later, after a few hours, we see the flashing lights at the end of a very long driveway, and start to worry that perhaps now, after all this time, they are coming to yell at us. To tell us to wrap it up and go home. Paranoia sets in. So we all walk over to the front of the building, just to chat and diffuse any situation that's about to happen. We talk to a very cool cop, who tells us they were just arresting some drunk off the street, and as long as someone doesnt call in to complain, he wasn't worried about us. We didnt finish everything we'd hoped that night, because our plan going in was fairly ambitious, but we got a ton of great footage, and though it was a long night (I think we got back to Boston around 4am), I think we all had fun.

thanks to Doug, Abdi and Debruyn for waking up too early to not get paid.
and thanks to Bill, Al, Eli, Gomer, and A.D. for staying up too late to not be partying.

LAWSON: the ending begins
-johnk

update from today so far

we had a few extras show up and give us a hand this morning which was awesome. overall a pretty good shoot this morning, although we have to go back tomorrow to get one more set of line recorded due to a mistake on my behalf, but thankfully we wont need the extras, and we wont need to be there as early as we were today.

this is a quick bogus commercial we did today after Egan asked that I buy him some Summers Eve for a drink, and I did just that. Very stupid, very us.

Smell that? . . . It's Excitement!

Hi, everybody! We are getting ready to start filming our epic final scene. We have all been keeping busy getting things ready and I think we're all a little nervous but very excited to finally get going on this scene (which will be awesome if all goes as planned). Egan put together a blood pump that we will hopefully be putting to use on Saturday at our warehouse location. Barry and John have been looking into after effects and stuff like that which could be very cool additions to the movie. I've been working on some music. Kyle found a "Chronicle" themed ice cream. Excitement is in the air!

So, any of you out there who feel like participating in what will be a very fun movie, let us know because we will be filming the finale over the next few weekends.

"Blood and Gore and So Much More" will be on the menu at the White Heat diner, so stop by for a visit. You can have Chronicle Crunch for dessert.

Thanks for reading
-Tommy

YOUTUBE Contest

Our video didn't make the cut. If you go watch all the videos that did, maybe it will be mind boggling to other people as well why we didn't. Ours is WAY better than half the shit that made it. Not being a bitter Barry for not even making it into the competition, the other videos legitimately suck, with the exception being:



That was AWESOME!

Hi, everybody! We are finally getting started on the big finale for the movie. If anybody in the Boston area wants to play a cop on Saturday, June 16 we could really use the help. Filming will be in downtown Boston from 7am - noon and then again later in the day 7pm - (possibly) midnight in Whitman. Ideally, we would like the same people at both shoots for consistancy reasons. It will be a long day that will consist of milling about on camera and there will be a lot of down time but it is for a good cause. And you also get a chance to be killed in an epic shootout near the movie's climax (during the night shoot).

Get in touch with any of us if you are interested in being a part of the movie!

-The cast and crew of Lawson:White Heat

The Vigilante

There is a sketch comedy contest on youtube coming up (deadline to submit for round 1 is today), and we decided we'd whip a quick thing together. There is a 3 minute time limit, and all videos will be judged and then POSSIBLY entered into the contest. IF we wind up making it, make sure you get your friends, your family, and everybody you know to vote for us if you think this skit is half decent. Even if you don't, please vote for it anyways if it is accepted. There will be more details as to whether or not this makes it in the coming week. Thanks for the continued support on LAWSON, and its finally getting back on track.

Ah yah

New pics coming soon, and a possible glimpse at a fund raising trailer I am going to work on. Sorry for the shortness of news and all that jazz in recent memory, but I have a good feeling that its going to pick up shortly and we are finally going to be able to finish this thing. Keep your fingers crossed and all that.

Thanks for all the support

HELP LAWSON SAVE THE WORLD

We are trying to get the word out further about Lawson: White Heat. We are trying our best to overcome our set backs, move forward and finish the movie. Though, we need your help! We need you, to help Lawson Save the World! If you aren't already friends with Lawson on myspace, please, add him. Lawson: White Heat If you know anyone who might be interested in Lawson, have them add Lawson. Spread the word of Lawson, the more people that know of Lawson and have Lawson on their friends, the more the word will get out. We also have a running blog for the movie itself, Lawson Production Blog Check it out, there is some fun behind the scenes stuff, a teaser trailer, and a couple blooper reels on there and on the Lawson White Heat Youtube Channel. Finally, Evil 1985 will be launching our website around July 1st. We will be giving more information as this date comes closer, but it will include Everything Evil1985, including more information about Lawson, as well as, our other productions in the works. We ask you...Are you willing to, Help Lawson Save the World?

I'm Stupid

*WARNING* This post might be really boring but I felt like sharing my stupidity with the world.

Greetings again from the Lawson Laboratory!

As some of you may know, I have been trying out various methods of getting blood to spray for the big shootout at the end of the movie. One idea that I've been tossing around from the beginning has been to have a pull string with a button tied onto the end burst a balloon/condom/bag full of blood. The bag would be placed under an actor's shirt and the string would be pulled through a small hole in the shirt, looking like a squib as it bursts. Sounds easy enough, and it is now that I've stopped being an idiot.

Previously, I kept trying to thread string through the balloon with a needle. Obviously this puts a hole in the balloon. I spent so much time trying find ways to get the string through and plug the hole at the same time that it never occurred to me that I didn't need to puncture the balloon in the first place. I could put the button-end of the string into the balloon of blood and then tie it off.

After months of toying with several different ideas, this simple solution presented itself as I was lying in bed this morning.

I am an idiot.

So I am going to go back to the lab and try this out. It should work. I'll keep you updated.

Thanks for reading!

-Idiot


PS: I just tried it out. It works. Can't wait to see this movie when it's finished! Also, we will still be using the air pump but the more blood effects in the movie the better. And as Barry says, "variety is the spice of life."

Ha....

So, news on the Lawson front. We are slowly catching up on some of the things we needed to get done for the majority of the movie. Unfortunately however, our warehouse fell through and we are back to square one on the ending.

Thankfully, we got the Chinatown scene done, and I am going to talk to one of the girls about finally getting to do an important scene at her house.

I have a bunch of new still shots from some of the more recent things we've done, and I will try to get them up soon.

To tide people over, I am going to post this rediculous video we did for my lighting class. Extra thanks to Egan, Tommy, and John for the help.

Trust me, its rediculous.

update coming

I will have an update probably tomorrow of whats been going on, and maybe a quick little video highlighting some recent shit.

WINNER!

So the teaser was shown tonight at the AiME awards show at the Brattle Theatre. We all headed there to see the trailer on the big screen, and to hear the reactions from people who've never seen anything about the movie.

First off, it was shocking to me that it got nominated to begin with. How cool was that? Moving on, there was some stiff competition for the category, and ours was the second one shown.

As soon as it started, as Tommy said, people "got it" right away with the opening line and the piles of coke. When he jumps through the table and blows people away, it got a pretty damn good response, and people seemed genuinely impressed/enthused by the trailer.

After it finished, it got legitimate cheers and lots of clapping, not just "oh, thats my friends movie so ill clap for it", but legit applause which was pretty damn awesome. This is a huge boost of confidence for me personally, and I am sure for others. One of our concerns is whether or not this is going to be a universally funny movie, or just an inside joke laugh riot. I truly believe though, its going to find an audience and be funny to anybody who can take a joke.

Anyhow, after the remaining trailers were shown, they come out to announce the winner. I am doubting ours will win, when of course they call my name. No sooner than they finish saying my name I'm mouthing "oh shit" and am already halfway on to the stage. I wanted to laugh out loud that it won but instead grabbed the mic and said what anybody who didn't think they'd win would say....

Thanks.

Then I got off the stage and was still laughing and in shock that it won. So good. We are officially an award winning group, and the movie still isn't finished. Hopefully people will come out in droves to see the finished product when its done. Next year, the whole thing will be submitted and MAYBE it'll win more shit.

Crazy!

Back on track

We were finally able to shoot something this weekend, as we did the Chinatown thing with a posse of Asians (thank you for everyone who came out and helped). We need to go back and get some establishing shots when we have the day for that, but overall I think it went okay. I am interested in seeing how it will cut together, because this was one of those extremely short sequences, but we had no legitimate dialogue planned before the shoot. So it was mostly adlibbed, and we had Egan telling us what we said before so we could keep it consistent.

Secondly, we got a new girl to replace the old one, which is awesome, because now we can head to our friend Maggies place and finally do an important scene at Badis place.

We should be hearing about the warehouse shortly too, since a specific deadline has passed that we have been waiting for. We will see how that all works out as its going to be a tough sequence to shoot. It could be friggin awesome though.

So, soon enough, we will be back in the full swing of things, we will get some merchandise out there, and hopefully we will be wrapping up in a little bit. This is where its going to get even harder than before since we need to have so many people on set for certain shots, but its going to be pretty damn fun.

Keep checking back for more

Teaser on the "Big Screen"

I submitted the teaser to my schools video festival a couple weeks ago. I had no real expectations that it would be accepted, due to how rediculous it is, and how serious some of the people at school are. Needless to say, the nominations came out today, and the White Heat teaser is up for best PSA/Trailer.

So if you have nothing to do next Thursday night, head to the Brattle Theatre to catch it on the big screen, and be sure to cheer when the 30 seconds of glory are over. So at least I won't be the only one there with a boner when its on the big screen.