shooting, done

About four or five hours ago we finished shooting the last scene for the movie. We're all super excited, happy, dirty, proud and tired.

Barry showed us all another scene that he just finished editing. (he posted a screen grab from it last weekend) Its truly fantastic. Moves the story along nicely and is full of hilarious vulgarity.

In between us all choking to death in the horribly dusty Egan family basement we watched a video we made years ago. It was entertaining but pretty sloppy. Since we made that movie we've all gotten older and fatter, but we still have the same goofy sense of humor. (and a little more talent) Lawson: White Heat is going to be a full length, well done version of those fun movies we used to make in one night, quickly and with in camera edits 5, 7 or 10 years ago. And its going to be great!
-johnk

Picture

I thought this would be a funny one to post while I am editing. I found it about ten seconds ago and laughed at it.

Click to enlarge it

Dumb Video

So as some of you may or may not know... Actually you all know because the people who read this are the people I speak to anyways. After the movie is done, I am going to be working on a bunch of sketches, skits, dumb shit, and dubbing of old UWA matches. The idea is to have a "variety web tv show" with a wrestling federation as the main focal point. The beauty is we never have to do anything physical because of the old footage we have, and all of the new stuff will be done in a round about way. Should be tons of fun!

Here is a second teaser for the show

some news

We were invited to be guests on an Internet radio show to plug the movie and chat and crap. Once details are solidified I will post the info and the three fans we have can tune in and chat.

We took the weekend to plan our final shoot. This is our first ever attempt at a movie fight. Some of us have experience fake fighting and choreographing fights from our younger UWA days so we have an idea of what we are doing. I can't tell if this will be easier or harder for a few reasons. Before it was literally one camera and one chance to do everything in front of a live crowd. Now we can re set stuff that doesn't work the first time and do multi angle gimmicks. For me personally I like the one chance as it makes it more pressure filled to do things, but I am also liking the idea of being able to be safe and not hurt myself like I have in the past.

As far as the post production activities go, I am editing. Capturing video is the worst part about it. We are working on merchandising and promotions so if people have hints ideas or interest I. Helping make sure to get in touch

Two More Shoots To Go!

Hey, all you Lawson-Fanatics!

As the two of you may know, we are rapidly approaching the end of this two year production. We are a tall stack of calender pages away from our original April '07 release date but it will be worth it when we are able to sit down with you and watch a well done micro-budget movie.

Last weekend we did one of the final three shoots. It was my last scene as Lawson and our last scene at our Whitman location. I'm sure if you go back and read older posts you will see that we have been "done with our Whitman location" several times, but this time I think we're really done with it. It was a pretty quick shoot. It was cold but luckily I got to dress in the Lawson garb which, as I learned over the summer shoots, is very warm.

The scene we were doing is the last one you will see in the movie. In addition to some continuity errors, you will get to see a pretty great looking prop that Kyle made. To say more might ruin the surprise. Another interesting tid bit of trivia to keep in mind when you see the final scene of the movie is that Commissioner Tunney was very drunk.

In other news, we had a meeting last night to go over a big fight scene we will be shooting soon. Seems like it's going to be good. Any of you who remember UWA will get a kick out of it. That will be our final shoot. So now comes the time when we need to consider how to deal with this movie being done. How, where, and when do we screen it? We are still going to have our big premiere and party of course, with all the fun and games as advertised. We are talking about different ways to make it available online for download and such. Seems like there are a lot of options of what we can do to actually have this movie be seen by some folks. We'll see how all this unfolds as the months go by.

There are some additional promotional things I would still like to shoot so don't be surprised to see me post another blog later on about how I put the retired Lawson costume back on to do a short commercial or PSA. They will be fun to do, but actually finishing the movie itself is the priority right now.

Thank you for sticking around while we make this thing and thanks for reading!

-Tommy

PS: We are doing our Second Annual Pumpkin Carving Contest! Email us a picture of your Lawson: White Heat-related jackolantern by Halloween night, and if it's is the best one you will win a FREE DVD!

Check out last year's winner and an entry from this year's contest:







TODAY'S LAWSON FUN FACT: In the 1989 movie, The Punisher, Dolph Lundgren uses the same shotgun as Lawson during the Fun House gun fight. Lawson has always been an inspiration to low budget action heroes.

The End is Near

One down, Two to go.

We are down to our final two shoots thank god. After two years of blood sweat and tears. Mixed in with some piss shit here and there the end of this long journey is finally upon us. Finishing this is going to be such a load off my back personally. It's been a lot of hard work and a lot of learning on the job. I suppose the only way to get better at this type of thing is to keep doing it, so after the movie premiers and is of course loved by all, I will feel like a seasoned veteran having this experience under my belt.

There are obvious flaws, inaccuracies, inconsistencies (some of which we are well aware of) but that's fine. I can honestly say I am pretty thrilled with how things are turning out. I will be completely honest about the fact that things are far exceeding my expectations, and probably everybody elses.

We still have a little bit of work left, and then I will be doing everything I can to get the post work finished in a timely manner.

One huge lesson which I've mentioned numerous times before...

PRE PRODUCTION IS A HUGE DEAL! Had we given ourselves more time this wouldve been done a while ago.

The other, I am taking a long break from doing a full blown action movie after this. I think a nice raunchy sexy comedy is on tap.

What a weekend

So there are about 35 scenes in the movie, give or take a couple. You know how these things go where things get cut, shortened, lengthened and what have you.

Today we finished one that was on our list for the past two years. One that we said we would hold off on until we were just about finished with the movie. Today was that day, and we have 2, MAYBE 3 days left of shooting! HOLY SHIT!

I wanted to put up a bunch of screen shots and all that jazz, but I've had a long weekend, took a long nap, and haven't put the new footage on the computer. I am still pumped, and will make sure to put some shit up tomorrow to go along with this post.

until then, this is for Egan, Tommy, John and Kyle. This is just a little tease for something I want to get going once the movie is finished.

DVD Screener

I put together what I have edited onto a DVD for a screening over the weekend. There are some scenes with temporary music, there are unfinished scenes, and there are definately scenes that need some audio touch ups (considering we use one mic, and it is a shotgun on the top of the camera) but overall it gives everybody a pretty good idea of how the movie is turning out.

Egan, Koziol, Tommy and Lianne have all taken a look and it got all positive feedback. I am pretty excited seeing it all FINALLY coming together. It has been a long time coming and thankfully its on the cusp.

In October of 2005, we goofed around for one of the weekend competitions and came up with "The Force"

Fast forward to the Summer of 2006 and we all felt we needed to take things up a notch, and finally work on something serious. Not just a three minute sketch or anything using a camcorder. We wanted to actually have a script and do it like a "real" movie.

Fleshed out ideas, and we had a script we were happy with in July. We took our time getting going, needed a warehouse for our grand finale (which on this date two years later we STILL don't have), and we needed to plan on when to get started.

Early October we finally got going and were literally breezing through scenes. Had a ton edited, got a rough teaser done for Xmas and we were REALLY confident that if things kept going at that pace, and our location came through, a Spring 07 release was beyond doable.

Here we are again in the present, and now it is about damn time it's coming together. I couldn't be more excited to be honest.

I am actually putting together little promo packs FINALLY for select people to get a little screener with two or three scenes and shit like that. Mini posters, promo pictures. As a matter of fact, I was supposed to send one to Sara, the poster designer months ago but shit has been crazy. Considering I assume she doesn't read this, it will be a big surprise when it finally shows up at her place.

Either way, I felt it was necessary to update people so as to keep this blog going. Especially since it will be more of a ghost town once it is out for everyone to see.

I will be back with more this weekend as Saturday we are knocking off yet ANOTHER big scene in the movie. Thank god!

After that we have two things that can be done in a day, and a big old school fist fight scene and THATS IT!!! WHOOOOO!!!!

To celebrate, we are going to go on a nice road trip

NEW Teaser (again)

This is a 2 minute scene from the movie. Self explanatory if you watch it.

Quick

New content coming hopefully in the next few days

Screen shots, MAYBE video. We will see

And they're off!

So I am settled into my new place after about 2 months of living out of boxes and not being able to do much in the way of editing. I got a lot of rewrites and scene polishing done in that time for the last few scenes we are doing. The original ending to the movie has been changed drastically. Overall, the entire tone of the movie is completely different now than when we starting working on it. What started out as our attempt to do a serious, gritty cop drama, has turned into what we know best, and it is ridiculous comedy, perverted humor, offensive insults, and our always improving attempts at some serious action/effects.

Now that I am settled (which I will take pictures of my sweet set up once I am finished making my little studio look good and post em up here so people can see where I do the "movie magic" and edit, do music, blah blah blah.

Onto the editing spectrum:

It's been a while but I started back into it this weekend. Went back to an old unfinished scene, and noticed that a file of footage has literally vanished from my hard drive. I have to go back and reload a few minutes of a tape to fit it back into the timeline. Not only that, this is the one scene left that we need to head back and get reshoots on. It shouldn't take very long, but in the end it will be worth doing. Since I forgot we were doing that, I decided I would stop there and just move on to a completed scene. Now here I am at almost 2 in the morning, needing sleep so I can be nice and refreshed for work in the morning. PRONTO.

I am planning on going through all of the tapes and making a catlogue of them in case we ever dub the tapes or anything and see if any fans out there want to make their own cut of the movie. In theory we should have all these tapes logged and labeled and stored properly for these organizing reasons, but I am a busy guy, and this isn't my full time job and I don't have an intern to do it (unfortunately)

Needless to say, I have a full plate in front of me now as far as editing goes. In the time since I've been between houses, a lot of footage has piled up, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. It's just a time consuming thing, and something I don't think will help me out in the "I think I am getting carpal tunnel syndrome" from using the computer so much. That's lame.

Regardless, I WILL be back with another update in a few days to a week. Should have pics posted of my station, kinda do a LAWSON: CRIBS type deal and maybe I will post new screen shots and shit from this weekends big shoot. BIG SHOOT.

After this weekends shoot, there are 2 more BIG SHOOTS left. This is all shit for the finale that we've been discussing, laboring over, and pulling all of our hair out dwelling on. We've gone through so much trouble, so many cancelled locations, and plenty of time and tape working on the last half hour/45 minutes of this thing. This is the reason for delays, but now it's almost over! CAN'T WAIT!

As a momento to the old days, let's take a trip down memory lane, almost 3 years ago to be exact, and take a look at the silly 10 minute weekend whipped together video that inspired us to buckle down and do an actual legit version.

It is a strong possibility that this will be included on the DVD release of White Heat, sans copywritten music and shit, and touched up a bunch so it will be smoother so we can have a compare and contrast so people can see how we went from "THE FORCE" which is what it is, to the all out epic "WHITE HEAT" which I truly believe is going to impress a lot of people. Especially once our budget of pocket change, crew of under 5 etc. etc. comes out.

So enjoy the inspiration one last time as the horses make their way around the home turn, and the release of WHITE HEAT finally nears.

LAWSON: THE FORCE

Finally an update

Over the weekend we finished up on most of the ridiculous special effects of the movie. It was a VERY long day of shooting, with a lot of different gags and incidents going on in one scene.

There are 24-26 scenes in the movie. There are plenty of locations, characters, gun fights, violence, comedy and all that hopefully you'd want. When all is said and done, I am expecting that the movie is around 90 minutes, give or take. When we set out to make a feature, I am sure people assumed we were just clowns messing around and doing nothing serious. To be honest when we started, I dont think even we realized exactly how intense, how legit, and how good this thing would be turning out.

Throughout the entire shooting process of the movie, I have done numerous rewrites and made plenty of changes to the original script. Honestly, the comparison to the original, and what we have now is crazy. Its a lot tighter, better dialogue, more consistency with the story, and literally about 40 pages longer than the original. I have a copy or two lying around of the original, so when we become huge, famous movie producers and directors and all that jazz, those puppies will be collectors items huh?

SIKE!

Anyhow, we have 3 or 4 things left, and I have plenty of editing and post to do as well. Almost finished... Almost.

One hold up for me personally as far as the editing process goes is the fact that I am literally in between living spaces as we speak, and have been for over a month. This weekend that changes and I will be FINALLY in my new place with a sweet ass set up/mini studio for editing, shooting, and music. CANT WAIT!

hahaaaaaa!

-Barry

More Screen Shots

Some stuff

I just finished a scene last night. It came out pretty good in my opinion. This was one of those extra scenes added on after shooting began. There have been a few of these additions made to the movie, as I felt we needed more explanation, story progression and character development.

The initial script I literally threw together in under a week. While it is full of jokes and funny scenarios, it was missing some things. I didn't have time for a rewrite because we wanted to jump right into shooting, therefore some things could be improved on. So, as we've gone along I've come up with additions and changes to make things more complete, and I think some of the newer stuff is even better than what's in the original script.

So a word of advice from the experiences I've had so far. DO NOT rush into shooting your movie. As excited, motivated, and as ready as we were to start and finish in two months, quality is taken away when you rush, and unless you have a legitimate budget and cast and a shooting schedule, be prepared to be dissapointed when the movie winds up taking much longer to finish than your initial timeframe.

For the fun of it, here's another screen cap from the movie, so you can see a few lab workers hard at work making batches of white heat.

Two Week Update

Hey, friends!

We are continuing a pretty productive streak. Last weekend we took another chunk out of the ending with some gory effects. They didn't work as well as I would have liked but we can always try again. Who knows, maybe it will look alright on camera and still be usable. We didn't get as much done as we set out to do last week but we did add a new scene to the ending which I like a lot. It helps you see how much of a bad guy Dy-Lan Badi is and where his head is at during this part of the movie. It's a cool scene.

This morning we did another section of the ending. It was an interesting shoot because it involved pacing for suspense, special effects, and a few camera tricks. Rich did a very good job portraying a coke head on the run from our deadly hero. Plus, he shaved his beard into a scummy, Lemmy-esque mustache. John did a really cool prosthetic effect for the scene using gelatin and fake blood. This afternoon might be scrapped due to the weather, but at least we got some stuff done this morning.

Thanks to Rich and Owen for coming out and helping us out. And thanks to you for reading!

-Tommy

Progress and hold ups

Hey, all you White Heat addicts!

Yesterday John, Barry, and Egan shot a lot of good stuff for a montage that will be in the movie. The Chief walking his beat and looking cool while on the trail of Dy-Lan Badi (that's not a sentence). I had to work so I missed most of the montage stuff, but we planned on doing another part of the end scene after I got out. It fell through, unfortunately, since the actor we needed for the scene was nowhere to be found. Hopefully he's alright wherever he is. You know, so we can find him and kill him (in the movie, not in reality).

Next weekend is a pretty elaborate scene involving a ninja and some gross blood and guts that will hopefully get done. If that doesn't happen we do have some contingency plans on hand. We're working at a pretty good pace nowadays and it's exciting. This movie's going to be sweet!

Thanks for reading
-Tommy

Today's Lawson Fun Fact: Lawson has killed 11 people in the past two weeks.

Another Successful Shoot

Happy Mother's day to all you mothers out there. Yesterday we started early and worked into the late night putting together a great scene. We built a pretty convincing set, in my opinion, between the scenery and the costumes. There was a drug lab of sorts that appeared to be bad guy quality control. It looked sexy. There were a few scientists and of course a few ski-masked scumbags that end up having a run in with Lawson. Thanks to Tim, Evan, Jesse, and everyone else who came and helped, sacrificing a Saturday to help us get this movie finished.

In addition to being in the scene, Tim was taking some "on set" pictures that should be surfacing soon. They look really cool. The scene had a little bit of everything that you would want from an action movie: guns and assorted weapons, bloody special effects, hilariously vulgar trash talk, interesting camera shots, and more. Aside from bare breasts and explosions, this scene covers some serious action movie bases.

I'd go into more detail about the effects, but for now I don't want to give away many of the gags you'll see in the finished movie. Just know that bad guy lives were ended fantastically and brutally. Justice was served. Served hard.

Yesterday was also Egan's birthday. So if you see the Chief in your travels be sure to wish him a happy (belated) birthday.

I'm probably forgetting a bunch of things I wanted to write. I'm tired and it's late. Remember to call your mother. I'm trying to think of something clever to write about mothers or mother's day to end this but all I can think of is the scene in Death Wish where Kersey's wife gets murdered. "Mother's getting the shit kicked out of her . . . "

Good enough.

Thanks for reading!
-Tommy

LAWSON FUN FACT: Lawson recommends hollow point bullets as a fine gift for Mom.

Checking In

Since this blog is always dead, I try to give updates every so often.

We have made significant progress since I last posted. I am pretty excited about where we are at, even though we are at a minor crossroads as the equipment we've been borrowing is going in for routine cleaning and crap.

Egan and myself got together last night to plan the next action sequence and story board it out. We are pretty happy and pretty excited about it. Should be pretty cool. We filled Tommy in on the action and he liked it. Pretty exciting stuff.

Been editing some more stuff, trying to catch up on what has been shot already. Been busy with classes and writing, but it's over now so I can get back to business and edit some crap.

Looking good though, looking good.

These Boxes Are For Action Packing

Hey there.

We just spent the morning shooting some fun stuff. The ending is underway and Lawson is going after the bad guys in a maze of boxes full of drugs. I don't want to say too much about the scene, but it was a fun time and it feels good to be moving forward. We are probably shooting some more tonight. Definitely looking forward to it.

Here's a picture from after we finished shooting and I was out of costume:



Pretty sweet! I just had a chance to watch the footage that left me in that state and it's awesome. I am really happy with it.

That's it for now. Maybe one of us will update with some of today's details after we do more tonight.

Thanks for reading!

-Tommy


TODAY'S LAWSON FUN FACT:Lawson is a blood fueled killing machine.