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.

The Waiting Game

Being at the mercy of others, when you're so excited, and so close to being finished with something completely sucks. We are patiently waiting to get into the ware house, so we can get the finale finished(which if all goes as planned is going to be pretty friggen good).

We are looking for a new lead female so we can shoot the House scene, reshoot the scene with the Mustang, and a couple of other important scenes.

Next Saturday, hopefully we will finally be able to get our Chinatown shoot done, and once we get POLICE T-shirts, and I round up the extras, we can reshoot the Crime Scene. I take responsibility for that not being done yet, but I need to make sure we have enough people, and enough clothing for them to wear.

This making movies shit, without a budget, without a legitimate shooting schedule, and without a crew (outside of us), is incredibly hard. Hopefully our next project to be determined after this, goes a lot smoother.

There WILL BE a sequel to this no doubt, but I don't think it will be the next thing we work on, as taking a break from the Lawson world will do us all a lot of good, even if it is just a few shorts things to work on in between while the story is fleshed out.

For those still waiting however, be patient, White Heat will be worth the wait, and there are plenty of ideas we have for screening the movie and promoting it, so bear with us as the tedious process of making the damn thing hopefully comes to an end shortly.

well then

We had a great meeting this week, where Tommy laid out his vision for a bunch of stunts and gags during the climax of the movie. We spent 2-3 hours figuring out the floorplan and got a rough idea of how many props and extras we will need.

In the past couple weeks we've had some fairly annoying setbacks, including cancelling full scene shoot that had been scheduled two weeks in advance. Then we had plans to get some outdoor covereage this past weekend, and a backup plan for other stuff to do in the snow if it snowed. Of course it snowed then sleeted then rained eliminating any sort of shooting.

We were able to get a bunch of random linking footage done, some inserts and general b-roll; so this month hasn't been a total wash. (Barry has been editing the footage together as we've been working, so we generally know if things worked in a scene or if we forgot anything within a couple weeks of shooting)

Scheduling can be such a pain, but really all that stands between us and finishing filming is organizing a couple more chunks of time and money. If anyone out there would like to contribute either their time to be an extra in the three remaining major scenes or give us some cash to buy a few remaining supplies, feel free to send an email to lawsonwhiteheat@gmail.com, (we do take bags of cash with dollar signs on them, celebrity cameos are welcome and product placement is negotiable)

and as always, join the facebook club
and become lawson's friend on myspace
thanks for waiting, we'll be done uhm,
probably before the new gnr cd comes out.
-johnk

Frustrating

So, we had a pretty important scene planned for last night. One we've been waiting to do for probably two months, but due to schedules and location concerns, we were unable to get it done. So, Koziol, myself, Abdi, and some extras were all set and ready to do the scene, but the girl in the scene never got back in touch after numerous tries. It is yet another wrench in the plans and of course a minor set back in the grand scheme of things, but I, like everybody else, just wants to get this damn movie finished and finally show it to everybody we've been telling about it.

The positive note is that the weather is nice out today for the first time in a while, so we will be able to do some out door stuff today and see how that goes.

SOB Coffestache

The Fuck Tally

I went through the edited footage again, and in the 24 minutes or so of video, there are a whopping 97 uses of the F-bomb. The majority of them come from Chief Coffeestache, with RapMaster Reese coming in second place. There is no doubt we'd have an R rating if this was a real theatrical movie. With the ending, if its as good as we want, possibly an NC-17. Who knows. We just dont have boobs in the movie.

By going over what still needs to be shot and trying to estimate timing of each scene and things like that, I still believe the movie is going to hit the hour mark, and go over by a few minutes too. Maybe if we are lucky it will be 70 minutes or so, which for a group of inexperienced assholes, thats pretty damn good.

Ah yah

Good Weekend

We wound up shooting a really funny scene last night and this afternoon. I already edited it and have showed it to Tommy in its 99% completed form. It is very funny, especially considering it was thought of yesterday. I will possibly grab some still shots from it this week and maybe throw it online. Not sure though because I dont want to spoil anything. Maybe I can find one part to use.

Anyhow, we are slowly getting back on track and getting the coverage we need until we get the go ahead on the warehouse scene. Since the weather is finally not deathly cold too, we can head back and reshoot an important scene we need. It is coming along quite nicely, and shortly I will get in touch with my friend Tina about the photo shoot for the posters.

This has been a great learning experience, and now we know that the entire process, if we want it to be pretty good, takes time, effort, and a lot of patience if you want a quality piece of work. (quality as in how it looks, content is up to the viewer. you will all love it though if you like our sense of humor)

Blood Test

DOUCHEBAG...

http://coffeelaughs.ytmnd.com/


how kyle has been spending his day off...

Can't Duck the White Heat

Our friend Tereck at work, has a studio with a friend of his. They produce rap and hip hop and are currently working on an album. Abdi (Badi) has been on top of things as far as trying to make connections with anybody who might be willing and able to contribute music for the movie.

For the past month and a half, maybe two months. We've been hearing from Tereck about how the song is coming out, and finally on Saturday, it was available to be heard for us. We didn't wind up getting a copy until tonight at work, and on the ride home we listened to the song over and over.

So we have a legitimate rap song, produced specifically for the movie, with White Heat being said numerous times throughout the song, which in my opinion is pretty damn cool! Not only do we have the blessing of Ravage to possibly use some more of their shit, but now we have a real rap song. Abdi is also trying to finagle a song from another guy he knows.

This thing is coming along pretty sweet if I could say so myself, and many thanks to Tereck and his friend Slim, who made the song for us. Also, nice work on Abdis behalf for making connections and hooking up the movie. Sweet!

Chief Coffee-laughs

Back to the Lawson

This weekend, we are finally getting back to the grind and working on the movie. This Wednesday is a meeting where we are figuring out exactly what needs to be finished, so we can finally get back to shooting the movie.

The weather has been a real drag for everybody, and I suppose the possibility of a nice snowstorm in the next couple of days isnt going to bode too well for the upcoming weekend. No more excuses however, we have to finish this fucking movie.

I am tired of sitting on all this great footage and I am sure everybody else is as anxious to see the finished product as we all are. Trust me, the wait will (possibly) be worth it, depending on your opinion of rediculous action/comedy movies with tons of vulgarity, tons of blood, and tons of naked chicks!

All of that is in the movie, minus the naked chicks. We dont know many chicks who will be in the movie in their clothes, nevermind out of them. HA!

Anyhow, be on the lookout this week for hopefully another update of something relevant.

Ah yah