Comic Book Resources

Comic Book Resources just ran a nice interview with me, at:

http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=19217

I apologize ahead of time for some of my rambling answers... ;)

Check it out.

K

Victims of Love

Here's a really, really cool new short film from Justin Lutsky, titled Victims of Love. Justin is a fantastic director, who also doubles as a green screen compositer (well, at least for The League he did) and webmaster. As payment, I contributed sound design to Victims.

Check it out!

http://www.epicimageentertainment.com/VictimsofLove/

Onwards and Upwards...

Well, as you can tell by taking one look at this page, I've never been that frequent a "blogger." I initially started this site as a way to show people test frames from the short film, as Dylan and I worked to finish editing.

But after I designed The League website in June, I asked my friend Justin Lutsky to code it for me, since I still have never gotten around to learning HTML. Of course, it became apparent rather quickly that it would be a pain in the ass for me to update the site (with me not having easy access to the Dreamweaver files, or knowing HTML). With the film going live, and interviews/message board posts starting to seep their way across the net, what better time to revisit the old blog for updates?

...

We're currently working on an outline/pitch for the world of The League, that could be done in several different mediums. Well, right now Alec's working on it... I'm updating this.

Oh, and if you haven't seen it yet, we just did a pretty extensive interview with Jennifer Contino at THE PULSE, regarding the short film.

Getting into Higgins & Siegel's League Film

Stay on the lookout for upcoming interviews with Comic Book Resources and RedEye...

Final Poster

Courtesy Eoin Colgan
www.eoinart.com

Final weekend

Our last two days of shooting were originally supposed to be our first. With location setbacks, we were forced to push the climactic fight to the end of the schedule. However, locations in February proved to be just as hard to find as they were in November. After a series of all-night scouting trips (Hi, Justin and Alec), we settled on a warehouse facility in Long Beach.

We lit the warehouse from outside (in the rain) with 9 Maxi Brutes up on Avenger stands. Jason Gray, Adam Hart, Alvin Zalamera and Steve Shriver made up the stunt team for the weekend, and pulled off some pretty fantastic stuff (little wire work anyone?).

It was an interesting experience, with the amount of visual effects plates that we needed to shoot. Mike Grier (Effects) was on set to supervise, as well as work with his brother Josh in managing our giant warehouse puddle. There is some nice ambience added to the scene courtesy of a super soaker. When you watch the scene, look for the water drip from the rafters. I swear it wasn’t inspired by a late night viewing of Alien the night before.

Chicago shoot

When Michael Nie (camera operator) came on board, one of the first things he brought up was the idea of shooting B roll in Chicago. We had considered this previously, but until that point it didn’t seem possible due to crew and equipment. I was willing to settle for still photographs, with a little digital wizardry from Mike Grier. However, when we started talking about the idea, we realized that Michael and I would both be in Chicago over Christmas, and we had a friend that might be able to get us a hook up on a camera package. Baring a complete blizzard, there was no reason we couldn’t go shoot establishing shots and inserts of the city.

Of course, when we decided this, it was still November, in California (which feels like September in the rest of the country). Fast forward three months, to one of the coldest winters I’ve ever seen.

Michael and I operated (by ourselves) with an Arri SR-3 package for about two days, in 10 degree weather. We caught two sunrises (5:30am) and two sunsets, since on paper it had sounded so cool for our daytime scenes to take place in the “early morning.”

The real break came when we were able to talk our way up to the 45^th floor of the Hancock building in order to grab some really fantastic shots of the Palmolive building.

It’s funny—when I watch a cut of the film, I forget how much went into getting these shots. All I see is a “larger” movie

Clothes Make the Man

Early last summer, just as we were finishing up the script, I started looking for a costume designer. Of course, with the subject matter we're dealing with, there's only one kind of artist I was looking at-- someone who did comics. Cue Eric Wight (www.ericwight.com).

I remember first seeing Eric Wight's art the summer before, when he did some really cool Mike Sekowsky-esque pages for Meltzer's Justice League #0. After that, there was the Mon-el story for the Action Comics Annual, and then at one point I stumbled across The Escapist. I was pretty much sold even before talking to him. Eric designed four of our characters-- Wraith, The Grey Raven, Helio and The Dart. When Helio's name changed to Sparrow, we did some alterations to the design (including colors and the logo), and eventually I decided I liked The Dart's costume so much that we would instead use it for Blaze (sans the helmet).

But anyway, here are Eric's original designs. With a movie that is supposed to take place in 1947 and then 1963, it was obviously important to have that golden and silver age feel to the suits.