Category Archives: General

Location, location, location. And costumes.

When I originally got the idea to do a medieval style fantasy project, one of the big hurdles was finding locations. There aren’t a lot of places that suggest “medieval” in a country that’s only been constructing building for a few hundred years. So I tried to write as much of the script in two medieval looking locations that we could actually find: a field and a forest.

This past Saturday, after screening my film 6 Nonsmokers at the Frederick Film Festival, producer Kelley Slagle and I headed up to the Frederick Watershed to do some scouting. The directions we were given told us to be on the look out for a cabin and a footbridge. Seeing what looked to be a footbridge, we parked at what looked to be a cabin, crossed the bridge, and started heading uphill.

We walked for a bit, through swarms of insects, stopping for a few pictures of a very nice creek. The road continued up a rather steep hill, which was more than we were willing to climb. So we decided to head back to the car and drive up. Unfortunately, we drove straight into some private residences and we couldn’t reach anyone on the phone for directions. We decided to cut our losses and head back.

On the drive back to downtown Frederick, however, Kelley suggested looking for an alternate entrance on the internet. We found one, but it was on the opposite side of the Watershed, several miles west of where we were supposed to go. We started in that direction, but talked ourselves out of it and decided to stay the course for downtown. However, I neglected to make the appropriate changes on the GPS, and we ended up going to the other side of the Watershed anyway.

Several miles of driving, a dubious consultation with a park ranger, some fiddling with Google Maps, and driving through a creek eventually got us to the spot we were looking for… a few hundred yards from where we initially gave up.

My location scout today in Woodbine, Maryland was substantially less problematic. And it’s now the frontrunner for our primary location. Plus I got to ride around on a Gator and see some horses.

In addition to locations, the quest for appropriate and affordable costumes continues. Also during our time in Frederick, Kelley and I paid a visit to star Bette Cassatt’s considerable costume collection. We were able to pick out several pieces that would be useful for the production.

But before production begins, we’ll be doing a photo shoot with the supremely talented Roy Cox in Baltimore. So our #1 costume objective has been to clothe our three actors who are taking part. Costume designer Eli Reeves is at work on tailoring several items. I have a box with a gambeson waiting for me at UPS. And our king’s crown has arrived from Morgana’s Collection in Quebec.

The producing never stops.

Next time (most likely), a recap from the studio of Roy Cox.

-Francis

Posted on: 26 Jun 2012
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Callbacks, Promos, and Fights
The last two weeks have been jam packed for the production. We held callbacks in the first week of June and finalized our cast. We saw some phenomenal talent and we’re very excited about the actors that we’ve assembled. Check them out on the cast page.

This past Friday, we got our first taste of what some of our characters will look like as Kelley Slagle and Bess Kaye suited up as an Ebon Spider and Daughter of Tairol respectively. We shot in Whitemarsh Park in Bowie and we learned some valuable lessons. For one thing, you should wear long pants when shooting in the woods. I decided that I’d wear shorts due to the heat and ended up with some nice thorn-induced lacerations. Fortunately I didn’t pick up any ticks or poison ivy. Lesson two is that plaster gauze is not an ideal mask making material. Kelley was a trooper as she choked on mouthful after mouthful or plaster flakes. By the end of our two hour shoot, the mask was disintegrating. Back to the drawing board on that one. But it did look pretty cool in the set pics.

Posted on: 13 Jun 2012
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Concept Art

Concept art of Ayleth and Tairol, the god of Ironleaf Forest.

Posted on: 29 May 2012
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