Rich Knight & Lisa Hammer
Guests: Lisa Hammer & Rich Knight
Project: Pox (Horror)
Separate Topic: Horror effects make-up
Tonight’s show was interesting indeed. First we had writer director Lisa Hammer, who views her work as being kind of family oriented/ cheery fairy tale like. I can’t seem to recall ever seeing a Disney Film where heads are being chopped off and testicles are being held up in the air while not attached to any other body part, but hey, maybe that’s me. Lisa was a great guest. One filmmaking point she hit on was what a great tool improvisation is and how actors can bring a lot of good stuff to a role that is not written in the script. While I agree with this, and personally love improvisation, it’s important to keep in mind the importance of “making your days”. In other words, if you have to shoot five pages in a day in order to get the movie shot in the amount of days you have budgeted for a location, for actors, for crew, food etc., you might not have a ton of time to improv. on set. Lisa shot her film over five years. Her specific situation afforded her the time to improv. If you’re a filmmaker or future filmmaker reading this blog the time to improv. might be in rehearsal. Flush it out in rehearsal and make your days! Even if you think you have extra time in a given day, bank it and get ahead of schedule. You might need that time later if something goes wrong (like weather, equipment failure, member of crew not showing up, any one of a million things). For more information on what Lisa is up to go to www.Lisahammer.com.
My second guest was Rich Knight. Rich is a horror and special effects guy. (Also an actor). He demonstrated a DECAPITATION on tonight’s show and talked through some clips of his work explaining his work. He also recommended some authors of books for those interested in getting into what he does and gave out his secret recipe for making blood. You can keep up with one Rich here: http://www.myspace.com/rich_knight
Thanks for tuning in!
Jeff Schubert
www.myspace.com/powerofnow