The Gifted Babies

I’ve went ahead and made some slight changes/improvements to the Milton Murder Mystery. Depending on your attention to detail, some are noticeable and some not. Here are the list of changes you can keep in mind while you watch the film again and relive some of those glorious moments:

• A whopping 12 seconds of additional ear gouging Music.
• Libavcodec’s Deinterlacer in Blend Mode was used to render the film footage  in Progressive Scan. Looks twice as good as Lord of the Rings except with only half the colour.
• New closing credits with never before seen outtakes to waste a another 4 minutes of your time ^_^ .
• Extended one shot by 2 seconds for personal reasons.
• Music is better synchronized to the visuals, it’s now the equivalent to making love.

Other news:

We’ve submitted Cork Christmas Carol and True Love Leaves No Traces to this years Cork Film Festival, still no word from whether or not they’ve been accepted.

Also we’ll be submitting several films to the Cinemagic Young Filmmakers Competition. Glad to see that our age and youthfulness hasn’t become something of a hindrance to us yet.

Finally there seems to be a fair few scripts in the works with a certain air of magic in them, starting off with Piratehelm who has recently finished writing Witches Brew . Cethan has finished the first drafts for two short films, one that is specifically written for the latest Mutant Space competition called Mutant Rooms where a film has to be shot entirely in one room, in this case it’s the kitchen. The other is called The Christmas Proposal , specifically written for the next Gifted Babies Christmas special. I’m currently working on A Kind of Magic ( the first non-Milton film I’ve written in a while ) and Who Watches the Witches ( Milton’s third outing ) which will hopefully be in production early next year.

… now online.

The trailer for the film formally titled as “A Maybe Mostly Magical Maybe Memorably Magnificent Mischievous Mister Milton M.* Martin Montgomery Murder Mystery of Multiple Mistakingly Misinterpreted Madnesses and Mighty Morphing Malevolent Misinformed Malcontents Mixture of Misogynistic Moles and Melinda “Mittens” Messenger’s Money Making Machine … In Multicultural Menopausal MultiVision. May Make Merry Mindful Malformed Mideastern Minors Monickered Morty Marginally Mistaken for Morose Masticating Monkeys. Monetary Margin: Minimum. Made for Mature Mexican Men. A Mindless Manus Movie. Memo: Minus Many Minutes, My Missing Marbles, Marcus Maybury, Marylin Manson, Miss Muffin ( Mother of Magician Marvin, Married to Muddy Myrtle [ Match Made in Midwest Monaghan ], Mistress of Magnets & Manager for Medieval Musicians; Missing in Malahide) and Midwestern Minestrone Marketing (Mmm Meaty Minestra..) Music: Macarena, Mozart and Mendel’s Melodious Mannequins. Memorial Maxim Magazine in Malls May of Mercantile Matters. “

*M. Means Marmalade

The premiere of our new production went down a treat on the night of the 15th. It was a close call as we were still converting the film to DVD format at 9.00 and the premiere was at 9.30 but somehow we made it thanks to James aka finitemonkeys phew! Hopefully it will be as well received here as it was initially. Sorry about the glitches in production after all it  had almost no budget 😛 (bar the catering) We will be attempting a new production soon enough!

The Undead  might be submitted to a few competitions in the meantime!

Enjoy!

Pirate

Production of  The Undead Wear Red has finally wrapped up since the 26th of July and is currently undergoing the post production process. The aimed release date is August 15th. Best of luck to James O’Sullivan who’s diligently editing the film as I type this blog post.

An additional 2 minute scene for Milton Murder Mystery has been shot by myself and Cethan on the 25th July, I finished the last few shots one my own today and oddly enough it was fun. I constructed a small set using a card board box from the coffee machine I bought recently, placed some props around it to dress it up a bit and then put the star of the show inside the box. This additional scene is really just an additional ending for the film rather than a complete reshoot, it ends at a slightly  different note than the initial ending but at least the film finishes with a one liner coined by the master of one liners, Mr Cethan Leahy. Also the footage does look noticeably different given that we’ve used a superior camera to shoot the scenes and also a tripod for 90% of the shots ( MMM footage was 97% handheld ). The aimed release date is the 19th of August, though in all likelihood it will be slightly later but before the end of August. That’s 14 months since we started shooting the film.

Update! I’m delaying the release of MMM to an unspecified date since it’s too soon after the premier of The Undead Wear Red .

Small set built for Milton Murder Mystery

Other news, Pre-Production has begun for the next Christmas Special! Cethan has a rough outline already written. It’s too early to tell if Cork will have another White Christmas 🙂 A Halloween special is also in the works, I’m writing this one, it’s currently titled WWW ( Who Watches the Witches ) while the story is relatively simple ( Trick or Treat session gone wrong ) it will probably require costumes, props, sets and CGI. It’s slightly more ambitious than Let The Sleeping Cat Lie so the likelihood of it getting made is fairly slim.

Been a long time, comrade. Anyway, not much news to report these past few weeks since most of us are either busy with exams, work and host of other misadventures. I’ve recently recieved an email from the Dingle Film Festival informing us that they haven’t selected True Love Leaves No Traces for the festival. This years festival is featuring Comedy as the main theme which is ironic given that I didn’t find the email funny at all.

The Undead Wore Red is still in production, editing has already started by the editing veteran James O’Sullivan who at the time of writing is parading through the streets of Cork declaring that today celebrates the 26th anniversary of the day he first displayed his naked bloody for the whole world to see what Corkonions are truly made of, placenta and all. Judging by the rumours it’s a proud tradition that he still practices every year. Happy Birthday James!

On other news I have gone back to editing Milton Murder Mystery Part 3 which is going well beyond the intended completion date of “End of  2008” , I’m not going to come up with any estimates about when I’m going to get the third part done exactly but I can guarantee it won’t be tomorrow that’s for sure! What I can come up with are excuses and lots of them, like right now, I should be editing but I can’t. Why? Because I have work tomorrow and don’t even have to time to write stuff on the internet.

The final bit of news concerns the recent competition put out by the lads at Mutant Shorts , basically the competition runs like any other 24 / 48 hour competition, you’re given a theme and have a limited amount of time to make a film. In this case, for about a week. In the end we got nothing filmed, reason? Well my excuse is that I have to work on weekdays and I don’t even have the time to write stuff on the internet. The theme this year was “in between spaces”. Cethan took a stab at writing something but didn’t get it done till Saturday morning which at that point we pretty much  gave up on the whole idea of making it. His script ended up being called the Missing Milton Mystery , which I will now proudly post up on this blog with Cethan’s permission.

Missing Milton Mystery –  The First Draft

Man walks into his apartment. holding a tin of cat food. He hears meowing.

Man: Ah Milton, I have that Cat food we like.

He looks around. He can’t see Milton but he can hear him. Concerned, he looks around, calling Milton’s name. He checks each room. he open drawers, boxes, the fridge the works. All the while, Milton is heard. Suddenly he stops the search.

Man: Milton, Milton, Milton…

No Response

Man: Marco?

Milton: Meow!

Using Marco Polo, Man locates the cat to the radiator. He sees a tail.

Man: Milton! How did you get stuck between that space?

Milton: Meow!

Man: I told you, to leave that mouse alone. He did nothing to you.

Milton: Meow.

Man:Right, I’ll get you out…

Man leaves and returns with cooking tongs. He tries to reach in and grab Milton. Gets stuck and slides in.

Man: Mm Cat got my Tongs.

Man grabs phone book.

Man: mm do I ring a plumber or a vet?

Neighbour knocks on door. She is holding a glass of water.

Neighbour: Sir, Do you see this glass?

Man: You glassed the sea?

Neighbour: Look Smartbuttom, there is a cat hair in it. Your cat hair.

Man: Milton is in the pipes!

Man runs to tap and turns it on. It is blocked suddenly clunks. Milton in the sink.

Milton: Meow

Man: Oh Milton, There is no sinking feeling when you are around.

Well we came back empty handed but none of us came down to Scbull just to see if we could win anything, it was just curiousity that played a vital part. We managed to attend two talks given by Kirstin and Jim Sheridan, as well as attend the showings of some of the submissions but not all.

We were present for the showing of Trippers Through Time in the Cinemobile, the audience was quite small so it got a few chuckles. In contrast, True Love Leaves No Traces was shown later on in the evening to a much larger viewing group and according to several audience members that I spoke with after the event, it was very well received, unfortunately none of us that came down were there as we were distracted with cooking dinner. At least the meal was nice.