Earlier in November I got to live out a career-long dream:
Fight with my professional hero, John Soares.
It required two 16 hour-long bus rides, and a lot of coffee, but it was definitely one of the most fulfilling experiences of said career so far. There’s a lot going into this story that I do want to share. But if you can’t get to the end, let me just say I am incredibly grateful to John for giving me this opportunity, to Cassie for being welcoming and fun to work with (and for her BAD ASS camera work!), and their friend John Wall who helped out on the set and kept us going with BTS videos and footage when it started to get cold.
Not to mention every other single person along the way these last ten years who helped make this possible. I hope I manage to mention you in this post. Because this marks something special: This is the final blog post for Strike a Pose!!! Films.com, and if you are so inclined, please feel free to read it.
I know it’s been a while since I posted, but I recently just completed a video featuring LIVE ACTION THEATRE and the DC STUNT COALITION for the upcoming “Continuing Adventures of John Blade: Super Spy” fringe festival fight play!
….That was a mouthful!
Check out the video and the wonderful cast and crew at their Kickstarter Page! Give them a hand – this is going to be one awesome show!
Below is the video, and here’s a description of the show:
“It’s business as usual for John Blade, Super Spy, when Professor Tantamount threatens the world with yet another doomsday device.”
Thanks to the DCSC and LIVE ACTION THEATRE for making this awesome video a reality!
In a collaboration with Matthew Merback (the man who would be Dresden), some excellent film makers in the Colorado region, and with permission from Jim Butcher himself, I present you, our teaser for COLD DAYS – A Novel of the Dresden Files by Jim Butcher.
Be sure to check it out on YouTube and read the description for all your cast and credit information! Links to the book and more can be found there.
In the meantime, some back story:
I’ve been reading The Dresden Files since my freshman year at college. The series of novels quickly grew into my favorite, with riveting characters and incredible adventures, all told from the film-noir styled first person perspective of Chicago’s craziest urban Wizard, Harry Dresden.
Since then, I’ve been dying to create something based on it in the film medium, and through my conversations and lots of pushing by my long-distance pal, Matthew Merback (Dresden), we managed to do a cross-country collab that, hopefully, will give us the opportunity to create more like this in the future!
With that in mind, creating this video was no easy task! Though it was shot on an iPhone 4S (not ideal) and edited in Sony Vegas, using a graphic imported from Maya (a program I’ve NEVER used, again, not ideal!), and co-directed by myself, from across the country, with only a prototype pre-viz to work off of (you can check that out exclusively here!) , it seemed doomed from the start.
But Matthew pushed me, we stuck through it, and well, I can’t say I’m unhappy with the final product. How could I be unhappy with it, when the author himself has had some positive things to say? I can’t be terribly specific, but I will use one word the author sent our way:
Last Saturday the DC Stunt Coalition, some friends, and myself went out to see “The Expendables 2”, starring Sylvester Stallone, Jason Statham, (not) Jet Li, Jean Claude Vann Damme, Scott Adkins, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Bruce Willis. Dolph Lundgren provided comic relief, and Terry Crews and Randy Coutoure did the only real awesome stuff. PLUS! Chuck Norris solidifies his legend once and for all.
Over the last 3 months I have been working intensely with rising short film and web content producersApsis Motion Pictures. In the past, we had done some pretty nifty stuff- from a hilarious fight scene in The Bridge 3, to a weirdly comic split personality monologue by me in Strike a Post. Recently, The Reclaimation of Louis Ledbetter hit the internet to much approval, but little did most people know we had another project up our sleeves, going through post and priming for release. So now, on this July 4th of 2012, we’d like to present you with our sci-fi western epic action short, “The Frontiersman”-Â short film about liberty, self reliance, and killing bandits!
This was my first leading action hero role in a short film. Typically I play the villain or some creepy supporting guy. Those are always fun, but to put myself to the test (and in those boots!) was really a great step up for me personally. While technically I am an anti-hero and do have a very dark beat, it’s still a big first for me, and has been something I’ve been hoping to do since I started acting and training in martial arts and fights 3 years ago. Theodorus Collins was a great character to play around in, and I look forward to doing more with APSIS.
Many thanks go out to the wonderful cast: Vicki Parks, Abigail from Ninjas Vs. Monsters, was great to share on-screen chemistry with and helped me prep my character. Her performance was fantastic and really brought something new into the mix of our typically masculine driven projects. Can’t wait to get her in front as an action star herself.
I also was responsible for the action and fight choreography, as well as stunt coordination. Thankfully I managed to wrangle the best cast I could ask for! HUGE thanks to the stunt team we assembled. As you can tell by Louis Ledbetter, we’ve been fortunate to keep many of these guys around- and we hope to present you with more action sequences (and heck– dramatic ones!) featuring the amazing talents of these guys:
Each of them provided something unique to the video, whether it was a dynamic look, an incredible stunt flip, a great presence during a fight sequence, or some unexpected acting chops that really added flavor to the scene. If it wasn’t for these guys, this movie wouldn’t have worked and I KNOW they made me look good! Wrapped in fantastic costume design by Denise Loukus of Apsis Motion Pictures Costuming, we had a full house of bandits that rivaled any of the best episodes of Firefly or the craziest action moments of the video game, Borderlands.
Speaking of great looks- the prop and weapon design by Tyr Rollins was unique and awesome! Custom guns for a fantastic group of characters thanks to our awesome producer!
And as always Joel Loukus, a brilliant director and VFX artist, created such a wonderful rhythm in post that you never feel bored! (I hope!)
So thanks for all the brilliant work from the cast and crew! Be sure to keep an eye out for our next video: A huuuuuge samurai swordfight set in the Star Wars universe!
