TWISTED SHORTS

From the mind of Scott Brown, this one came quickly and was a breeze to shoot compared to some of our other projects. While not as complex as "Hannibal's Lecture", this one still required some crafty thinking to get rolling . . . heh . . . a little ball humor there.

Bringing Spike to Life

Animating volleyball star Spike Orbison was done using low tech methods -- namely, mono-filament fishing line and the right lighting. Several angles were shot with the ball being moved puppeteer-style and then the clips edited over the voice-over which had been recorded separately.

Giving Spike a Hand

In Cast Away, 'Wilson', Tom Hanks spherical pal, is marked with blood when Tom's character grabs the ball and hurls it in disgust after cutting open his hand. The result is a hand-shaped stain that gives the inanimate ball a face, so to speak. Well, we'd love to tell you that we bloodied our volleyball during an elaborate bloodletting ritual in which we all cut our hands open, bled on our computers and dripped our plasma over the ball to get the crimson stain while dancing and chanting a rhytmic "let this website make us a million bucks" kind of mantra. Dammit, that would have been cool, but we used acrylic paint.

A bit of twisted trivia . . . whose hand was used as the template on our volleyball?

Hmm . . . send your e-mail queries and maybe we'll reward the first right answer. And maybe we won't, but isn't playing half the fun?

Frostbite for Our Art

Cast-A-Ball shot in January and one of the scenes conceived called for an actor to cross the frame shoeless and in shorts as he plays Tom Hanks on the island set of Cast Away. The result is a hilarious (well, we think so) scene in which Spike goes off on his high-powered co-star and berates him with obscenities as the human actor leaves the frame. So, what's the problem? Well, we did mention it was January, right? January is cold. And when you're on the beach, it's really cold. So, what did we do? Ha, get someone else to freeze their ass off, of course! No, really, we owe Dusty Brown, brother of our own Scott Brown, a big one for performing several shivering takes of the camera cross while sub-freezing shore winds blew on us all.

Ahh, Hannibal…what a long, hard road it has been in the creation of one of our premiere shorts. This is a favorite of all of us here at TwistedShorts. The idea: What if Hannibal Lecktor (post Silence of the Lambs and Hannibal) wanted to reintegrate into society? What if he and gal-pal Clarice Starling went to a job finder agency to get him a job? Heh…heh…that’s what we said. The possibilities are numerous and we enjoyed playing with them.

The Casting

When we decided to lampoon one of the previous decade’s best and most award-winning films, we knew we had to get one thing right: who was to play Hannibal? Our first choice was actor and professor of theater (or theatre for you artsy fartsies) Bentley Anderson. Bentley, as far as we are concerned, nailed Hannibal. Well, he didn’t actually ‘nail’ him, that would have been a very different short film and you’d need to be 21 or older to view it. Anyway, one definite ingredient of what makes Hannibal’s Lecture so good was the great performance Bentley gave us, and for that… we thank him. We have to thank him -- we didn’t pay him.

Another spectacular performance is the hilarious portrayal of Conchita Meltzer given us by Nancy Bloom. Nancy is an actress with years of stage experience and she turned out to be the perfect choice for the chain-smoking job councilor. Not to mention the awesome array of wild animal and pattern print blouses that Nancy brought to the shoot and the fully-loaded, authentically nasty ashtray full of cigarette butts. That’s a method actor, folks.

Hey, give him a hand!

The first job that Hannibal goes after is a speaking gig in which he will deliver a lecture on how to lower your monthly grocery bill. Bet you didn’t know that the ol’ cannibal was such a frugal domestic cat! So, Hannibal goes to the lecture hall and, since he is a multiple murderer after all, he is accompanied by Clarice as well as a guard. As he begins to speak, the crowd has trouble hearing him, so the guard reaches over and helpfully moves the mic closer to Hannibal’s mouth. Whoops! Big mistake!

For the shooting of the bitten-off hand, the Twisted crew turned to friend and fellow filmmaker/writer/special effects wiz, Robert Pitman. Robert created a latex-covered fake arm nub that fit over actor John Pycior’s hand for the money shot. Then, rubber tubing was run up through the arm to the hole at the end of the wrist where the hand is missing. With lots of plastic on the floor of the lecture hall, we rolled film and John did his awesome scream of anguish as Robert pumped blood (dishwashing soap and food coloring) up the tube and out the severed arm. We were going for more splatter factor but liked what we got and looking back, the lecture hall folks are probably very pleased we didn’t do a Shining-style bloodbath.

The Stunt Pucks - Or-- Do we really want to test how good that mask is by shooting a hockey puck at the actor’s face?

For the shooting of the hockey scene, we had scripted a bit where Hannibal snatches a fast-flying hockey puck out of the air with his teeth and takes a chuck out of it before it hits the ground. You don’t see that in the NHL!

Okay, so great on paper, but how do we shoot it? Well, did we mention we are geniuses? In addition to the “principal” puck, we used three stunt pucks to get the shot. First, Scott fashioned a fake puck out of black modeling clay and before it hardened too much…yes, folks, you guessed it…he took a big bite out of it. He’s still picking black clay out of his incisors. Now, that’s commitment! Or, maybe we have no budget and couldn’t pay some schmo to bite the puck for us. Anyway, the bitten puck looked great. Along with that stunt puck, we used a softer, rubberized puck for the actual shot of the hockey player swinging away at Hannibal in front of the goal. If you look closely, you’ll see there is a cut between the player’s back swing and the puck hitting the goal. We actually tossed the soft puck so as not to render Bentley a eunuch and Marc Harlan, who played the hockey shooter, just completed his swing motion for the cut-to shot.

Okay…so what about that shot of the puck flying at Hannibal’s face? Well, first we shot the background plate of a fast push-in to close up on Hannibal using a Glide Cam stabilizing rig. Next, in his very cluttered and filmmaking-dominated garage, Kimball cut a third stunt puck from wood, shaped it and painted it black. With a whole drilled in the bottom of it, the puck was placed on a spindle and the spindle wound with cord. Then, shooting in front of a blue screen, the cord was pulled so the puck spun in the lower portion of the frame while it sat otherwise stationary.

Whew….see how much love we put into our work? Next, Kimball used Adobe Premiere to composite the background plate of the push in on Hannibal in front of the goal and the spinning puck layered on top. With a few adjustments and a motion filter applied to the puck to give it some lateral movement, the shot is complete. Hey, Hannibal, look out for that puck!

And just where do we find a church to let us make a mockery of Holy Communion?

The finale of “Hannibal’s Lecture” has Hannibal answering his ‘calling.’ He takes a job as priest and in the final scene presides over what we joke is modern day cannibalism sanctioned by the church. We know, we know. How could we? Hey, we’re religious, but we’re also Twisted!

So, problem…how do you get a church to not only let you film in their sanctuary but allow you to degrade one of their holiest rituals? We didn’t. Blue screen to the rescue, once again.

Kimball scouted and found a beautiful church with the right look and style and shot several background plates to use for the scene. Each plate had to be framed and lined up just as the front plate with the actors would be so the shots could be married and the geometry of the shot would look right. Next, the actors were filmed saying their lines in front of the blue screen. Lighting had to be matched so that the background and foreground shots would look right together. Then, the shots were composites in the computer and after adding some nice warm glow filters and some cool reverb to the voices, we had our church scenes.

One of our first pieces and a take off on those commercials in which idyllic scenes of green meadows and blue skies are shown while a narrator reads all of the horrific side-effects you could experience by using their product.

The Flow

Kimball shot this one with several different lenses and used some soft filters and slow-mo in post-production to get that "Wow, I'm dreaming . . . no, wait, I'm on 'ludes" kind of look. Just about every shot comes from a family farm which we have access to and we were pleased with the selection of visuals we were able to choose from.

The Sheep and the Lonely Man Who Would Have One

Well, since Nadadol was shot on a farm, we had access to something that should never be used in conjunction with creative, deprived individuals who have dark tendencies: Farm animals.

As we captured several beautiful, wholesome shots of flowers and children running through meadows, Gary decided we should get a bit Twisted. Well, come on -- we are Twisted! So, as you watch Nadadol, you should know the subtext of a farmer stalking one of his prize sheep for a little afternoon delight was not part of the original plan. (But, damn, it's funny!)

Compositing 101

Nadadol was our first use of a blue screen within a project.

Again, wanting to duplicate the look of those pharmaceutical ads, we wanted to have Scott superimposed over the soft scenes as he said his lines in doctor's guise. Thanks to Robert Pitman for getting us access to a very nice blue screen at a local TV station. Several takes were filmed with Scott framed in various positions and then the background shots were cut together with Scott imposed over top. Hey, this filmmaking stuff is fun!