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Our #wcw Lilith Mistress of Mayhem, the host of our film The Bunnyman The Sleepy Ridge Murders! Get your  Bunnyman DVD here: http://amzn.com/B003NE666M

Fun With Liquid Rubber

Debra Sussman (Lynn Hendricks) came out to the DaJa Vu Films office space today so that we could do a torso casting of her for when her character gets killed in The Bunnyman. Debbie is currently involved in a big project which we are unable to talk about. I think she's working for the CIA or something, but she swore us to secrecy so we can't say a word. Anyway, she called me this weekend because she was telling her make up guy on the huge project that we were doing a casting of her and he didn't want to have to work on her if her skin was all messed up, even though the appliances he's put on her have caused Debbie to break out in blisters. Oh, what little faith she has in us. But I assured her that we're not using any cheap stuff. We're using a liquid rubber (we did a test of my arm using alginate, which is what most make up books say to use, but trust us, save your money, cause alginate sucks ass) that's made by the same company that produces the material the new bat suit for Batman Begins was made out of.

We made sure to feed her first. Generally, our rule is not to feed our actors. Food costs money and we have better things to spend our money on than something you basically only rent anyway. But when you're going to have actors in an uncomfortable position for four to five hours, its best to feed them so they don't get cranky.
After lunch, I put on Wild Hogs so Debbie would have something to watch so she wouldn't just be standing there for hours doing nothing. Jason and I set to work.

Things didn't go exactly as planned. We had latex gloves to put on the release cream, that worked out just fine. It was the liquid rubber that proved to be the problem. No where did it say that you need to use a thinner for the first coat except on the instructional DVD that we had to buy. We thought we could do the casting without it. We thought wrong. The liquid rubber began to dry almost as soon as Jason could mix it and it clumped up on the bristles of the paint brushes we were using. Same thing for the latex gloves, so we asked Debbie if it was okay if we did it without the gloves. Trooper that she is, Debbie said, "Go for it." So we stripped off the gloves and got down and dirty. Reason number one why it's a good idea to use friends as guinea pigs instead of complete strangers. Friends are less likely to slap you when you are "forced" to grope and man handle them.

We put on two coats of the liquid rubber and filled in the gaps. Wild Hogs had ended so I put on Heartbreakers and we started putting on the plaster strips. These are purchased in rolls of gauze with dried plaster, which are cut into the desired lengths. When cut, the strips are dipped in warm water and applied. They form a support and shell for the mold. We had to wait for everything to dry before we could go any further, so we took a break and enjoyed the movie. Once the mold and plaster were dry, we removed the shell. Then Jason had to cut a strip down the back of the mold so it could be removed.

I had put some of the rubber below where we'd put the release cream, so Jason had to cut some of the rubber from Debbie's skin, accidentally leaving a gash (and they say I'm clumsy). Which is reason number two why it's a good idea to use friends as guinea pigs instead of complete strangers. Friends are much less likely to sue when injured.

And we now have a perfect casting of Debbie's torso, replicas of which will soon be available on our website. Hey, we've got to finance this movie somehow, right?  

Editor Note: The last paragraph is an example of David's poor sense of humor. Replicas of the torso will not be sold on our website. 

The Bunnyman Production Day 3: I Shot The Sheriff

We had David Scott and Scotty Schultz, as well as Trent Stover and Derek DuQuesne out for filming today. It was raining this morning and David drove his bike, so he got a little soaked on his way over.

We started out with David, Derek and Scotty. Since we planned on shooting the sheriff station scenes in sequence, we didn't have Trent come in until later.

We began with Scene 42:

INT. SHERIFF'S STATION - DAY

From a PHANTOM POV we enter the Sheriff's Station and slowly approach the desk where DEPUTY CORMAN sits, his face buried in a newspaper. He takes a sip from his coffee cup. As he sets the cup back on the desk, the paper lowers and he sees.. To find out how the scene ends, you'll just have to wait to see the movie.

When Trent arrived we paused to shoot all of the Sheriff Stephens bits and let David have a break, sending him to the communal "trailer" while we worked with Trent. Once we got that stuff done, we called David back over so we could do the fight scene between Hooper and Stephens. It didn't work out quite the way I wanted, but we got some really cool angles.

When we finished with Stephens' scenes, we let Trent go and finished Hooper's scenes and sent David Scott home. Then we worked on some scenes with Corman and Loomis that the other actors aren't in and worked on some recently added some mostly improvised scenes between Loomis and Corman so that we can have something to fill in any gaps that may arise in editing.

It was a seven hour day, but we completed every one of the sheriff's station sequences. Which isn't bad considering it would have taken a studio weeks to do what we did in only seven hours. Bully for us!

Scotty sleeping on the job.

The Bunnyman Production Day 5 Long Day's Journey Into Night

We had three different sequences scheduled for today and got all of them completed.

The day began around 8:30am when David Nevill showed up. We let him in the office to get settled while we waited for the actor playing Tex to arrive, then we headed down to the grove to film.

We completed all filming for David Nevill's character, which turned out to be some of the funniest bits in the entire film. The dude is hilarious even when he's not saying a word.

After sending David off, Jason and I grabbed a bite to eat and watched Jack Frost 2. We watched the first one, Jack Frost (not to be confused with the Michael Keaton flick) a few days ago. Not a great flick, but not a bad one either. It had Shannon Elizabeth in it, so it couldn't have been all bad, right? But the sequel sucked.

It had just ended when Debra Sussman arrived.We chatted for a bit while Jason got some stuff ready, then went over and filmed some of her scenes. 

Then we had some spaghetti while waiting for The Bunnyman, Kat and Gordon. Kat and Gordon were running late so we had James come on down and film his stuff with Debra. Finally Kat and Gordon arrived so we sent Debra home, filmed some stuff with James, then got down to the nitty gritty of filming our first nude scene. 

We finished filming everything around 11:30pm and didn't get everything packed up until around midnight.