…sucks. Let’s just be real about it. Scheduling is not fun. Trying to align events so that multiple people from all different lives can show up together for even a couple hours on the same day, same place…it’s madness.
Well madness is where we are with SHIFT. We have our major players set, now it’s a matter of getting them set in place and ready to go. So that’s what work this week will be, hitting the calendar and getting ducks lined up.
I have to do some location scouting for one scene. We’re dusting off Mabrey Studios (also known as the house we filmed Party Girl at) to use as the main house in SHIFT.
It’s a good cast, with good people, should be a good time.
Check it out, the season two finale of Party Girl: The Series!
It finds Party Girl and Darchart desperate to rescue Party Girl’s sister and up against new and returning foes who plan to make things difficult for them.
Well it was also exhausting as hell but well worth it as my bro, Jermaine, and I filmed footage for two teasers we are working on.
The first was Crapshoot.
On set at the Hickory Street Lounge for Crapshoot.
It’s the story of a woman who gets her hands on a strange device that revives her when she dies, each time with a random superhuman ability. She struggles for answers and normalcy while dodging crazed scientists, religious zealots and mercenaries bent on recovering the device from her.
Crapshoot is one of a handful of projects we will be submitting to script contests, for grants and every other thing under the sun that could possibly be a source of funding for us to make it happen.
As I have mentioned before, Jermaine and I have been friends since we were kids and we spent many days of our youth planning stories, creating characters for comics, movies and TV.
We go back like 8track and Crackerjacks
The web really wasn’t a thing back then, but if it was we would have been thinking of that too. Jermaine has helped me from afar with feedback and advice filming my web series like Party Girl under my Taurian Films banner. But he and I had yet to work on something HANDS ON together under the Jigsaw Entertainment banner.
Crapshoot was the first one. It was cool. While casting gave us some hiccups in the week leading up to filming, things got worked out eventually. We filmed a few scenes at the Hickory Street Lounge. Ken is a kick ass owner and we owe him a ton for letting us in the place for as long as we were there. From there we moved to Fort Worth to the home of Stan Baker, who plays Big Bear in Crapshoot. Stan’s an amazing guy and an asset to any shoot both in front of and behind the camera.
Jermaine, working and planning shots.
I have tried to work with others on shoots before in the capacity that Jermaine and I were for these shoots and it has had…mixed results I will admit. But not so with my brother and I, perhaps because we were more in line with each other as far as the vision of the project or perhaps I simply trusted him more than others with what I wrote. He was primary on the camera and I stepped in on the shoots when I needed to as did he. Often we dovetailed what the other was saying or going to say, so it was cool to see we were in such lock step with each other. Made for a smooth shoot and we needed that seeing how we went from early Saturday morning into the Sunday morning hours. We called in Tony Dotson, Cloyse Caruthers, Brandon Henry, Derrick Andrews and Kerry McCormick for on camera rolls in the teaser as well as Nathan Hartley to help us behind the scenes getting still photos, something we never do enough of on shoots.
At least I don’t.
Long hours, but a lot accomplished. Did we get everything, no. I have some small pick ups to obtain in the next week or so. But I will get those in and all will be good.
Filming a take from the HTB teaser.
Sunday brought us Annie Cruz and filming HTB (Hard Target B*tch). This was monumental as well. We were finally filming the project we have been talking about the longest. Annie was in town attending Exxxotica with her fiancé promoting their new business venture and while she was tied up Friday and Saturday, we marked off Sunday to make the shoot happen. I whipped up a small, short teaser to film with her. We had our first planned lead have a schedule conflict, so again I called on Derrick Andrews, who was available and great to work with.
Wrapped after a long but fun HTB teaser shoot.
We filmed in Recycled Books on the Denton Square. That store has an amazing look and feel to it. We filmed video for our next stab at fundraising for the HTB graphic novel. Possibly the film too, but we will see where things go, but the first priority is the graphic novel and the money it will take to make that happen.
Making Derrick a little messy for the next take.
After that we filmed the teaser footage. We got a lot in, and we have some small B-roll pickups to knock out in the next couple weeks. We were filming as the Sun dipped so time was short to get what we needed in the light we needed to have for it.
Jermaine and Annie talking through the next take.
Again, it was a good shoot to work on together and be in sync regarding what we set out of to accomplish. I think it was good for Annie too, as much as we have talked about it to finally be here in the moment, in the character…that will go a long way towards feeding that fire to get out in front of the people and show them that this is a great project to get behind. We tried and failed before as far as fundraising for the book, but having this experience and having her be the character, it will just make us all work that much hard when we launch that campaign again (because we will and soon) and try to get the project going.
It was a long brutal weekend yes, but very well worth it.
Don’t forget to check the Taurian Films productions…
Will still keep the planned Free Comic Book Day appearances in Denton and Dallas of course. We will still have the first episode drop May 4 for folks to see online. But coming out to the screening and you will see it a week earlier than the rest of the world and meet the cast and crew and other people in and out of the business. So why not come out?
We have a fun fiery filming night a few days ago. We filmed the very last shot of season two.
It was a cool evening. Mid 60’s I think. Cait (Rachel Buchanan/Party Girl) and Steve (2nd camera, AD) were grateful once the fire started.
We still have some nagging little pick ups that need to be done so they can be thrown into the other episodes, the majority of them have been cut and assembled into rough cuts to make sure they fit within the time parameters we are using for the second season.
In the first season things were admittedly across the board time wise with some episodes clocking 15 minutes and others 30+ minutes. Never again. We’re shooting for a cool 22:00 minutes including opening and closing credits. A more compact, complete story to be had and enjoyed and accessible for streaming sites and TV channels as well.
We’re set for a story in an online magazine, which is nice, anything to get and keep more eyeballs on the show, we’re glad to be a part of.
Otherwise we are just plugging away, cutting season two and trying to get word out there and get people to take notice of it and give it a shot.
2015 is of course off into high gear and we have made it a point to get moving on our projects. You get out of them what you put into them, right? As far as recognition, word of mouth…people have tons of other things going on so you have to really do your part to step out in front of them and show them that you have something and that your something is good.
Cait Pool, Party Girl for season two!!
It’s happened slowly but surely with Party Girl, Taurian Films chief export right now.
Season one is online.
Season two is nearly done. We of course wanted it to be completely done by now, but when you have as many actors as we have had for it and with the talent they possess, they get pulled into lots of projects, bigger projects and lots of times paying projects, so we have to wait our turn. It’s the way it is for the moment, until we crack that consistent funding code and we’re not scraping together all we can to pay for things related to the project.
Speaking of, I am looking at taking on a workshop gig teaching at risk youth multimedia and having them work towards generating their own short video project. What those projects will be, I don’t know, but I can’t wait to see what can be created when you take those minds and that energy and put it towards something positive. Planning on using that payday towards some post production work on Party Girl (mostly the sound) and hopefully raising some money for the rest.
Party Girl is seen on a handful of Roku channels, most recently Maiden Network and we are eyeing some international outlets as well.
The North Texas Comic Book Show is in a week in Dallas and our plan is to be there promoting the show as well. We’ve gotten good responses as the cons we have went to so far and looking to have things continue as we work to build up interest in the Party Girl season two when it drops May 4th at a special screening at the Texas Theater. Really looking forward to that as things will definitely go a lot smoother than the season one screening and subsequent release of the episodes online. Not afraid to say things could have gone better, but we take our lumps, we learn and we get better and we’re anxious to show how we have gotten better.
The first teaser for season one is set to debut on the Jan 29th installment of SCNS: Live with myself and Cait Pool in their studio talking about the show. Can’t wait for it as those guys are always very supportive of the show.
A past pin up sketch for HTB. Annie has lent her likeness to the main character for the book and plans to star in the film adaption.
The other big iron that has been thrown in the fire is HTB, Hard Target B*tch, a graphic novel/film project that has been in the works for a while now. It’s been gestating, getting tweaked here and there, movement hasn’t been supremely fast on it for the simple fact that we need money to go forth with it. The size and scope of both the graphic novel and the film are out of our financial wheelhouse at the moment and we’re hoping our fundraising efforts, both crowdfunding and seeking other investors, can yield success.
The crowdfunding part of things is online on Indiegogo at http://igg.me/at/HTBBook/x and we’re hoping fans of Mz. Cruz can help get the ball rolling on the support of the book. In our mad plan, the book gets made and its a made to order blue print of how the film can be done and will be done and hopefully people who would potentially help fund it, can see that and get behind it. Because it’s not moving forward without funding.
We shall see.
Coming down the pike as well this year a couple pilot pitches, the third and final season of Party Girl and…who knows what else.
It’s a weekly poll for Indie Series of the Week, also they have other categories..favorite actor of the week, favorite actress of the week, favorite couple/duo of the week.
The eligible episode for Party Girl is Chapter XIII.
Hit the site and vote. And I think for the write in categories if you watch the episode..Ada Perez..Den J Economou Jenni Tonge Mabrey Jacob Drum and Jeanne Lampley, Kyler Hodson, hell everyone shines.
Let’s see if we can’t bring some good praise to the show!
Vote, share and get others to vote! Deadline is Wednesday, 10/22!!
Thursday night myself and Party Girl cast members DJ Economou, Jenni Mabrey and the new Rachel Buchanan, Cait Pool, had a chat Thursday night with the hosts of SCNS: Live, a Dallas based web show that highlights entertainment and popculture and gives love to Dallas areas projects and people.
It was fun for all to have another avenue to chat about Party Girl and bring some attention to the show.
We’re hoping to connect with the SCNS crew again for some on set features in the future. Check out the link synced up to our appearance.
And then go and check the whole episode of course.
Well it’s a change you won’t see until season two actually.
Jeanne Lampley has resigned from the show as she has a summer acting gig planned in NYC. We wish her well in her future endeavors and thank her for her work on the show.
We have quintet of ladies who have put their hat in the ring to replace the outgoing Jeanne, and hope to have one in place by the end of weekend.
And of course fans of Jeanne still have nine more episodes of her as Party Girl.
I hope to have Chapter V delivered to the masses soon, which, yes I have said, but in truth we needed one nagging pick up scene that Jeanne had to shoot, which we did, so now we can finish it.
In the meantime, work has been continuing on season two.
We have shot some fun scenes with Giovannie Cruz, Richard Houghton, Ada Perez and Stan Baker, all reprising season one roles.
Between takes on set.
We got to a few scenes I was particularly excited to do in the form of the Congregation led by Logan Thomas as THE MINISTER and Victoria Sawyer and Sanjay Nilliyat as two of his disciples, SISTER PIKE and BROTHER DIESEL Brady Kickhaefer was great in his role of equal rights activist, MARK SPEARS, even though he is a dirty Kansas City Chiefs fan. And we got a smidgen from Oscar Seung as DANIEL CHU/CORONA of the IMMORTALS. Who you will see lots more of in the 9th episode of season two.
Getting our shoot on.
Dallas Comic-Con was last weekend and we had talked with Fabian Lopez about attending it to help promote Party Girl.
We didn’t end up going, but Fabian did in costume at least one day as CamoFly, his Party Girl character. And though he did not get as much love from some attendees, he still had a good time.
Fabian Lopez, from grunt to super villain in Party Girl.
We plan on being armed with flyers and such for upcoming conventions and we are making note of which ones we are going to attend. All comes down to the almighty dollar. Dollars are the only reason the revamped taurianfilms.com has not hit yet. But that’s the price you pay when you’re doing it yourself. But we will do whatever we need to bring the Party Girl story to the masses.
And of course, if you haven’t seen it, catch up with Chapter IV of Party Girl at:
Questions, feedback or anything else please send to taurianfilms@gmail.com. We love to hear from you all.
Monday marked a great occasion as we took another step toward bringing HTB to life.
Bj, Jermaine and Annie meeting summer 2012 in LA to talk all things HTB.
HTB is a screenplay written by me (Bj Lewis) a few years ago as part of the April Script Frenzy event. I had the character around for longer than that, and had started planning some aspects of it, but it was really Script Frenzy that gave me the kick in the pants to bang out a draft of the script.
Annie Cruz prepping for the kickstarter campaign video.
Over the years, I got my brother from another mother, Jermaine Spencer involved in it, fulfilling dreams and aspirations the two of us have had our entire lives. And then the heavens opened and we got Annie Cruz involved in the project and things could really roll.
Last year, as mentioned on this blog before, while on a trip to California for Power Morphicon, Steph, Jermaine and myself met up with Annie and outlined the project and our intentions and got her fully on board.
We nailed down a potential budget and decided to go the crowdfunding route to bring the character to life. As part of that endeavor we have been planning the campaign, the videos, the perks all that fun stuff.
Monday, Jermaine got Annie in front of the camera to record her portion of the pitch video as well as recording content for some other videos we will post as the campaign goes on.
I plan on a longer blog on this and detailing the creative history between Jermaine and myself, but I just wanted to mark this step in the process.
And of course even with the movement on HTB, my primary focus on my end of the world in Texas is Party Girl and continuing to do what I need to do to bring it to life. Footage and project files are in the hands of Jason Terry who will do the FX, so ideally that goes smoothly. We will be working closer together in future episodes to make sure what we shoot makes it nice and easy for him to do his FX work.
A still from episode 1.7 “For My Sister” featuring Party Girl’s battle with Delilah, a thief from Angel City.
The search for music continues and the search for a grasp of when to use music and when not to continues. I realize larger projects have people specifically to handle the musical end of things, but this is one of a million other things I am handling myself for this project. But when in doubt, do it yourself right?
Soon, very soon, it will be released and years of hardwork can be seen by the public.
Taurian Films 