Lady X: Episode 19 released!
 

Lady X grabs a chance to visit an old friend and perhaps glimpse into immortality. Is it real, or the insane fantasies of a burned out scientist? At least she'll be able to take it easy in the quaint crossroads of America, land of corn, soybeans, and ultralight aircraft.


Watch Episode 19 now! Go to http://www.ladyxfilms.com and click the "Current Episode" link.

The Lady X Crew

================
Episode 19 Details:

Directed by: John M. Heskett
Produced by: John M. Heskett
Director of Photography: John M. Heskett
Camera: John M. Heskett and Chris O'Neal
Written by: Stephen Dean Adams & John M. Heskett

Audio Engineer: Stephen Dean Adams

Principal Cast: Genelle Johns (Lady X); Richard Johns (Aaron Walker); Darrick Burch (Ian Paine); Stephen Dean Adams (Doctor Random Synapses); Darrick Burch (Bad Guy 1); Derrin Dicus (Bad Guy 2); Kevin Heskett (Bad Guy 3); Jason McHarque (Bad Guy 4)

Music: Composed and performed by Stephen Dean Adams and Bazooka X

Hello John,

Funny odd movie I must say. It shows (and proved when you look at the behind the scenes-reel, BTW great dancing professor you have!) that you guys had a great time making this LX episode. Over the top acting and action fits your approach. Great to see a plane used, it gives it a big movie feeling, nice shots from the cockpit. Some of the action scenes have some continuity errors, but who cares...! I wish I could follow all the conversations better, it must be the accent or my pc-speakers that prevent me from doing that. Good music that suited the movie.
Nice work!

Peter

Thanks Peter,

On the Blooper reel site - the QuickTime is not streaming, but is downloading before playing. It may look like it is doing nothing, but in reality is it downloading. I think it is worth the wait just to check out the trained bear/professor.

The blooper reel is located at:
http://www.media4ministry.com/LadyX19/bloopers.html

This was a first endeavor for us alllllll. - Accent, what accent?
And we had great fun doing it. We hope this is a fun and entertaining episode for everyone.


John

Hi John,

Your reel is streaming on my computer, using Netscape 7. But at the moment I'm checking it via Internet Explorer and so far I can see that browser first wants to download the complete movie, before it wants to play. Strange. I've had the same with my own episode 16 teaser trailer.
I've found out that it's a matter of extending the URL to the .MOV file to make it streaming under Internet Explorer.

Regards,
Peter

Nice job, John. You're the first to use so many explosions. Mind taking us through the steps on how you did it, who did it, and the cost?

Also, the overhead aerial shot that includes the ultra-light...was that taken from another ultra-light...or a plane or chopper?

John, .. wow. That ultra light. Geez.

What next for Lady X? Space travel?

Peter I'm not sure how to extend the url out to the mov. I think I have already done that. If anyone has trouble with the blooper reel not streaming please let me know and we will try to figure it out. Or if you know how I can fix the problem.

Thanks Keith, that was the first time our Lady X had flown. She really enjoyed the flight and did very well at it. It was a two seater used for flight instruction. The instructor was in the rear seat shooting the video. The tricky stuff was done by a pilot.

I did a little bartering with a pyrotechnic company for the pyro work. I will shoot their synchronized Christmas display in exchange.
It did not turn out exactly the way we wanted, but it worked. If I were to do it again it would be out more into the road. Also we were to have had a fireball at the end which would have obscured the jeep. It got forgotten by the pyro guy. We had 16 bullet hits and one blast to the mailbox. Disclaimer - no mail was harmed in the production of this movie.

The overhead shot of the ultra light was from another ultra light flying cap. It barely turned out but I wanted it so bad I used what footage we did get.

John

Hi John,

I'm not a QT expert, but hopefully this will help:

The movie at
http://home.tiscali.nl/pesie/video/zappp-med.mov
won't come streaming into Internet Explorer, using just a normal weblink to the Web-address as mentioned above.

However, if you use the following link and insert it in a webpage, then it will play like streaming video in Internet Explorer:
<EMBED ID="QuickTime1" SRC="http://home.tiscali.nl/pesie/video/zappp-med.mov" BORDER=0 HEIGHT=255 WIDTH=320 ALT="" PLUGINSPAGE="http://quicktime.apple.com" CACHE=TRUE CONTROLLER=TRUE VOLUME=256 AUTOPLAY=TRUE LOOP=FALSE NOFINSIDE="~! ~!" >

I'm not really sure which part does the trick, but it works for me.

Peter

Thanks Peter I think that did it, but I will need to do some more testing on another computer.

John

It was a fun episode to watch. The dialog was a little tough to understand in a few places.

Loved the way the pyro worked shooting up the road. Ultralight shots were great !

Liked the ultralight stuff, good machinegun smoke effects.

One question, why does the mailbox blow up before the puff of gunfire happens? Am I interpreting it wrong?


Also, the diaolgue wasn't synched to the video when I watched it. Is the video like that for everyone, or did I have a moose stepping on my high speed cable line again?

<<<-- Originally posted by Keith Loh : John, .. wow. That ultra light. Geez.

What next for Lady X? Space travel? -->>>

Well, if you let your imagination play a bit, you might see another fine way of air travel in episode 21...

Dylan,
The machinegun was a steel pipe with fireworks strobes (6 or 8) packed into the end which was drilled to resemble a flash suppressor and capped. We first used aluminum, but it got so hot you could see through it then the end just fell off! We were going to have one camera with a close-up and the other a medium shot. The close-up did not work and so you are not able to see the flashing star pattern even though it is there. Real Guns from real aircraft look more like what we ended up with anyway.

Mix one part Hautian accent which muddies the annunciation a bit with one part voice over and some parts are a little off. I'm hoping it is the last scene you are talking about. But compression and mr. moose may have accentuated the problem.

And yes, the gun did go off after the mailbox hit. And yet at the same time more than one gun was firing, so we left it the was it was. It was a one-take kind of thing, but we could have added it with After Effects.

Each scene was shot on different days and one scene on two different days. If you noticed we have our share of scenes and this took a toll on the talent. We learned a lot shooting this short. There is quite a bit we would do differently on the next one. Did I say, we learned a lot shooting this short. We are hooked and will certainly make more shorts in the future.

The audio tech has a studio and uses ProTools along with a Mac. He has something which plays different instruments and sounds then he sets tempo, does other kinds of magic and layers.

I've been waiting for questions about the Glock in the lab scene. As much detail as Dylan picked up I'm surprised he didn't catch something going on there.

Nice fun episode John! I was just waiting for the "Dukes of Hazard" theme song to break out when that Jeep pulled onto the road.

As for the Glock glitch at in the lab, you're talking about how he cocks the gun after holding up 'Dr Random Synapsis' for a bit. My friends back home in Alaska would have been all over you for that but it is the great cliche to cock a gun right before you use it, whether you just did a minute earlier or not exists in all the hollywood action movies so I suppose you could be forgiven!

Question on the VreezeCAM: How do you like that thing? I'd never heard of it before and it seemed to work pretty good, but a bit of side to side jitters as you moved. I've been working on a homebuilt stabilizer useing plans from www.codydeegan.com and would like to hear what your experience with that device was.

Cheers,
Huey

On the VreezeCAM, Jack Tankard makes a great product. It is only hand held and not a vest mount. He has been making aircraft camera mounts for years. When on a job in a remote area he needed something like this and made a simple stabilizer. After that he made himself a nicer one. These are functional, and well made by someone who understand what they are doing. He only makes a few my hand and has not gone mass market. Check out his footage at his site http://www.vreezecam.com/video.html it is amazing. The side-to-side motion is me needing more practice and a cross wind outdoors. I still have not found a way to use the thing well in wind.

On the glock, He cycled the slide because he had just taken it from the Doctor and didn't know if it was loaded. I will give you a hint. Go back and listen when he cycles the slide.


I'm glad it came across as a fun episode. I knew we didn't have the polish and had to come up with content. Thanks,


John

These stabilizers sure take a bit of work to try and figure out! I've been practicing with mine and it's a pain trying to get it all balanced right and to move properly to keep it smooth. You should check out the site www.homebuiltstabilizers.com they have a forum with good information and you could ask them for tips on using it in the wind (it's run by Charles King who frequents these boards).

As for the Glock, the scientist would have know that the gun wasn't loaded for the ten seconds before the guy cycles it, but I guess he was just a scientist so he probably couldn't have wrestled it away. But then again maybe it was and the other fella was just making sure it was loaded.

Cheers,
Huey

Oh, the Glock 27 was loaded all right. It was the agent who didn't know if it was loaded or not. Couldn't you tell? All the sounds in that sequence are natural from the scene. You too should be able to tell. I thought surely someone would bring it up.

Well, nobody picked up on it. When Agent Aaron cycled the slide on the Glock a bullet came out and landed on the table. I had wanted to catch it in the frame, but the best take did not show the bullet eject.