name for a movie. Except the BackBlog part. You need a character
name in there, like... "If you see only one movie this year, see "Bill
the Coroner: a law-breaking love story." Actually that sounds like an
incredibly sick movie.
I would be lying if I said that I didn't we haven't done slightly
crazy things to accomplish this film. But we have, and luckily for
you, we'll document its truth here. Even if we have to also put
forward a disclaimer that *NONE OF THIS IS REAL: IT IS ALL FABRICATED
AND POSED FOR THE PURPOSES OF ENTERTAINMENT*
Now that that's out of the way (curiously ambiguous since it could
apply either to the events in the film or the methods by which we
accomplished the actual film... Hooray for legalities or something.
But then, what's a good movie if it doesn't involve a few legal
ramifications?), its time to backblog! We need to catch up on things
that we've done.
By far the most entertaining is the abandoned house. But I'm going to
let Amanda, Will, Ryan, and James (AHEM!!! Get off your duffs, or
rather get back on them and write a damn blog entry for this
production diary so it isn't all my ranting and raving going on here
alone!!!) tell you in their own words about their excitement with
breaking and entering.
I will give you the details (maybe boring details?) of searching
endlessly for props and room decor, and for the creation of specific items.
In making this movie, I wanted to have a bit of an homage, as it were, to the Silent Hill games themselves which impacted me enough to give up my pride and actually create fan film material. In striving to do that, though the story is totally original, I wanted to incorporate some of the awesome imagery of the games. Consequently, we went through the script and discussed the art direction, and where, if possible certain scenic elements could be incorporated into our movie (and make sense, of course).
Some of those included the Seal, which I blogged on before, the chained door declaring "Don't go outside" (sans the "-walter" since we have no walter in our story), and Robbie Rabbit. Ah, Robbie Rabbit.
Robbie Rabbit, as far as I can tell, first makes his appearance in SH3 at the amusment park (although it is possible that I didn't notice him in one or maybe two, if not likely since a cute pink rabbit with a bloodstained face isn't an image you forget easily). He's carried over into four, sitting as a small stuffed rabbit on a woman's bed. Either way, his existence is creepy, fascinating, and rather a mystery. Does he represent despoiled childhood? A cute fluffy bunny costume that hides a much darker world, the blood seeping down his fur? Who knows. But it was quite the event making our Robbie.
As usual we did this at 2:00 am. This is a popular time for me to create things it seems, since it is one of the only times in which my late-night friends, (actually that should be "late night friend" because it consists of only Amanda. Everyone else has to go to bed because they "have to get up early tomorrow." Whine whine whine.) can get together. It may or may not lend itself to the creationary process, since it usually involves coffee and being incredibly loopy. Such it was with Robbie.
You see, we searched for a Robbie Rabbit. We looked long and hard. But it seems no one makes a decent pink rabbit, even without overalls. I mean, I'm not asking for Jesus himself to come down and turn water into stuffed animals. I just don't think I'm asking for the impossible. So we made it. Well, sort of.
Amanda and I found a stuffed white rabbit which didn't look like the one we wanted, but had a close enough body type. His eyes though were all wrong, I'm afraid, and gratefully, Amanda had enough forethought to visit a random used clothing store and when no one was looking, slice off the eyes of another rabbit. Okay, yes perhaps it wasn't entirely moral to attempt. But! We did get eyes for Robbie. For the Greater Good! (I just watched Hot Fuzz again the other night. Its on my mind.)
On the first night, we attempted dying robbie a delightful shade of pink. First we cut out the insets in his ears, surgically removed his face, unstuffed him and pulled out the battery pack that, disturbingly, let him speak. Don't worry, he didn't suffer. I ought to point out that I'm a licensed ( and by licensed I mean illegally working for the underworld) stuffed animal taxidermist. Its difficult to count the number of stuffed animal heads I've mounted or faux-bears i'v skinned for rugs. The saddest part is I'm not kidding. But regardless, I'm saying that I'm quite skilled and experienced and Robbie undergoing this cosmetic surgery was only mildly taxing on my skills. At least until putting him back together.
Let's back up for a minute. Have you ever used fabric dye? It works great. On natural fabric. Natural fabric.
Trivia time! Did you know that most stuffed animals produced today have acrylic fur? Did you also know that Acrylic is a clear plastic, which, it turns out, isn't super susceptible to the dye-ing process?
They do, it doesnt, and now you know.
Well Robbie came out cotton candy pink, not the electric magenta of the dye. This was actually fortuitous since we weren't shooting an 80's music video. His dye however... i suspect is mostly caked on the acrylic. The more one handles him, the rosier palms one gets. Ahem. Anyway... moving on.
Now we had to add eyes. It was a simple matter to cut the ugly brown dots off, but a much more difficult task to sew larger random eyes on. Please recall the above late night comment. We sewed the eyes on, but not entirely perfect. They're mildly crooked and he was goddamned creepy. He looked, sitting there mouthless and unstuffed, like a freakish boo-bah. (That's another story entirely, although suffice it to say boo-bah is one of the most LSD-inspired and disturbing children's programming concepts ever.) It was at that moment we started laughing and couldn't stop.
Adding the face didn't help, in fact we started referring to him as our (watch out - inappropriate humor ahead) "downs rabbit." The slightly crooked face became more apparent with his hand-stiched slightly crooked mouth...
I'm just going to show you pictures of the process because they're ridiculous and do a better job telling this story than I can.
Winging it after this point, we found ribbon for his bowtie; some great fabric for the overalls and blood all over the face (which have required special shooting methods, since he looks great from the front, but the overalls have the shittiest sewing job in the back; not to mention anytime our little girl actress hugs him to hide the blood all over his mouth, she has to place her arms correctly to hide his lousy sewing... sigh).
All in all he turned out great and looks like robbie rabbit. I'm bored with writing this so, the end.
If you or someone you love would like to learn more about Robbie Rabbit, please take a moment to view the video below, you won't be disappointed. "Hold on to Dear Life."
Courtesy of youtube and Konami entertainment.
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