Updates to Without Troy and Random Action Websites

Big updates to the Without Troy and Random Action websites today. No longer are we relying on my slow server for streaming the video as all of it is now hosted on YouTube. That means you can watch all of Without Troy in HD right from WithoutTroy.com for the first time. It also means you don't need Flash to watch and all of the pages work on iPhones and iPads. Way to go me!

Random Action – Extras

On the second day of Random Action Extras weekend I present to you first a rap song written and performed by our actor and sound guy, Nic Belmonte.

Isn’t that amazing? Our composer was none to pleased about getting the Puff Daddy treatment but it’s something I’ll always have over Nic.

Finally we’ve got the Random Action collection Trailer that aired before the showing of Without Troy. My good friend Matt O’Neal cut it together for us. He’s a talented guy and really captured the series well.

Random Action – Fight Choreography

It’s Random Action Extras Weekend so let’s get nuts. This was one of the original promised extras for the RAEP5 DVD that never got finished at the time. I finally got around to it this week. ENJOY!

Ah, but this isn’t the first fight choreography video I made. The last one was just a slideshow which just doesn’t earn the love that the above video deserves.

At this point in my life I get as much joy out of watching the choreography as I do the fight in the finished film.

Random Action – Episode 5

You’ll really want to watch this one in HD. 720p probably. 1080p starts to show the flaws too well.

This was a great undertaking for us at the time, like nothing we had ever done before. In HD no less! All of the other episodes were shot in a day but this one was shot over a month. Our crew was much larger, in that we had one. I’m particularly proud of our transition to color. Scene to scene we used color to create mood which was a lot of fun to engineer in post.

The fight scenes were a lot of fun to choreograph. You can even watch a slideshow of photos taken during our practice sessions.

The actual shooting was… interesting. There were injuries and interruptions around every corner. Tom gut hit in the head with a sword. “Gospel Fest” was in the next room while we shot the first fight. Somebody called the cops on us while we shot the last sign. I busted my ankle scrambling to the door to greet the cops on the roof.

I wasn’t there the day the basement scene was shot. I would have stopped Jeff from looking like he was molesting Tom after he gets shot.

The Roof scene is my favorite part and I hope yours too. Suprisingly, it was the easiest to shoot as well. Jeff and Steve has such great chemistry that there’s no way it could have gone wrong. Such great chemistry that some of the fighting is real. Brothers.

We weren’t sure how the fall from the roof would work till the editing stage. We shot it a few ways and none looked good. We had a plan to take a cheaper camera and rigging it to a balloon/parachute to drop off the roof for a perfect shot of the fall but it didn’t come to be. I still think it could have worked but I have my detractors.

Random Action – Episode 3

My good friend Tom Otero thinks this is the best thing we’ve ever done. It is the first time we used any literary devices in out story. It’s amazing how much a framing sequence to make a story seem so much more interesting.

1. This is my only on screen appearance in the Random Action series.  Adam Rickabus survives this video to return as High Pockets in the finale.
2. When I first came up with the concept for Random Action, I didn’t know about Jeff Brown but I was friends with his brother Steve. When I found out he had a twin who would act for me every changed.
3. That hubcap is hanging in my room in my Mom’s house.
4. My glasses really broke on set so we had them fall off toward the camera. Lots of quick compromises were made to make this happen. I wish I still had the gumption to do that on all my projects.
5. Music is by Scott H Biram. He is a badass.
6. We bought a mattress at the Salvation Army to make landings easier. $24.
7. After avoiding the NERF aspect in Episode 2 we really embraced it here with the NERF shotgun.
8. At the 2:40 mark you can see Tom’s shadow fall across the actors when the camera spins. He feels he can never atone for this sin. I’m still upset about him hitting my knee on the one good drive away shot.
9. Tom ran the camera for all of this episode and it really shows. He’s fantastic at getting really dynamic shots. I have an old joke about telling which one of us was holding the camera in a given shot. If it’s a low angle shot Tom did it. (He’s short)
10. Steve speaks enough Spanish to correct my awful bit of writing at the end. Thank god.

Random Action – Episode 2

If you read my last post you now know more about Random Action that some of the people who were in it. You may ask yourself, what else could possibly be known about a series of student action movies? You may ask yourself, how did I get here? Well prepare to find out.

1. The most important thing for you to know is that our poor attempt to shoe-horn in plot weighs heavily on us to this day. We’re still working on making a coherent storyline long after the series is done.
2. So real the reason we shot in high contrast B&W is because we didn’t know how to white balance or get good contrast on the school’s camera. The Sin City motif didn’t was just a great excuse.
3. The sword sounds were recorded in my dorm room by myself. I used a cheap hammer and a piece of metal. This was surprisingly effective.
4. That is my robe that Jeff is wearing. Well, it was mine. I gave it to him as a gift at the premiere of episode 5.
5. You can see the bending of our plastic swords in several shots. We shot in order so it get’s worse as the video goes on. During the battle on the steps, Jeff is holding the blade so as to keep it from breaking off.
6. We’ve talked to people who do actual sword fight choreography. I’d like to take this moment to apologize to them again.
7. Finally, the last shot of Jeff getting hit by my truck is based on one of Robert Rodriguez’s 10-Minute Film School videos. The trick is to have the victim lay on top of the car and roll down onto the windshield. Brilliant right?

Random Action – Episode 1

I just got a new computer and as such I’ve been able to do a lot more with video compression and finally put my old videos online in HQ. As such I’m going to upload them here with commentary. These certainly don’t exemplify what I’m capable of today, but it should be fun to see what crazy crap I made going back all the way to high school. We’ll start off with my baby the Random Action series.

A loose history of the Random Action series is this: In January of 2006 I read Penny Arcade’s Official NERF Rules of Engagement. The middle panel, which takes the absurdity of NERF guns and mashes it up with overdramatic noir style stayed with me. The April before, Sin City, hit theaters and as a big comic nerd I was hooked. That led to the Sin City style open for the 2nd season of Random Acts. Random Acts was a sketch comedy group that I was a founding member of at Butler University. Tired of doing just comedy my friend and oft-times business partner, Tom Otero, and I decided to do an action piece. I remembered an idea I had come up with the year before that would have featured future Without Troy star Kent Livingston. Kent was out and our new friend Jeff Brown was in. The title, naturally, would be a pun based off of our parent series.

The shooting of the first episode took about an hour. Right behind the camera people were walking to class so all of the voices were re-recorded later. Eric Weiher made his sole appearance as our ninja kidnapper. He’s a much better actor than what you see here. My co-director Tom makes an appearance at the end as the eventually named, Marlowe. Marlowe would grow to be possibly the most compelling character in the series due in no small part to Tom’s performance.

Music is by the amazing Tomas Diablo. He kindly gave us permission to use his music and I can’t thank him enough for that.

The Random Action series grew out a lot from here. It’s incredible how much it’s changed.