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MORE INFORMATION ON BEHIND THE SCENES ALIEN FACTOR

The   photos were taken directly from the video #4 demo. In the upcoming articles (posts) I will be using actual photos that will be clear whenever possible.

CORPSE FOR ALIEN FACTOR

I stayed in Baltimore, Maryland area about three weeks while we shot most of the creature and special effects scenes for Alien Factor. As each film day drew to a close the next film days schedule was revealed.  We had to be very flexible about the schedule and able to change it at any moment. For example one evening I was given the assignment to have a zombie type dead person ready for the next days shoot.  Ok, get me some cotton, latex, a blow dryer, a glue gun for the teeth, old doll with some hair, and a Styrofoam head for wigs and away I go. Presto chango one dead guy in the morning. It really wasn’t pressure. It was fun.

ZAGATILE

ZAGATILE  (ME ) GETTING SHOT

The thing is I really was getting shot!. Look at this above  frame  closely, and this scene   in the movie. I am flinching and I ain’t acting. That gun was not supposed to be shooting pellets , but it was. Wax bullets!  The first one hit me in the stomach ,which was made of thick rubber  and it bounced off. The second shot got me in the shoulder. I yelled out at them to “Stop, something is coming out of the gun”.  “Something is wrong”!

When you watch the movie the Sheriff never aims the gun at me any more after this above camera angle shot. Some of the shots are done without the gun being seen. He was all shook up that he could have done some real damage to me.

When they helped me out of the monster suit, their was a hole in the Zags arm, and a hole in my tee shirt, and a hole in my arm with a wax bullet stuck in it. I popped it out. We put some iodine on it . Went to the drug store and asked the druggist what to put on it and he gave us some medicine.  I was fine. Probably couldn’t do that kind of thing now-a-days.

FORCED PERSPECTIVE

BIG SPACE SHIP CRASH

Britt McDonough ( not sure how to spell his name ) and I put this one foot long model together at his moms house. We used Celuclay for the ground the ship  skidded across. Celuclay is a form of  ground up paper machee type stuff.  The rear end of the ship  is an electric tooth brush holder. Boy it is fun to come up with this kind of stuff. There is a photo of us in a previous blog article (titled BOO! ) of mine  setting it up outside in the snow at Gunpowder State park in Baltimore, Maryland. ( I am on the left )

The movie scene above is another forced perspective with the actors off to the right and in the distance. The  cameras f stop has to be wide open for depth of fields  focus to reach from (in this case) one foot to a couple of hundred of feet away where the actors were. The two “planes” merge as one image on the film. It is a neat illusion.

INNER MAN

FINALLY THE “INNER MAN” ( Kiss me you fool)!

He is so named because he is like a man with his outside skin stripped off. I made it pretty  much anatomically correct. I did not wear this suit. You had to be pretty skinny to wear it. The idea was that the bulk of the suit would make it the size of the actor who played the Alien. I did not want the suit to be bigger than the actor, thus the skinny person in it and a shirt over the Alien and he was the same bulk as the actor.

Well that’s all for now the next article will continue with more Paragon things or  maybe other projects I worked on or a contributor article ?.

Thanks for coming!

John

p.s.

 NEXT WEEKS BLOG ARTICLE WILL BE FROM:

THOMAS  BERDINSKI  of fame for such delicious movie treats such as “The Italian Zombie Movie”

He has promised to answer the most asked question he gets at Horror Movie Conventions

Any idea what that question might be?