GASA:sssnacksss:BLOG

Club Doppelgang

2011-05-15T11:59:00.030-04:00

Finally i can post pics of our most ambitious film shoot - the GASA Club Doppelganger. A nightclub routine in the ubiquitous computer. A place where each attendee comes with his/her doppelganger. The music provided by an all animal band.

So many of our friends came out to be animal band gals, or brought their "doppelgangers". Amazing costume contributions from Spoon Popkin and Virginia Warwick.

I won't tarry, and should let the pics speak for themselves. I'll leave you with this to consider - it is felt frequently that Doppelganger "syndrome" is proof in alternate or parallel universes. Dan Conrad, however has told me that he does not believe in parallel universes at all, but feels that people are lazy in thinking of such things, and should put more thought into the mysteries of time.

Doppelganger pairs-

Elisa Urtiaga and _______.

Gerry and Sophia Mak. actual relatives, but.....Doppel still.

Lexie and Kit Mountain. Also relatives. But don't get the wrong idea!!!! Doppelgangers are not actually blood relatives at all!!!!! Not at all!

For example-

Josh Van Horne and jake hotstetter.

The band-

Lioness on the euphonium - Katherine Ralston.

Janet Braunstein.

Virginia in her most well-known guise - squirrel.

Freda Mohr, octodrums.

in the above photo directing the whole thing - Tom "Blur"ram.

The band was a lot of work to set up. We told them to "band sync" like a real music video, and we had them "jam" to Respect by Aretha at about 30% speed - cough syrup style, chopped and screwed.

Best of all was this young lady-

Regina Armenta. She played our "chantuese", and also provided virtuoso pole dancing.

Note our cinematographer, Eric Franklin, going all the way to get "the shot".

Regina and Gina, who played the MC.

Lauren Bender, whom i tried to get into "sexy" attire, opted instead for a more "toothfairy" vibe as the hard-working cocktail server.

Again, here we see me "directing"----

Spoon, our sax player, and Lucy Morreale, the trombonist hang with Regina and m wife, Jackie Milad.

It was an incredibly dense and crazy shoot. I felt that it actually somehow BECAME what we were filming, as the nearly 40 plus people got into their cups and had a a crazy time. It eventually turned into a frantic limbo competition.

Thx to Yeni Mao for contributing the extra wide angle shots above!

Dog fight & no Fall Guys plus Cancer Stix

2011-05-14T15:04:00.021-04:00

Hullu again. We recently squeezed a shoot in between some dense busyness and the slightly early birth of my son, Piero. Somewhere, somehow, it occurred to me that Dan's version of the "shitty cap-offs" at the end of the Part 1 Vignettes should be a "dog fight". We knew that sometime in the film one of us would have to eat a lot of dog food, with dog food being a rarity amongst foods for Snacks - one we haven't tried or worked with in our performances. And we knew we'd be calling on Eric Franklin and his amazing Greenmount Ave manse for the shoot, but the idea that Dan would "box" and superior dog in a gambling den atmosphere was a recent inspiration.

Why "cap-off" shittily? The previous post in this blog skims on the shoot we did for Tom's "shitty cap-off", but this one, Dan's "shitty cap off" proved to be a golden afternoon - Possibly Dan's masterwork of prostration for the cause. In Part 1 of the film, the "stooge" protagonists are often used and abuse by many attractive and talented females. Though the treatment is poor, the visuals may carry some erotic appeal for at least someone. The "shitty cap-offs" are meant to strip (pun?) the Part 1 scenes of any eroticism and leave only scatological humor and mystery.

This shoot was assisted by some heavy Baltimore talent, and yes they are attractive and talented. However, be assured eroticism was scaled. The Effervescent Collective's Lily Susskind, Virginia Warwick, Hanna Moccasin, Dan bro Pat Breen and Eric Franklin stepped up to the plate and knocked a few balls afoul of the conventional, dull or tranquil.

So the premise is that Dan's "stooge" enters Eric's world, a claustrophobic work pit, not unlike a burnt to crisp police detective surveillance nest.

Note Wollensak reel-to-reel. Keyboard art by Kate Porter.
Much of the film lightly deals with working "stiffs", though they're merely holograms or algorithms gone sentient, perhaps so by virtue of burden and tedium. Are the algorithms we rely upon to execute our tasking our slaves? Eric's character, much like all GASA objects, are quietly disgruntled, in the Thoreau sense.

Note the ciggy. Now i should tell you that we decided to SMOKE THE HELL out of Eric's house for the shoot. This shoot was so goddamn smoky. Thx to the ladies, Lily, Virginia and Hanna for putting up with all of the smoke. GOD, it was awful....yet beautiful. I personally smoked at least 5 cigarettes, which is five more than usual.

Everyone was instructed to SMOKE.

Above- Virginia in front, followed by Hanna. These are the "dog owners". They push Eric to his edge, and force him to put his money where his theremin is - and he must gamble on what he knows to be an inferior specimen - Dan.

A dog fight ensues, and, predictably, Dan loses. No amount of dog food can Popeye Dan into inspired victory. All the while Pat Breen plays ref in the closet, and even smoke ten cigs at once.

Above is Dan as dog.

Below, Dan and his dominant foe, Lily, become "dogs".

Below, note the floor pad. This was meant as a "wrestling mat" for the dog fight. Note theremin. This is an important component of Eric's losing game.

Lastly, i need to discuss Dan's stellar turn on this date. My goodness, did he ever eat a lot of dog food! He also did a great deal to get the materials for the set together, as i was well tied up.

Best of all, he did his own stunts....that wasn't a joke in this blog description. Dan threw himself down the stairs several times, to get the perfect fall. He packed his GASA "reds" with pillows, laundry and what-have-you. It was marvellous!

Thx to all for the great shoot.

Clockwork Latrine and Sphere Cheese

2011-05-13T16:18:00.029-04:00

This scene is thought by Snacks to be the first one of two "shitty cap-offs" to the Part 1 vignette sequences. The "snack" in question for this one is the wonderful cheese ball, a favorite of both Dan and i since the early days of yore. It's an unwholesome thing, yet a food with irresistible texture and panache - leaving it's tell tale trace of orange cheese flavor dust upon the fingers of each volunteer.

The setting was a bit of an inspiration. I'd heard for years that it was possible to get up into one of Baltimore great Downtown landmarks - and thanks to the help of Joe Wall, property manager of the "baltimore Arts Tower", we were able to procure the ultimate steam punk set - an early 20th century Clock Room. I've had deja-vu/past life/lucid dream tethers to Victorian architecture and technology my entire life. Steam-punk, for lack of a better term elsewhere, is a necessary spice in the Snacks GASA melange. This light tangent/pun into Herbert/Lynch universe is unintentional, but one must admit that the Lynch film looks steamy/punky. Imagine if it had been the Dali/Jodorowsky/Giger pile-up , mythically trapped in the 1970s like a mosquito in amber.

Built in 1911 in downtown Bmore....

it's had a few alterations and iterations since. It was originally attached to a big factory which made the "Bromo Seltzer" health elixer....nowadays it's just a lowly pagoda with a bunch o' pricey artist studios and it's run by the city of Balt. The builder of the factory/tower, a Captain Emerson wanted it to evoke this epic edifice from the 16th century....

the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence, Italy. Myself, conveniently in Florence two weeks before the shoot, was able to provide my person as the missing link between these two gemini, and snap the above pic.

The interior of the Clock room is pure poetry for the GASA fantasy, with giant whirring elevator motors, trap doors, amazing Babbage-scapes of loud clacking mechanisms, and even 5 gallons of "worm gear oil"...

The clockworks are now electrical, but the 25 foot long pendulum is still in there. Here's some snaps around the room-

We took the better part of an cloudy afternoon filming the scene, in which Tom is abducted by a Quasimoto-esque Little Howling Wolf and forced to eat cheese balls and shit them in order to drive the rube-goldberg contraptions in the room for an ambiguous purpose.

Wolf had told me many times that he has some deep roots in vaudeville. When he heard about our "comedic" outing in a clock tower with a huge jug of cheese balls and a nice shiny porcelain potty he almost began auditioning spontaneously, showing us just how rubbery and labile his comedic muggings could be.

Well, the result was excellent. Wolf really filled the Steam-punk clock room with his outrageous physicality. He entertained us with (tall?) tales of his theatre resume/exploits and he ate most of our sandwiches. He had to run home at sunset due to the kick-off of the Ravens playoff game, which by the way, they lost.

We also rigged the place up with 50 feet of clear PVC tubes so we could bounce the cheese balls through the room like data going through fiber optics, but unfortunately, i neglected to photo that. Welllll.....

Thx to Wolf and Max Eilbacher for bringing it out to this shoot!

Gummi Boogie Bear Chortles

2010-12-11T17:21:00.035-05:00

Greetings candy lovers. The most recent shoot we did for "GASA" involved my wife, Jackie Milad, white paint, a big cube and 10lbs of gummi bears.

As usual, we converted a crevice in the "5th Dimension" (H+H Building, Bmore) into a soundstage for the movie. The idea behind the scene, which occurs in the "Part 1 Vignettes" of GASA, is that Tom (1st person singular narrarator of this very paragraph) confronts a very bleached out "bear nymph" somewhere inside the infinite computer and is seduced into voluntarily eating a LOT of gummi bears, which inevitably cause him severe and psychedelic gastric overload. For this shoot I "took one for the team" and drank what seems like a pint of corn syrup and ate a shit ton of those iconic candies.

Jackie and Sarada Conaway arrived on day two of the construction phase to helped to design an enormous nearly invisible mandala in the corner of the set. The mandala would eventually be a large animated mosiac consisting of several hundred Gummi Bears.

The animation, to be realized via "stop motion", took approximately two hours. The bears are glued to the set with hot glue, incidentally. I felt maxed out on italian cookies from Trinacria Foods that night, so i only ate about 8 gummi bears during tedius ritual, though Dan sacrificed 28 bears to the gummi diety.

The completed manadala was ultimately remarkably durable and if i may, rather christmassy.

Some nights later Jackie arrived and with Sarada's assistance and make-up mastery turned Jackie into this beguiling creature.....

Sigrid Lauren, Bethany Dinsick, and Dan's hermano Patrick Breen came over to help "bleach" Tom. Because we wanted the bleaching to also animate via stop-motion effect, we need the extra hands to move quickly....

Note in the above photo how Pat had to work "crotch detail".

Above, Sigrid makes me even more white. We instructed our assistants to feel free to eat as many gummi bears as they wished. There were many.

This shoot proved to be a "yoga of the body" for me, as i experienced many sensual things i have never felt before. These include having cold white watery make-up brushed into my groin, having gummi bears break down and melt while stuffed into my nostrils and drinking and pretending to puke bright florescent colored "puke" made of nearly pure corn syrup. The sickening sweet taste lingered in my mouth all night long. I got up twice in the night and pounded water to to try to rid the cloying, hideous tooth-rotting taste from my head.

But kvetching aside, some of the stills and imagery from this shoot are among my favorite of the entire film. Unfortunately we have no photos of the puke. The end.

Oktober Wurstnacht

2010-10-31T13:32:00.043-04:00

GASA is dogmatic about indoor vs outdoor, i.e. real vs virtual, but the "death metal/sausage/s&m" segment of the "Part 1 Interludes" subverts us by being an outdoor as indoor scene. As with the "sauna shoot", the "sausage shoot" occurred during the mild, lovely Baltimore October times. The spark for the shoot came from Dan, who envisioned a part of the movie in which his roommate, artist Gina Denton, would flog him Dom-style with a long sausage rope. Gina, who loves and listens frequently to death/black/doom metal of the heaviest kind, just seems to exude more "S" than "M", though in person she is not sadistic or abusive as far as I can tell. She just has powerful woman energy and likes wearing black and listening to loud heavy shit.

We chose The BANK, West Baltimore's finest underground venue located at the end of the ghetto rainbow, as the site, and imagined how we could shoot the scene in their "courtyard" and make it look like a strange "room" - since, after all, it is meant to exist inside of a computer program (imagine GASA as a video game with no beginning or end). Additionally, we really wanted to add Gerry Mak to the scene, because he too is a master of metal (throat singing for art-metal band Bloody Panda), a thespian, and an interesting physical foil to Gina - being a very petite male he is rather smaller than Gina, and he would be playing her "igor", or halfwitted assistant (archetypes!). We decided that Doom Metal sounds would fill the scene, and i asked Gina and Gerry to come to the shoot as "feral" as possible. You won't fail to notice in the above photo of them that they did indeed come "feral".

Gina was our MC character in the infamous (though not yet blogged) nightclub scene and in that scene she adorned herself in some scary/beautiful pelts and of course we'd continue that for this shoot too. She is exactly the same character, in fact, for in the GASA universe archetypes abound, ideas bob up and down in the sea of data.

We initially envisioned a starker scene, using the BANK courtyard to suggest the whole scene was happening in a big cement box (which the courtyard is, basically, but a roofless one with a veg/herb garden on one side). However, when we arrived (via the back bungalow of our courteous host the inimitable Little Howlin' Wolf) we got a bit magnetized by a mysterious corner of the thing with an enormous Ghetto Weed Nut Tree of some sort growing out of it. Instantly we went to work building our "indoor" S&M Sausage Dungeon with a tree growing up it's spine. Note in the above photo the St. Christopher's Cross (St. Steven's Cross?), meant for tyin' and whoopin".

Here Gina preps her pelted headdress. Note her leather glistening in the bottom lit TomTom drum light. The light was on faders for percusso-lumination effects. Ta!

Dan hangs the "candelier" in front of BANK bottle mosaic. The combination of the attractive BANK-designed courtyard art, the Nut Tree, the moist October harvest air, and our additions of gloomy dungeon decor quickly spun the location into our perfect setting for the Dan character to get his butt whooped by a screeching, grunting feral duo of sausage wielding and chomping maniacs. Gina provided us with a a great mix of doom, gloom, and Scandinavian guitar sounds to flesh out the moods apropos.

Above: The Nut Tree, glowing in the purple Westside night.

I could hardly comment on Gina in the above photo in a way that would improve on what the photo itself speaks formidably. Note the sausages dangled, which were Gerry's actual dinner.

A parting shot (below) of the back wall of the BANK. The shadows from our lights went well with the mysterious Poe Moon out that night and eerie heat that seemed to move into the city earlier in the evening.

A fun night indeed...and thanks to the BANK folks, especially Wolf, and way ups to Gina and Gerry.

Sauna + Hot Dog Last Supper

2010-10-31T13:25:00.043-04:00

Snacks is at last stretching down into the back leg of our shooting schedule for "GASA". Specifically, it is also the "Part I interludes" phase. Don't allow me to expand on what that means, because it will be esoteric jumble that may only ever have meaning to Dan and I. Briefly, I can say this - We shot the movie backwards (sort of), and the "middle beginning" consists of "interludes", autonomous "vibe" pieces that wedgie themselves into the bigger picture of the film - but retain non-narrative spirals in and of themselves. In each interlude, the lead "wretches", played by Snacks ourselves, are "tested" by a series of tortuous "pleasure" routines inside of an infinitely huge computer system.

Just about a short week or two ago Snacks crammed three shoots into a sublime pocket of October weather, two of which went towards visualizing the "sauna scene" concept......

The sauna itself exists in the backyard of the one quarter Danish/one quarter American/one half Portuguese marriage partnership of Jenny Graf Shepherd and Jorge Martin. They bought a sauna in it's entirety from a fellow on Maryland's Eastern Shore and it was delivered a contiguous whole via flatbed ------- all the way from the Eastern Shore to that exact spot (see above photo) in Arcadia, Baltimore (sort of the lower left ventricle of Lauraville, NE Balt). It's a fine item, this sauna, smelling sweetly of wood fires and high quality seasoned cedar.

Since this part of the movie occurs inside of a computer, the spaces are meant to be "2D", mere simulacrum or projection. However, the simulacra have teeth, and in this particular scene, those teeth sink into some hot dogs.

In the above photo you will see Dan "preparing" a hot dog for a "movie magic" moment in which it will fly perfectly between the toes of this lovely person....

Kat Sotelo. Performce artist extraordinaire, she is the anchor of the scene, and she ministers over her charges as well as her victims with succinct efficiency.

When the wretch portrayed by myself arrives into the sauna simulacrum, he is in worse tune than a west baltimore church basement piano, and Kat must burden herself with the necessary task of "tuning" Tom. She is soon assisted by a second tuner, portrayed by Katherine Ralston - of Baltimore's Annex Theatre. Hot Dogs, in one dimension, can be thought of as "tuning forks".

In the topmost photo, one can see the entire cast for the scene. Several "musicians" are required to "play" Tom, now that he's been "tuned". Big thanks to our players - John Kahn, Sam Shea, Katey Truhn, and Ami Dang.

Consistently throughout this entire movie our lead characters (US) are treated very badly. Use and abuse are interchangeable. Use IS abuse. Note how hardcore deadly Kat looks from the POV of the person's face she is slamming her foot into.

Every expert victim tuner who lives in a computer sauna must be armed with a "quiver" of hot dog tuning forks in her towel.

Jenny and Jorge were fine hosts, and their superb sauna shall be immortalized in our "art". The first shoot was rather chilly for our nearly naked toweled persons to be prancing about in the backyard, although we eventually got the wood stove in the sauna kickin' and that was plenty heat to warm the hot dogs and also our scruffy souls as well. There was an eventual late night hang and also we dined on the weenies too 'round midnight or so.

The second shoot we did a week later, and my gosh it was a lovely Autumn eve of the best kind - those humid breezey patches of tropical air we get waltzing occasionally through Bmore from the Caribbean during foliage weeks.

Here's a parting shot of the sauna, languid in the the October night....

Computer Plumbing Central

2010-08-25T11:07:00.020-04:00

Another large construction for GASA occured this past June. After a year of courting Ms Paige Shuttleworth for the role of the GASA computer plumber, we finally found the right time and spot to build the set and shoot the scene.

Paige's virtues shall not elude you, reader. Aside from those virtues easily extracted from the above photo, go 'head and table another in that both of her outfits used in GASA were made entirely by her, for her. She is a master at sewing and fashion design.

This set is a close second in terms of time/effort in building to the white laboratory posted about previously. We wanted to acheive more "steam punk" than "cyber punk". Paige's character works as a "plumber" of sorts, sending the two lead wretches to various "virtual" testing grounds where they unwittingly experience more pain than pleasure through psuedo food fetish S&M scenarios. Paige is central to the movie, and her character is less one dimensional than all others, as she is, in spite of incredible Glam Rock style and good looks, a working stiff and ground down by the steamy tomb room she stations at.

Set-

There is a smoke machine on the left by the bicycle rim. We take "steam punk" literally and there is occasional gusts of "steam" pouring from the wall to achieve Fritz Lang or Jules Verne style sci-fi energy. The set was built right in Dan's studio in the H+H building. We liked the idea that Paige's console for operating the whole thing was a big, dilapidated organ manual.

Thanks to my lovely and insightful wife Jackie for being our camerawoman and logistical inspiration. It was unbearably hot in Dan's loft and the three nights we shot footage were grueling. Baltimore warehouses in summertime will forever stand in my memory. It's a very memorable body sensation, that sauna like climate.

Jackie took all of these pics. The four of us had fun in spite of the temperature....expecially "choreographing" the fight sequences. As stated previously, Paige's plumber character is very abusive to our "wretch" characters. Like in every other scene in this movie, our characters have no hope of even getting a shot in as we are kicked, whacked and otherwise bullied.

The above pic shows how we achieve our type of "movie magic". This was a long tracking shot of Dan getting "punched" and a "fist POV" of him flying 10 feet into a wall.

Here are a few varied pics-

It needn't be said that the butt figures prominently into GASA. Below note Tom testing out the "butt whanging" mallets.

I am relieved this shoot is over. Thanks Paige and Jackie. The end - for now.

Dangerous Radiation/ Flipparoos/ Faux Fu

2010-08-08T18:48:00.030-04:00

GASA has many "fight scenes". We have been influenced by a great many Hong Kong and Bollywood fight sequences, not to mention some of the glorious things available on youtube. I'm not sure frankly what the appeal of violence is for us (all of US....humans?). There is so much violence out there intended for comedic purposes...well, it's interesting. prat falls, larry, moe, curly, wile e coyote, etc....it all seems pretty painful....yet amusing. Perhaps, even though films ask for "suspension of disbelief", what they also ask is "suspension of belief"....i.e. this isn't really violence....now LAUGH.

part of the appeal, in my humble opinion, is the lack of credibility of many films.

for a particular scene in GASA, our doppelgangers (played by the inimitable two can ladies Jessie Unterhalter and Emily CD) seek us out, challenge us to a duel, kick our asses, and eat our souls. We needed a place to shoot this scene, and since the scene occurs "outdoors" (more on that in a sec) it needed to be color-flipped and altered.

so, firstly, the location we chose for this scene was a "PCS base station" (cell phone signal receiver/amplifier/transmitter) atop Dan's warehouse, the H+H building. it is quite convenient to have a loud, humming 60hz, current sucking, high voltage SCI-FI-begging-to-be-used setting just up a few fire escape flights from Dan's living room.

We went up to scope it out one day, and instantly fell for the thing, knew it was perfect for our purposes. but of course we got to it by climbing up the fire escape.....if we'd gone up through the locked door at the top of the stairwell, we'd have read the signs saying "DONT ENTER! HIGH RF RADIATION. HARMFUL" etc.

We got a bit freaked out that we'd just been all over the place for the past hour and had a good old time in high energy radio fields. I calmed down later in the day when i started googling RF facts. Apparently no link has been made to cancer...........yet. However, like it's big sister the microwaves, radio waves with a lot of amplitude can heat up organic tissue really fast. one article i read said that if a human stood directly in front of one of those rectangular cell phone antennas that their eyes and testicles (ladies excluded) would likely heat up and explode in less than 30 seconds. The rest of you would get 2nd or 3rd degree burns pretty quickly.

So, when we went back up there a week or two later with our doppelgangers, we kept a nice distance from the antennas.

For particular reasons, we want the "outdoor" scenes of the movie to be "color altered". Each scene shot outside will get it's own color palette.

On this particular day, there were storms in the area and grey skies. we had previously been very pleased with the huge spectra of gorgeous color we'd gotten through HDDV in our previous shoots. THe footage from our PCS Station shoot were awfully dull- a result of the heavy overcast and low grey light. Ultimately, it didn't matter, because Dan was able to do this great, spacey, foreboding and creepy color scheme with brilliant pinks and purples.

We did our best with the Kung Fu.

This particular scene is a "sword fight" in the tradition of samorai "jideigekei" film. but obviously - retarded, goofy, and pseudo-futuristic.

Below are some "power pill taking" pump up Rocky-esque training scene stills.

Lastly, a head butt to help your day along.....

Doppelgangers

2010-04-04T11:24:00.021-04:00

Last summer Snacks generated the great/terrible idea of having a portion of the film centered around a conflict and subsequent "kung fu war" between the two stooge lead characters (played by yoursss trulysss SSSnacksss) and their "doppelgangers". This was based on the suggestion by Jessie Unterhalter and Emily C-D, also known as the artist collective "Two Can", that they somewhat "mirrored" Snacks - by virtue of their "art duo-ness", as well as by eerie physical parallels.

Emily and Dan exude certain Anglo/Celtic wirey-ness, skinny and pale, suggesting lack of vitamins.

Jessie and Tom exude a certain swarthy, greasy Mediterraneaness, with big brown eyes and er...."powerful" nose shapes.

The idea turned into an obsession and the theme emerged - "doppelgangers". Snacks' doppelgangers are females (and approximately 10 years younger at that). Who is your doppelganger? We don't necessarily have clear or huge ideas about "duality" "polarity" "multiple universes" etc etc. But The idea that Snacks' doppels are not "identical" is very suggestive and opens the mind to so many thoughts....

We shot a huge scene (to be documented here soon) in this past autumn in which an entire nightclub "sub-routine" (existing in the large computer program in which most of the film takes place) is intended as a Dionysian blow-off valve for "doppelgangers", which have some sort of role in the "binary" computer universe.

The intent is not to be heavy-handed, but it is nearly impossible to avoid the implications of doppelgangers. Once we put the "casting call" out around Baltimore for "doppelgangers" to populate our "nightclub" scene....people out in the art community instinctively knew that we were asking for "spiritual" doppelgangers and not "identical twins". They arrived to the shoot with every gesture expressing they "groked" our gist. The meaning and implication of "spiritual doppelgangers" far exceeds what is possible when think of duality as mere "mirroring".

Again, we hesitate to be explicit about our thoughts regarding this overwhelming thematic idea....but suffice to say, our hope is that it will be implicit at minimum that one considers that implications of "non-mirroring" dualities and assymetrical binary languages when viewing "GASA".

These photos were all taken last year in the early spring, prior to shooting the film, while we were developing the plot and theme ideas for the film. Practice for the doppelgang events ahead.....

Sage Cuttlefish

2010-04-04T10:55:00.012-04:00

Casting is something Snacks does not take lightly. Evidence: Paige Shuttleworth/Moore, cast as the conflicted, though of course mean and sadistic, computer plumber. This is possibly the most important and "nuanced" character in the story, aside from the wretched goons portrayed by Snacks themselves.

We have only just begun our shots with Paige, though what has occurred has been quite splendid. We spent a small portion of an afternoon doing an "elevator scene" at the H+H bldg.

Some phone pics, pardon the low reso....

CUPCAKE SHOOT (DAN emerges from the far end of the bakery black hole)

2010-03-21T15:49:00.010-04:00

if the above image doesn't haunt your subconscious, then you must be a dreamless brute with no sense of eroticism.

I can't recall the exact date by now, 8 or so months later, but sometime in late july or early august last summer Snacks engaged in the "cupcake shoot" - the first of the "vignette section" of the film. As of now the structure of "GASA" is divided into two parts, the first involves the "kidnapping and utilization" of the main characters, two stooges and bureaucratic lackeys played by Tom and Dan, and the second involves a sort of "cat and mouse game" between the stooges and their "doppelgangers", played by Emily C-D and Jessie Unterhalter.

The "vignette sections" of Part One are a run of what we consider 8 semi-independent "music videos" which demonstrate Tom and Dan in separate "subroutines" testing the pseudo-fetishistic and mock hedonistic properties of a virtual reality computer program.

Each "vignette" may exist on it's own, once the film finally takes to life out there in the world. In some ways the film is intended to be mostly modular, with the narrative vaguely described through images and sound, but the "modules" could be swapped or isolated as needed. Therefore individual sections can serve as "verses" to an epic poem....but in themselves could be self contained and eliptical.

Thanks go to Evan Moritz, Caitlin Murphy and Tim Paggi of the Annex Theatre for their assistance with the shoot. Likewise, Jen Kirby supplied a powerful performance as the cupcake medium. Frida Mohr and Kate Porter provided invaluable support via baking, cleaning and general help throughout. Also, thanks to Ami Dang for providing us with saris and Indian textiles from her personal collection.

As with many of our shoots, this was planned and "baked" on the 5th Dimension, H+H bldg Bmore. We hung the fabric and set up lights over the course of a week or so and did the shot in one concentrated, sweaty evening. Tom did most of the camera work and direction, and Dan, as you shall see, was the nearly nude STAR. Evan and Caitlin endured the heat deep inside the Saris. One wonders how Indian women cope with the heat of their country while wrapped in those fabrics....

Ami Dang has an impressive collection of saris, both from family and also from shopping in Delhi and Punjab on her periodic music trips to India.

Ms. Kirby appeared voluptuous and mysterious in her role. The scene was staged as a "ritual sacrifice", led by Jen. Dan, of course was the lamb in the slaughter.

Evan (below) and Caitlin were faceless henchmen, sari burritos, culinary fusion.

Frida was our "cupcake tech". There a lot of "cupcake strobing" effects in the clip. What amounts to 5 second stop motions animations of cupcakes dancing around on the gurney-top took quite some time to set up. It was exacerbated by the warehouse night humidity and heat.

i think we used a total of 40 odd cupcakes. Is it puerile have these mammarian delicacies served by a chesty young lady, and then have her wreck them all over our protagonist, mr Breen?

I can't remember why Evan was smooching Dan when he had cupcake meat all over his mouth and face.....

hungry maybe.....

the end.

We came close to an edit of this scene while working at STEIM in Amsterdam. As stated before, it's i sort of "music video" on it's own, and this may be the first "leak" of the movie we put up on youtube or similar. Currently we're shaving and tidying the scene. Stay tuned.

GASA Lab shoot

2009-12-22T21:43:00.053-05:00

Dan and Tom put in a nice piece of labor this past June constructing the "Lab" for GASA. Throughout the film, and especially during the intro, scenes take place in a grimy "science lab", inspired partially by the "clean" space stations of kubrick, partially by the "dirty" spacestations of the russian "Solaris". There is also the clumpy top heavy kitsch space stations of "the Jetsons" or Vadim's "Barbarella" in there too, along with the cardboard christmas light twinkle of the orginal star trek's "bridge". We put in some long hours, including a very late evening the night before the shoot. Great thanks upon THEEric Franklin, who besides helping us with camera work during the shoot, also came out the night before to do a bit of construction. This set still partially exists in the Kitchen of Dan, 5th floor H+H bldg, Bmore.

Dan expressed interest in the set being white, to get that "Kubrick" feel.

note the Nintendo controller and VCR carcass.

thanks to Florian from the Whole Gallery, H+H bldg, for the contribution of these Dream Machines. They were mounted to turntables and set to revolve in mirrored cycles.

the night before the shoot we sure burned the midnight shampoo. at the last minute we were inspired to remove the metal tubing from the dryer exhaust to make a "transporter beam".

above pic prior to bzz cut.

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the next day, 11am comes on strong for our "stars", 75% of whom had had some drinks the night before. Dr. Drew was the half of Matmos that entered the set not hungover from the previous eve's saturnalia.

Much thanks go to Ed and Cameron, the "soft haired boys" (term c/o Merril Feitell), who portrayed lab cabana boys. Here Grace Bedwell applies eye makeup to Ed. Grace continued with her role from our first shoot - a sinister harvester and project manager for "GASA".

Martin Schmidt, when first approached about his role in the GASA lab scenes, asked, "am i being typecast as a 'science guy' again?".

He was superb playing his nearly natural persona.

Here Eric and Ed at work....

Buzz cut scene with Grace and Dan...

Above photo Dan directs Grace, post bzz.

Tom directs Martin post Bzz.

Lastly, Cameron's mouth as trash compactor....

This scene has been edited. We worked on the sound design while at Steim in Amsterdam. We have shown this scene to numerous friends/family as well as to an audience in Amsterdam and to an art class at Maryland Institute, College of Art (thx to Stephanie Barber). Although not finished to 100%, this has been our first scene to help us see how our vision of the film back in the drawing phase will feel once carried out with edits and sound design.

Gastronomical Anatomical Sensory Administration

2009-12-20T11:59:00.002-05:00

Greetings humans.

Here it be December and we have not shot any new footage for "GASA: Memory Overload" since early October. Though we have been quite busy editing and scoring the footage we have done thus far.

Here I'll try to catch up with ourself and highlight the footage and work we've done. Included will be stills, credits, behind the scenes footage and soon perhaps some previews and trailers.

We began actual shooting for "GASA" in June of this year, about five months ago. We lit out on a murky summer day to shoot the opening scene of the movie...a "hunt scene" in which the charming and scary Grace Bedwell locates snacks and "harvests" them. note her "tracking gear"...

Catherine Pancake was a great aid to us for this shoot. We found a spot at Druid Hill Park, which is off of a strange access road that runs behind the zoo. It is very apocalyptic in it's thick gooey forest canopy as well odd clearings with trash and piles of mud, all tied together by the foreboding presence of the TV Hill broadcast towers, which we are "appropriating" as sci fi objects for the movie.

Here is a pic of Tom, just weeks before the "shave scene".