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

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

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

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".