Club Doppelgang

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!

Gummi Boogie Bear Chortles

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.

Computer Plumbing Central

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.

Sage Cuttlefish

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....