We shot two of the most critical Joker scenes last night...scary is the only way to describe Jeff. He had this absolutely psychotic, purely insane look throughout one of the scenes, it even scared me. And that's hard to do. Everyone's going to hate him, which is what's needed. It's definitely not going to be for the squeamish.

Shooting the first of the larger fight scenes Sunday night, it's going to be fun. Not counting the smaller ones (Batman vs. Riddler, Batman vs. one guy, etc.), there's four fight scenes, including one huge one.

The Red Stick Animation Festival's coming up in April, we're turning in the CG demo reel today. It'll be online either later today or sometime this weekend, and it's got a number of first looks in it...including the final layout (though not the final version) of the opening credits. Check it out when it goes online.

When I changed the primary domain for my account, all of the blog settings were lost and restarting it was the only way to get it back up. I copied all of the entries before deleting the old blog, and have restored a number of them. Look for a new entry over the weekend.

Due to multiple spam comments being posted, the "Add Comment" feature for blog entries is being disabled for the immediate future. New entries will still be posted, but visitors who do not have accounts will not be able to comment on them. I've had to ban 6 IP addresses and delete that many entries in the last 7 1/2 hours.

We've broken 100,000 monthly hits to the site for the first time ever. Quite the milestone, and there's still almost two weeks to go. That's well over the previous record of just under 70,000, which was last month.

Script reading later this week, as well as shooting some the Batman & Barbara Gordon scenes. We've locked down a week-by-week schedule of what we're doing from now until the premiere in March as well.

One month after the new trailer first went online, it's been downloaded 2617 times.

Not bad, especially since I'm not counting in the number of times it was downloaded from Cranefilms.com. And I'm going by when it went online on a Tuesday four weeks ago, instead of going by the date, the 15th.

In the past month, we've:
-finalized the main cast and added more of the minor parts
-finalized the script
-done two photo shoots
-worked on the rest of the costumes, most of which are in the final stages of construction
-had a script reading
-relaunched the website
-added a Myspace profile for the film
-nailed down more locations, including getting permission from the necessary people

And all we're waiting on right now is for the camera to be fixed.

-Batman
(still rocking in the free world...)

Ahhhh, the joys of making costumes...

-the BG armor's well underway, sculpt will probably be finished this weekend (spoiler photo of the character's in the gallery)
-Superman's cape and chest emblem are finished, starting on the bodysuit this weekend. Belt's in progress, I need to call and check on it. Boots and briefs need to be made, but that won't take long.
-Eric and Alvin are handling Riddler, which should be about finished now.
-Eric's working on Harley, probably done around Christmas. Emily's not free to shoot her parts until after Christmas, so he has time to get it done for her.
-Eric's helping with the Superman costume as well.
-Starting on another character's costume for a cameo this weekend, Brady, Hunter and I will be handling that.
-Robin costume is finished, may modify the gauntlets. Nothing major.
-Batsuits are done and ready to go.
-Joker suits are finished.

We're definitely going to have to do a featurette for the DVD on the costumes.

We're lining up people for extras and fight scene parts, so right now the only real holdup is the camera. That should be ready to go soon, the shop ordered a replacement part for it during the week. Hopefully we can start shooting sometime next week.

Let's do this.

(originally posted by Brady)

So we had our first of what will probably be many meetings tonight. The whole cast and a few crew members got together and read through the whole script. We had a little photo shoot which you can view in the Gallery area. Went really well.
Some big issues came up that I think are going to alter the script (should we decide to make the adjustments), which will keep with the consistant theme of the whole film and not bog down the mocie w/ too much info that, despite being in the source material, dosnt really matter nor work in the context of "the movie". Im really glad the issue came up as it showed very clearly that everyone who was at the meeting has thier head in the game and clearly cares about what is going to happen w/ the film in the coming weeks.
Stay tuned!

That's the number of downloads for the new trailer as of the two-week mark yesterday. That number is also just for the Formulas site, when you include the Crane Films site it's probably over 1500.

The new website is finished and ready to go, it'll be up about noon Central time Thursday.

Side note before I get into today's entry...
-Joker makeup test using the new airbrush makeup tomorrow night. Photo shoot afterwards, so expect photos online sometime late Tuesday night or early Wednesday.

Now, it's kind of a boring topic, but I'll try to make it at least semi-interesting...

-We broke the 20,000 visits mark for the main page over the weekend. Pretty good milestone, and that's since the site went online in July 2004. Now that's views (page loads), not hits.
-This month we're averaging well over 2000 hits (number of requests for files), up from over 1600 average last month. The only other time we averaged over 2000 hits per day was in August, when the first trailer got listed on Comics2Film.com.
-In less than a week, there's been nearly 800 downloads of the new trailer since it went online, just from this site. Cranefilms.com has it up as well, but I don't know the stats from there. Best guess is it's over 1000 now, and the only places it's been listed on are Batmanfanfilms.com, Myspace, Livejournal, the LSU Cinema Club group, and the two websites.
-Because of the smaller file sizes (love that Quicktime 7 compression), bandwith increase has been nearly minimal, even with the new trailer up in two formats. Less than 3GB used, compared to nearly 40GB when the first trailer was listed on Comics2Film.com.

And some totals for the last year that the site's been up:
-About 147GB of bandwidth used. Dropped to almost nothing since the first trailer was moved off-site, but it's trending back up now.
-Well over 22,000 visits (that's for all pages on the site, not just the main page), averaging over 2000 per month.
-Well over a half million hits in the last year, and averaging well over 40,000 per month lately. This month we'll easily break 50,000, and might hit 60,000.

Top referrers (where we're being linked to from), in no particular order:
-Batmanfanfilms.com
-Comics2Film.com
-CraneFilms.com
-FanboyTheatre.com
-GL-ND.com
-Myspace.com

All of the numbers have been increasing the last couple of months, and that's probably going to continue well into the new year when the film's finished.

Let's roll.

(originally posted by Brady)

Ok, so it's been like 2 days since I finished editing the trailer and it went up and man oh man, the response is very enlightening.
All this talk about shooting some stuff for a new trailer that had an online release date that was 3 days from when i was told kinda hit me real fast. And knowing that the camera was going to be in my hands the whole time (as its hard to use when you have gloves and a vision obscuring cowl on) and that editing was going to be all me as well, Id better be damn sure anything we shot was going to be usable.
We've already shot a scene for the actual movie, but David is insistent on showing the people as much real footage as possible. Makes perfect since to me, so my goal was to make mock scenes. Worked out perfectly AND I think it gave the actors a good idea as to how shooting the actual movie is going to work. So this is a good practice for everyone involved.
The thing I really like about working w/ David is his real world approach to the material. I've never been a big fan of comics, but Batman has always fascinated me as he is not just a comic book character, but a literary symbol up there with Aticus Finch or Odysseys. He cant fly, he cant shoot lasers out of his fingers, but he applies himself in every possible aspect of his life to become a perfect specimen of a man. And to use those applied powers for right as apposed to wrong says even more about the character, Bob Kane and anyone who takes on the material with that mindset.

SO...as anyone who frequents this site, you probably know that David has had some failed attempts at getting this movie off the ground in the past due to people who either didn’t understand his take on things, or were just plain unreliable. Crane Films was responsible for the last trailer that was made which was done before any of us really knew each other. Which showed in the final product. It was alright, but only alright.
So it was agreed that some downtime and serious preproduction, recasting, visual effects tests ect were necessary to make this thing look the way it needed to.

So after David has pretty much mastered CGI to the best of his abilities and we all have begun to see things on the same page, we can start assembling the best possible cast, locations, props, costumes (and artists, Eric!) to get this thing moving; which is exactly what we did last week.

Creating a trailer is like getting all your clay ready, shaping, and then pulling pieces away from it to tease the public with. I tried story boarding the trailer, but ultimately threw them out to go with whatever felt right. So everyone got together over the course of two really cold (thank god for David's sake) nights and we basically just broke everything down and made damn sure not to rush anything. Lighting was so crucial that I would take several minutes and make poor little Jeffery hold his Joker smile until I was satisfied with the lighting. I am very particular about my theory on lighting. In this case, I want it to look like it's coming from a real source (ala streetlamp ect) but not looking so realistic that it takes you out of that comic book realm. And yet I don’t want it to look too expressionistic so that your thinking Tim Burton while you watch this either. So it's very tricky...but worth it.

Editing the trailer was the funnest part. 7 1/2 hours at the comp...not bad.
Using the reindeer in the beginning was Kyle's idea and I think it made all the difference in the world. So I used music not batmanish at all to set you up for a horror movie. In fact, the first time you should know your in for a batman movie might not be your first glimpse of the Joker, or the Riddler, but not until you see the word Gotham City. Hell, Batman's face doesn’t even appear until almost the end of the trailer. Giving you loads of examples of "CRIME" in the beginning was essential to the first appearance of our heroes. which is my favorite part. Seeing them from behind with those strings from the Batman Begins score hits hard. Really heroic.

I’m glad to be working in the company of friends. Emily Rowley is gonna be nuts as Harley Quinn (spot on casting), Jamie is gonna offer a younger look at Robin as I think as ever been seen before in a live action Batman movie, plus he's got the perfect range to play an adult while looking a bit younger than David. Amy Engal and Lana Roberts was a miracle to have them playing relatives due to their obvious likeness. Both excellent actors and smart enough people to get what's going on. And of course having the talents of Alvin Temple and Eric "Fabulous" Bullock on set at all times is going to keep everybody in good spirits. And last but not least, Catherine Tillson is helping out behind the scenes. This might be the most comforting thing as a co-director as Catherine has an extensive knowledge of movie making and is a work horse herself. She will know going into this as everyone else involved that shooting may go on well into the night and nothing will be more important in your life than getting this right.
This is a fan film, that means no exceptions. If you feel like you have better things to do, good, get off this set. And for anyone who is ready for a really fun and active production, great. Lets put another one in the bank that will make us, and all of the fan boys (hopefully) proud.

Now in the words of Bela Legousi - "LETS SHOOT THIS FUCKER!"