Last week we met Alan Winston, tackled the history of Bravado Entertainment (his 80+ movie strong production company), and gathered some thoughts on editing.
This week we delve into his latest movie, The Jedi : Part 6 - Queens of the Sith.
(If you speak hebrew, you'll know that "jed" translates to the number 2. Thus "jed-I-6" starts to look a lot like "216." Immediatly erase this retarded baseless thought from your mind.)
WARREN:
You are working on The Jedi : Part 6 - Queens of the Sith.
What do you want people to know about the project at this point? Pimp it.
ALAN:
Pimping away... Hm.
'The Jedi' is a live-action Star Wars parody series that originated on my show Delusions of Grandeur. It originally centered around wannabe Jedi Knight Gerald Kellerman and his attempts to stop crime at night with his toy lightsaber. Over the years, though, the series grew and grew, introducing more characters, more complex plotlines, and broke away from reality completely. It's now a full-fledged fanfilm, still a comedy of course, existing in its own little universe of Jedi politics.
Over the years, Gerald
[cough: played by alan]
has picked up a sidekick in wannabe Jedi Apprentice Finias Pokewicz
[cough: played by K.Shawn Edgar],
and a nemesis in Sith Lord Wilhelmina Tamerlane[cough: played by Carrie Davis].
In part 6, all storylines are resolved, all confrontations are final, all deaths are avenged, and all lightsabers are rotoscoped. It's the last movie in the series, so it's going to be a big spectacle, y'know, climactic and stuff. It's definitely our biggest movie ever in terms of production value - actual costumes, a bunch of remote locations, a cast of hundreds (well, dozens), big special effects, and (hopefully) the best story in the series.
WARREN:
You start off your summary by nodding to the 5 previous Jedi movies.
So, how do you expect people outside Oregon to watch these first 5 jedis, and come up to speed?
Or do you even want them to?
ALAN: I do expect them to watch the first five Jedis... sitting down, I suppose. Awake, preferrably. And mildy amused.
WARREN:
I STAB YOU!
ALAN:
Well, to be more technical, a few months before J6 is ready to go, I'm planning to put out a collection of the first 5 on VCD and VHS [cough: the first three add up to 11 and half minutes. Parts 4 and 5 add up to 40 minutes minutes. Plus behind the scene extras...], and charge like $1 for it. Selling below cost. How crazy is that! Yeah. That way people will have the opportunity to catch up on the continuity.
WARREN:
But should they...
ALAN:
Sure the first five installments can range from cheesy to cringeworthy (part 1 is almost six years old now...), but people should at least see part 5. The story in part 6 relies on a lot of relationships and situations set up by the previous movie...
WARREN:
Did you consider the people who would watch Jedi6 with no experience in the previous 5?
ALAN: Actually, yeah. Believe it or not, I did try to make this one as
stand-alone as I could. Moreso than say, Return of the Jedi is to the
original trilogy. I imagine that's why there's an opening crawl at the
beginning of each movie - it brings people with foggy (or no) memories up to
speed. Right off the bat, in the first scene, you get the relationships
between the three main characters, and those relationships essentially drive
the rest of the movie.
Jeff Bennet and Case Bowman wanting to come back for part 6 was kind of the curveball, though - the second-to-last draft didn't have them in
it. Their characters are very tied to the events of part 5, which is worrisome, but hopefully it won't be too confusing. [cough: both of their characters died during part 5]
WARREN:
How much time have you spent on jedi6 so far? exactly-ish?
ALAN:
That number could vary wildly depending on your definition of time spent...
I was writing concepts for the story as early as February 2000 (when part 5 was finished), so you could say I've been working on it off and on for three years now. We didn't officially get into producing it, though, until June 2002. We had about 5 days straight shooting all of Jeff & Case's scenes, another weekend on that set to finish up all the scenes there, a weekend shoot in the forest, a night of pickups in the forest, a weekend in the desert, three days of the set in Erin's room and the KBVR hallway, a day of greenscreen, a day of reshoots in the desert, and a day of shooting in the snow. So, that's nineteen shooting days. Add a few days to account for all the prep time, and we can't have spent more than a month total working on the movie. So far.
Of course, that's been spread out over the last nine months (and really, we've only done about three days of work on the movie in the last five months). Typical scheduling nightmares. So, the few days that we have gotten have been jam-packed and furious. And chaotic. I'm guessing we've got another four days worth of production to go. Hopefully it doesn't take another five months to get those.
WARREN:
Why put so much work into a movie so mired in copyright violations?
Your ideas will be scoffed at as rip offs of the most widely seen movies in history!
ALAN:
Why? ... Why? Because I feel like it, that's why. Geez....
WARREN:
Why not focus on career building projects instead?
ALAN:
Well, it's certainly a skill-building project. It's all about building character. Or something. It's a transitional piece. Career-building projects can wait until I'm clear of nasty entanglements like using State of Oregon-owned locations and equipment. Originally, the plan was to make this the last project produced for broadcast on KBVR (which it still is, depending on who's in charge of the station/programming by next year)
[cough: KBVR is the college tv/radio station that all 60 episodes of Delusions of Grandeur were broadcast on during alan's college years.]
As long as I'm making one long copyright infringement, it's better to do it now than to do it when I have the option to make something more (ugh) profitable.
And really, if I hadn't started it when I did, it probably never would have been done - I no longer have access to (some of) the people, places, or equipment that were necessary to make it. And you never know, this might be my last chance to make a movie in Oregon, and I always wanted to showcase the great variety of scenery we have. So I figured I better do it now. And if I'm still in Oregon, and we need any type of environment, at least I know where to go to get it now. If I had waited any longer, there was a danger of never being able to finish it, and I hate leaving things unfinished.
WARREN:
Why do you hate leaving things unfinished?
ALAN:
Always seemed like a good idea to me to finish what I started, stick it out 'til the end. If I gave up and left things unfinished, I wouldn't learn anything. And it just seems like a waste to quit, depending on how much time you've invested in the movie. And how much you've shot. Only when a work is finished can you sit back and really analyze all the things you didn't notice you were doing wrong. Or, give other people the opportunity to point out what they think you did wrong. Either.
Finishing the project is the most exciting part of the process. You lay down that final edit and it's a tangible point where you can let go of all the tensions and stress assosciated with the production. You leave it unfinished, and you just end up carrying it around with you. The 'what if's and 'if only I had's will carry over to the next project (which may or may not be a good thing). I dunno, I guess closure is a good thing. At least that's the way it works for me. It's not an absolute rule, and I'm sure there are lots of people perfectly capable of working in a completely opposite manner (coughnightisyounggauntlet216cough).
WARREN:
Bastard. No more coughing. I'll do the coughing.
Why didn't you just place the story in your own sci fi universe?
ALAN:
We're not exactly at the point where we can pull it together and efficently make something good enough to sell more than a dozen copies of anyway, so we may as well make whatever kinds of movies we want.
And, seeing as how I've grown to like the characters in this series, and so many people wanted to make this one (IE Jeff Bennett offering to fly up from San Diego for it and so on), it seemed like the best project to take on right now. There'll be time for original works later. And I'll probably stick to those after we finish this.
WARREN:
But why do sequels to something you made back in college?
Why not do a new stand alone jedi movie that everyone can be reinvented in?
ALAN:
Why? Whywhywhywhy....
No, no, there is no why. Nothing more will I teach you today!
WARREN: ack!
And it was thus that alan slammed his hovel's makeshift door in my face, leaving me to freeze in the rainy jungle and wonder how i could convey my displeasure at resuming my hick jedi master Bandameer role. My tears were overpowered in degobah's downpour. then i killed my wretched geek self.
But you can continue on to part 2, where my blurry ghost spirit slaps Alan around for ignoring profits and raping star wars.
