Gearing up for the pilot!

I am counting down the days until we begin shooting our pilot episode for Hell Hole, The Series.  We decided not to shoot our first episode but shoot one in the middle, where the characters are at home in their new house.  Episode 5, here we come!


Storyboards are in the make and we have schedule out the three day adventure to shoot a 6 minute episode.  Jorge and Jason created a diagram of camera setups this weekend.  Stephen is putting some final touches on episode 5.  I have been working out the sound of Satan and collecting props and gear.  Casting for Satan has not yet come to a close, as we are excited by several auditions.   This week we all will converge upon Salt Lake City to wrap up preproduction and begin shooting.


11 days before we begin shooting!

Jason rallies the troops old school style!

As we get closer to our shooting days and things get hectic, Jason is always good with an email to lift the sprit and lighten the mood. This one came with a photo and it spurred a few fun emails listed below.

Good day to you all kindly woman and gentlemen of AOI. As I reflect back at our time together I am proud to know such great artists as yourselfs. To go into the battle of bad media together feels me up with such a sense of pride. Nothing on this great and goodly Earth can stop us in our conquest to fight this bad media evil and prevail as only AOI can! Are first assault in our quest is the World Wide Web. He is a dangerous foe full of junk and crapy videos of kittens and whinny people. A very sad sight indeed. BUT WE WILL PREVAIL! Hell Hole, The Series is our secret weapon to defeat this enemy. It is crafted with a quality story, backed up with superior production value and lastly... blessed with great entertainment value! Hell Hole is our weapon of chose, good entertainment our armer, creativity our helmet and quality our sword! We AOI will stand tall and fight for freedom from bad media!!! So AOI, we must prepare, we must share ideas, we must reason with one another. On the marrow I suggest we gather. When the Sun is about to set over the Great Salt Lake, Eight Post Meridiem, Seven Post Meridiem in the desert. I look forward to our meeting of the minds. Till then I bless that we will stay alive in these danger filled days to fight again for Architects of Imagination!

General R.J. Ball of the Territory of Utah, East side District.

Dearest General Ball,

I trust this letter finds you well. It is a balmy August night as I write these words. I pray for all our sakes and that of our children, that this war is over soon and Bad Media will no longer plague or once great nation. Rations have been low and moral has continued to steadily decline. However your stirring words have lit a fire in the hearts of the troops I pray may never be extinguished. We will fight on Sir and shale never surrender! I Sir will proudly stand by you not only on the morrow but on the day that follows as well.

Lt. Wisely 5th regiment

August twenty fourth in the year of our lord 2009

P.S. Love the Photo it reminds me of simpler times.

My fellow country men,

Tonight we shall rendezvous at 1900 that which be called false time and 2000 that which we consider reality in "People of the Mountains". I'm informing you of my mission status in L.A. as I write to you now. Moral is on the up and up here but fear looms within the minds of our men as we prepare for another campaign in which we will be heading north east to meet up with existing regiments of Lt. Wisely and General Ball. Major Pentacoff will be following suit, we move at dawn.

Just so you know I will only be able to meet for the first 45 minutes of our meeting due to some reconnaissance with my sergeants. An agenda is below to list of items to discuss, please review.

Items to add to Agenda:

-SFX update - body fire and hole update - we will need to shoot the plates for composites.
-Discuss meeting with Colonel Allen from the Confederate Army, Major Pentacoff present.
-Callbacks up date with Xander, Kenneth, Jeremiah and Corey.
-Schedule of shoot. Major Pentacoff and I have started discussion on this, I am also generating a list of how many setups per scene etc. We need to discuss how PSA fits and croquet game fits. My fear is that we are locking ourselves into a corner for Saturday which is a prime day.
-Talent update with PFC Katzer and PFC Nielsen. Rehearsals Sept. 8th - 10th confirmed from 8pm - 10pm.

I hope this letter finds you well. May our desire push through the fires of the wilcox mountains. May our beef jerky give us the nourishment and our cavalry. I sit and gaze at the banner spelled H-O-L-L-Y-W-O-O-D. We shall and will take down each letter one by one. Our regime will prevail. I look forward standing next to you on the field of battle.

Lieutenant Colonel Urbina (I was going to go with Commander Skywalker)

The Sound of Satan, pt 2

Satan, who we are currently casting, is just a voice.  As a result, it is up to us to take the nicely recorded OS  dialog and put it in the hole.  Step one: make the space of a hole.

Previously I mentioned that Satan is 7.5 miles under the ground which is based on a myth.  However, the physical properties of sound that far away from where our characters finally hear Satan are ridiculous enough to ditch realism... the realism of a 7.5 mile deep hole.  So I have been looking at other possibilities, like building a model to mimic the desired reverb of the hole.  Another example is taking a long tube-like item and creating an impulse response (IR) from it which would be used to make the reverb of the space inside that item.  That may also mimic a hole.  Not having a Hell Hole model already built, I tried the latter.

I first found a bunch of free IRs already created by Fokke van Saane.  I ended up playing with the vaccum tube IR, processing it further to create a longer tail with more resonant properties on the lower end of the frequency spectrum.  It sounds much more complicated than it really is. After it was processed several times, I loaded it into Logic's Space Designer.    

The result was encouraging, although still not quite the hole I want to experience in the end. From what I have learned here, I would like to take a longer tube, put weight in or on it and then take create another IR.  This will lengthen the depth of the hole and how it vibrates (as though it were in the ground, and not a free-vibrating plastic tube).  

There is also a question of how much primary source versus reverberant sound should we hear.  That will come in time as we expand our exploration of how to create the correct depth of the hole.  If you would like to make an IR of your own, there are many tutorials on the web with more in depth information.  Please experiment!

Interpretation - Hell Hole Pilot

One of the themes of the piece I have interpreted and shared with the others is the concept of manipulation amongst the characters. Manipulation comes in all different shapes and sizes within human behavior and it is definitely seen in this episode. Our goal is to show how every character tends to manipulate each other, this sounds more serious but luckily we will be seeing this subtextually within the pilot. Stephanie manipulates Jason, Jason manipulates Stephanie and Lucifer manipulating both of them. The triangle of the relationships is endless as we progress within the series! The energy, rhythm and performances will shine through and the result will be comedy! Keep on the look out...the days are counting!

Script Feedback - Round 1

We just got our first round of script feedback from Tim, a dear friend who has just hopped onto the project.  With detailed notes from Tim, we sat down together over the internet to discuss the feedback.  Jorge was in LA, Jason and Stephen were in Salt Lake City and I was (and still am) in the good ol' AZ. 

We discussed characters, hooks and the purpose of a script... and we came across the idea that the script you initially write and the one you shoot from can be vastly different.  The script you use to sell you concept to a possible investor can also be unique in its own right.  

AOI - On Scripts for Invest  by  m5coff

Enjoy!

The Sound of Satan

This evening, Jorge and I met to discuss how sound will be used in the pilot episode for Hell Hole. I personally did some research to help determine how Satan would sound from so far underground and came across legendary well that led to Hell. The well to Hell is a direct reference to the Kola Superdeep Borehole which is not much wider than your fist and approximately 7.5 miles deep.

The legend goes that Russian researchers of this borehole had noted that when their drill started flailing about that they probably reached a pocket or a chamber within the earths depths. Curiosity got the better of the researchers and they lowered both a heat resistant thermometer and a microphone into the hole, along with other sensory equipment. Temperatures were claimed to be at 2000 degreed Fahrenheit and that sounds of tortured souls could be heard. In the end, most agree that the temperature only reached 356 degrees Fahrenheit and that there were unique geological findings but that there is a lack of evidence for the tortured souls.

So, it has been determined that Satan's hole is only 7.5 miles deep and opens up into a wide chamber below... too bad the research didn't yield more facts about Hell.

But many other aspects of Satan and his sounds were discussed this evening. His emotions and how they play through sound and image, what he does on a normal basis without Stephanie and Jason being around and the distinct sound of the baseball that Satan and Jason are playing catch with. All of these will take a bit of experimentation but I expect that they will very much bring the world alive (as well as the character).

While casting for Satan is currently happening in LA, I am still building the IR for the hole's reverb. Oh yes, I am building an impulse response with a model hole and chamber. From this, I can create the depth to hole which we never quite experience other than through sound. Fortunately, our model will not be 7.5 miles long... perhaps only a mere 4-6 feet in depth. As for hearing those tortured souls at the bottom of the Hell Hole, you will just have to wait for the series to hear them!

Holy Flamin' Baseball, Batman!

Jorge is in LA working the casting calls and playing with flaming baseballs. Fire courtesy of Justin Martinez.

Hell Hole Fire Test 1 from Jorge Luis Urbina on Vimeo.

Casting!!!!

Here I sit sorting through an avalanche of head shots, resumes and reels hoping that gem will appear. Fun, Fun, Fun!