Tag: Hollywood insight

Red Dead Redemption: The Best Western in over Twenty Years

There are some things that established thinking in politics will never understand, because their culture is relative to their emotional states established before their 15th birthdays. It is well known that many people don’t evolve much emotionally beyond their middle to late teen years. That means that the values established in those years become the final touches of a psyche that will travel with that person all their lives.

And that is where a major gap exists between those adults that grew up prior to the computer revolution, and the adults that grew up after. And the teens that are now spending much of their development participating in online games, such as Medal of Honor, World of WarCraft, Gears of War, Halo, and Madden Football are having a different emotional experience than those that currently sit in the halls of power. And that is why those who analyze the Tea Party movement are completely lost, because there are elements emerging that defy the old powers that have controlled the human mind for thousands of years.

Well, I’m a man that grew up after this computer revolution. But what I’ve done personally is that I did not stop my development at age 15. I have continued a youthful mindset well into my adulthood. So as the computer age has emerged, I have enjoyed the benefit of the interactive gaming industry, and how they have now moved into a marketplace that rivals Hollywood movies. And I enjoy playing them and with each new game I find the experience beneficial.

With that said, my top game experience of 2010 was Red Dead Redemption.

Red Dead is a spaghetti western style game that allows you to do anything anytime, and anywhere in a vast western era style environment. It is the best western produced since Clint Eastwood’s Pale Rider back in the 80’s, but what this western has going for it is that you get to play the part of the lead character. And that is a dramatic new element that I find infinitely fascinating.

The music is the best western style soundtrack since Ennio Morricone’s soundtracks for The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly, A Fistful of Dollars, and For a Few Dollars More. The style of direction is undeniably Sergio Leone, which again is a very welcome site.

The story of the game is about the evils of politics, which has particular appeal to me. Younger players may not get so much out of that story line, but I found it particularly potent. It’s about the encroachment of civilized, European style government over the rugged individualism of the western settler. But the story also deals with the deception of those same individuals that resort to the pack mentality of cattle rustlers, and Mexican revolutionaries.

One of the greatest thrills in the game are the one on one duals that you get to be in, where you have to quick drawl another gunman like we’ve all seen in hundreds of westerns. It is quite an experience to do it through the character of the game.

The game for me was a great relief from the reality of modern life where people have evolved into very soft and fragile versions of European ideology. I found the characters surviving the Wild West to be refreshing versions of the overly padded people we all have to deal with on a daily basis. In Red Dead, people get shot, they die, they fight with boldness and honor, and they don’t do a whole lot of complaining.

And that was the best part of the game.

The established portion of society hasn’t picked up on it yet, but the story to games like Red Dead Redemption is very sophisticated and politically significant if not entirely successful of recreating history both accurately and mythically. And it was a great pleasure to play.

And for Halloween, they released this! What great fun!


Rich Hoffman

www.overmanwarrior.com

Bullwhip Consultant on Films

After the Enquire article, one of the natural questions resulting was about how do you consult for films with whips?

Unfortunately, these days there are fewer films using whips as a part of the story line than there was in the early days of cinema. That of course is directly attributable to the decline of the western in modern film and television. But occasionally, a storyline comes forth that requires them, and a decision will be made on how to go about it from the studio. Recently, Whiplash from Iron Man 2 was produced which featured whips of a sort. But their approach was to use film of how a whip moves to create the effects in CGI.

But CGI works great in some cases, but not so great in others, and whip work is something that is more dramatic in real life. And such is a recent call I received from Peter Facinelli who I met at the Indie Gathering Film Festival while I was doing some firewhip work.

This is from the actual stunt demonstration where Peter and the director Rob Gunnerson were a part of.

They approached me about a project they were doing with RealD 3D where they wanted to capture the firewhips with RealD’s new 3D camera system in HD. So I flew out to LA to help them bring that project to life, called for now tentatively, The Delivery.

Peter of course is currently busy with the Twilight franchise, so further development of The Delivery is ongoing.

Here is the trailer that we shot, which consisted of a series of test shots to test the camera equipment. I served as the whip consultant and handler in all whip action. I am particularly proud of the shot we got where I cracked the cigarette backwards using one of my 12 foot bullwhips. The director wanted to do it for real, not in CGI, and we pulled it off with just a few takes.

View the Trailer at the links:
The Delivery 3D Trailer
http://mediaservices.myspace.com/services/media/embed.aspx/m=102190281,t=1,mt=video
The Delivery 3D | MySpace Video

 
More info and production stills can be found at this link.

http://twilighttreasury.blogspot.com/2010/01/peter-facinelli-delivery-3d.html

Here are some images from the shoot:  Here Rob Gunnerson sets me up for the stand in work for Peter who is in the background. 

Here is Mat Wilig, who played the demon, standing with me.  We had the awkward issue of sharing a trailer on set since they were short one and we both had extensive makeup to do.  The very first thing I said to him was something negative about playing for the Panthers because I’m a Tampa Bay fan.  But after that, we got along well.   Matthew is recently retired from the NFL after 14 seasons. He played for 6 teams (New York Jets, Atlanta Falcons, Green Bay Packers, St. Louis Rams, San Francisco 49ers and the Carolina Panthers). He went to 2 Super Bowls while winning 1 and losing the other. He is steadily rising up the Acting ladder and receiving acclaim as his roles get bigger and better.


Here is Rob and Peter going through the shots with me so we can measure distance for all the equipment. 

Here are the Producers, the face paint really got on my nerves after 12 hours.

Peter and I on break. 

Test shot of how the 3D camera’s were capturing the fireball given off by the firewhip.

Rich Hoffman

www.overmanwarrior.com

The Expendables and The Lost Cannibals of Cahokia

This last summer, it is unbelievable how many movies are out there that just aren’t very good. I say this as I hear that The Expendables, the new Sylvester Stallone film is number one for the second consecutive week. It reminded me of some comments some professional script advisors gave me, which I thought was hog wash at the time and has been confirmed by my experience, told me about my screenplay, The Lost Cannibals of Cahokia.

Over a hundred thousand hits on Youtube, but it takes a lot more than that to get a good movie put together.

Several years ago, I wrote Cannibals based on the ancient civilization outside of St. Louis. It was an Indiana Jones type of adventure that featured a young college age woman, before Lara Croft was popular, which gives an idea of how long ago I wrote it. During the coarse of her adventure with two friends in the back woods of Kentucky, they discover that decedents of Cahokia were cursed by a shaman with human deformities that forced them to consume human flesh in order to stay alive themselves. It was an action pact adventure film. Critics of the story had a hard time believing that such a character could possibly do the things the heroine does in the movie. They wanted to see more emotion, more relationship conflict, and more character arch, which I refused because I didn’t want to make that kind of movie. They are a dime a dozen and have no lasting value in public consciousness.

The film was written for an independent film producer, and the deal fell through. So after that, I had a story, so I shopped it around the way everyone else does that writes screenplays, and the universal response was, “It was too bloody and the characters weren’t believable,” which was a way of saying that the characters were too dynamic and not functioning in a way consistent with normal human response. These being the same people that argued with me for hours when I complained that in the Blair Witch Project, I never would have become lost in the woods the way those kids were. The response was disbelief that I could say such a thing with confidence. So the line of communication was worlds apart.

Now since I wrote Cannibals, Kill Bill has come out. Several other horror films that are similar in grotesqueness, such as the Saw films have emerged. So the comments of the assistant to studio reading departments made me realize that the studio system and all the agents on Wilshire Blvd, are not able to sort out the good from the bad. They are obviously in some cases getting stuck in politics, where they stay away from such stories out of some dedication to a social cause. Or they are reading screenplays that are about issues that they can relate to, which consist of life in Santa Monica, or Beverly Hills, which explains why the films produced don’t resonate well with the American public.

Now people love movies, so they’ll go see them, even if they aren’t very good. But consistently, the movies that people hold dear to their hearts are not the kind of projects pounded out on Wilshire Blvd deals. They come from film makers that have heart and passion and push the limits of studio bosses to the limit. They come from taking chances.

So when I hear Stallone was making an old fashion “tough guy” movie when the industry experts are formulating stories about working women and their problems, and relationship issues, and the typical comedy, Spike TV is playing repeats of the old films from the 80’s where political correctness wasn’t so correct. And I was happy to see Stallone take the bold chance to make another good old fashion film where toughness is the central character.

On my own project with Cannibals, I’ve tried several times since the marketing to the studio heads to put together an independent film crew, both times things fell apart before filming could begin, which is part of the business. And that is fine with me. I’d rather hold out for the right team and a good distributer, than to sell the project short, only to make another film that comes out flat on the screen and dies in the video rental market.

It’s better to aim to make a film that people would rather see multiple times, and people still enjoy decades later when it shows on TV during the holiday marathons.

Rich Hoffman

www.overmanwarrior.com