I’m sure by now you’ve established that I tend to be fairly wordy when I write these blog entries. On numerous occasions I’ve tried to keep the word count to a minimum, but it hasn’t met with much success. Thus, when it came time to talk about June 8^th and 9^th, the shooting days for The Rats in the Walls, I had two options: I could write about the prosthetic limbs, the blood splatter tests, the straight jacket and the hand made backdrops or I could just show it all to you.  As the old adage goes, a picture speaks a thousand words, and these pictures, captured by Sam Green (http://dd.ourvfs.com/dd13sam/wordpress/) will do more justice than my overly synthesised prose could ever do.  That said, I still feel the need to provide some substance to the pictures in question, but I’ll try not to use so many words.

Day 1 – June 8^th

Lead actor Eric Floyd got into character right from the mornig. Makeup artist Amanda Imeson did a wonderful job making Eric look more like a deranged Delapore. Some exceptional mood lighting certainly helps as well.

We required a few backdrops to be erected, so along with co-producer Mike Chen, EBM head of department Jessica Clark-Bojin and head animator Vera Varlamova, we created them to give the perfect look for the film.

The day was like a kindergarten class taught by Hannibal Lecture; more complex lighting set-ups required even more arts and crafts.

Makeup artists Nikki Simpson and James Skuse prepared James Swendsen, who played Norrys, for some of the more gruesome scenes in the film. James was a great sport, despite being in a particularly vulnerable position. Eric was eager to take a bit out of the scene, so to speak.

Naturally throughout the day there were also deep, important conversations. About what, I don’t remember, but rest assured they were important.

Let’s not forget, why all this commotion was going on in the first place: some excellent footage.

In a nutshell, that’s day one. It wasn’t as quick and compact as the pictures make it seem. However, it certainly was eventful. In the next post, I’ll walk you through our second day of shooting, but before then, below is the picture of the fantastic team who made all this gory-goodness come to life.