the best laid plans

     This week in DarkTriforceFilms, we had to make a lot of changes on the fly. Continuing our streak of being productive, this week consisted of continuing to film for videos that we started last week like The New Logan, new videos including one named The Intervention which I will touch on in a little bit, and an *attempt* at filming Dead Man's Hill. Speaking of that, I have to issue an apology. I lied to you last week and said that we'd be filming the new Dead Man's Hill this week, and while I can't say that we didn't film it, it's not any footage that will be seen!
     On Sunday, we met up with the props and equipment we needed to finally get Dead Man's Hill done, but were very quickly met with all the obstacles that seemed to be planted to stop us from getting this video done. Since we no longer live in the neighborhood we originally filmed Dead Man's Hill in, we had to do some location scouting for a new hill to use - and we ended up deciding on one in Woody's neighborhood. We had a choice between 2, and we went with the one we thought looked better on camera. 

     Setting up shop next to some big vehicle they had left parked after paving the road, we started to film, and this is where we came across our first issue - due to the schedule of the ol' day job, we could only start filming around 5, and this left the spot we were in with some pretty harsh shadows - you can see a little bit on John's face in the screenshots. But whenever we'd do a wide shot where we're both across from each other - John would basically be glowing and overexposed, while I was in a shadow, almost impossible to see, and this had like no way to fix. We shrugged it off and decided to go with it, since most the video took place somewhere else anyway. And it was the least of our problems we'd soon come to find out.
     We usually film inside, directly outside one of our houses, or in a secluded area of a park - and because of that we don't often have to move for any random people coming through. This time, we were filming right in the middle of a neighborhood road, so multiple times we'd just get a shot set up and someone would yell "Car!", and we'd have to move the camera and everything, stalling us from getting the video done.
     Then we started to notice that the cars just kept coming - like there was A LOT of cars that were going to and fro on this street. It wasn't a main street or anything, so it seemed kind of random. Then we noticed they all seemed to be trying to park in front of one specific house.. and then realized that house seemed to be throwing a party.. and they had A LOT of guests!! Between every take another car would pull up and look for a new spot to park in on the street, save for the one spot we were all standing in and keeping our stuff at. By the time we ultimately scrapped this filming session, the street went from basically empty, to almost the entire length filled up with cars parked just for this one house. 
     And so, we had to delay Dead Man's Hill once again, tired from the heat and constant back and forth of cars. While we do still plan to film it eventually, with John's schedule we can really only do Sunday's - and Bacon's production will be taking up a lot of those for the next few weeks, so it'll be a bit until we get a chance. This Sunday, we planned on filming just the beginning part of it since Carlota (who plays the villain in this video) is in Canada - but we decided to film a different shorter video so we could hopefully have a fully finished video instead. I'll update you on that next week! As for a video we did finish - let's talk about The Intervention!

     Much like with Dead Man's Hill, we had to make a lot of decisions on the fly for The Intervention. If not obvious from these screenshots, this video is about the infamous Woody Hamilton mustache. I started writing this video around the time Woody originally grew his mustache, which I believe was like late 2021? But at the time I couldn't think of a way to finish it. Woody eventually shaved that mustache when we went to Disney in early 2022 - but after that began to bring it back under the promise that he "would not shave until we filmed The Intervention." And so, the video was written and the days of mustached Woody were officially limited.
     Close to the day we were scheduled to film, the cast of the video was changed around and now included Alexis and Kip! However, the original script had Alexis as more of a cameo, and Woody had a different idea for an ending - so the day before filming, I wrote an entirely new ending to the video and we were ready! But on our first day of filming, we met knowing we could only film half of this video that night - the final cast member in the video was a Mr. Charles Hufferd - who couldn't make it on that Tuesday afternoon. 
     But we planned ahead! And after finishing on Tuesday, we planned to meet up again on Friday morning before Cameron headed to his day job to finish up the second half of the video and anything else we may have missed. There were a few more complications however - Kip couldn't make it Friday morning due to some issues regarding his becoming a Train Conductor (long story), and in Kip's words "Alexis was a sleepyhead", so that left just myself, Cameron, Charles, and Woody to figure out what to do with the rest of the video.
     And so, the ending to this video was rewritten on the fly, making it the 3rd ending that was made for it - we'll see how it comes out once it's on deck for editing. And so, this video now has 3 endings and also 3 separate endcard scenes as well! Maybe one day we'll film the alternate endings and post them here on the website or something, who knows!
     But these videos weren't all we did this week, we also continued working on the videos we started last week! (I know, aren't we good at our jobs?)

     While not an incredible amount of work was done on The New Logan this week in comparison to last week or even the other videos from this week, we did finish one more scene out at one of our local parks. I unintentionally wore all black for it - since we were doing it after the second day of The Intervention and I had to wear the same thing as the first day filming. And much like every other video we did this week, we had to make some changes and improv some stuff on the fly for this small little scene too. Due to us not having everything the script required when we shot this, we had to make due with what we had - for instance, instead of me playing a guitar on a bench, it became me playing the broken keyboard in the trunk of my car on a picnic table. 
     Included here with the stills from the video, are some HD ones from what we filmed last week to make up for the fact all the photos in the last report were just taken off the camera screen since I didn't have time to import and screenshot everything before I had to write the report. And now you can see a bit more of our office! We have like 1 more scene to film for this video, and like 1 last shot to do at the office for it, so hopefully this will soon join the list of videos that are ready to edit.
     On the subject of editing though, let's quickly touch on Narrator once again!

     Narrator has officially entered editing, and will hopefully be done by the time the next edition of The DarkTriforceReport comes out! So if all goes to plan, the next report should be the last time you have to hear about this video - or maybe every new edition I'll talk about the analytics of it or something. It feels like a tradition at this point, you know? All but one of these have talked about it! I wish it was a bigger video to deserve all this pomp and circumstance!
     And just like everything else, even editing this video required some figuring things out on the fly. While nothing to the level of something we'd have to do for the other videos this week, it's just a lot of cutting clips back and forth in order to line up the way I need it to since a lot of this video is dependent on a voice over that we didn't have when we were filming. But overall, the editing is going swell! It's a short video so it's no big task or anything, just a few more clips to put in and then color correcting and audio mixing left!

     To conclude, I want to thank everyone who's been helping with the productions during this apparent "DarkTriforceFilms Crunch Time", from those who have been staring in multiple like Woody, Charles, and Kip or have cameoed in just one or two like Alexis, Cayley, John, or Ashley, and of course anyone who's just come to help us out like Kristina and Carlota! 
     And to give some more exclusive insider information on BACON (the Buddy Cops spin off webseries coming soon to a DarkTriforceFilms near you), we also held auditions for a couple of the new characters this week - which was a very weird but cool experience! As a small channel that's only ever grabbed our friends for videos, having people willingly apply and read scenes that we wrote was kind of surreal! But the people we met and who have applied were all super nice and great! Maybe we'll have casting announcements soon on here, I dunno! 
     I guess the moral of this report is to not be afraid to change things up and be ready to change things on the fly when making videos? That seems to be the common thread between everything I talked about today. Except the auditions, huh. Had to make up questions to ask them on the fly, does that count? Ah well whatever.
     Thanks for joining me for another one of these little newsletters that I write that nobody reads! Until next time, this is Logan signing off!