MISSION SLIGHTLY DIFFICULT

INTERVIEW SERIES PART 1

by NigelBlackthorne

 

Rick_Slick put out a casting call for a new movie he was going to shoot along with Miracle Picture’s own Francis_7.  That movie is Mission Slightly Difficult, which will be released sometime during the first part of next year. I got the part one of the reporters in the movie along with The Voice’s owner/founder/editor Geea.  The scene we were in was shot at the very beginning of the shooting schedule and I got a link from Rick for the part of the script that I was involved with.  I found the script to be very well written and very professional.   

Having been involved in a number of movies/videos, I realized that Mission Slightly Difficult was then next step in the evolution of There moviemaking.  The costumes, the sets, the script, the level of acting, the sophisticated method of filming…were all way ahead of anything I had seen before. 

During the course of MSD shooting, I had been IMed by Rick, Francis or Disky, when they needed an extra guard or scientist or whatever. With Francis supplying a liberal dose of levity on the set, it was always an enjoyable experience.   

I took some pictures and wrote up a little article on the filming wrap party, but wanted to ask the principal actors/actresses a few questions about their experience while shooting MSD.  In this the first part of The Making of Mission Slightly Difficult, I interviewed Rick_Slick. 

It took Rick_Slick a couple of months to write the script for Mission Slightly Difficult and I was curious about how he came up with the concept for MSD.  He explained, “Well, I had just finished helping add some screenplay material & dialogue to Broc Lee: Man of Tomorrow for Miracle Pictures. Francis_7 liked it so much that he said he would produce anything I wrote.  As my eyes lit up, he then qualified that statement with "Except porn."   So I took him up on his offer, and I wanted to do a halfway-serious halfway-goofy action movie.   

At first I was leaning towards a Bond movie, but I was also playing Dr. Evil in FatHamburger's "Austen Powers: The Avie Who Shagged Me" movie, so I knew a Bond spoof was already coming out shortly.  I also thought that a lot of the stunts and special effects we would need for a Bond film we weren't yet ready for.  I looked through my MP3 list and discovered several versions of the Mission: Impossible theme that I had downloaded a long time ago hidden deep underneath a bunch of Backstreet Boys and N-Sync music files that I have NO CLUE how they got onto my hard drive, I swear.  I thought it might be cool to do a spoof of Mission: Impossible instead... where I could still try some stunts and special effects, but focus more on the story and plot, and have fun with several main characters instead of just one or two.  So I went to work on the screenplay back in the end of June with a very basic plot outline I came up with and then fleshed it all out with some dialogue and details until I came up with something I was happy with.  I passed it on to Miracle Pictures to see if it was all feasible.  It wasn't, but that's never stopped us!”

Obviously Miracle Pictures was up for the task.  I asked Rick how filming MSD was different from the other projects he had done with Francis_7 and the Miracle Pictures group.

”Well first of all, the main difference you will first notice is that the title of the movie is different than the other ones we've done.  But more seriously, the project differs a lot to me because I was able to create it from scratch. I also downloaded/edited the music and the sound effects, built a lot of the sets, help cast the actors and actresses, handled most of the logistics of getting everyone together to film over the 34 days it took, and I worked on some of the graphics.  In my first film with Miracle Pictures, Killboat, my participation was limited to ad-libbing some dialogue here and there or suggesting some scenes or shots.  For Broc Lee, I was given the script and allowed to add whatever dialogue I felt added to the storyline and increased the comedy value of the movie.  So this is the first time Miracle Pictures has really given me carte blanche to create a movie from basically the ground up... in return, I did a lot of the grunt work that Virtual_Vikki, Francis_7, and Disky would normally had to have done.

Those who know me well understand that it's always been one of my dreams/aspirations to write a screenplay and watch it be produced into the movie, and even if it isn't real life, this could really be close enough to fulfill that.  That's what I like so much about There... you can really be the person you want to be in our virtual world that for whatever reason, you aren't able to be in real life.  And I will be eternally grateful to the folks over at Miracle Pictures for giving me such a wonderful opportunity to do so.”

There are a lot of challenges when you take on a large project like MSD and I wanted to know what was most difficult for Rick during the filming…this is what he had to say, “The most difficult aspect was coordinating between the schedules of the main actors and actresses, which sets were ready to build, and which scenes we were prepared to do. With so many main characters in every scene, it was a show-stopper if for some reason someone couldn't log during a night we had scheduled to film a certain scene.  

 Thankfully, most of the time, we would have several options on scenes to film, or we would use a stand-in.  For some of the minor roles, if the person we had designated for that role wasn't on that night, we unfortunately had to put someone else in their place. One of the drawbacks to that is for people with easily recognizable voices, such as FTR_Eddie or SumGuy, you lose your sense of immersion in the movie when you realize the same guy is playing several different parts. Unless you get really liquored up when you watch these things first, in which case you probably won't notice.  

In the future, I think it would be wise to keep the number of main characters down to a manageable level.  In this movie, there were essentially 9 main characters, so we really had to depend on each of them being available every night.  And sometimes those nights of filming would be long and tedious, where Francis would make us do the same scene over and over like 56 times until we finally heard the magic words of re-assurance and relief we had been waiting to hear all night: "Okay, you no-talent hacks... I guess this is as good a shot as we're going to get."  All in all, the most stressful part of the project for me is trying to help Francis_7 film the scenes the way I tried to communicate in the screenplay based on how I envisioned it all in my head. If we get anywhere close, I think everyone will really enjoy what we all put together here.  And I have to thank RavenTresses for putting up with me spending so much time away from her over the last two months to work on this, and for all the support she's given me throughout the production.”

If the title Mission Slightly Difficult says anything…it says action…albeit with tongue firmly planted in cheek.  So, what kind of great special effects can we look forward to in the movie?  Rick explains, “The special effects are limited to a few explosions that will be added during editing, some chromakey work where we film some actors in front of a green screen, and then later substitute another piece of the film in for the green background so the actors are superimposed over the scene, and that's about it.  Industrial Light & Magic turned down our bid of 500 Therebux to work on the special effects for MSD, so we were pretty much out of luck on that.  

FatHamburger's "Austin Powers" and Pineriver's "The Creature" were great examples of special effects in a There movie, but we wouldn't have come close to that.  There are about three major stunts in the movie, one of which involves a daring hoverbike jump onto a hoverboat, which should look the coolest.  We spent all night filming footage of it from different angles, so hopefully it turns out as exciting as I had envisioned it in my head.  If not... cut us some slack.... making a movie is hard!”

As I mentioned before, I had the opportunity to do a number of bit parts in the movie myself and in each instance I was amazed at the elaborate sets that were being used for the shoots.  I wrote in a previous article that the cost of shooting the movie was over a million tbux.  I asked Rick about this huge expenditure and if there were any plans to recoup any of the money spent on its production. 

Rick explained, “Pimping out RavenTresses for fast cash was apparently out of the  question, as my new black eye can attest to.  At a personal cost of over one million Therebux, and even more spent by Virtual_Vikki in submission costs for various props she built for us, this is probably the most expensive movie produced in There yet.  Every set was basically built with PAZes.

Virtual_Vikki should be able to recoup her investments by putting some of the props in auctions after the movie is released.  Grimm will be auctioning the five custom hoverbikes made for the movie as a limited edition after the movie is released to recoup his investment.  I don't have any plans to recoup the money I put in at this time except for auctioning off the vehicles and building material when I'm sure we're all done with them.  I thought about auctioning off some of the PAZes themselves which contain sets from different scenes, but I'm not sure what the interest would be in that. Seeing this project completed will be well worth the money I invested.

With the stresses and strains of a busy shooting schedule still fresh in his mind, I was hesitant to ask Rick if he was thinking about any future movie projects…but went ahead and asked him anyway…this is what he had to say,”Miracle Pictures has enough project material to carry them into the spring of next year, so right now I think I'm just going to relax in There and spend time with my sweetheart.

You'll find RavenTresses and myself getting into all sorts of trouble and bawking like chickens over the next few months, I'm sure.  When we're all ready to try again, I still want to shoot for a Bond movie at some point.  Raven would like me to attempt a romantic comedy, about love and affection and dating and all that garbage, as apparently the women of There want to see something besides guns, explosions, and bike chases.  So maybe I'll write a romantic comedy with
guns, explosions, and bike chases.”

One of the great things about There is that it provides a great environment for making movies.  There are limitations and every person who has ever made a movie or video in our little metaverse has run into them.  Rick has his own ideas about what could be done to make things better for moviemaking as he explained, “I think using There to make movies is a great creative outlet for people, and allows someone to produce a movie with whatever props, vehicles, stunts, actors, and extras they want at a very small fraction of what it would cost to produce the same movie in real life.

It allows the people who like acting a chance to try themselves out on a virtual movie set, it allows people who like building things figure out how to put together a set, and it allows people with technical expertise the opportunity to mix together the video and audio with effects to polish it all up.  I think you'll see the movie producers in There continue to try to outdo each other in terms of special effects and storyline, and hopefully projects like MSD will inspire more people with the proper hardware/software to attempt making a movie in There.

This could be a major selling point for There in the future, or even a way to license their product to Hollywood.  Imagine James Cameron using a version of the There platform to visualize scenes/camera work from the next Terminator movie instead of relying on models or storyboards or expensive CGI to conceptualize a scene.  Imagine Steven Seagal using the There platform to actually practice acting first before filming for the big screen.  For the immediate future, I think the following changes would need to be made to aid the movie-making industry in There:

1) The ability to disable being sucked into a chat group.
2) Better support for a higher density of avatars in one area before blockheads are formed.
3) Better in-game support for various camera angles (rotating, zooming, panning, attaching the camera to another object, chase cam, etc).
4) The ability to adjust from how far away you can hear voicechat, and the ability to normalize the volume of voicechat regardless of distance (so all audio is picked up by the avatar acting as camera).
5) Turn on paintguns in more places (I had a lot of difficulty finding
locations for sets that were both a) relatively flat, b) allowed paintguns).” 

Mission Slightly Difficult is still a few months from being released but promises to be action packed and fun…something to look forward to.  In the next part of this series we will visit with the Miracle Pictures gang…Francis_7 and Disky.