Latest / Cinema Yūgen / Todd Sheets Unleashes Werewolves in Space
Transcript
- 0:00G'day. That's right, it's that time again. Time for Cinema Yugen.
- 0:16Yes, welcome back Cinema Yugen. Todd Sheets is a filmmaker unbound by the concept
- 0:22of you need a truckload of cash to pull off epic on a low,
- 0:26low budget, but with Wolf Moon rising he He smashes together all the B-movie
- 0:31mastery from the likes of Roger Corman, Jim Wynorski, Fred Olin Ray,
- 0:34and delivers practical genius along with laughs,
- 0:38monstrous mayhem, and gore galore on the dark side of the stars.
- 0:41It's a howling good time with Wolf Moon rising. Please welcome him to Cinema
- 0:47Yugen. Here he is, the mighty Todd Sheets.
- 0:50G'day, Todd. Man, thank you so much for having me on the show.
- 0:53Thanks, mate. Jeez, it's been a while. I was looking at one of our old interviews was 2018.
- 1:00Jeez, that feels like a long time ago now.
- 1:03Yeah, that's true. If time flies, it really does. I know, but I mean,
- 1:08that's it, but it seems like a whole different world now compared to then,
- 1:13even though- It kind of is.
- 1:16Because it's kind of a lot happened in there, but-
- 1:20When I saw the write-up for your movie and what it was promising,
- 1:26Werewolves in Space, Wolf Moon Rising, talk about it, mate.
- 1:31It's a lovely, lovely, loved it, love it, love it, great, love werewolves,
- 1:37love werewolves in space.
- 1:38I think there should be more things in space.
- 1:42Well, I appreciate that. But yeah, man, it was kind of a thing where,
- 1:45you know, I've always loved werewolves and I've always loved these great lower
- 1:52budgeted kind of alien knockoff movies that I don't, I don't like to call them
- 1:56ripoffs because I think they were inspired by alien, but in a lot of ways,
- 1:59they're way different than alien.
- 2:00And in some ways I even liked them a lot better than most of the sequels to alien.
- 2:04And, you know, you got movies like creature and, you know, of course,
- 2:09horror planet and things like that.
- 2:10But I got really inspired by movies like Galaxy of Terror, Forbidden World.
- 2:17The Terror Within, things like that. And, of course, Battle Beyond the Stars.
- 2:21Loved the Roger Corman factory and how they combined sci-fi space movies with
- 2:26horror elements and had creatures and monsters and weird slimy things and gore.
- 2:32And I thought, you know, I really want to make a movie like that because it's so inspiring.
- 2:37And, of course, we've had such terrible weather in the Midwest here in the United
- 2:42States, and the weather was just pummeling us with rain every weekend,
- 2:47winds of 60 miles an hour.
- 2:49Our average wind speed here now in the Midwest is 45 to 50 miles an hour these days.
- 2:54And so I was like, every time I try to film outdoors, it knocks the equipment over.
- 2:59You can't hear anything or everything's rained out. And so I was fed up.
- 3:03So I was like, I think it's time for me to do a space movie because I could
- 3:06build the sets myself and we can just set it all in space.
- 3:11And that kind of prompted me to sit down and put my favorite movie monster of
- 3:16all time, werewolves into space. Yeah.
- 3:19Genius stuff, really. I loved it.
- 3:22I loved it. I loved it when Brian Trenchard Smith finally wrote his book and
- 3:28told the story about Leprechaun 4.
- 3:31Oh, yeah. Have you heard the story? Have you read it? I have not.
- 3:35Well, I mean, it is like as, as, as ironical as it sounds.
- 3:42It's literally he like, it's like
- 3:45the pitch you wish you could go in and
- 3:47do and then just say sure right
- 3:51and he just went in the room and like he had
- 3:54come off the success of leprechaun three in las vegas
- 3:57which did very well and they said
- 4:00we want to do another one and we wanted to be in
- 4:03space oh yeah and he was like oh this is good he says you know we could do it
- 4:08like this is totally like there's a dude taking a piss and you see this green
- 4:14orb go up the stream of liquid into his penis and then later it's like alien
- 4:19and the leprechaun shoots out of his crotch.
- 4:23And then there's silence and the next minute that's
- 4:27fantastic yeah can you do that yeah why not
- 4:30of course we can do that and you know
- 4:34thus an industry was born you know a lot of people think that that they've run
- 4:38out of ideas when they they send it into space like sharknado went into space
- 4:43and Jason went into space and
- 4:45Leprechaun went to space and I wish we could have seen Machete in space.
- 4:51I don't think so. I love it. I think it's great.
- 4:54I think it's a whole, I think if there were more in space movies,
- 4:58I think there could be, you know, it could be like its own sub genre almost.
- 5:02Well, I like the fact that I had my characters there. They were stranded.
- 5:06You know, the other ship that they had that they got the werewolves from,
- 5:11the distress signal ship that they went to, And these people turned out to be werewolves.
- 5:16You know, that whole situation was that ship blew up, so they couldn't use it.
- 5:20So they're pretty trapped on one ship, and there's really nowhere to go because
- 5:25they're in the middle of space.
- 5:27Their shuttles certainly aren't going to make it all the way back to Earth.
- 5:30So, you know, I really liked the fact that I could trap them there with these
- 5:35monsters, and the monsters could hunt them, you know, like they're prey,
- 5:39like they were in the middle of the woods. Only it's not the woods.
- 5:42It's been transposed to a ship. Yeah, certainly.
- 5:45And we should mention your great cast. A couple of my favorites that I want
- 5:49to throw shouts to, Douglas Epps as Hawk.
- 5:53I love some of his.
- 5:56I like his back and forth, actually, with Jack McCord, who's Dr.
- 6:00Frank Savage. I love that Doc Savage.
- 6:02He's got some of the best lines in the movie. Like, I love it when the chick.
- 6:07Oh, no, I shouldn't spoil it. Crap. No, hang on. I love it when a certain thing happens.
- 6:15And I think it's in the delivery of the line, more than the line itself.
- 6:20But he turns to everybody once he sees this thing that happens.
- 6:25And he says, everybody grab your blasters. You know?
- 6:32Yeah. And I love his, like, what is it? San Fran-tastic.
- 6:36That's San Fran-tastic. And, uh, what's the other one? Well,
- 6:40isn't this just the icing on this shit cake? Yeah.
- 6:44I kind of like it too. When he's standing there watching this guy transform
- 6:48into a werewolf that they've taken back to their ship to try to help.
- 6:51And the guy is just like morphing and turning into this thing.
- 6:54And he looks over at everyone and goes, well, you certainly don't see that every day.
- 7:02It's got some great lines. I remember when I was writing it,
- 7:05I kind of wanted that to be our version of,
- 7:07you know bones from star trek
- 7:09i wanted it to be a kind of a crotch yeah yeah yeah yeah
- 7:13he yeah he does give off that sort of yeah he's
- 7:17cranky but fun and but i mean he was he was the one when he died i actually
- 7:22was like that was kind of sad i was like oh damn i wish the doc had wish the
- 7:27doc had admit but he didn't that's the cool thing about our movies because we
- 7:31don't really have any rules about anyone can go at any time,
- 7:35even the main character, like back in my film from 1996,
- 7:39Violent New Breed, halfway through the movie, I was reading a book and the book
- 7:43was about screenwriting.
- 7:44It said the cardinal sin is never kill your main character.
- 7:48And so I said, I've got to do that. And I did, but I switched it over to another
- 7:52main character and it was so smooth that it actually worked and people really seemed to like it.
- 7:57So you never know what we're going to do when i'm writing it i just
- 8:00i have an outline but that may even get thrown
- 8:03away if i'm on a roll because i just want it to go where
- 8:06it goes where the story takes it and that's where
- 8:09the story took it and a lot of really cool characters had
- 8:12to get i mean someone's got to go so the werewolves had to take out somebody
- 8:16and uh there's only a handful of characters here that that they can work with
- 8:20so those guys had to go yeah totally and um i i have to give you a lot of props
- 8:26for you know i mean Compared to a lot of movies out there,
- 8:30your movies are made for, you know, very, very little money.
- 8:36And yet you still manage to pack so much. I mean, this thing's got special effects.
- 8:41It's got practical effects.
- 8:44It's got the werewolves are fantastic.
- 8:46It's got, you know, realistic gore effects with the blood tubes. I mean...
- 8:53It's, it's everything. Like it's all part of your complete breakfast.
- 8:59You know, how, how do you, how do you, I mean, obviously you have a lot of talented,
- 9:05collaborators and whatever, but how do you manage to pull so much?
- 9:09How do you fit such a lot of taste in such a little biscuit, Todd?
- 9:13Well, you know, that's a really good way to put it because I used to be told by,
- 9:17you know, a lot of the guys that are my mentors, which is like Fred Olenaray
- 9:21and Jim winorski and david dakoto was definitely my mentor back in the early
- 9:24days and these guys all worked with roger and i remember being told even by
- 9:29julie corman when i got to talk to her it was.
- 9:32Always deliver the groceries if you promise to bring
- 9:35the groceries make sure you deliver the groceries the
- 9:38worst thing in the world is if you have a really cool trailer and a
- 9:40great poster and you don't deliver the groceries so right
- 9:44we we find a way to do it and it is true
- 9:47you know this movie had a very small budget you
- 9:49know it it was a four-figure budget very very
- 9:54small uh you know we were in we were in the
- 9:56mid four figures here and we got through it basically
- 10:00because we've made so many movies over the time we own a lot of our own equipment
- 10:03right and you know we went everywhere we could trying to find things like i
- 10:08went to auctions to find the parts to put for the spaceships for their control
- 10:11panels and things and the panels on the walls you know i i found those and bought
- 10:17a bunch of those as cheaply as possible.
- 10:19And I did the work myself to build the sets. The first half,
- 10:23the sets on the bridge and the sets in the sickbay, those I built myself.
- 10:27And then later we had this amazing airplane hangar where they fix planes.
- 10:33It's a school also, and they basically teach people how to be airplane mechanics.
- 10:38And in this place that Jack McCord of all people, he's a teacher there.
- 10:42And in addition to being a great Doc Savage, he's also a teacher. and he's
- 10:47been able to get us this location. And then we took some of our panels and things that we'd used.
- 10:51We shot all the stuff in the bridge and in the sick bay.
- 10:55And then I took those panels down and took those over to the hangar and put
- 10:59them in places there so that it would match.
- 11:02And we were able to shoot there. Of course, it was 120 degrees.
- 11:05We were shooting this thing in the end of July and early August.
- 11:08And so we were able to milk everything out of it, but it was very,
- 11:11very warm and our panels didn't want to stick.
- 11:15And it was just a constant battle, but it's worth it because we were able to
- 11:18really get a lot of production value that way and make things over the top and
- 11:23as big as we wanted them to be.
- 11:24And we tried to make it very true to the Corman School.
- 11:28Jim Winorski was kind of my unofficial consultant on this.
- 11:32And we would go back and forth. And he had told me so many stories about how
- 11:35they built those sets that I knew going in exactly what I was going to be doing
- 11:39to build these and how I wanted them to look.
- 11:41And I'm really, really proud of how it came out. And for the money, it's unbelievable.
- 11:46I mean, I've had people think that we've spent, you know, 10 times,
- 11:5020 times as much as we did.
- 11:52And it's really, it's, it's really a blessing to have that, you know,
- 11:56and of course with the Wolf suits, we had some of those suits left from Bonehill Road.
- 12:01We took really good care of them. And then we got new heads to put in there
- 12:04and the new heads were expensive yet amazing.
- 12:08And for the quality we get, it's not expensive at all, really.
- 12:12I mean, honestly. And the guy that did the heads for us, Kyle.
- 12:15He also did the suits for Bone Hill Road.
- 12:18And he is just an amazing artist and knows really how to bring the most for the dollar.
- 12:23And he always really helps me because he knows we're doing this basically with no money.
- 12:29So he comes in and I think he takes pity on my poor soul or something and he helps me out.
- 12:34And the effects department was headed up by Amanda Payton and Jeff Sisson was her assistant.
- 12:39And Ricky Williams came in and helped and we had a bunch of people helping
- 12:42on the effects crew and we just utilized anything
- 12:45we could find and did the best we
- 12:48could with this stuff and it was kind of by the skin of
- 12:51our teeth and you know just pulled ourselves together
- 12:54and everyone pulled together and like I've never taken
- 12:57a salary on any movie I've ever directed because if
- 13:01it's a if it's paying myself or buying a
- 13:03werewolf I'm gonna buy the werewolf every time you know
- 13:06no one watching this movie cares what i made they care if
- 13:10they enjoyed the movie and if the monster looked good and so
- 13:13that's what we do you know yeah that's the
- 13:16that's the big thing that that you worry about going in is if the if the monsters
- 13:21aren't any good then it's gonna be you know like even if you go back look i
- 13:26really love that old um tv movie gargoyles and we love it yeah and i I mean,
- 13:33that works because I think the guard, like I know some of the foot soldier ones
- 13:37are kind of a bit odgy, but the lead dude...
- 13:43You know those are brilliant brilliant
- 13:47creations because i love that movie myself very
- 13:50much and you know for the money they had they didn't get
- 13:52any money for this thing and they put all their money into these
- 13:55cool monsters and having them fly and everything and they did a great job
- 13:58yeah and i mean the the the build-up
- 14:01is enough i mean because you've got some really great shots particularly
- 14:04in the the opening scenes kind of the the pre-credit sequence or whatever you
- 14:09want all at the the opening action sequence you've got some great you know almost
- 14:15like the first thing i thought when i watched it was aliens like the the below
- 14:20like the lighting from under the floor and.
- 14:25You know it's it it gives it a different look as opposed to you know just harsh,
- 14:30lighting but you've got some great sort of color gels and and stuff and the the below ground,
- 14:37the lighting from beneath just really gives it that great
- 14:40atmosphere and also makes probably what
- 14:43is probably in real life a relatively small space
- 14:46look large true yeah that's that's the thing
- 14:49you know we had a few of these hallways where basically it
- 14:53was a storage area and they had multiple levels to it
- 14:55so that made it perfect because that meant they had
- 14:58a floor above us that was made of grating and so
- 15:01we were able to use that and light from below and really
- 15:05try to get suspense out of the lighting we wanted it to
- 15:07be kind of creepy we wanted it to have that look
- 15:10i mean when you go back and you watch galaxy of terror or
- 15:13you watch about even battle beyond the stars i was just noticing because
- 15:16i just watched the 4k last night and i was like wow man
- 15:19this lighting really is a lot like some of like when they're in
- 15:22there and there's the green and blue popping and uh they're
- 15:25talking and he you know douglas is like i broke the
- 15:28darn scanner and that lighting is almost identical
- 15:31to battle beyond the stars lighting and that was of course on purpose but the
- 15:36funny thing is i hadn't seen battle beyond the stars in years i was doing it
- 15:39from memory and i was so surprised i mean i'm i think i'm going to get a screen
- 15:43grab from it and put that with a still from the movie and show how you know
- 15:47on social media and show how.
- 15:49Influenced it really was by by these artists i mean even jim cameron you know
- 15:55james cameron got his start on these corman movies and it shows you know and
- 16:00of course in the movie one of my favorite parts of the movie that some people
- 16:03don't pick up on is in the opening there, when you have the Charon 13,
- 16:07which is the ship that's having all the problems that the Amberstar ship is
- 16:11going to save, the captain of that ship is sending out this distress signal.
- 16:15And it's great because it's Joe Dante. I mean, you can't get better than Joe Dante.
- 16:19That's fantastic. And what makes it perfect is it's a werewolf movie.
- 16:24And you've got the guy who directed The Howling.
- 16:27In a way we've done in space, which is just fantastic.
- 16:32It also made me think of Philippe Mora's sequels to The Howling 2,
- 16:37particularly The Marsupials, which I love probably because of the Australian connection.
- 16:43But certainly Howling 2, there's a great, you've got that great mix of that
- 16:51serious, funny kind of walks that line in between.
- 16:55There's some great throwbacks to the like, like Bobby Westrick is,
- 17:01you know, got some, some nice drops, you know, I never told me the odds and
- 17:04he's got the jackpot line. Keep the home fires burning.
- 17:08Exactly. We're not back by dawn to all the president.
- 17:12That's exactly, you, you picked up on all that and that's exactly what we were going for.
- 17:16I wanted a, a hero, a captain of this ship that is completely like a son of those characters.
- 17:23You know what I mean? If those characters had a son, that's him.
- 17:26He had the same wit and the same humor and the same grit, you know, in his delivery.
- 17:31And I thought the entire cast really stepped up and did a great job.
- 17:35But, you know, Bobby, this character, John Apollo, meant a lot to me because
- 17:39the whole Amber Star thing came from my childhood because I used to shoot movies on Super 8.
- 17:44And, of course, after seeing Star Wars, it changed my life. And I started making
- 17:48these space movies of Star Wars kind of mixed with a little Star Trek.
- 17:51And I made these Amber Star movies and John Apollo was the captain.
- 17:56And so now, of course, we were kids back then doing it, but I really wanted that angle.
- 18:02So when I thought about the space thing, I thought I'm bringing back the Amber
- 18:05Star. I'm bringing back John Apollo.
- 18:07And, you know, in the ones when I was a kid, his first officer,
- 18:13his second in command was Tom.
- 18:14But I changed it to Tanya because I thought it'd be cool to have.
- 18:18A strong female lead second in command. And I, and I'm one of the things I loved
- 18:22when I watched the movie after it was all done, because when you're editing, you're so close to it.
- 18:26You just have to kind of wait, then take a couple of days off,
- 18:29then watch it, you know, when you're finished. And I, I loved how strong all
- 18:32the female characters are in this.
- 18:34And that came directly from Roger Corman as well, because, you know,
- 18:37he really supported strong female characters in all of his movies as well as
- 18:42promoting a strong female directors even, and producers.
- 18:46And he, He was very much into that, and that's something that I love because
- 18:50it came through, not even consciously, it came through in the writing and it
- 18:56came through in the production.
- 18:58Roger's spirit was guiding us on this thing. I believe it with all my heart.
- 19:03Well, another thing that you carry on very much that is in line with the Corman
- 19:07School of Filmmaking is because you are shooting it for a low budget,
- 19:12you can be audacious with your storytelling.
- 19:15Like you know if you were
- 19:18to turn around and say look i've got if you turn around
- 19:21and say whatever the budget for the film was to someone hey
- 19:24you've got x amount of dollars to go make a science fiction werewolf movie in
- 19:30space most people would probably laugh at you but if you're from that common
- 19:35school perspective yeah yeah sure why not i have to tell you honestly there
- 19:41There were times when we were doing this,
- 19:43it's always, it's hard because you have to keep the spirit alive and the positive energy.
- 19:49But there were some times when I thought to myself, man, am I going to be able to pull this off?
- 19:53You know, I wrote the script for what I knew I had, but how am I going to,
- 19:57you know, like the black hole sequence is one of my favorite sequences in the
- 20:01movie because I'm like, okay, we have like no money and compared to Hollywood, we have zero money.
- 20:06And I'm supposed to be doing a huge scene where the Charon explodes and it's
- 20:12such a big explosion, it rips a hole in space and it creates a vortex and a
- 20:16black hole, which then starts pulling the Amber Star in.
- 20:19How the heck am I going to pull this off? Because while these guys are trying
- 20:22to help these survivors...
- 20:25The bridge is going crazy because they're like, get up here,
- 20:28captain, because the whole thing is going, you know, we're about ready to get sucked in a black hole.
- 20:32How am I going to do this? And the end result, it's one of my favorite sequences
- 20:36in the movie because probably I was so worried about it. And I really love the way it came out.
- 20:41It actually had people, you know, we just screened the movie night before last
- 20:45and people went nuts over that sequence.
- 20:48They were kind of on the edge of their seat. They're like, get out of there, get out of there.
- 20:51And people were really getting riled up. And I said, this is amazing because
- 20:55literally I was, you know, fighting and fighting and redoing the effects,
- 21:01the visuals and everything because I was doing that myself.
- 21:03And I was not happy and I just kept tweaking it and tweaking it until it finally
- 21:07came exactly like what I wanted in the script.
- 21:10And I was so proud of it because it actually moved an audience and we did it
- 21:15for literally like non-existent funds.
- 21:19You know, I mean, these, these guys in Hollywood would have spent probably a
- 21:23couple of million dollars on a sequence like that.
- 21:25And we literally did it for, you know, maybe a hundred dollars for the fact
- 21:29that I had to get some software to do exactly what I wanted it to do.
- 21:33So it was like, just had to learn the software and then took the time.
- 21:37And that's what it is all boils down to.
- 21:39If you don't have the money, you have to take the time. Yes.
- 21:44Yeah. like there's there's no point in there's no
- 21:47point in because i mean look there are some
- 21:50look and i've seen a lot of independent movies and there
- 21:53there's there's chintzy and there's chintzy
- 21:56there's two different and there's
- 22:00chintzy charming and you know chintzy trash
- 22:03and right but there is
- 22:06some stuff that people might call chintzy trash but
- 22:10all the all everything is there except
- 22:13for the way it looks you know what i mean right like
- 22:17it's a good story there's a good cast it's it's well
- 22:20told but it looks bad look it
- 22:23looks like it was yeah really really cheap
- 22:26and that can throw people out but if
- 22:30you like you say take the time to even
- 22:33even though you mightn't have everything and all
- 22:36the bells and whistles that you really really want and like you know if you
- 22:40really had a suitcase with a million dollars you'd solve that problem but like
- 22:45you say if you take the additional time to make it as good as you possibly can
- 22:49for the money that you have you do have the opportunity to.
- 22:55To make it stand taller than it actually stands, if that makes sense.
- 23:00I agree. And that's one of the things I really loved about Wolfman Rising is,
- 23:04you know, since we owned all the gear and when we do make any kind of profit, we just buy bigger gear.
- 23:10I thought the look of this movie was kind of beautiful for what we had.
- 23:14I was like, this is really a beautiful looking movie.
- 23:17And that is, you know, you touched on something very important that a lot of,
- 23:21especially micro budget guys, I guess they don't think about.
- 23:24And that is, you know, right now in the world, it's kind of like the VHS days
- 23:29all over again in the streaming market.
- 23:32I've been saying this. Yeah, keep going. There's like 900 people a day making
- 23:37a movie, especially now since it's so easy, compared to those days on VHS where
- 23:42you really, that was hard.
- 23:44And now you've got, you know, you can do it all on your phone even.
- 23:48And, you know, so people have to think of the look and the sound.
- 23:51You have to make sure you've got good sound, you have to make sure you have
- 23:55good sound design, and you have to make sure visually that it's able to compete
- 24:00with other films in the market.
- 24:03And that was my number one thing is that I want it to look as good as we can
- 24:07possibly make it look so it doesn't look like we spent $0.30.
- 24:12Even if we did spend $0.30, we can make it look like we spent $30,000 instead of $0.30.
- 24:18You just have to, you just have to play with how it, you know,
- 24:21you have to learn your craft and you have to play with your shots and make sure
- 24:25that everything looks as good as possible. Don't shortcut.
- 24:28I mean, there's times when it was 120 degrees and we had a dude in a wolf suit.
- 24:31They could only be in the suit for 10 minutes at a time. Then we'd have to stop,
- 24:34put them in front of, we had literally around me, there were rows of these huge,
- 24:39like four foot tall fans in a circle.
- 24:42And we would, I'd say, cut, pull him out. They'd get him out of the suit and kick on the fans.
- 24:46Then we'd wait a few minutes to put
- 24:49him back in the suit do another shot and so it
- 24:52was meticulous and there's times that when it's like that and you know
- 24:55you've been on the set for 10 hours it's four o'clock in the morning and
- 24:58you're going what am I going to do I just need to get this scene done
- 25:00and you want to push yourself and cut corners don't do
- 25:04it you know just do it right even if
- 25:07it means man I ain't getting home until daylight
- 25:10it's going to be eighth morning but hey you know what you're
- 25:13going to be glad because the shot is worth
- 25:16it and that lives forever so once
- 25:19it's out there it's out there and it's going to stay out there and one
- 25:23thing i learned from the early days when i wasn't real
- 25:26good so i was just a kid but always take
- 25:29the extra minute to make it that much better
- 25:32yeah and that's what we did on this we just you know we didn't rush ourselves
- 25:36and we didn't cut corners we just said you know what if it's not right let's
- 25:40keep shooting it till it is yeah and i think i think too much today people just
- 25:45give it the squint test you know like yeah it looks good whereas my wife says
- 25:49good enough for government work you know there you go.
- 25:54A bit of a spit in the polish, but it's, as you say, definitely worth it.
- 26:00And to have all the goodies, all the callbacks to all the films that I love
- 26:07from a time which has sadly fallen
- 26:10by the wayside in this slick and speedy climate of the streaming age.
- 26:16But like you said, I feel it's just like a rehash of the VHS days,
- 26:20except there's no tapes.
- 26:21Hey so there's nothing tangible but it's still like
- 26:24oh hey there's all these streaming services and they
- 26:27need films so anyone with an iphone and
- 26:30an editing software on their computer can effectively
- 26:34add to the you know i mean
- 26:37i hate when they refer to
- 26:40movies as content but me adding to the
- 26:43adding to the content stream because i
- 26:46mean the sad thing is is that when they teach media
- 26:49in schools now it's it's all it all falls under
- 26:52content creation so whether it be narrative as
- 26:56as is classified in the educational terms narrative content
- 27:01storytelling right and you're
- 27:03absolutely and you know my thing is you know i'm very
- 27:06much still a child of physical media and so when we
- 27:09do these movies i want them to be on physical media first
- 27:12eventually they're going to be streaming but but one of
- 27:15the like a movie like wolf moon rising should not be watched on a
- 27:18cell phone you know what i mean i mean you can't see the detail we really.
- 27:21Put a lot of work into the details on this the
- 27:24backgrounds and and the the space scenes i
- 27:27mean they don't have the grandeur seeing that on a big screen
- 27:30you know doing this theatrical tour and seeing the audience reaction to
- 27:33these big huge screens with these these
- 27:36space shots and the you know and all the fighting and the
- 27:38werewolves it really shows a
- 27:41difference plus we did a full you know dolby surround
- 27:45mix that is beautiful and sounds great and great
- 27:48store thank you i mean and i've
- 27:50got to say the transformations in this are really dynamite i
- 27:53think that's that's another place to is particularly
- 27:56in werewolf movies like if the transformation's crap and then the overall transformation
- 28:02is crap then it takes me out of a werewolf movie if the werewolves look shit
- 28:07but thank thank goodness that Wolf Moon Rising does not have a dodgy werewolf,
- 28:16You know, I was, that was a big thing for me because I've, that's my biggest thing.
- 28:21The first time I watched The Howling and Rob Bateen's transformation scene came on with Eddie Quist.
- 28:27I, I lost it. I thought this is the most amazing thing.
- 28:30Then American Werewolf came out, Rick Baker, David Naughton turning into the
- 28:34werewolf right there in bright lit apartment. it.
- 28:38And ever since, you know, I loved one of my favorite movies and I've recently
- 28:42got to be friends with Paul Clemens and I love Paul Clemens because he did The
- 28:45Beast Within. He was the main character.
- 28:47And even The Beast Within, when it goes crazy and the dude's head's like the
- 28:50size of a balloon, I still enjoy it because it was pushing boundaries.
- 28:54And of course, The Thing, Rob Bateen, you know, came back and did The Thing.
- 28:58And of course, Stan Winston did some too. And that movie is just the ultimate
- 29:04transformation movie of any kind.
- 29:06But when it comes to our transformation, you know, we, we had four different
- 29:11stages of makeup for, for the female version and the male version,
- 29:15we had three different stages of makeup and then the final.
- 29:18And what I wanted to do and make sure it worked was I combined all these as
- 29:22seamlessly as possible.
- 29:23And then I, like for the woman, the girl's, you know, transformation,
- 29:27I basically first wave of makeup,
- 29:30I followed the movement of her the second wave of makeup I followed
- 29:33the same movement of her and this was all by hand because
- 29:36I couldn't afford a motion tracking camera and then
- 29:39each one I did you know I had her move the
- 29:42same and I tried to follow exactly the same and then I was able to go in and
- 29:46turn that into a film strip take that into photoshop and actually use the airbrush
- 29:51tools and things and blur and not really blur because it didn't get blurry but
- 29:56like I said what I mean by blur is blur the lines between each shot.
- 30:01So it was one smooth transition from beginning to end.
- 30:05So I kind of used modern technology with even Jack Pierce days,
- 30:11you know, when he did the Wolfman, how they would sit him in a chair,
- 30:13but he couldn't move. That's basically what we did here.
- 30:16One effect, you know, we, we had to make up a certain way that face was bubbling
- 30:20and things and it would move right into the next effect, which had more hair
- 30:24and more bubbling and the teeth were getting longer right into the next.
- 30:28So I was able to blend each type of makeup we did and make that a seamless shot
- 30:33where it starts with her screaming and ends with her as a werewolf all moving,
- 30:38all the camera was moving through the whole thing and i think it really kind
- 30:41of turned out okay i think it was look it's fantastic and the fact like you
- 30:45said you because it looks like it's it's even though it's intercutting different
- 30:49shots and as you say different makeups and different effects.
- 30:53Because it's all in motion it all seems fluid
- 30:56even though it is a montage of of images
- 31:00in effect right because we just kept because we
- 31:03shot everything almost the same so even if there was a slight change i
- 31:07was able to fix that by by going
- 31:09in and if the black if the background was a little off because it's
- 31:12all by hand i was able to go in and fix that so
- 31:15i was like so it looks like it's all the same shot which is
- 31:18something that you know i'm thankful for of course it took
- 31:21like two weeks just to do because it's
- 31:24like every day working on that to make it right but you know
- 31:28at the end of the day you you look back at it you're like
- 31:30oh my god all that work it's like a you know
- 31:33what 20 second shot 25 seconds but wow
- 31:37what a great shot you know mate it's well worth it one of my favorite quotes
- 31:42from robert rodriguez's book from back in the day rebel without a crew is that
- 31:48if you love what you do you can succeed because the work will speak for itself
- 31:53and the work speaks for itself here.
- 31:57Wolf Moon Rising, Todd Sheets. Mate, where, when and how can the audience check out Wolf Moon Rising?
- 32:08Well, the good news is if they're in any of the cities or any of the places
- 32:12around the world that we're going to be screening this, I'm even working on
- 32:16trying to get some stuff done in your neck of the woods there.
- 32:20I'm looking at international cinemas and talking to them and trying to get it
- 32:23shown in Japan and different places.
- 32:25But we're doing a theatrical tour for a while. And then after the fall,
- 32:29then we're going to be gearing up to release it on home video.
- 32:32And it'll be on Blu-ray, DVD, VHS even.
- 32:36And then it's going to go to streaming eventually.
- 32:40But I'm hoping that people will grab the physical media if they still have the
- 32:45players because it looks a lot better.
- 32:47And they don't have all the compression and everything. So it'll look beautiful for them.
- 32:51So that's all going to happen after the fall. And I want to thank you personally,
- 32:55because, you know, a lot of people will watch us and never catch the little
- 32:59in-jokes and the little nods that we did. And we did a lot of them and you caught
- 33:03those. And I just really appreciate that.
- 33:07Well, like you, I watch too many movies. Yeah.
- 33:13I've seen, I've sadly seen more movies than some people have had hot dinners,
- 33:18but yeah, it's my curse, but I love it.
- 33:22As, as the great George C. Scott once said in Patton, God helped me. I do love it.
- 33:27So I love it more than my life. I love the movies and I loved Wolf Moon Rising, Todd Sheets.
- 33:33Thank you, mate. Thank you.
- 33:36Thank you for all you do for guys like me, man. It means the world to me in my heart.
- 33:40Thank you so much. yes wolf moon rising ladies
- 33:44and gentlemen werewolves in space it's all part of
- 33:47your complete breakfast why would you not want that
- 33:50i wanted it i got it you can get it too check the
- 33:54links in the description for all of the touch
- 33:56sheets wonderment and awesomeness
- 34:00you can get it all check the links in the description and wolf
- 34:03moon rising check it out it's doing a theatrical
- 34:06tour right now and in the fall there
- 34:09in the states making its move to physical media latest
- 34:12streaming but get it where and when
- 34:15you can if you like werewolves in space like
- 34:18me the size of wolf moon rising met
- 34:21is not it's wall-to-wall action with classy special effects and taking particular
- 34:27care in the wolf department tot sheets knows from his years of underground artistry
- 34:33how to pull it off smorgasbord blood-soaked howling and horrifying creatures and joe dante's in it.
- 34:42Wolf moon rising it's awesome check the
- 34:45links in the description and as always my little yugenites thank you for listening
- 34:52to us on spotify or wherever you choose to listen to your favorite podcasts
- 34:56i'm ken hill and until next time you've been listening to cinema Oh, Lucas!
- 35:05Music.