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Brett Kelly's Return: The Rotoscope Adventure of Conqueror Queen · Cinema Yūgen

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G'day, that's right, it's that time again. Time for CINEMA YUGEN!
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Music.
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I'll see you next time. Yes, welcome back Yugenites. Today Brett Kelly is back.
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Brett Kelly, he said he was going to take a break from directing But the director
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of Raiders of the Lost Ark, J.C.
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James Lawman, Murder in High Heels, Ouija Shark, Konga TNT, Heavy Metal Werewolf is back.
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He has come back and he is going to make, how cool is this, get ready for it,
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he is going to make a rotoscope film.
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Conqueror Queen is a rotoscope animation feature I think Fire and Ice meets
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Heavy Metal meets Filmation from Brett Kelly, director of movies like Jurassic Shark,
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My Fair Zombie and more Written by Robert Fries, the author of Splatter University
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and Galaxy Warriors Novelizations as well as the writer of it came from Hollywood
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and Videoscope magazine
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you can get over to the go go now
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i'm so glad brett decided
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to come back i loved galaxy warriors
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brett welcome back yeah thanks i think it turned out turned out exactly the
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way i wanted it to the last time we spoke you were you were going to uh be taking
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a break from filmmaking so before we dive into conqueror queen i guess what
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what what changed your your mind what inspired you to want to come to the first place?
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Nothing emotionally changed.
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So yeah, I was planning to retire after Galaxy Warriors.
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And then as real life kind of happened, the foundation of our house had a crack in it.
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So all of a sudden I needed to come up with a project to help pay for the crack
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in my foundation. Right, right.
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So all of a sudden I needed to take it. Nothing like making a movie. Yeah, I know.
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So the next thing you know, I'm picking up a couple of smaller kind of shark movie projects
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that people seem to want to pay me to do right and then and then yeah so then
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i decided i'm going to do conqueror queen is kind of another one of the projects
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that i want to do for me sort of thing right yeah yeah well if you're gonna
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if you're gonna tell a story what is one that's close to your heart hey.
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Yeah, exactly. And I thought, you know, I mean, I'm a little bit burned out
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on a lot of the elements of filmmaking.
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But one thing I thought is, if I did a movie, like, if I did a stop motion animation
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thing, I wouldn't need to necessarily build every single set or anything like that.
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I can, I can just cast some actors and then draw them.
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And I can make, I can, I can film it in my backyard and make it look like a castle if I want to.
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Totally you know and we can't really talk about conqueror
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queen before we talk about a filmmaker who's near and dear to
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my heart i've got my dark wolf one one
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twelfth scale figure just off to the side of me i have
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a day bill of wizards up on my wall i'm a
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big ralph baski fan have been since the beginning
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ralph baski obviously you're a fan as well
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yeah i i he's kind
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of an acquired he's an acquired taste and you know
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he's not something i watch regularly but occasionally if i
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feel like you know seeing some innovations or
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some interesting guy an interesting guy who's clearly making movies that he
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wants to make he's he's pretty cool in that regard i just watched fire and ice
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again for the third time recently yeah it's it's awesome i remember seeing that
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as a kid and i can't believe it took 40 years for the action figures to come
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out but but I'm very grateful.
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Yeah, good point. Because I'm a huge, I'm a card-carrying fan of Bakshi.
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There you go. Dark wolves.
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And, you know, for guys our age, I mean, it came out at just the right time to put up with him.
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All over the place. Yeah, do you remember back when, I think it was Robert Rodriguez
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was talking about it or had done some pre-production on a film?
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I was very excited back at that time to see if he was going to try and do what
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he did for Sin City but bring the Frazetta element to it.
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But using that Sin City type but not just rotoscoping, obviously.
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Right, right. What you will be doing. Did you see The Spine of Night?
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No, I don't think I have. What's that? The Spine of Night came out just before
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COVID, another independent.
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You might want to check the one out if you haven't already. Yeah,
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I think I will. It came in on Blu-ray and DVD.
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I think, again, another sort of shows you or gives you a glimpse into the laborious
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process of a couple of people making a scoped picture,
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which is, of course, why you've attempted to start a crowdfunding campaign.
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Campaign because even though you've said to me, excuse me, even though you've
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said to me, you intend to, uh, to make the picture regardless,
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the process is going to be long and arduous without, without reinforcements. Yeah, exactly.
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So I have the Indiegogo going. It's not much of a success at the moment.
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I have a set, it's been going for about a week and I have a second contributor at the moment, but.
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You know, I'm going to make it. I have all the equipment. I've already started the drawings.
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But I thought, you know, if there's an opportunity to maybe bring in other artists
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or other things that would smooth up the process and make it a little easier,
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I sure wouldn't mind that.
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The drawing process, I mean, I'm doing 12 frames a second.
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And, you know, five seconds of film is about a five-hour drawing experience.
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Not including backgrounds or anything.
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Just the figures. years so to do a full a full film is is going to take it's
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going to take a while right yeah.
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Yeah and i've been saying you know because i have to film the
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actors first it's like making a movie twice yes yeah
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and the only the second time is uh far more
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laborious yeah i mean it'd be as you'll
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see when you if you're interested to watch that spider-man night there is a
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sort of behind the scenes material and uh and they say you can see the audience
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can see and you yourself can see what Brett is going to be going through if
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he goes all the way because,
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like you said, capturing the moments or the actions that you need to then go
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away later and, you know, I mean, in one essence,
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the post-production side is going to far outweigh the post-production side because,
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you know, I mean, when the whole film has to be, uh,
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when, when, when you essentially have to draw over everything that you've done,
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redo everything you've done with, uh, with just figuring out the workflow is crazy.
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Yeah. And, and like you said, all that work only, only counts for some of it
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that doesn't include the backgrounds and any and all shots like that.
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It's, it's a wild, it's a, it's a wild notion to take on.
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But i yeah i understand why one
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would do it because as you say you were a bit burned
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out on the regular type of filmmaking this allows you
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to this allows you quite a lot of free i mean i know that the there's a very
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tedious side to it but this allows you so much freedom because you'll be able
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to do stuff that you have never been able to do technically yeah i mean as far
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as imagine As far as conceiving imaginary locations and worlds,
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because if it's just a painting in the background, it can be anything. Yeah.
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I mean, and theoretically, they're going to be interacting with creatures of some sort.
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So, I mean, we just filmed a scene last week where basically we had somebody
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hitting my kids with pool noodles.
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And those will later represent tentacled monsters. Right, yeah. As you do.
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That's fantastic. I mean, that's what I told them. I just hit them with pool noodles anyway. Yeah.
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I'll bet you kids are looking at this, Dad, this is going to be really bad.
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This doesn't make any sense.
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I don't know. No, they're dressed as elves and hanging out in my backyard,
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and they seem to be having a good old time.
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Well, look, the more elves at the party, the better the party.
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But it must be, you don't seem like a man who gets daunted easily.
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Is it daunting to think about, okay, look, I've started this ball rolling?
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Well, it is daunting. thing it is absolutely daunting
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but then what i think about is
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i got my my wife on board she's totally
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on board with this she got me a for father's day
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she got me a stand-up desk that i could draw properly in so so
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now i'm at the point where she says you can't quit because i bought you this
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stuff so now i have to stick with it she's all the way invested well it helps
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when when the people that you live with are just as invested as you because
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this as you say the amount of work it's got to go for a few seconds to film.
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This is going to be a couple of years of your life.
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Yeah. Hoping I'm hoping about a year, but we'll see how it goes. Yeah.
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But I mean, I mean, once, once obviously the filming, the, the rotoscoping,
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then the rest of it, then the selling, then the, you know, getting it out there into the world. So it's,
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As a lot of people don't know, the same with documentarians,
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the same with, you know, people make independent feature films over,
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you know, 10-year periods of their life.
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This quest to make using this medium to express yourself is not something you
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should enter into lightly because it's going to take so much of yourself and
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your family as well to achieve, wouldn't you say?
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Yeah, for sure. and i it's i'm still trying to figure out some of the the processes
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and stuff i mean i'm kind of taking it i'm calling it chapter by chapter so
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i'm starting with chapter one of the story and then i'm going to try to film
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all of that and then start the rotoscoping process so i could discover,
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what kind of shortcuts i can make or what kind of like things i shouldn't do
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like one thing i already discovered is don't film somebody wearing black clothes
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in front of a back background because Cause you can't see the edges of their
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clothes when you try to draw them.
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So there's little tricks I need to pick up. So I'm by doing it chapter by chapter,
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it's like the old joke of how do you, how do you eat a whale one bite at a time? You know?
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Yeah, totally. You'll be wild for a while, but it's a, it's an incredible,
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it's an incredible feat to, to take on an animated film.
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I was talking earlier in the year with Michael. And I'm not an animator. Yeah.
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That's, The thing is, I was talking earlier in the year with Michael Davis,
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who actually started in animation and then went to filmmaking and now is going back,
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crowdfunding Like Yourself, an animated film, earlier in the year.
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Now, he has been helped by a lot of new technology.
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I mean, there is basically a form, and he's talked about this on Robert Myer
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Burnett's show and also, there is a whole lot of technology now.
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Now, as you were talking about just then animating, like doing part of it and
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then finding out the process and almost like special effects makeup,
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you know, when they come in and they do a process and the first time it takes
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like 10 hours or something.
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And they're able to find it then into something manageable like three or four or something like that.
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And like i was saying with michael davis the technology that
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exists now allows him to essentially do a
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form of motion capture using you know
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iphones to do his the kind of computer animation that he wants to do with his
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i imagine you to yourself as you're going through the process we'll look into
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these possibly new software that that possibly do i don't know parts or or assist
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in parts of the rotoscoping process as you're going through?
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If it exists, I'll give it a whirl. I mean, I'm just saying.
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I did try an AI thing, too, where it apparently takes your drawings and tries to anticipate whatever,
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but it didn't it wasn't right so i i tried it just as a sample and then i went
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back and i drew everything by hand and it's always better that way but but we'll
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see i mean i'm open to to figuring out what exists and using technology to my advantage i mean,
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you know i'm not i'm not doing i'm not on some noble journey to
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prove how many pictures i can draw no
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no you know i'm perfectly fine i'm perfectly
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fine with letting technology help me if in any way shape or form
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no i mean by the end you'll be sick of
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drawing you'll never want to pick up a pen again i'll bet i'll bet no doubt
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you know or or it'll be very tough watching it or you won't be able to watch
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it without some sort of you know like they say some filmmakers oh i haven't
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seen this for ages all i remember is the hours and hours i spent bent over my desk,
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and my hands clenching out like James Coburn's towards the end of his life,
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riddled with arthritis.
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Well, you know, just little things like on one of the costumes I was drawing,
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I drew it, you know, I probably drew it 300 times and I'm just cursing why I
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put a belt on that person.
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If I didn't put a belt on that person, I wouldn't have to draw the damn thing.
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Yeah, it was like back in the day when Bob Hoskins was talking about
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being and then uh who framed roger rabbit and he
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says if i grab the rabbit like that it's clean if
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i do that they've got paint in between my fingers
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you know yeah yeah little things you don't think of until you try it yeah so
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i mean i mean in your case because you're rotoscoping the whole thing you uh
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i mean you of course may run into troubles like that if someone doesn't you
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know close their fingers properly or you just oh yeah yeah yeah yeah and it's
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funny if people if people move too
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quickly that you get blurs between which doesn't
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happen in cartoons so yeah so there's a
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matter of solving like whether i put motion blurs on there
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or what i do or do i skip those frames or i
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mean who knows you know there's it's a learning curve for sure yeah i noticed
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in that spider night which as i said you can check out i noticed that they filmed
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a lot against sort of just white backdrops to get do you do the same thing yeah
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i i did some in front of it just in I put my backyard with, you know.
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All the, you know, rakes and all that stuff in the background. And that's fine.
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But a green screen is not necessary. So I did the next scene I did just in front
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of one of our blank walls in our house.
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And it works just fine. I mean, literally you could just omit whatever you don't
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want to as long as they're not as long as they're not walking with a sofa in front of you, then.
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Totally totally i mean we'll see we did a scene that's that is kind of on the river sticks with,
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whatever's charon or caron or whatever his name is yeah we we
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didn't really have a boat so we'll see how that works out i mean i
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don't know so i haven't drawn it yet but we'll see yeah
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well i mean that that's that's unique i mean you you're focusing
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a lot at the moment on on catching the action but i
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mean the next step will be background that's the challenge yeah
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the background's obviously animated because you'll have
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to worry about the clouds and the light and the sun moving
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and if there's water there's going to be light reflecting off the
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water and so on and so forth although i know i know
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why i now know why uh bokshi didn't
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use any shadows on his characters you know
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they're all walking on the ground and there's no shadows blowing around that's
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right i know why now yeah that's hard that
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would be that would be another separate nightmare me there'd probably
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be like a just a small team of people just doing okay we
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need his shadow on that tree there we need shadow on
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the ground over here you know i mean that's something
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you don't that's something you don't really i mean pay attention to when
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you first watch some of these animated films and i'm sure computer animation
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would can do it no problem but oh yeah yeah i mean the the technology that exists
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today just to you know as simple as you know some photoshop you know flips of
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images like to put someone's reflection in a pair of like mirrored glasses.
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Yeah um and and and things like
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that you know to hide little things where they
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used to like did you ever used to remember watching movies and there'd be a
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dude with sunglasses and in some shots the sunglasses would be glossy but whenever
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there was a close-up it seems like they had a matte finish so you didn't see
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the camera yeah yeah yeah yeah i mean all those sort of things Things you take
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for granted making in live action.
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When you're filming, I mean, you've made a lot of movies. Filming,
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as you say, filming now for something that is going to have a lot of work done
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to it later, do you still take as much time and planning? No.
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With the scene knowing that or or are you in a way what's interesting is like
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for costuming people just need to have costumes that are close enough because
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then i can change everything later we still rehearse the scenes and i still
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get the actress performances but what's interesting is,
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in my brain i'm thinking about their movements and
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i'm thinking about you know if
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for example if i say action and then they
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take five seconds to say their first line i
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have to decide how much of that do i want to animate because i don't
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want to draw 24 frames of them waiting to
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say their line right yeah you know what i mean whereas just you know it's just
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a slight pause in real life is nothing but to draw it yeah that's that's 24
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drawings yeah particularly if they stop and have a moment and look off to the
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side then look back yeah exactly there's a lot of extra animation.
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Because you got to think about the eyes and as you say the the position
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of you know and you so you got to you got to
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think extra about cutaways what do you want to cut to in case yeah
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you know well even a cut even a cutaway would
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be quite a lot of work if you cut down to like say a hand
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pulling out you know a sword from a scabbard or oh
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yeah a close-up of a hand pulling arrow out of a
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quiver or or something like that
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i mean that's another you know aside from the the
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action that you need which is the the full frame yeah those
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little cutaway and it's funny dialogue is in
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some ways difficult in some ways easy because you know
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just to film dialogue is a piece of cake but to draw someone pontificating
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that's a lot of drawing but on the other hand on the bright side at least they're
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not at least they're not flailing their arms all around and you have to draw
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that a million times so there's pros and cons right yeah yeah i suppose you're
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You're not going to want a lot of big speeches or orations.
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Just save that for like, as Roger Corman, just save that for voiceover or something.
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I also noticed, I also observed now that that's probably why there's not a lot
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of talking in Fire and Ice.
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No, no, it's all action. And probably the better for it with those fantasy films.
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I find that the good sword and sorcery films from back in the day were more
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about ideas and the quest.
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There was very little character depth. Like Deathstalker never sat around and
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explained his life and why he does what he does and all that sort of stuff.
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So he was just, you know, he's a roguish character looking to make his way in
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the world by sword or by any means necessary.
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I mean, can you tell us a little bit about the plot of Barbarian Queen or the basic?
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Yeah. So Conqueror Queen is about a...
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It's there's a warrior woman named Tamina who is been asked to ask by the king
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of this realm to rescue his son who has been kidnapped by an evil queen and her wizard.
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And so she's going to go do that. And on the way, she runs into a couple of
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elves who are eager to help her and she doesn't want anything to do with them, but they want to help.
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And so she has to, they go on a quest, which is like, you know.
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If you remember Deathstalker 2, how he's got numerous steps to go along the way.
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Like, first you have to go to this graveyard, and then you have to do this.
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She has a similar sort of quest where she has to do several stops along the
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way to acquire items or whatever it is.
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And then so she can go defeat them at the end. Whether she does or not, who knows, right?
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You'll have to wait to find out if the Conqueror Queen conquers.
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We will put links in the description. the film has
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an indiegogo campaign which which
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is look the more help he gets the quicker you'll
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get to see the awesomeness hey breast yeah for
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sure yeah the more the look the more the merrier many
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hands make light work and filmmaking does take a village and the more people
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behind it get to i know a lot of great artists too who would love to get involved
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but at the moment i can't i can't afford them so so the inspiration is there
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if you love ralph backsheet films if you're interested to see.
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Rotoscoping is.
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Well pretty much, well I don't know if it's a lost art but it's something that's not.
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You don't see much of anymore so if you are out there right now and you want
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to get behind an incredible project from a do-it-yourself do it what you can inspirational.
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Filmmaker he's made some great films this sounds like
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another great project i love rotoscope movies
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so i'm keen to see it i love sword and sorcery so i'm keen to
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see it and if you're keen to see it too and you want to help brett
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get it out into the world quicker which many hands
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will help him do otherwise he's going to be laboring away
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he'll be a lot paler the next time we see
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him because he won't see daylight for a
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little while once he once he gets into it but if you help him and if you get
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behind it brett will be back getting a tan and getting body healthier a lot
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quicker than he would if you don't the film is concrete queen the filmmaker
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is brett kelly i'll put links in the
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description to the campaign there is also a
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facebook page right brett where they can everyone can keep up
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with the the progress regardless whether the
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campaign is successful or not the film is going ahead conqueror
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queen will be coming to conquer it'll be
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just a matter of time it's not a question of of if it's a question of when brett
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mate it's always great to talk to you love your your movies man i'm glad you've
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decided to to re-enter the the fray because you look like a man with a bit more
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to say so i hope regardless.
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I like what I like, and I want to share it with the world. There you go.
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I hope, regardless of the way it comes out, that it comes out.
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And I think that once you get to the top of the mountain, regardless,
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you've done something mighty, and no one will ever accuse you of not putting
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everything into something.
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So regardless of how it comes out, mate, I'm excited. So I'll be first in line
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of tickets or DVD or whatever the case may be.
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I appreciate that. But yeah, cause I love these movies and I was so excited
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to hear that you were making one.
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So yeah, you have my, my prayers, my blessings.
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I hope the movie gods and everything else in your world smiles down while you're,
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you're off on this magical quest, this adventure.
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I start drawing again in about four hours. There you go.
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You're making my fingers sore just looking at him uh
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brad kelly god bless you mate and thank
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you sir thank you for coming on cinema you can all
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the links will be in the description ladies and gentlemen conqueror
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queen brad kelly is back to conquer its rotoscoping its sword and sorcery it's
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uh fantasy it's ralph ralph bakshi style back from the past if you loved it
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then you can and love it again.
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And if you've never seen it before, you can check it out.
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Like I said, uh, the spine of night as we've been able to check that out on
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us wizards. We didn't talk too much about wizards is another phone.
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I never seen wizards. Oh yeah. Yeah.
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I love that movie. They killed Fritz! They killed Fritz! Those rotten,
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stinking, yellow berries. Those horrible...
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The only fantasy film with Nazis, I think. Yeah. Yeah, it does have that distinction
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with Nazi propaganda in a children's movie.
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Jeez, the 80s. Different time, weren't they? What a time.
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It was great to do it live. And it's great to talk to my friend, Brett Kelly,
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Brett thank you again mate for being my friend yes Brett Kelly don't just dream
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it do it get over to the Indiegogo now help him out he's going to make the film
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anyway but help him out if you can,
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if you do this it might just bring back rotoscoping in a big way because if
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you don't know about it you should know about it go check it out check out the
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links in the description help Brett help Help the Queen, the Conqueror Queen,
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conquer Hale to the Queen.
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Check the links in the description. And as always, thank you,
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little Eugonites, for listening to us on Spotify or wherever you choose to listen
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to your favorite podcasts.
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I'm Kent Hill, and we'll see you next time on the one and only Cinema.
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Music.