stacie ponder

Man, I converted my personal website to a blog format because I thought it would make for easy updates. I suppose it does make for easy updates…I simply never do any updating. I’m not sure why that is. Or do I? I guess it’s because most of my life revolves around horror movies and for that, I’ve got Final Girl. I’m not sure what else to talk about, except maybe art. I haven’t done much in recent months, but I did recently paint MacReady from The Thing:

Someone commissioned a Thing painting from me- or rather, four paintings that, when combined, would form one large image. I’m still waiting to get the go ahead from the client. This is one of the rejected proposals; while it may not have been to his liking exactly, I dig it so I decided to paint it up.

See, isn’t that fascinating? What else? I’ve got a few projects at the not quite ready to talk about yet stage. I have plans for other projects, some which have been percolating in my brain place for months, if not years. For some, I just have to stop thinking about them and start doing them- that’s difficult for me, because I plan out everything before I put pencil to paper or fingers to keyboard or whatever to whatever. But there comes a time when my head is just running in circles and the thinking has to stop.

See, isn’t that fascinating? I could also tell you that I’ve been playing Mass Effect 2 and Dragon Age: Origins. I could tell you that because it’s true! I guess if I have a hobby, it’s video games. Eh, there are worse things I could do.

I suppose I could also tell you I’ve recently discovered George RR Martin’s series A Song of Ice and Fire. As much of a geek as I am, I’ve never much been able to get into fantasy novels. Not sure why. Not to sound douchey, but a friend of mine has been cast in HBO’s forthcoming adaptation of A Game of Thrones, the first volume of A Song of Ice and Fire, so I picked it up to check it out, to see what my friend was getting herself into, to see why hardcore Martin fans were so miffed that she was cast (the reason being, I suppose, is that said fans have never heard of WIGS).

Wow. The book hooked me right away. By the time I was halfway through, I couldn’t put it down. When I finished it after a marathon 200 page reading session, I immediately went out and picked up volume 2, A Clash of Kings. Martin is a fantastically engaging writer, and I guess my enjoyment of this fantasy series has granted me a +15 in nerdery. Eh, there are worse things I could do.

So, I don’t know. Is that how these updates are supposed to go? Seems boring to me, but what do I know?

Catch up on all the previous installments of So I Made A Movie: LUDLOW right here…presented to you in GLORIOUS DETAIL!

Can I get a WOW up in here? I realize that the cliffhanger ending of the last So I Made A Movie: LUDLOW installment has left you in such a worried state that you’ve been clutching your bosoms for months now, wondering if I ever tackled my computer issues and got Ludlow finished, right?

SHANNON LARK: I even know what happened, and I’m still clutching my bosom.

Well, I did. Pretty much. No longer intimidated by the massive, complex interface, I enlisted the help of things known as “books” and an editor friend known as “Brian” (actually that’s his real name, so ignore the quotation marks), and I quickly tackled the fuck out of Final Cut Express. Once I really got the gist of the way it works I started cruising along- then I discovered what the program can REALLY do and I started all over. As I mentioned, I’d only worked with iMovie in the past, and my options with that were extremely limited- basically, the footage you put in is what you’re stuck with, save a few crappy filters. If your footage stinks, your footage stinks and that’s that.

SHANNON LARK: Brian really is his name. I’m not so sure about this “book” thing she keeps referring to.

Knowing that, I shoot WITHOUT a “Well, I’ll just fix it in post…” mentality. I frame scenes the way I want them to look, I do the best I can with lighting, and so on. But given the possibilities with Final Cut, I can think about style in ways I’d never really considered. At the risk of sounding like Princess Jasmine, it’s a whole new fucking world. I mean, this raw footage…

…becomes something else entirely- something I never thought of while we were filming, because I didn’t know I could do stuff like this.

It all plays into the weird, dreamy aspects of Ludlow. It’s a small, silly, obvious thing, perhaps, but to me it’s quite righteous.

That said, it was a slow process. I worked each scene individually, concentrating solely on the visuals and matching cuts. With no color correction, no audio correction, no music, and nothing close to a complete film, I began to worry a bit about the finished product- especially since I was planning a screening of Ludlow in just a few weeks’ time. It was hard to get a feel of what the movie was going to be like; on June 5, less than three weeks until people were going to come to my house to watch the movie, I wrote: “Stricken with another onset of, ‘Oh my gahd, this totally fucking sucks.’ The comedy-horror comes so easily, but this is tough. Totally feeling discouraged, mostly because the first…oh, seven scenes are so friggin’ quiet. With no music and just a rough cut, it’s difficult to tell whether or not it’ll be…you know, boring. I’m starting to get to the action, though, and I’m feeling better. Still nervous.”

SHANNON LARK: She would call me up and tell me her woes, but I would always reply with “but you’re a badass Stacie, this movie is going to kick serious butt. Look at all we were able to accomplish in 2 days, Final Cut’s got nothin’ on you!” Etc. etc.

All I could do was plug away at it and talk to Shannon for encouragement. I’d send her screen caps or let her know what scene I was working on…Ludlow was filling up my brain, as it had for months. I love editing, so sitting in my little cave ‘round the clock working on the movie was a joy, although I was still unsure if it was any good, or whether I’d be able to finish it in time.

The Final Cut, she is complex. Clicken ze big big.

Though I try to do as much as I possibly can on my own in my movies, one thing I’m not capable of is creating music…despite the fact that I played a mean recorder in 7th grade. Since I cannot use the only songs I remember- the theme from M.A.S.H. and the Oscar Meyer Hot Dog Song- I need to turn to someone else who knows what he or she is doing. I had someone lined up to provide Ludlow with a soundtrack, but that someone…well, flaked out. No music, unreturned phone calls…my deadline was a little over a week away, and I had no fucking music.

I was seriously starting to freak out about that, when all of a sudden I received a magical email; basically, it said, “Hi, I like reading Final Girl and I’m a composer. If you ever need music for one of your films, I’d be happy to help.” That, my friends, is fucking kismet…and to my great relief, I discovered upon listening to his samples that this dude knows what the eff he’s doing. I took Mr. James Barry up on his offer faster than you can say “I took Mr. James Barry up on his offer”; as he’s a local, he came by one night and I showed him a rougher-than-rough cut of Ludlow. He took a copy with him on a DVD, and a few days later he had a score for me. A score. A SCORRRRRRE. He came over again and we dropped in some tracks and…mah lord, kids. It was amazing, and it made Ludlow feel like a real fucking movie. It was 100% fitting that it would all come together in this bizarre fashion- it simply wouldn’t be Ludlow if things weren’t effed up and weird, now, would it?

SHANNON LARK: I couldn’t believe that James pulled all that together in like…2 days. He must be made of superhuman stuff, with a big C on his chest. By the way, C is for Composer, get your mind out of the gutter. Sheesh!

I met my deadline. I had my screening (Shannon and I talked about that a bit in So I Made A Movie: VOYEUR), and Ludlow was pretty well-received. The comment I heard over and over again is that Shannon is terrific- yes folks, lo and behold, she can act! She’s really fucking good in this movie. I’m proud of her performance- she makes the movie, as far as I’m concerned- and I can’t wait for everyone in the whole wide world to see it. It’s amazing what’s possible when two girls who just met get drunk together and sign a napkin contract, yeah?

SHANNON LARK: Yeah!! They all said it was good, except for that main actress who can’t really act. But I was too wasted to hear any of that; I had a date with a curtain.

NEXT TIME: The end…and beyond!

Hmm. You know, I created this website in a futuristic blog-style format so I could keep it updated every minute with every detail of my scintillating and glamourous life, but now I see I haven’t updated it in over a month! This most likely means one of two things: 1) I’m a big lame, or 2) there’s nothing much to update.

Actually, there are some updates, but I don’t know…I feel all weird blah blah blahing about everything all over The Internet, and frankly being all me me me makes me feel even weirder. But, the site is here, so why not blah blah blah about me me me?

• Final Girl continues on and on. You probably already know that, because I can’t imagine many people visit me here but not there.
• I’ve been writing for Rue Morgue magazine…oh, for the last few issues now. I can’t tell you how happy this makes me. No really, I can’t. It’s in my contract.
• I’ve been making some movies! Ludlow is almost finished; the fundraising drive was a huge success, and I’ll be sure to chronicle the end of Ludlow: Stage One in another installment of So I Made A Movie soon. Stage Two, I suppose, is getting the film into the hands and eyeballs and earholes of viewers.
• In addition to Ludlow, I’ve been acting as DP for Shannon Lark on a few of her movies. We blathered on about the making of one of them, Voyeur, at our websites already. Click to read!

One of the best things about making these movie with Shannon- aside from , you know, making the movies- is that we usually manage to sneak in some little getaway trip after the shoot. When Voyeur wrapped, we camped for two days at Sasquatch Mountain, aka Sequoia National Park. A couple of weeks ago, after finishing up Ludlow and Lipstick, we went to Death muthafucking Valley for a few days…camping and exploring and alternating between freezing cold and unbearable heat. It was amazing.

So, I don’t know. I’m working on movies, writing as much as I can, and trying to finish inking a damn comic book I’m months behind on. In between all that, I eat pizza and watch the occasional movie. Things could be worse.

Alright, people, this is it. As you may well be aware because I won’t shut up about it, Ludlow is finished. It’s been slapped on a DVD and screened for some friends. In fact, I thought I’d reached a time when it would no longer rule my days and haunt my nights…and I’m sure you all thought you could just watch the fucking thing and be done with it, right? That’s nice, in theory, but…

See, the final cut of the film turned out to be a whopping 63 minutes. 63 MINUTES, a result that was rather unexpected, to say the least. After all, the script was only 20 pages.

Now, as you may notice, 63 minutes is quite close to the running time of a feature film, yes? And a wee too long a run time for a comfortable short, yes? Yes. Obviously, this only means one thing: I need to write some more, shoot some more, and make Ludlow longer. I need to expand the elastic waistband on the comfortable short(s) and make this into a feature, which will be easier to get into the grubby mitts of audiences. Stronger, faster, better!

Shannon Lark (ze star) will be back here in Los Angeles in early August. Once more, we’re going to truck out into the Mojave Desert and, barring any typical Ludlow-related shananigans, we’re gonna finish this puppy.

Here’s where you come in, o dear reader. We need to raise funds to complete our arduous task. Travel, lodging, FX, these all need to be covered, so we’re asking for donations.

Donate $10 and your name gets in the credits of the film. The person who donates the most by Friday, August 7th will also receive a 16″ x 20″ painting by me, subject matter of the donor’s choosing.

Yes, I feel a bit presumptuous offering up a painting by me as a “prize”, but I have no idea what else to offer. Check out my work here to see if that’s something you’d be into.

We don’t need much money, but we do need some. All proceeds will go towards the making of Ludlow- however, should we receive money over the amount we need to finish the film, it’ll go towards whatever’s next on our slate- and Shannon and I have a good four projects lined up to make together.

Any amount will help. Alright, frankly a penny won’t help that much, but I’ll still take it and give you my eternal gratitude in return.

Now, if you’re saying “That’s all fine and good, but you haven’t shown us crap beyond that teaser trailer. What am I getting myself into? I don’t even know what this movie is about!” Well, here’s what the skinny be, as best as I can tell ya…or Heidi at Pretty/Scary can tell ya, ’cause she told it just right:

Shot in the California desert in just a few days under grueling circumstances, Ludlow’s plot involves a woman (Shannon Lark) stalked by her abusive ex boyfriend and aided by a well-meaning sister (Elissa Dowling) which quickly turns deadly.

There you go. And here’s a little clip. Oh, this shit is NSFW, but then so is Final Girl, so…

So. Give if you can, or is you want to, even if it’s only well-wishes. Repost this or link to it on your own website and spread the indie horror love. The movie-making flame BURNS!

I don’t know what the intent of this is- I just made it.

It’s very reminiscent of the poster for George Romero’s Dawn of the Dead, don’t you think? Totally unintentional, I swear!

I’m, like, totally in “post-production” on Ludlow. Since I went way overboard with the info sharing regarding the shoot, I figured, you know, why not indulge myself and share way too much info during the entire process of putting this movie together? It’s what The Internet is for. Well, it’s for sharing too much information and it’s for LOLcats.

So, WARNING: this is all about me and my big ideas for Ludlow and seriously, it’s so boring, I’m falling asleep whilst typing ittttttttttwiooooooohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

Oh, if you have no idea what the fuck a “Ludlow” is, click here and catch up. Or don’t and remain clueless. Whatever, man, that’s totes your beeswax.

During filming, Shannon Lark looked far into the future and yawned upon reading this boring post.

If you’ve watched any of my previous…uh, let’s call them “films” for lack of a better term, shall we?…then you may or may not be surprised to find out that they’re all edited on l’il ol’ iMovie5. See, I’m always about 6 or 8 steps behind the curve when it comes to computers due to the fact that I’m not a millionaire. It’s true! Though I exude exquisite class and glamour all over The Internet, I am little more than a humble pauper.

Another example of exquisite class and glamour.

As such, I plod along all humble pauper-style working with programs from 5 years ago and everything’s generally cool; I’m a big proponent of the idea that your equipment doesn’t entirely matter, but rather it’s all about what you can do with it. *sexual innuendo, wakka wakka* The point is, geez… the first three episodes of Ghostella’s Haunted Tomb were shot on VHS, and they’re…largely coherent, at least.

SHANNON LARK: Stacie never gives herself enough credit. “Lack of a better term?” Her movies are wonderful! And they actually make sense. Especially her latest with that wedding dress-thing.

In related news, did you know that NOBODY uses VHS anymore? Weird, right? I just don’t understand this modern world! VHS is so cool. Why I remember the day I stepped up to VHS from using this thing. Oh, what a day that was. Electric Youth!

I’ll readily admit that top of the line equipment would be swell to own- after all, there’s no arguing that stuff shot on the Red One (fancy, expensive) looks better than stuff shot on VHS (not fancy, obsolete). But again, I’m not a millionaire and thus I make do. Sometimes, though, you just gotta bite the bullet and upgrade your crap to crap plus.

Sorry, VHS. I mean, you don’t look THAT bad and I still love you and all…

Sometimes, upgrading is all about ease. After those first three episodes of Ghostella, I dumped my VHS camera for a cheap (but kick ASS) mini-DV camera. In addition to superior picture quality, this meant I could simply import footage directly from the camera into iMovie rather than burning a DVD from the VHS tapes, extracting the footage from the DVDs, converting the file types, and THEN importing to iMovie. I still make out with my little camera every night as my perverted way of thanking it for saving me so much time and hassle. The making out is also my way of letting it know that I think it’s pretty.

…but this is a little sharper…and widescreenier…and insanier.

SHANNON LARK: I agree that you should make out with your equipment. It makes it function better (as long as no saliva hits the mother board) as the good vibes permeate its mechanical consciousness.

I’m trying to make a…well, a GOOD MOVIE here with Ludlow. Relatively speaking, natch. I want it to look beautiful, and I want as much as possible to avoid the deadliest of pitfalls that frequently lay waste to no-budget movies: shitty audio. Whether or not I’ll achieve these goals remains to be seen, but to give myself a leg up I used Shannon’s fancy-pants camera to shoot the film (although not wanting to neglect my own beloved camera, I brought it with me to capture behind the scenes shenanigans and, you know, to make out with). The second part of this mathemagical equation involves post-production and my decision to…dun dun dunnnnn…upgrade from iMovie 5 to Final Cut Express 4. This is roughly the equivalent of upgrading from sitting on your ass all day to going all nutcake and doing the Ironman Triathlon in under an hour.

I don’t know if that makes any sense, or whether doing the Triathlon in under an hour would indeed indicate a level of nutcakedness, but perhaps you get the point.

What? No, I’ve never done the Ironman Triathlon. BIG DEAL. It’s not like I’ve never done ANYTHING. I mean, this one time I stayed up for two days straight and lemme tell ya, it broke my fucking brain! It was during a road trip with my friend Jim, and the highlight of the trip was probably the moment when my mind completely melted and I couldn’t remember the name of the restaurant where we’d had breakfast. The restaurant was called Country Pride (gross, awesome), but the closest I could get to calling it that was to blurt out “Purity Face”.

SHANNON LARK: Hahaha! I went to a place like that recently. It had a giant pig in front of it, which I rode.

“Purity Face” is clearly not even close.

Anyway.

Look, I’m not trying to knock iMovie Version From 5 Years Ago, believe me. I’ve done some cool stuff with it, if I do say so myself (and clearly I do say so myself). However, the program is largely aimed at people who want to make a “movie” of their kids pooping at the beach and Ken Burns-style photo montages set to the tune of Jim Croce’s “Time In A Bottle” to give as a gift to Nana and Pap Pap for their 60th wedding anniversary- and that’s…you know, mega-cool. But for Ludlow, I want more control than iMovie can provide; I want to filter audio and correct colors and all that deluxe good-time jazz. Lo, I say unto thee, this is a story about control. Control of what I say, control of what I do- and this time, I’m gonna do it MY way. I hope you enjoy this as much as I do. Are we ready? I am- ‘cause it’s all about control…and I’ve got lots of it.

NnnngaaaahhhhhJANET JACKSON GET OUT OF MY HEAD.

“I will fuck up your dreams!”

Sorry, wait…mmm. Err, where the fuck am I going with this?

Oh yeah- so I upgraded my computer and now my stupid big fat scanner is no longer compatible with my system (it sits, useless and mocking) which means I can no longer scan in…you know…STUFF FOR MY LIFE which includes COMICS and I’ve got Final Cut Express but it’s super complicated and I don’t know what I’m doing and I hate not knowing what I’m doing and I feel my self-imposed deadline looming and I’m totally freaking out.

SHANNON LARK: Girl, you are gonna get the freakin’ stupid editing system BLAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!! Just keep working at it. You are super smart and you do things and you have the BESTEST blog on the intarweb where people send you fanmail and some of them even try to look up pictures of me naked just because you have let me go blablabla on your blog about masturbation and Ludlow. This is just Ludlow trying to bring you down, man. Fuck Ludlow. Fuck it with an iron fist and conquer this program till you hit yourself in the face cause your fist goes right through it, all transparency-like.

SWEET MERCIFUL CRAP did I really write all this just to bitch about how my new editing program is OH SO HARD and WAH WAH WAHH and IT’S GOING TO TAKE ME SO LONG TO LEARRRRRRRRNNNN? Hmm. I guess I did.

Well, I SAID it was boring…and YOU read it anyway! SUCKER!

Sorry, that’s not very nice at all. I’m going to go make an iMovie video featuring a Ken Burns-style montage of all our favorite Final Girl pictures from over the years, and I’ll set it to the tune of Icy Spicy Leoncie’s “Man! Let’s Have Fun” as my way of apologizing.

Actually, that video sounds pretty cool. Wow, I should be a jerk more often!

And please don’t remind me that I’m bitching about editing movies on my computer while the world is riddled with people who have no homes or clothes or perhaps not even eyes, because I feel guilty enough about my meager entitlements already. I BID YOU GOOD DAY.

This trailer took approximately 50,002 years to shoot, but now it’s done done done and posted on Funny or Die for the world to see. It’s a greatest hits montage of stupidness starring a bunch of my friends. Hooray for everything!

If you dig it, head over to Funny or Die and cast a vote for FUNNY. It’ll make Jesus happy.

Okay, I don’t know about that…but it’ll make ME happy, and that’s…you know…fine, too.

The creature walks among us, and totally waves hello!

20″ x 24″, acrylic on canvas

Well, here it is, the teaser trailer for the short film I’ve been blabbing incessantly about, Ludlow. Coming June 2009!

I recently made a short horror film called Ludlow, starring Shannon Lark and Elissa Dowling. I thought I’d share all the boring details about how that came to be, because…you know…sharing is caring and if there’s one I thing I do, it’s care. Part one of the saga is here, part two is here, part three is here, and part four is here.

The alarm went off at 5:30am. I opened my eyes and saw the overhead light was on. Power had come once again to Ludlow! I sat up, a big, goofy grin on my face, and- being the nerd I am- literally gasped aloud with glee. I restrained myself from clasping my hands to my cheeks all moony-eyed style. I looked over at Shannon to see if she shared my excitement, but she was still passed out. Why wouldn’t she be? It was 5:30 in the fucking morning!

By 9am we were rolling and we never looked back. I realize this is all in sharp contrast to the first two days of our undertaking, but we really encountered no problems at all on Thursday. Lemme tell ya, it was really fucking nice.

SHANNON LARK: I couldn’t believe it! I was half expecting an airplane to crash through the roof, or something. This feeling made me haul ass and concentrate like my life depended on it.

you have no idea how effing hot it was outside

We shot outside in the blazing sun, we shot inside making day-for-night…we cranked and cranked and cranked, not stopping until about 4:30pm or so when my other actors- Elissa Dowling and Ned Christensen- showed up on set. I’d just like to take this opportunity to point out what a superstar Ned is; maybe you recognize his name from Ghostella’s Haunted Tomb, as he provided me with a good portion of the music found throughout the series. But he has a regular, rather fancy-schmancy job, and I know that driving all the way out to Ludlow after work- only to turn around and drive back that night so he could work the next morning- is something…you know, not just anyone would do. He’s as rare as a unicorn, that one.

Bearing in mind Ned’s time constraints, we cranked out all of scenes as quickly as we good. Lots and lots of violence, lots and lots of blood, lots and lots of awesomeness. Shannon had some extremely intense work to do, and she did it. I was happy that Ludlow was finally giving us a break, and I couldn’t have been happier with what I was seeing through the camera lens.

no one tried the French Dip, despite its famousness

We finished up with Ned around 11pm and he high-tailed it back to Los Angeles. We continued to work after he’d gone; scenes with Shannon and Elissa outside the motel, scenes with Shannon screaming inside the motel…and of course by this time of night, the motel was in fact full up. At one point, we got some neighbors- a woman who didn’t look a day under 70 and another woman who could have only been her mother. I went over to warn them about what was going on, that unfortunately there’d be a bit of yelling and blood, but we were making a movie so there was no cause for alarm. Their response?

“Oh, alright. We’ll keep the TV turned down low so we don’t bother you.”

I swear, my eyes welled up; it’s stupid but I get that way when people are inordinately sweet and nice and kind. I clarified that I wasn’t asking them to be quiet at all, and I somehow resisted the urge to, in the onset of my late-night delirium, give the grannies a hug.

We finally called it a night around 1am and stayed up a while longer to sort of process- we’d finally managed to get a day in with no problems. Granted, it was an incredibly long day, but we were under the wire. Is that a saying? I have no idea. We were somewhere around the wire, at any rate, somewhere in its vicinity, trying to cram a lot of work into not a lot of time. As much as we’d accomplished on Thursday, we still had about 15 scenes left to shoot on Friday. That’s…kind of a lot. Some time around 2, as I was finally drifting off to sleep, Shannon quietly muttered the last words of the day:

“Wud up, Ludlow??”

SHANNON LARK: Not before I crammed Miso soup down Stacie’s face. We realized we hadn’t really eaten all day, except for those pepperonchini’s topped with peanut butter…and some toasted seaweed.

Up again and cranking by 8am, we just kept on doing our thing. Our thing went all crazy kick ass like; you’ll be pleased to know that everything went as smooth as could be expected- YOU WILL BE PLEASED I SAY. Ludlow and fortune continued to smile upon us: the power stayed on, the Chevron kept the free coffee and water flowin’, and I kept the blood flowin’. We worked and we worked and then when we got tired, we worked some more.

the pink sunglasses with the spinning pearls make everyone cool

I combined a few scenes in the interests of flow and…you know, time, which was a wee bit scarce as Shannon was due to fly out of Los Angeles at 4pm on Saturday. I rewrote some stuff on the fly and would hand scenes off for a bit of rehearsal while I organized my thoughts and changed my shot lists. It was exhausting and exhilarating; the biggest change I made was in the very last scene, where Krista has a large monologue. Due to the work we’d been doing, to my directing and the way Shannon had been playing the character up to that point, the monologue really didn’t make sense by the time we got around t shooting it. The character was in a different place than I’d anticipated when I wrote it, and she simply wouldn’t say the things I had her saying. The tone was far different than I intended- it was better. All the changes I made were for the better, and in the end there were more than a few- and Shannon just rolled with it. She learned new lines and got on with it. It was an amazing collaborative effort and no matter the end result (HOLY CRAPPING CRAP I HOPE IT’S GOOD), it was an incredible collaborative process.

When I said “Cut” the last time, when I turned off the camera for good because we’d gotten what we’d needed to, the clock said 6:34am. 6:34am on Saturday. We shot for about 22 hours straight, because that’s how long it took to get everything done. The whole script- the whole movie- was in the can. I couldn’t believe how long we’d been at it, and that it was finally over.

SHANNON LARK: By that time I was giggling like a perfect mixture of a blushing school girl and a crazy person. I sat down. I slept for 5 minutes with my bloody hands in the air. I love filming!!!

Unfortunately, there was no time to celebrate. We packed up and cleaned the room as best as we could, wiping blood off the walls and the doorknobs. Shannon finally got a chance to wash her hair, which she hadn’t done all week (for the character, man, I swear!). We loaded the car and were on the road by 8:30, but not before Ludlow had one last laugh at my expense- violent winds had begun to blow (like, dust storm violent), and my car door slammed on my foot as I was sliding in the driver’s seat. I wasn’t surprised that Ludlow would try one more time to defeat us, but in the end it couldn’t. Later that evening, after Shannon had gone home and I was about to pass out from exhaustion, I laughed at the purple bruises on my foot and my sunburned arms. Ludlow was already becoming a memory, some weird sort of dream.

SHANNON LARK: I went to the airport and had a bloody mary with some almonds. I immediately became drunk, and that bloody mary was “aiport” weak! I was yelled at by an attendant on the plane, and promptly passed out all the way home, my fingers on my laptop keyboard.

Then eventually I started writing this, and…you know, I remembered it all.

WUD UP, LUDLOW??

MONDAY: TEASER TRAILER! In the meantime, enjoy some screencaps. ENJOY THEM.