C For Chaos, what a long, strange trip it’s been. The film that had it’s genesis when myself, Jamie and Geo were riding up to Virginia to pick a Neo Geo video game I had purchased on eBay. We used the 6 plus hours in crammed into the cab of my Ford F-150 to conceptualize our first feature length film. Ironically, the ideas laid down would become, “C For Chaos,” technically our first web series. To say that what we actually turned out bears little resemblance to the concept would be generous, but isn’t it always kind of fun when you take off to somewhere unknown? That’s for C4C was for us budding film makers, the great unknown.
At the time all those nights locked into the comic shop in Asheboro, NC (the basis for our mythical Andersonville, NC in the film) filming until we could barely stand up, dealing with the cold shooting battle sequences with the Numbers Killer or sitting through 9 hours of makeup only to start an all night shoot tended to annoy me. Now I look back on them as some of the most real film making experiences I’ve ever had.
It was the film where the shooting seemed to go on forever. If there was a rookie mistake to be made, we made it, so reshooting and even recasting was the norm rather than the exception. I say this with no shame because in the end, we persevered.
In so many ways, this film made us as a production group. If “The Zombie Hunter” was the genesis of Mutantville Productions, surely C For Chaos was the coming of age. It was the crucible that forged us as film makers.
As a feature film it broke us, first myself and then Jamie as editors around 2008, then rebuilt us as we imagined ways to make the footage we had in the can work most efficiently. To tell the grand story that Jamie had wrote based on our ideas from the long truck ride it took more than 190 1 hour 8mm tapes. Clearly, too much footage to cram into a feature length film.
I’m pleased to announce that at 5:30 Thursday, December 5th, 2013, the first episode of C For Chaos – The Web Series was posted free to view for all on the Mutantville Players Youtube Channel. As writer/director J.T. McRoberts so succinctly put it, this release “is like a huge albatross off the back of MVP.” Indeed it is.
When I was coming to the end of my most recent IT contract, I knew I would have some free time to devote to making this release become a reality, so back in June of this year I started pestering folks to help me get the footage together on a single drive. It literally took months to get all the right people and drives together to make that happen, but praises be, it happened. Now, I’m trying to get a small back log of these webisodes ready to go to account for unexpected busy periods with work or real life stuff.
Episode #2 was a bit of a bear due to a lot of screen replacement work that needed to be done. You’ll see what I mean when it’s released around thre 19th of this month. Lots and lots of key framing bezier action, but I digress. I do the work out of love for you all. I hope you can take some enjoyment from this series. It was a fun project, despite how long it was dragged out. I still think of it as some of the best fun I’ve ever had on a set.
In addition to the webisodes, we’ll also be offering a directors commentary for each release as well as our version of The Talking Dead, “Chaos Conundrums,” in which host and C For Chaos cast member, Steven D Tucker chats with folks who took part in the mammoth undertaking of a project. He’ll be taking the viewer out to the old locations to see how much they have changed and sharing some of our grass roots guerrilla film making techniques along the way. Please enjoy the fruits of our efforts below and be sure to leave us a comment on the Youtube channel. Putting this stuff out bi-weekly takes a lot of work and your kind remarks are fuel for our fragile artists egos.
The plan is to release a new episode every two weeks. So epsisodes/ webisodes may take longer to prepare, occasionally throwing this schedule late, but that is the planned release schedule we’ll try to meet. I shared with the fellows that I’d be happy if each episode got 50 views. Since the soft release last Thursday, webisode #1 has received nearly 3 times that so I’d say we are off to a good start. Help us out by sharing the link or pointing folks to the C For Chaos Facebook fan page. If all goes as planned, this web series should run for a minimum of 2 years time. Who knows? At some point we may offer the complete series on DVD with some of the behind the scenes footage, of which we shot a ton!
