Mystic Cosmic Patrol - Time Crisis

Okay, the next episode (again, in two parts) has arrived! Check them out below.

Mystic Cosmic Patrol

Mystic Cosmic Patrol has arrived! It actually debuted last week, but I wanted to wait for the second part to drop today. Because of short attention spans, the episodes are being released in two parts, whereas I think they work better as a complete, whole episode. So now you can get the whole episode experience by watching part 1 and part 2 back to back.

Edit: Funny or Die has revamped their site and MCP is no longer available there. But it can be seen on YouTube and the episodes aren't cut in half!

And the good press and interviews keep coming in:
TrunkSpace (Tim Jo)
TrunkSpace (Chris Candy)
TrunkSpace (Minae Noji)
TrunkSpace (Chris Masterson)
TrunkSpace (Cig Neutron)
TrunkSpace (Laura Monaco)
TrunkSpace (Tim Russ)
Japanator
ComicBook.com

And an interview with KTLA 5:

Mystic Cosmic Patrol is coming!

After a long wait, Mystic Cosmic Patrol is finally going to see the light of day! It will be airing soon on Funny or Die, with four episodes coming out weekly over the course of a month. It's been a long road, but I'm eager for people to finally watch it.

For now, we have a trailer that gives a preview of the low-fi comedy that we were going for.

Mystic Cosmic Patrol Trailer from Kyle Wright on Vimeo.

Not only is the trailer out, but we've been getting some good press from:

Forces of Geek
Fanbase Press
TrunkSpace (Gavin Hignight)
Daily Dead
and BigShinyRobot

And the show isn't even out yet!

I'm super excited for people to see this. I had a great time shooting it and we had a incredible scripts, a great producing and creative team, and the cast and crew were fantastic. Hopefully there is much more to come!

MCP on Facebook

edit: The first two episodes are now on YouTube.

Quick update

I haven't been too good about updating lately, so thought I do a quick one.

My feature for late May-mid June shut down unexpectedly during pre-production, so I've been doing the odd job here and there. One of them was shooting some title sequence elements for an upcoming television series. It was pretty secretive and the first time I've had to sign a $1 million non-disclosure agreement. Needless to say, I can't really say much about it right now. When the show comes out, I'll grab a couple screencaps to share the parts I shot.

Another thing I did in May was shoot some miniatures for Mystic Cosmic Patrol. While at the location, I also got to see a rough cut of one of the episodes. I have to say, even in the rough stage I was quite pleased. It came together nicely and is pretty funny. I'm looking forward to seeing the final cuts of all 3 episodes and hopefully it'll get picked up so that we can continue the show, because it was a lot of fun.

One of the benefits of the extra downtime I've had is that it's given me a chance to work on a couple of my own ideas I've been kicking around for a while. I'm not the most naturally gifted writer, so it's been some hard work as I develop the stories and characters for a couple projects I'd like to shoot. Progress is moving forward and I'm making some headway.

Coming up, I'm also in the early pre-production stages of a short film, a very cinematic Kickstarter campaign video, and I also have two panels to attend at San Diego Comic Con for projects I shot, Space Command and Nobility. Besides these DP jobs, I'm excited to do a little directing with one of my own projects. June and July look like they'll be keeping me quite busy!

Mystic Cosmic Patrol principle photography wrap

Well, we wrapped on the first 3 episodes of Mystic Cosmic Patrol.  It was a lot of fun seeing the hilarious script brought to life by the actors.  On our final day, it was threatening to rain and we had some outdoor scenes to shoot, but the weather ended up working out and we got everything done.  There are still some miniatures to be shot, but principle photography is done and the footage is off to the editor.

Unfortunately, the last two Nobility pickup days overlapped with this project, so I missed out on that, but it sounds like they managed to get it handled fine.  Now I've got a little down time before my next feature begins towards the end of the month if all goes to plan.  So I'll leave you with another picture that doesn't really give anything away.

Mystic Cosmic Patrol week 1 complete

We wrapped our first week of shooting Mystic Cosmic Patrol.  It was all overnights, which was a bit tough to get used to, but we managed to finish on time and even got out early on the last day of the week.  Our locations are complete and now we're shooting out the rest of the episodes on our soundstage.  We're also back to regular days.

The script is funny and I've enjoyed seeing the actors bring their own comedic elements to the scenes.  Probably the most challenging aspect so far has been lighting the night exteriors with a small lighting package and G&E crew.  I always worry about trying to make the lighting look natural, but over the weekend I watched some episodes of Parks and Recreation that had nighttime exteriors and I noted that even at the budget and skill level of a larger production like that, they were also fighting against having an obvious lighting source or looking muddy, so I think I did relatively well.  I also tend to be hyper-aware of what I'm shooting because I know what and where the sources are, even though it may seem to the end viewer to be fairly natural.

It's been fun so far and I look forward to seeing the finished episodes.  With the quality of the script, I hope the show gets picked up because it's pretty wildly entertaining.  We're shooting on the RED Dragon as A-Cam, with a RED Epic serving as B-Cam, all on Canon EF lenses.  My A-Cam is kitted out with a Teradek Bolt 600, which has been fantastic, and a SmallHD DP7-LCD.  B-Cam has been rocking a Paralinx Arrow and the 1st AC has been impressed with the clarity of the Atomos Shogun monitor/recorder's 1920x1200 screen.

I can't show you any footage from the show, so here's a boring shot of the cast trailers instead.

ZEFR launch party

Single day shoot in a parking lot.  We had a 12x12 silk that we used to bounce sun back at the actors and virtually the whole things was shot at 300FPS.  I had never had the chance to do the whole Mentos in Coke thing before, so it was a lot of fun seeing the geysers of soda exploding everywhere.  Shot on RED Epic with Canon zooms.

Nobility season one

We started principle photography on season 1 of the science fiction series Nobility, described by writer/creator E.J. De la Pena as "Firefly meets The Office."  Part comedy, part drama (so that makes it a "dramedy" or so I've been told), it follows the crew of the C.A.S. Nobility, the newest and most powerful starship in the human fleet.  We're shooting on RED Scarlet with EF lenses.

Starring: Cas Anvar (Assassin's Creed, Star Wars: Clone Wars), Walter Koenig (Star Trek: The Original Series, Babylon 5), Doug Jones (Pan's Labyrinth, Hellboy, Falling Skies), Darren Jacobs (Starship), Torri Higginson (Stargate Atlantis), James Kyson (Hawaii Five-O, Heroes), Adrienne Wilkinson (Xena: Warrior Princess, ER, Angel), Ellen Dubin (Napoleon Dynamite, Dead Zone), and Miracle Laurie (Dollhouse).

http://www.nobilitytheseries.com/

As you can see, whatever they did in post to the image does not at all look like what I shot. Sigh.

Mr. Bollywood - Welcome to 7 Eleven music video

My roommate is a musician and wrote a comedy song about being from India, coming to America, and trying to live the American dream.  He wanted to shoot a music video for his song, so I gave him a hand.  We shot the majority of the video in one night, with a few hours of shooting at other locations on a separate day.  Shot partially on a Canon 60D, partially on RED Epic MX on Canon lenses.  Frame grabs below are my own color grade, as I wasn't too happy with the post work on the actual video.