First day of this two day shoot has wrapped, Sunday, January 25th.

I am now officially a 16mm filmmaker. View for yourself the hideous onslaught that was the Super 8 Massacre here.

Next shoot date March, 2009. Cast/crew, check the website for updates!

Thanks to everyone who participated. Great work. Test reels back next week.

-NVH

Shooting begins on Sunday, January 25th, at 8am for Path To My Heart, the first in a trilogy of horror shorts.

Mean Jean

Writer: Nonabell Howard
Director: Nonabell Howard
Format: Short, silent (with soundtrack)
Film: Super 8mm, Kodak Plus X/Tri X 7266, 7265, Ektachrome (color)
Running time: 5 minutes

Cast:
Jean: Derek Ellsworth
Billy the male hustler: Chris Barton
Goths: Lindsay Lowe, James Fattu, Najeda Patolo
Crackhead: Therese Ellis
Hippie Terrorists: Johnny Zero, Ron Windham

Crew:
Camera: Reagan Peterson
Assistant Director: Hilario Figueroa
Production Assistant: Phil Davis

Trivia

Cast and crew were hired from Craigslist and friends of friends. Most of the people had never met before the day of the shoot.

Film was shot entirely in Austin, TX.

Film was a one day shoot, for 7 hours.

Entire budget was $500.00. Cast and crew were paid $20.00 and pizza for lunch. Pay was so low some crew members never cashed the checks.

It was 100 degrees out when exteriors were being shot.

Foxxies is a sex club in Austin. Crew members went in to the club to ask permission to film.

Chris Barton's "hustler dance" was inspired by Billy Squier's "Rock Me Tonight" video. He was cast after I saw him imitating Billy Squier at a party.

White stuff on Jean's car is bird crap.

Two of the actors cast as goths were real goths from New York City.

Mean Jean was technically a sequel to another film, which was shelved after audio track was deemed unusable.

Filmed rejected from Myspace for copyright violations (soundtrack).


Technical Trivia

Film switches to color after crew ran out of b&w film.

Color film has blue tinge due to incorrect meter setting.

Dust is visible in upper right hand corner of film in some scenes.

Jean's walk speeds up in certain places due to wrong fps setting.

Large segment of film was lost due to technical error. After giving money to a tap dancing crack head, hippie terrorists try to kidnap Jean, but instead kidnap the crackhead. After this, Jean and Billy head to the sex club.

Film skips due to camera jamming, but was used as an effect in the film.

Lens flare is visible when Jean and Billy get into the car.

Some shots out of focus.

Production assistant can be seen standing in the background when group are at Foxxies.


Continuity

Billy dances on park bench then leans against pole. In next scene cigarette appears in his mouth.

When group are skipping, Jean does not have purse. In next scene, she does.

Hippie terrorist Ron is missing from coronation scene.

No explanation for group of people that show up at Foxxies after Jean meets goth kids.

The online premier of the underground super 8 film, Mean Jean.
Sneek peek ended. See myspace for clips. -Nonabell

I've been misdiagnosed. I have a benign nerve condition called "The Devil's Grip". I have steroid injections on Monday and I should be off and running - so much work to catch up on. Time is the great destroyer. I was so excited to have such a bizarre condition - what a great name! And how appropo considering I am a goth chick at heart. I was telling my psychiatrist that I was resigned to being a morose person, and he said, "No, don't give up hope yet!" and I was thinking NO! Stop it! I don't want to stop being morose! You'll ruin everything!
I like ghosts and strange people and demons that live under the bed. I like junkies and vicious dogs and insane cops. I like it when my neighbors throw their trash all over the yard, too. It just makes me laugh.

Hi everybody,
As you may or may not know, I've been battling peripheral neuropathy, a chronic pain disorder, for the past two years, and well... I am losing! Doctors have jerked me around and doped me up, but what they have not done is stop the spread of the nerve pain. So I'm headed for neurosurgery before the year is out.
I have decided with much sadness to put all my productions on hold until the New Year, when hopefully I will be pain free and ready to get back to work. Hopefully they'll throw in some freakish plastic surgery while I am on the table and I can be pain free and look like a demented Paris Hilton at the end of all this.
Nonabell Howard

Still casting and looking for locations for this film. Production has been moved back to January of 2009. Details and more details and things progress.

I moved - new myspace url is myspace.com/nvhfilms

This is the first in a series of promos for Mean Jean, the title was changed, since the first film The Last Days of Dan will most likely be scrapped. So now this film will stand as its own entity rather than a sequel.
Mean Jean cruises Chris the male hustler