ARTICLE

MAKING "NEW GENESIS: THE TWILIGHT OF THE DOGS"
(WHERE ART MEETS ANXIETY)

by Elizabeth Heyd

Director John Ellis is doing what most filmmakers dread doing: slicing chunks of frames out of the rough cut of his newest film, " Twilight of the Dogs," and trying to whittle it down to a running time of under two hours. Only a fraction of the feature's 42,000 feet (or 20 hours), of raw footage remains to be edited. "Twilight" is Ellis's debut as a director, and from his office space in Arlington, Virginia, he's not only finishing the work print but overseeing special visual effects being created here and in California, as well as the final sound mix, and is anxious to wrap up what he calls his "little picture."

Ellis is nocturnal, his tidy apartment pretty much bare with the exception of movie artifact-decor and just enough nourishment in the kitchen to get him through one edit session. Sitting in the dark at his Steenbeck editing table, mug of coffee behind him (a fixture), figuring out his next move, whether it's how to "edit", or "kill" a scene and accommodate special effects which exist now only on storyboards or in his imagination. He says when he's got editor's block and can't make a decision about how to cut a scene, it comes down to knocking out any footage that stimies the storyline. "Twilight" is an action adventure film with intertwining storylines, written by science-fiction writer Tim Sullivan from California, and for years their plan for a movie. Now he's in editing-in the third year of production--and he's been scrutinizing the live-action scenes looking for his ideal sequence. He has two more scenes to cut and the film is over two hours long, so he's pruning into marketable length to make a Christmas 1996 deadline andpremiere the film to the American Film Market (AFM) in Los Angeles in February. Ellis expects "Twilight" to be as well-received on the video market as the first two films he made, "Invader" (1992) and "Star Quest: Beyond The Rising Moon" (1988). "Invader" was seen on Cinemax and HBO last summer, and "Star Quest" had top ratings when it debuted on the Sci Fi Channel.

Ellis is more than editor and visual effects director. The scribbled-on scripts and other paper trails, promo posters for "Invader" and "Metamorphosis," and piles of videotapes and books about moviemaking are suggestive of more than a passing interest in fiction and fantasy films. Talk with him and you're talking with The Very Big Motion Picture Corporation of America. He's director/producer, coordinator, editor and CEO. He works alone well into the morning hours to finish this project, watching reel after reel of footage, some of it for the first time since it was shot last in July, 1993 and this past May. "Filming in the summer of '93 was horrendous", he says. Money ran out in the middle of shooting and cast and crew were weary from the heat and mosquito attacks.

Screenwriter and co-star Tim Sullivan (left) in famed flightsuit, with Director John Ellis
during sweltering summer '93 shoot of "Twilight of the Dogs". Note "plague" makeup on Tim's cheek.
Photo by Richard Latoff (1993).

Second unit shooting in May '94 functioned with a skeleton cast and crew to complete several critical scenes in the film, and some of the most creative. He was concerned that his lead actor, Tim Sullivan as Sam Asgarde, had gained a few pounds over the year, but much to everyone's amusement he still fit into his flight suit. The local low-budget effects were drummed up with amazing effeciency and creativity by well-known names in the genre: makeup whiz Tim Davis created a dummy to replicate Sam's torso when he gushes blood (during a stigmatic episode), and turned actors into radiation victims who coughed up a horrendous concoction (strawberry yogurt and salsa). Still other characters had to feign attack by man-sized spiders which would be brought to life later in California by Kent Burton.

You would think that watching special effects in movies would be like watching another magician's stage show, but Ellis says "most everybody shares secrets these days" and he doesn't mind revealing a few of his own. Frequently he does learn new techniques, and continues to figure out ways to get out of technical binds.

"Contessa", comic art by John Ellis (1991)

Early Career trail:

Ellis started in the early 70's as a freelance illustrator, having been tutored by long time friend and mentor C.C. Beck (Chief Artist and creator of "Captain Marvel" in the early 1940's). He worked briefly for artist Jim Mooney for Marvel Comics in 1976, but admits that he was "too young, too slow, and preoccupied with myself" to have any success drawing for comics. He started making his own 8mm movies while in junior high school, using a home-made animation stand. He says, " I built models, shot live-action, stop-motion animation, animation on cels, painting and drawing directly on film, all kinds of experimental stuff." While still in high school, after he'd made a short black and white film "Air Fighters"with elaborate special effects and stunts, he showed the film to famed stuntman Dave Sharpe at a nostalgia convention (in Houston) and was told by Sharpe that he had a knack for filmmaking.

That black and white film met with an early demise (it was destroyed by an irate roommate in 1978) but Ellis continued to dabble with other wannabe filmmakers on other projects that never got finished, and that's when he says he "gave up" trying to make movies on his own. Two weeks later he got hired as stop motion animation camera operator for "I Go Pogo" with the Chiodo brothers, Kent Burton and Steve Oakes, who would later found Broadcast Arts, who did many funky animated logos for the fledling MTV and later produced "Pee Wee's Playhouse". "I Go Pogo" led to work with Consolidated Visual Center, then Taylor Made Images, and Broadcast Arts. At Broadcast Arts he worked on animated spots including the early I.D.s for MTV. He, Kent Burton, and a "promising young filmmaker" Ellis says was still in high school, Phil Cook, had done work on their own and saw other independent successes, and decided to collaborate themselves. Ellis and Cook got together to work on "Star Quest" and then "Invader", both directed and written by Cook. In those features, spaceship models were fashioned from soda bottles and L'Eggs pantyhose cartons, and full-sized sets were cobbled together from things scrounged from the alleys and commercial dumpsters. Ellis laughs, "I used to go on foraging missions. I would dissapear for a while and come back saying, 'look what I found. This is so cool!' I always felt guilty yet excited climbing into those dumpsters. I still want to stop and go dumpster diving when I see one."

Back to the present:

Knowing top-notch inventive people has helped Ellis cut post-production costs. He "borrowed" the studio of commercial photographer/special affects wizard Bill Dempsey to create special optical effects for Twilight. There he used an oxberry aerial image optical printer and a bolex camera to Rotoscope and create spectacular opticals "the old fashioned way. During that same time in Hesperia California, Kent Burton (an Emmy-winner for animation on Pee Wee's Playhouse), was animating two dozen giant black widow spider shots for the production. Ellis has made several trips out to "the high desert" to help build the sets and plan the stop-motion animation with Kent, and has had a great time working with his long time friend. Kent just loves making the grotesque spiders come to life!

The screenwriter and lead actor is his partner, Timothy Sullivan, with whom he's been able to work out fine details on the script. Sullivan, a science fiction writer in California, is also an accomplished actor who has decent roles in over half a dozen pictures. The two have collaborated to tell the story of "Twilight", a cautionary and futuristic adventure about survival in a post- apocalyptic world. In it, former military pilot Sam Asgarde, an alien woman named Karuy (pronounced "Kar-oo-ee") and scavenger people elude a power-hungry religious fanatic named Reverend Zerk. When Ellis was interviewed in March of this year on Channel 9 TV' s Broadcast House in Washington, he described the film as "Mad Max meets David Koresh." Ellis isn't interested in making slashers or films with violence for the sake of the violence. He and Sullivan are telling a story about human nature, spiritual rebirth, and looking into the not-so-distant future of man's state of being on earth. At the time it was written, the David Koresh/Waco, Texas event hadn't occurred, and the "Twilight" story was closer to the truth than either Sullivan or Ellis could have predicted. A friend of Sullivan's, in fact, was David Thibbideau Sr.' whose son was one of the nine Koresh followers who escaped the standoff and fiery end.

With the exception of Director of Photography Alicia Sehring, special effects artist Kent Burton, and screenwriter/actor Tim Sullivan, most of all the other crew and talent (animal and human) are from Virginia and Maryland. Walter Suarez, pyrotechnics experts and armourer, brought along authentic AK-47's, M-16's, Ingram MAC-11s and assorted shotguns, pistols and even an old Springfield rifle. Makeup effects man Tim Davis created prosthetic third-degree burns and stigmata and wrangler Doug Sloan from Virginia brought Tex, the dog that was featured in "Sommersby", starring Jodie Foster and Richard Gere. Soundman Len Schmidt made sure the sounds were all there. Joan Clark handled the casting. Director of Photography Philip Cook, for personal reasons, had to depart nine days into the filming of "Twilight", leaving Ellis in the unenviable position of finding a replacement on literally a day's notice. Luckily for Ellis (and film continuity), his friend Director of Photography Alicia Sehring, who Ellis says is "Simply the best cinematographer around", was on the set in Upper Marlboro, Maryland the next day from California for the balance of the 37 day shooting schedule. Mac Squier did the rousing and totally credible symphonic score with midi sampling and a Macintosh computer system.

Alicia's main unit camera was an Aaton Super 16 and daylight live action was shot on Kodak ECN 7293. They chose Kodak ECN 7296 high speed stock for nighttime filming. Second unit filming used an Arriflex SR Super 16 camera as the primary, and a Bolex H-16 Rex 5, a Beaulieu Standard 16 and a Mitchell High Speed reflex 35 mm for special effects background plate photography. Second unit night time photography took advantage of Kodak's new ECN 7298 Super highspeed stock, which meant we didn't have to use as many lights, which saved time and money. For the money, in Ellis's $400,000 total budget, he says the right stock choices for those applications saved us money and made the film look better with less finessing.

For "Twilight", as with his earlier productions, Ellis is recording and creating the sound effects himself, and is designing the tracks and laying in the sounds. All of them. Thousands of them. "The learning curve kicked in years ago," he laughs. "Six reels of picture, approximately 19 minutes per reel, and approximately 16 tracks of sound per reel. Plus accompanying cue sheets (paper work). "it boggles the mind...It can make you crazy if you let it!" he says (in his best Peter Lorre voice). Doing or designing the effects himself keeps them "better and more easily integrated." They work better because I know every one of them and how they need to fit, . Living low on the hog forces him to seek ingenious, top-quality but low cost solutions to sound and picture problems, a job that he wouldn't give up for anything. "Money isn't everything, but when you have it, you aren't so hungry and you aren't as creative...or so I hear!", says Ellis. "I'd like to try it with money sometime...just for the experience, you understand?" he says with a deadpan expression.

As editor Ellis wraps up the last minute trimming, producer Ellis is looking to wrap up the sound mix, and he's hoping to have his film in the can by Christmas and on the way to video store shelves soon after. Then he'll anxiously await another one of the many scripted projects he'd like to get off the ground. "Twilight" and its director and screenwriter are popular fare in this corner of the nation with adventure/science fiction buffs, and with the media, for being able to create movies about alien beings, supernatural forces and space travel in Maryland tobacco and fruit warehouses, unlikely settings to say the least. But being one of very few filmmakers in this region, and loving the area, Ellis is quite at home making his movies here, especially when he doesn't have to "wait on line for money with all the other guys in Hollywood", he says. "I'm the guy who makes weird movies here...or is it the weird guy who makes movies here?...well, it's way better than flippin' burgers!".

- 30 -

150 extras, 35 crew, numerous visitors (including the press), one of the hottest, muggiest days of the year...explosions, animals, kids, tents, sunburns, windburns, sweat, mud, smoke, dirt, grime, mosquitos, gravel, porto potties, caterer underestimated numbers, hundreds of blanks (ammo) at Laurel (MD) Sand and Gravel...what fun! "Scavenger dogs" scatter as tank attacks from NEW GENESIS: THE TWILIGHT OF THE DOGS (1998). Photo by Richard Latoff (1993).

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NEW GENESIS: THE TWILIGHT OF THE DOGS
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