Something Stirs…

The latest issue of WIRED has a story about Robert Rodriguez and SIN CITY.

They talk about how he’s combined his no-budget guerrilla filmmaking techniques, first displayed in El Mariachi (filmed during summer vacation in Mexico for 7 grand), with the latest in digital technology. He does everything himself, out of a studio he built at his house in Texas. He now shoots digital, edits on a computer, puts in special effects digitally, scores the music digitally, and combines it all himself. I remember watching the making-of documentary on the DVD of Once Upon A Time In Mexico, where he talked about the fact that the shoot-out in the church was actually filmed with rubber guns, because their actual working props were held up at the border…so they mimed the entire fight, and then he went in later and digitally added sound, muzzle-flash, spent bullet casings and bullet squib hits in post-production. If I hadn’t been told that, I wouldn’t have been able to tell.

I got the film bug again.

Laura, running errands yesterday, swung by Borders and got me Rodriguez’ book: Rebel Without a Crew: Or How a 23-Year-Old Filmmaker With $7,000 Became a Hollywood Player. It’s exerpts from the journal he was keeping before, during, and after making Mariachi, an appendix called “10 Minute Film School” and the complete shooting script to the film.

I read it from cover to cover last night.

I’ve definitely got the film bug again.

I’ve also decided that when I start working on it, I’m going to document the project via LiveJournal. The question is whether I’m going to use this one, or start up a new one specifically for that purpose.