Precious Metalhead #7: A Fistful of Don’ts (a quick rant from the Director)

Progress!

We are making great progress with the movie now.  The animated shots are rolling in, with lots of active cameras per shot, and sets placed into half the shots now.  Ben, our editor has the monumental task of assembling our over 1100 shots into a believable movie – and it is really coming together.

You can see two interesting things at this point in the animation – first, even though we are hardly done (eg no facial animation yet), you can really “see” the characteristic motions of the actors in the animated characters.  We’ll look at the animated Jay walk, and shake our heads to say “Boy, that looks just like De’Lon’s walk”.  That’s exciting – we love how our actors brought their own style to the show.

And second, internally we’ve unofficially transitioned from thinking of the figures in the film as the actors (De’Lon, Philana, Josh, Michael, etc).  Now it’s far enough that we can really also see and imagine the characters themselves – and we have found that now we’re talking about what Zoe or Jay or Bernie are doing.

We are also making some interesting progress with some celebrity connections.  I can’t say much more at the moment but it’s very likely that we will have some amazing and very badass music and cameo placements for the movie.  More to come.

Finally, many thanks to our financial and blogger supporters during our moneybomb.  We met a lot of great people and remain very impressed with the enthusiasm people have for us as we push forward.

New Silver

Within the week we will be minting new silver rounds, and will get them into distribution to everyone.  We are making a brand new one-tenth ounce round, about the size of a dime, plus replenishing our supply of full one ounce pieces.  The tenths – “fractionals” in the lingo – are really unique, and will come in at a price point that everyone can own a little silver.

The Rant

One of the cool things about our job, to put a “movie with ideas” together, is that we get to engage with people with… lots of ideas. And I’m really excited to see that we’re well recognized enough at this point to see some of that engagement.

We have a solid point of view, but know that you are a diverse group of individuals – political, apolitical, liberal, conservative, libertarian, anarchist, religious, atheist, single-issue, philosophical, pro-this and anti-that. For some of our biggest fans, the key strife in the world is between superhero comics and narrative comics, or whether zombies move fast or slow.

We’re not going to make all of you happy. But, I actually like to see discussion. In addition to predictable nit-picking from libertarians and ACs, I’d actually like to see some commentary from the prototypical left… that will come. We will keep engaging with you, our fans, and we’ll work to keep the discussion civilized.

But that said – and this is based on a small sample of unusual interactions so far – let me now lay out a few things that you should and shouldn’t expect from Silver Circle, just to get this off my chest:

1. Do expect this to be a real feature movie. It’s designed to be a fun non-stop story with character development, complexity, romance, explosions, and lots of crazy stuff.
2. Since it’s a freaking movie, don’t expect it to contain a comprehensive hard-line worldview, where everyone acts like robots to enact your precise political diorama.
3. Don’t expect us to go into absurd detail on your favorite topic. There just isn’t time even in a 100-minute movie to explain all of that. Our longest “speech” is hard-hitting, but half the size of this blog post. And, that speech scene simultaneously contains a romantic encounter and a thuggish chase. We try hard to show, not tell.
4. Do realize that the economic backbone of this story is about alternative currency and inflation. But you don’t have to be into that to enjoy Silver Circle.
5. And, we’re reaching waaay beyond the “choir” here, so don’t expect it to be some kind of documentary or detailed expose’ with charts and graphs.
6. Don’t expect our rebels to model perfect, politically correct rebel behavior. They don’t. Our rebels are human, complex, and sometimes a little volatile. The real political process is boring, and but well-placed explosions look really cool.
7. Don’t expect the rebels to always follow the Non-Aggression Principle… exactly.  So don’t think that we “think it’s ok to go out and blow up stuff.”   This applies both to interested Federal Agents and fastidious NAP enforcers. Personally, we sure as heck aren’t gonna go blow anything up.
8. Don’t actually go out and do what our rebels do, unless you are up for some serious Waco action.
9. We put a lot of strange and interesting stuff in Silver Circle. Do take meaning where you want to and talk about it. If you see chemtrails, have fun with ‘em. You will find clues from many conspiracies short of alien invasion in here. It doesn’t mean all of us believe in them, but that’s just part of the fun. Thanks to an interesting discussion with a fan at FreedomFest last year, I now have the silver/gold connection to aliens with Zecharia Sitchin, so maybe you’ll get some greys on the sequel.  Maybe not.
10. Don’t infer advocacy from everything we show – do you think Fight Club was advocating underground fighting, or that Independence Day was encouraging aliens to blow up the White House?
11. If you want to find out what some of us think, read silverunderground.com. But don’t expect us to even agree with each other and we don’t expect you to agree with us.
12. Expect us to be serious, but don’t expect us to take ourselves seriously. We’re going to have some fun with this stuff along the way, and don’t need everyone to agree.

Ok. With that off my chest I can go on and finish making this movie.  Basically, I love the discussion, but be reasonable and act as if we’re in the same room.  Better, act as if we’re in the same room, and we’ve both got shotguns…  Kidding.  Mostly.

Metal Song of the Month

This month’s song, with a good cussing rant beforehand: Tree of Liberty by Sons of Liberty – live!

Have a great month, fans – we’ve got a heavy show schedule coming up as well as lots of comic pages and lots of new footage… It’ll be a busy spring!