"Absolutely incredible. A home run. Arguably one of the best movies of the year." is what
- First : what possessed you to undertake such a big project, and why The Stepford Wives?
"Well, I love a good story, and I felt it was time for me to do a more complex movie.. why The Stepford Wives? Well, a lot of reasons actually...
First off, it's very well known, so it was pretty easy to describe what a Stepford Wives movie should look and feel like. As much as I loved the 2004 remake, which is the version this movie is based on, it was pretty clunky in some ways. It tried to be satire when it really is a horror movie, but Frank Oz added more comedy where it was desperately needed. That's the one thing the 2004 remake did really well. With so much beautiful production, and a script that could so easily adapt to porn, it really has the bones of a great movie.
On a more serious note, I felt a lot of the same underlying concepts like controlling and perfecting your partner which gave The Stepford Wives its creepy ick factor are still around in 2015... politics around women's rights in particular... Stepford kind of embodies that, and that's kind of terrifying.
And, I wanted to take on a big project because I will admit I am a little competitive with Emily. She is one of my BFFs, but she's already released 2 major movies and won more awards than I can count. I can't let her be the only one! lol! "
- Let's go through the phases of the project. During our informal chats you told me about your penchant for storyboarding. Did you plan the whole movie as a SL porn parody in a very precise way, did new ideas come up when the movie was already mostly planned, and at what point did you begin to actually get your hands dirty and film ?
" The entire movie was scripted out and the movie sound was totally edited a good couple of months before I even rented a place to start building my sets. I wrote notecards for every cast member with every shot I wanted, what kind of costume everyone was wearing, what each scene intended to accomplish, even each character's backstory! In retrospect, it probably was way overkill, but everyone in the cast was so wonderful about outfit suggestions, sets, and lots of great ideas that just added so much to the movie. It really was a collaborative effort. Actually shooting and editing the movie really fell into place naturally after that."
- At what point you began thinking about the cast to use? Can you comment on some of your choices - not all the characters have been introduced yet, but see what you can do to be spoiler free, lol.
" Most of the characters I knew who I wanted to cast pretty early in the process, because everybody remind me of something each character does in the movie. The Stepford Sluts don't get nearly enough love in the story, so all 18 Stepford characters will get a featured sex scene!
As for the characters, Cream [Release] was a natural choice for Bobbie, as was Lexi [Fizzle] for Bannister. I've wanted to get those two in more movies for a while, they always make me laugh! Plus, everybody is going to see Lexi and wonder when she's going to pull out the straws! Emily and Larry [Vinaver] are the main villainy characters, and really, would you cast anybody else??"
- Tell us a bit about the locations used in these first 2 episodes: some are quite familiar to the regular pornstars partygoer. Which sets did you have to build, and if you like and have anything specific to say, please comment on the time it took and the logistics - did you have to keep multiple sets rezzed at the same time? Prims are not cheap...
" Sure! The Survivor-like reality show we recorded at [editor's note: the world famous] Porn Stars Beach on Emily's sim, but we recorded a LOT on Sil's sim too, he's been soooo patient and supportive through this whole thing. Love you!! And, in addition to that, I rented a 1/8 parcel where I built a lot of the sets, then stored them in my inventory. I can usually build a set in an hour, but not the house (the one with the fountain in the opening credits which I'm completely overusing) or the super creepy ritual room..
The way we'd work is we'd focus on recording everything we need on a set, so it'd be out of sequence, because some clips are used in, say, Part 2 and Part 4, like the road scenes. And I would derez that and swap out the next sets. It was just like a RL TV show redecorating a stage between shots. We only had a 1/8 parcel which isn't super expensive, but we only had enough prims for 3 or 4 sets rezzed at a time, so prim management was a little hectic! "
- Which scene was filmed first, and approximately how long did each scene take? I know being super-organized helped you film a scene we'll see in the last episode VERY quickly.....
" Right off the bat, I knew some scenes were going to be problems.. because of scheduling conflicts, lag (what would Second Life be without it), mismatched windlights, scene discontinuity because different shots were shot on different days, or realizing I need to create graphics for the reality show or the newspaper segment.. but I was able to manage a lot of those issues by separating shots, and making lots and lots of notes! Of all the issues tho, scheduling issues are DEFINITELY the worst.
For most of us, Second Life isn't our full time job, so there's no telling what might happen, one of my actors may suddenly go AWOL and there's no way to get ahold of them to know if they're okay.. I won't deny I delayed Part 2 because several key characters are introduced and if I needed to recast, I didn't want to have to re-release the movie.. Most of the characters were completely done recording by the time Part 2 came out. "
- All things considered, what do you think is the biggest challenge for a filmaker in SL? If you could magically make something 'change' in SL or about SL, what would that be?
" Schedules. Evil, evil schedules where I have 30 minutes to film a sex scene between 1 person in California and 1 in Europe. I could definitely do with better animations too.. Sil and I should team up and make our own animations store, but we'd be too busy with each other lol! "
- Besides what you have already mentioned , anyone else in your "Special Thanks" in the credits you'd like to take the chance to thank once more and tell to our readers why their name is up there?
" Sil of course, who's been sooo wonderful and supportive.. Emily who's my friend, mentor, and competition.. Cream and Anyka who are the movie buffs and came up with sooo many good ideas.. Amia who contributed several key pieces of furniture.. I really could thank this whole cast for believing in the movie and making it so much fun to do."
Ok ok we're done!
Thank you SO much to Erin for answering the questions. And for putting together this movie. It's truly an incredibly inventive effort. The amount of fresh ideas she managed to put in this flick, making it a real reinterpretation and parody of the original (which was a reinterpretation, if not parody, itself....) is truly imaginative. Expect more on the blog later about this production -stay tuned on Erin's blog, from which i also lifted a couple screenshots - the good ones :p-, and thank you for reading!
