Thomas Chaser
Tribune
I’m watching your posts and I just don’t understand: are you speaking on behalf of Alexander himself or are you his commercial agent? ))
Саня, дружочек, скажи правду: Who is who? (I'm a fan of your talent as a producer!!)
I write a script and select an actor (or two) for the role(s). Alex handles the booking, the props, and the production. Then, he sends me the raw footage from the cameras, including whatever is filmed prior to "Kamera Auto!" and after "Kamera Stop!", so I see some of the behind-the-scenes of the story. Usually it is White Rose giving direction to whomever is the specimen victim, Alex checking the cameras, adjusting the ropes holding the actors, and jokes between the cast members. Sometimes I can email directly to the actors and White Rose for clarity on how to play the character and present the story, or ask a question about something, but on the day of the shoot it is all up to Alex, White Rose, and the actor to bring my script to life.
It's not a big production company. Alex does a lot of the hard work himself. The cameras are all mounted with pre-set framing and depth. Sound is the in-camera microphone. There is one person to monitor all of the camera, and then another person to edit the final footage into the video you can buy online. There is an actor that I use named Teresa (pictures attached from the film where she's used to test the effects of insect spray on humans) who is actually a video editor for Alex. I think he also uses one other person as an editor, and as a production assistant. White Rose's husband was a production assistant as well, but I'm not sure if he still is. He hasn't appeared in any BTS footage I've seen.
In addition to the raw behind-the-scenes film from all 3 (or 4 or 5) cameras, I also get the finished video. I have my own video editing software and I enjoy spending time using the raw video to make my own personal cut of the film. Wondershare Filmora allows me to crop, zoom, pan, speed-up/slow-down, and do other things to the footage. So, when I get Alex's final commercial version, I usually only watch it to see if they used camera angles that weren't sent to me, just to make sure I have everything, and to maybe get new ideas on how to improve my edit skills. Getting the raw footage from Alex is like getting a gift from Santa on Christmas. Woo-hoo!
As for my story ideas, they usually have some basis on real-life studies or experiments. Involuntary organ donation and sale on the black market was one of my early ones; believe it or not that is a real thing. The one with Teresa being used to test the lethality of insect spray came from a documentary about VW diesel engines and how a small independent lab had conceived the idea of routing exhaust from a running VW in one room to a mask on a bicyclist in another room, to see if the bicyclist would become woozy. Of course (1) the bicyclist thought it would be a test of oxygen absorption during exercise and (2) VW executives nixed the experiment because Germans gassing civilians made for bad optics. But for an unscrupulous research scientist like Dr. Squalus (Dr. Shark), such an experiment could yield results to be sold for big money on the market!
One idea that I'm running with now is taking the fake experiment created by Dr. Stanley Milgram and using as a story where women volunteer to be spanked in order to test their memory under stress, and whether pain improves recall of things. I wrote a couple of fake scripts, but then decided to let the actors play it out for real. It's yielded some surprising results. One woman went from missing 7 out of 20, to missing 5 out of 20, to missing only 3 out of 20. The worst result out of 5 women tested has been 9 missed out of 20 (poor Teresa; I should give her a chance to improve her score. What do you think?).