Orangecow.org in the News

[Garrett Gilchrist]

There's an interview with former Doctor Who CGI head Will Cohen in the new Doctor Who Magazine Special Effects special, probably the first ever truly warts-and-all expose about how fraught the Eccleston era was behind the scenes. Unprompted, he mentions and plugs my 2005 documentary about the making of Star Wars, "Deleted Magic!"

Thanks to DMCJ for the tip.


Not the first time I've been mentioned in Doctor Who Magazine either - they plugged my WhoSprites Doctor Who Lost Episodes animation project once or twice. Wish we'd actually gotten the budget to do more with that.

[Garrett Gilchrist]

Twenty years ago, almost exactly, I started making what you could technically call my first live-action feature. I was in high school, fifteen years old. It was my friends and me trying to be like Monty Python, making jokes about classic literature, the sort of stuff we had to read in school. (I'd already done some simple animation.) I had trouble getting enough people to film the sketches with, so I used puppets, cutout animation and all kinds of silliness to fill out the 90 minute feature.

People liked it, so with the help of David Ashe, Justin Bielawa, Benjamin Sipprell, and lots of friends, we wound up doing a bunch more of those. Seven no-budget video features by the year 2000, including a parody of Star Wars: The Phantom Menace and the very Pythonesque "Excaliburger, or the Spatula in the Stone." There were also two more serious movies, "The Animal Game" and "The Animal Effect," where we played darker, more twisted versions of ourselves, exploring our own teenage flaws. (They were still funny, in an improv kind of way.) I also wrote a semi-serious play, "Easier Than Thinking."

In 1999 I went to USC film school. I made a few more no-budget comedy features with some guys in the midwest, and got involved with a whole nationwide (or even worldwide) filmmaking community, before too many egos in the room got to be too much to handle. At their urging I'd become a troublemaker, which I regret. I learned some lessons the hard way and changed my attitude about a lot of things.

I made some student films I'm still proud of, on film and on video, including one about a dying comic strip artist and an animated adaptation of Terry Pratchett's "Mort." The best was probably "The Journey of Truesong" - a five-minute fantasy on 16mm film, inspired by Jim Henson's "The Storyteller." I also took three years to make a serious drama called "Gods of Los Angeles" - still shot on video for no money, and still featuring friends like David Ashe and Cori Haisler.

I continued to write mostly serious screenplays, about fourteen of them. They weren't intended to be shot for no money on video. They were big Hollywood productions. I went through an entire career's worth of writing and creative discovery writing screenplays that almost no one has read.

I filmed one of them in 2007 - a comedy/drama about the Marvel comics character, the Sensational She-Hulk (starring Kierstyn Elrod and Lesley Youngblood). The cast was absolutely terrific, and I spent over three years doing the editing and special effects, before having to move on to other things. Still very proud of that one. Only about half of it was ever released and I'd still like to finish the edit one of these days. It referenced The Avengers before The Avengers, and was a Marvel movie before there were Marvel movies. The recent releases of Jessica Jones and Deadpool have accomplished a lot of what I was trying to. We wound up being featured on the Target DVD release of "Spider-Man 3," and I met Sam Raimi.

Also around 2007, I started a project to animate the hundred-odd lost episodes of Doctor Who, called WhoSprites. I created thousands of drawings and digital paintings, animating dozens of characters with full mouth and eye movement. The official folks never picked it up, and neither did the fans, although about an hour of animation tests were created. It looked traced but wasn't. I learned so much from doing that much art and animation that it informed and influenced my entire art style from that point on. In 2009 I left Los Angeles and in 2011 became a full-time artist, struggling more and more to survive.

I kept writing screenplays - quite a few in 2009. I published a short novel, Cratchit & Company (based in the world of Dickens' A Christmas Carol). I also wrote half of a much larger novel which still isn't done, but will be one of these days.

I'm back in L.A. now. Struggling to survive. Failing to survive. But I'm still writing, still drawing. I've been doing some filmmaking lately on a project I've only told a few friends about.

I still haven't made a "big" feature film. All my screenplays I've kept to myself like a secret - an entire career as a filmmaker that nobody knows about but me. The technology today is amazing - much better than the terrible video I worked with back in high school and college. I will make a big feature somday, once I have two nickels to rub together. And I'm very grateful to all the actors and all the friends who got me this far.

It's been an interesting twenty years. I hope I make it to see another twenty.

https://www.youtube.com/user/ocpmovie

[Garrett Gilchrist]

You can just barely spot me and Griffin Lewis (AKA musician/comedian Griffinilla) in the background here (like at 10 minutes in). Also Markiplier and company.

I'm sure there will be a proper edited video from this event soon, but Youtube comedians The Game Grumps (minus Danny) held an art show in L.A. this week as a joke to celebrate the end of Ross and Barry's "Pokemon Art Academy" series. Everyone appeared in character, and it was an impressive length to go for a gag. I said hi to all the Grumps.

Holly Conrad spent some of her time there playing Pokemon Go. This is a video of that. Not super exciting, but yes, this is a thing that happened!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=muwDeS3Tb-8

[Garrett Gilchrist]

As above, I'm in the background of this Game Grumps video. Me and Griffin Lewis. At the end especially.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9P3CGYkVPfA

[Garrett Gilchrist]

I restored this rare film from a VHS source. The trailer in particular. Not too interesting as a film, but it's also a worthwhile document of the "hippie" generation gap from both sides, at the time. You get a point of view that you wouldn't get today.

https://www.createspace.com/417559

I don't see a credit for them here so I'd like to thank Alex Douglas who was my assistant on the restoration, and Khal Barnes who filmed the new interview with Jack Grapes. I'd also like to thank Darrell Maclaine-Jones who restored the audio (and is credited with myself and Alex on the cover art).

The whole project was Iain Lee's baby. The radio/TV host is as big a Monkees fan as you'll find and spent years tracking down any copy of this film.

You can order the DVD for $19 at that link.

It's not my site and I make no profit from that (I don't know if anyone does), but I'm proud to have restored this film as a favor for Iain Lee. He had a low quality source and needed help, so I pitched in.

It's still low quality (it looks like it was filmed off a projector screen), but worlds better than it was. The trailer in particular.

P.S. Recently I also restored another super-rare movie from VHS, "The Tournament," for the Ninja Busters Blu-Ray. Another favor to a friend. A little black and white English Samurai movie!

[Garrett Gilchrist]

From 1997-2004, film students at the University of Southern California took a class where our task was to create an original sitcom series, more or less like what you'd see on broadcast TV.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vN3xSck ... Xkn1WZQkgD

I worked on the 2003 season of "God Help Us", and directed/shot/edited the title sequences, which I'm sure I still have somewhere in DV quality. I was doing production design - set dressing, props. I drew the baseball shirt logos in ep 3 and a Madonna painting in the stairwell. They were still using my title card in 2004.

You can spot me in the crowd at the very end of the 2003 episodes.

I also got away with shooting a scene for my own 2003 movie "Gods of Los Angeles" [no relation] on the same set, somehow, so thanks for that, guys .....!

I also wrote another USC sitcom called The Weekly Insider, which I have on VHS somewhere. I didn't like the result though.

Here's the scene from my 2002-05 movie "Gods of Los Angeles." A dream sequence with David Maddox and Julie Kenworth.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=03eJ7YHadh4

[Garrett Gilchrist]

I was walking down Hollywood Blvd and Jimmy Kimmel was filming a "Generation Gap" segment. I stood around to watch the end of the filming and end up on camera. Probably should have smiled.
https://youtu.be/IAT8F_jmDFE?t=499

[Garrett Gilchrist]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6CxWXiodLs4
Ten years ago, we made a movie about a Marvel superheroine. Iron Man was just shooting then. There was no Marvel Cinematic Universe. We were talking about the Marvel Universe onscreen, while talking about missteps like Howard the Duck and Hulk, and hits like Spider-man and Blade. Time has caught up to us. A feature or TV series about the She-Hulk no longer seems like a long shot.

[Garrett Gilchrist]

It's Bendy and the Ink Machine! Chapter 1 of the horror game inspired by 30s animation.

I've been doing editing for Fandroid, the Musical Robot's new video game Let's Play series on Youtube. This is a new project by composer and comedian Griffin Lewis, who has previously collaborated with Jenny Nicholson (now a Disney and Star Wars commentator) and Hailey Lain (animator and singer who storyboarded with Chris Fern for me on the Thief and the Cobbler: Recobbled Cut Mk4). Well, Griffin has collaborated with lots of people!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QZo80K5rLsY

I didn't edit the robot's faces on this one, but I edited the gameplay and performance, trying to keep it light and funny. About 30 minutes of takes were cut to 10 minutes here. These videos are intended for a young audience but I think they're pretty funny.

We included references in the video to Griffin's song "The Devil's Swing." Here's Caleb Hyles' cover of that:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sh6LTfSaXpA

Here is Hailey Lain's cover of "The Devil's Swing," with her own animations.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DXOI6noPnSo

So far I've edited about half the Fandroid Let's Plays. We'll see how that goes. Here's one I edited for Roblox Lumber Tycoon 2.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jqu1MN4jtoI

And one I edited for Roblox Escape From the Evil Dentist. I also edited the faces on this.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8Vmb6iNW_8

I'm out of money so this gig has helped a bit. Unrelated: A lot of my time this past year has been spent developing a personal film project that isn't quite ready yet. So, uh, look for that one eventually.

[Garrett Gilchrist]

About a year ago, I did voice work for this video game, De-Void. Alexandra Serova plays Elizabeth Woolgather, and I play WILCO, an artificial intelligence, as well as the mysterious EYE.

http://www.pulsetense.com/de-void/
http://store.steampowered.com/app/468570/DeVoid/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQiiwGJYIFU

I'm in it throughout, but note the robot at 1 minute in, the monologue 18.5 minutes in, and the bit at the very end, etc ...