Tuesday, October 2, 2007

BLOOD TIES - Action Film of the Year!

BLOOD TIES wins The Action On Film International Film Festival's "ACTION FILM OF THE YEAR"!

Screening on July 28th (2007), at the AOFF, BLOOD TIES (http://www.bloodtiesmovie.com/) was able to win "Action Film of the Year". Though the festival was predominately action, there were many films that stretched that definition. Rob Pralgo (co-star and executive producer) and I really did not think it would happen even though we of course knew about the nomination for both AFOTY and the 'Best Action Sequence of the Year.

Mark Harris (the kick ass role of Rourke in the film), traveled across the country to cheer us on and partake in the fest's atmosphere and seemed convinced it was a lock, but Mark's... Mark, so who knew?

We had other cast members show up as well, most who had moved to LA to seek their fortunes, including the always wonderful Samantha Worthen, (another cast member) who always seems to be everywhere at once supporting everyone.

We were thrilled that many other friends made it and we had a really strong and positive screening, with enthusiastic questioning and responses at the end.

My girl, the "Amazing Amanda", who always seems to have it together so much more than me, was there by my side, trying to rein in my enthusiasm and excitement over our film and the response it was getting.

With over 1000 people attending the awards ceremony, our sit down dinner had me facing away from the awards stage, and the announcement really didn't register until "AA" started trying to get me to quit eating the cheesecake and realize they were calling our name.

The fest was great - and of course the win made it SO MUCH BETTER - and we all saw some significant talent, and though it sounds pretty corny, we made a lot of new friends including David No (FORGED - Best Short Film at Dragon Con and The Melbourne Underground Film Festival), Igor Breakenback (GOOD LUCK WITH THAT), and Takeshi Maya (KAGE).

Can't wait for what's next... oh yeah... the Rome International Film Festival last month, the Big Bang Film Festival in Philly on the 17th -21st, and of course the Indie Fest USA!

BLOOD TIES - First Review

Traveling the World with "BLOOD TIES"

Written by Nathan Flood Saturday, 15 September 2007

That's how it always starts. "I've got this great idea for a movie."
Pretend you do have this great idea for a movie (I know it's hard, but try). You decide to pitch it to a buddy with a little bit of money in hopes he'll jump on board. You've got this great script and you're ready to go, where at this point your buddy asks, "Where you going to film it?" And your answer is?

If your answer is Thailand, you're lying (or insane), unless your name happens to be Kely McClung, because that was really his answer. Throwing independent filmmaking logic out the window, Kely pitched the idea for his film Blood Ties and its halfway-around-the-world bizzaro location to friend Robert Pralgo, and somehow, someway, got him to say yes.

Blood Ties, is an action film set not only in Thailand, but also a few more wallet conducive locations including; Washington, D.C., Miami, Virginia, and, oh yeah, Atlanta.

Filmed in a jittery, cinema verite, Blair Witch meets Bourne Ultimatum style, the concept of the film is, as listed on the filmmakers' website (http://www.bloodtiesmovie.com/), "Jim, (Robert Pralgo) would be kidnapped, and Jack, (Kely McClung) would save him; in essence, Rob would get his ass kicked everywhere he went, and everywhere Kely would go, he'd kick everybody's ass." How's that for an action film? Okay, there's a lot more to it than that, but at its core it's an action film, so you have to figure there's a significant bit of ass kickin'.

The obvious story here is about Thailand. What the hell are two Atlanta boys doing shooting in Thailand? I mean, I like Thai a whole lot, but these guys must have Pad Thai running out of their brains or something. Half the budget's blown before the plane even touches the ground. Now that's a story, and it's a great angle for the film, but after spending a little while talking to Kely and Robert I realized they weren't curry freaks, they knew what they were doing. They sold me on Thailand. It was the perfect choice for the film.

Knowing the film's action would be focused around Kely's martial arts skills (he's a black belt in 5 types of martial arts as well as a former world champion in full contact stick fighting), and having no sizable budget for guns, squibs and FX, shooting it on the streets of Atlanta wouldn't play real. According to Kely, "How do you justify filming in an Atlanta setting where someone will bring out a Mac-10 and just shoot you?" Couple that with the fact Thailand looks seriously cool as well as your actors and crew will work for a fraction of U.S. prices and suddenly you're talking Thai.

Now that I see shooting in Thailand makes sense from both a cost and quality standpoint, where's my story? Do you ever watch the DVD extras? You know, where the director or whoever tells you about all the behind the scenes you don't really care about unless you're some type of fanboy (see my article in last month's CinemATL for explanation if you don't know what a fanboy is). Well, it'll be worth listening to on Blood Ties. There's not a scene in the film where they didn't have some interesting story.

Story after story after story. A huge blowout over an $8.00 toy gun purchase, dealing with a Thai mobster for a location agreement, getting stopped by the secret service in Washington D.C., almost getting busted by the NSA in Miami, border guards harassing them in Cambodia, broken ribs, food poisoning, hiring Thai taxi drivers to play thugs, meeting your D.P. for the first time in Thailand, making fake rain, shooting in an abandoned and burned out 42 story building and a bunch of other stories of things that happened to them over the filming. They literally told me so many stories I started to wonder if the film was going to be half as interesting.
The bad guy awaits a beating.To find out, they showed me a small clip of the film where Kely's character kicks some serious ass and takes out 23 bad guys in 77 seconds (or 1 bad guy every 3.4 seconds). I was impressed. It didn't just look good, it looked great.

They told me one of their best and funniest compliments about the scene was someone who remarked, "This looks like it's a real movie". And they're right. Seeing that one fight scene, I knew they had something special. It looks like it could be in the Bourne Ultimatum yet they achieved it with 1/3000th of the budget.

And then came the stories. There were the professional fighters who brought their own stunt gear including a Styrofoam chair to be smashed over someone's head and fake rebar to be impaled on. There were the 4 plastic guns that had to be shared by all the bad guys to make it look like every one had a weapon. And in post, to make the guns and everything look real, they had to add 1327 layers in After Effects, each with multiple animated masks and 4-5 effects in each layer as well as 140 tracks of sound.

And that's just 77 seconds. That's when I realized they were going to have the impossible task of telling all this on the DVD commentary track. I suggested they pause the film during the commentary track just to get in all the stories. Probably stretch the movie to 3 hours.
But that's one of the great things about this film, all the extras. Not that you'll see the stories on screen, for that, you'll have to wait for the DVD extras. Some seriously great stories.


Nathan Flood is an editor for CinemATL