Candy Eye Factory Blog

We know it’s been shockingly quiet on the Model Movie blog the last few months, but actually editing the project was all the chaos that Candy Eye could handle!

To keep you up to date on our plentiful progress, here’s a timeline of how post production went down - so far.

JANUARY
The Mission: Chisel the movie into a super-crude rough cut set to William’s 13 minute scratch narration track.

Lessons Learned: The movie, and thus the narration, needed to be 2 minutes shorter, and the minimalistic visuals would eventually need a lot of Digits-like juicing and sprucing up.

FEBRUARY
The Mission: Whittle down the narration script into a sassy, sharp spike. Casually beg The Legend of Santa Susanna’s acclaimed voice-over talent, Rob Dogg D, to lend his gifts to our new project, minus the southern twang this time.

Lessons Learned: How much we love our expensive white narration microphone. And how endlessly amusing it is to pronounce the phrase “Another Schiller Lesson” with a lazily German accent.

MARCH
The Mission: Re-edit the film to Rob’s spot-on narration. Watch 3-2-1 Contact and Charlie’s Angels credits sequences on YouTube in order to lend our Models Movie the appropriate 1979-ish graphic and textual flare.

Lessons Learned: Bauhaus and Braggadocio are brilliant fonts, and radial-edged boxes are the new black.

APRIL
The Mission: Score the film with lame elevator-music type songs.

Lessons Learned: Broadening our 70s sounds with funky traces of Fat Albert, ABBA, CHiPS, Mr. Rogers, and AIR helps keep our movie’s soundtrack feeling retro, right and rounded!

MAY
The Mission: Polish the visuals one last time, re-record Lizzie as Lydia’s Rapport Tip dialogue.

Lessons Learned: Sometimes a great microphone is more trouble than a bad one.

Current Project Status: The movie’s still not totally done yet - but give us 5 or 6 days, and then the story might be different.

Polls for The Name Game 08 are closed. The record-breaking amount of votes have been carefully tallied by the trusted officials at the accounting firm of Wilson, Phillips & Associates out of New York City.

And here, people, are your official results…

The Feisty Model: The name Penny was a popular choice but in the end Jessi was the name the public thought sounded the spiciest for Allison True’s saucy character.

The Secretive Model: Votes were spread generously amongst many of the five contenders with Chelsea and Sandra eventually tying for first place. The Candy Eye crew broke the tie themselves, thinking the name Chelsea would sound too much like the name Jessi, (which Allison had already been dubbed as). Plus our high school choir teacher was named Sandra - so Sandra it shall be for JoEllen’s mysterious model!

The Dull Model: William was secretly hoping the name Colleen would win, but Pam was far and away the most popular pick for Tina Testa’s goony girl model. Have it your way, America.

The Foxy Model: Lydia was the clear front runner and eventual winner, but as Lizzie’s lovely character had already tentatively been dubbed Brenda during filming of the project, it was up to Lizzie herself whether to officially switch to Lydia or stick with Brenda. Trembling at the monumental choice before her, Lizzie just couldn’t deny the fervor of her voting public. So Brenda is now history and Lydia is Lizzie’s future, for which she graciously thanks you.

Fellow Americans, click below to meet The 4 Schiller Girls, as named by you!

Read the rest of this entry »

We’re all about collaboration and gettin’ goofy at The Factory, so with both those factors in mind, we officially invite you to work with us on our 12th movie by naming its 4 Leading Ladies.

The winning names you help to elect for the girls will be used in our final film, so rock the vote hardcore, friends.

Though Lizzie Martinson’s curvaceous character had previously been dubbed Brenda during the shooting of our film, this isn’t set in stone. Perhaps one of the names in the poll below would be a better fit. Cast your vote, and America’s top pick will later go head to head with the name Brenda - with Lizzie herself making the final call this time!

Lizzie’s model character is the most beautiful of the bunch, a blessing/curse she wears with an icy aloofness - - A princess like this would probably be named:

Lydia
Valerie
Erin
Callie
Denise

VOTING NOW CLOSED! RESULTS COMING SOON…

Next up on the ballot - Tina Testa’s character:

Tina T plays the drab and gabby model of the bunch, noted for her unattractive features - she’d probably be named:

Colleen
Anita
Michelle
Sonja
Pam

VOTING NOW CLOSED! RESULTS COMING SOON…

The 2nd girl on the ballot is Allison True’s character.

Comedienne Allison True plays the wan, religious model who deep down is a real spitfire, so does she sound like she’d be named:

Jessi
Casey
Penny
Mindy
Kimberly

VOTING NOW CLOSED! RESULTS COMING SOON…

We officially invite our fans ‘n friends to work with us on our 12th movie (all about models in the 1970s) by naming its 4 Leading Ladies. The winning names you help to elect for the girls will be used in our final film, so rock the vote hardcore, friends.

First up on the ballot is Miss Martinson’s character.

JoEllen plays the sunniest, most naturally-talented of all the models, but is filled with shadowy secrets. Consider quite carefully, does this character sound most like someone named-

Chelsea
Sandra
Gina
Jaclyn
or Gloria

VOTING NOW CLOSED! RESULTS COMING SOON…

The third and final day of filming “The Schiller Guide” consisted solely of re-shoots including Scene 06c - Static Posing Intro with an improved, softer lighting scheme; Scene 10c - Hands Lesson, but with JoEllen wearing bangle bracelets this time (thank God!); and Scene 07e - Wet Hair Lizzie, minus the wet hair.

For this, the 12th movie from The Factory, the rear nook of the Candy Eye soundstage had been converted into our accessories arsenal. A peek at its main table reveals but some of our glamorous goodies. And although we are curators of the midwest’s largest collection of 70’s era “Jewess sunglasses”, sadly, only but one or two made their appearance on screen for this production.

One of our favorite sections from the first day of shooting involved the models whipping their hairy heads luxuriously towards the camera all Pantene ProV-like. So on our final day, we stocked up on promotional photos demonstrating this technique and are including a blurry, blooper-y reject for now. The perfect, polished glory of what industry insiders refer to as “The Paski Spin” will be revealed at a later date, many times over.

Okay, so…having made an outrageous fortune off our blockbuster Mallorys movie, The Factory founders were tempted to flitter away their stash of Candy Eye cash on Prada pajamas or perhaps a Porsche - but decided instead to re-invest their money in the future of The Factory and purchase something we had long dreamed of owning: The 2nd most expensive steamer that Target offers - the 65 dollar one!

Armed at last with this mid-priced marvel, never will the King and Queen of Candy Eye have to worry about wrinkled trench coats or crumpled pencil skirts in their films ever again. Here, Tina and JoEllen demonstrate the glory of the Official Factory Steamer, as they magically mist the kinks out of Allison’s costume for scene 08c - Show Pony Posing.

With 11 scenes re-shot in under 4 hours, we concluded principal photography for “The Schiller Guide” movie at 9:30 on a Monday night. In Hollywood they say, “That’s a Wrap!” In Factory City however, William instead shouts, “Who are you and how long will you last?” And then the cast shrieks back the Name of the movie at him, followed by the word Girls, and then the word Forever.

Sounds tricky, but look how slick ‘n simple it actually is in execution.

William: Hey ladies! Who are you and how long will you last?

Jo, Tina, Lizzie, & Allison: We’re The Schiller Guide girls…Forever!

And then we all dance around like twits for two minutes. On film, of course - cause otherwise, what would be the point?

We hit our stride on the second day of shooting the Models Movie and knocked off another 27 silly little scenes. When JoEllen wasn’t on screen playing the most secret-filled of the 4 Schiller Girls, she was fluttering about behind the scenes making certain the rest of the cast was Factory-fabulous, head to toe. Witness her hard work below.

SCENE: 14b, Re-Cap Hugs Montage
WARDROBE: Liz = Helena Merchant sparkle sweater, dark denim skirt, Karen Mulder hair-do.
Jo = Birdy blouse, tan corduroy vest, brown waitress skirt, Facts of Life barrettes.

SCENE: 09d, Trend Trackers
WARDROBE: Tina = Rainbow stripe suspenders, black leotard, sailor-legged jeans, white gloves.

SCENE: 10a, Allison Storms Off
WARDROBE: Allison + Liz = Peachy bath towels, coral shower caps.

Two days down, only one more to go!

Our first day of shooting “The Schiller Guide” was a dizzy little whirl. We had aimed to conquer 29 scenes, completed 28 of them amazingly, somehow - but then realized soon enough we’d probably face some re-shooting down the road.

But C’est la vie for Le Factory.

Having skipped wardrobe and hair tests for this project, mostly we were relieved to have successfully created the JC Penny catalog circa-1979 look we had been working toward for all 4 of our leading ladies. When a girl makes us giggle in her get-up, then we know we’re on the right track and our first day of filming was “fulla giggles”.

For Tina the key was tinted eye-glasses (wait ’til you see)! For JoEllen, it commonly was a pair of Mindy Cohn-ish barrettes. Allison’s brand new bangs were hot ‘n hip for 2007 and yet oh-so perfect for ‘79 as well. And Lizzie’s lush locks were straightened Brady-Girl style, and her collection of high-waisted mom slacks were instant MVPs.

So now, get this: In our nearly two decades of mini-moviemaking the Factory Friends had never employed the use of cue cards for any of their productions until now!

The crew banded solidly together to guide Lady Lizzie valiantly through her on-screen reading of her lines that we needed stilted seeming - yet cutely charming.

Leave it to Lizzie, of course. Her stilted was some of the most charming we’ve seriously ever had.

So this 12th video of ours was intended as a simple mini-movie (aren’t they all?), but we knew it had blossomed into something a bit more substantial when we realized the film was going to require 69 different outfits! That’s gotta be some sort of Factory record.

We dove deep into our Candy Eye Costume Closet to complete the mission and will be presenting on-screen, at last, some fabulous pieces that have been sitting around in our fashion stashes before the Factory was ever even officially founded. Get ready for your close-up, purple wool bell-bottoms!

Aside from costumes, one of our main pre-production missions was to decide how to shoot the project in order to give it an Instructional Video-looking rawness, without losing the polished sheen we coat our creations with usually. The magical solution seems to be shooting at a 1/30 shutter speed, in case you care.

Aside from that we’re discovering pumpkin-orange bedsheets as backdrops and swarms of silly 70s eyeglasses will be “crucial-crucial pieces”, as the trashy Mallory would say, in turning this ‘lil video into a big ol’ winner.