In the spring of 2003, Mike and Joe began work on their most ambitious amateur film project. The general idea stayed constant from the beginning: the story would follow a military squad in a dystopia set in the not-so-distant future, where countries would war over scarce resources. Everyone would pilot a giant robot.
Mike Hancock and Joe Fairweather are Weathercock Productions, amateur film producer/director/writers and, unfortunately, also actors.
The challenges with this newest project became clear as the script developed. There would be dozens of characters, with many scenes dependent on special effects. And Honor Rode Shotgun is even more demanding than the sprawling Deadening II: Dead to Rights.
Months were spent revising the script, shooting test footage and building props, including weapons and robot suits. Mike and his composer friend John McFarland wrote and recorded a musical score. Principle photography took place over the summer of 2004. By August, most of the dialog was in the can, but much of the challenging action footage was still an open question mark.
After August, the project slowed to a crawl, for a number of reasons. One was the insidious climb of production standards: after putting in some time with a blue screen and compositing software, Joe found out that previously crappy special effects didn't have to look "so-bad-it's-good", and could instead look "good". This was an entirely new and intimidating prospect, and brought a new level of pressure to the editing process.
Of course, distance was the biggest challenge to overcome. Joe moved from Michigan to Seattle for grad school. Mike joined the Peace Corps and headed off to Central Asia. As much as Weathercock Productions is about pouring time and energy into creative projects, the motivation for actually finishing a film comes entirely from collaboration. A film needs feedback, it needs compromise and sacrifice.
Weathercock Productions has, however, since recovered their goal - to release And Honor Rode Shotgun as a set of short internet-appropriate chapters, with the first completed around the end of the summer. That's summer of 2010, for the record.
