One of the many great things about Robert Rodriguez' Planet Terror, besides the zombies and Rose McGowan's machine gun leg, were the homicidal twin babysitters who would not let a zombie apocalypse stop them from getting paid. The director has now rehired Electra and Elise Avellán (his own nieces) to play Lola and Lucia, "who run an ice cream truck and just happen to be monster slayers in their spare time," as he explains in a video uploaded to his page on BlackBerry's ambitious promo campaign pairing established artists with unknown talent.
Rodriguez wants aspiring filmmakers to bring their creative A-game to his latest camp/exploitation tribute, the ironically cutesy-titled "Two Scoops." The man burst into Hollywood from humble beginnings with 1992's El Mariachi, a film he made with only a few thousand bucks and some gung-ho non-actors. He knows camp, from artistic (Sin City) to base (Machete and the soon-to-be-released Machete Kills). Far from being precious about aesthetic, it is also the film genre that launched the careers of directors like Ron Howard, James Cameron and Jonathan Demme, who all worked with the king of low budget filmmaking, Roger Korman, before they entered the Hollywood game.
See also:
- Robert Rodriguez Punches New Times Reporter, Talks About His El Rey Network
- "Mestizo City" Creator Henry Muñoz Talks Art, Politics and Robert Rodriguez
Now, Rodriguez is offering a sweet opportunity to anyone with a variety of filmmaking skills to help him make a short film starring the twins from Planet Terror. Here's the trailer with the blank spots in green screen:
You must fill in those blanks. There are four ways Rodriguez wants aspiring filmmakers to get involved:
- Acting in a speaking role
- Digitally designing monster death-dealing device
- Creating a beasty worthy of the reaction shot delivered by one of the twins in the trailer.
- ... or you could just send in your pic to be featured in one of many missing persons flyers as part of the film's set dressing (lame).
The contest for the acting role is on now. There are already over 100 auditions uploaded, and some of them are indeed pretty brilliant. This guy spliced in the footage he is auditioning to be in, used a virtual set, vocoded his voice and chose a quivering foot as a stand-in for the monster:
But, come on, get your aspect ratio right! If you can do better, instructions can be found at the "BlackBerry Keep Moving" site (look for the tabs for more information). Give it a shot, be creative and consider production value -- there's affordable technology out there nowadays; it's not 1992 anymore, and you don't need to use a fancy BlackBerry Z10 to be eligible. The deadline to enter this portion of the creative process is April 3. The details for the other projects will appear after this part of the competition has found its co-star.
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