The Story Behind The Story

The story of GI JOE vs. ALIENS takes its roots way back to 1974 when I was a young GI Joe fan. I had fun in my backyard with all my friends playing with all of the great Adventure Team gear. My back yard was a perfect place for Joe. Grass grown on sand, it made for a variety of environments. We even had large trees in the front yard, and the whole place was ripe for Joe adventures. A brook flowed through it, and connected to my great-aunt's property which was nothing but sand dunes.

But while we set up many adventure scenes and played them through, we never once thought to take photographs. So when GAF introduced the GI JOE Adventure Team View Master Reel set, I had to have one. I got a set, and marvelled at the detailed settings and situations they set up using the very adventure equipment I was using! Why only one set was made is beyond me. The stories and pictures were awe-inspiring, and the images stuck with me throughout my life. I recently put the pictures and documentation up on my web site, for your perusal.

Somewhere around the age of 11, my grandparents thought I was too old for "dolls" and I was forced to give up a collection of GI Joe toys that would be the envy of many today, and probably worh thousands of dollars. I was forced to give them to a younger cousin. I tried visiting my collection months later only to find little more than pieces of feet sticking up out of the ground.

For Christmas, 1999, my wife bought me Derryl DePriest's masterwork, (and de-facto bible to many Joe fans) The Collectible GI JOE: An Official Guide To His Action-Packed World. Little did she know she was opening the flood gates! I now own around 40 GI Joes (and assorted other 1:6-scaled figures), and while my collecting frenzy has slowed down, it has not yet stopped.

Earlier in 2000 I stumbled upon Loose Ends, a photoplay by Tod Pleasant and John Ellingwood. I read through it, and it inspired me. This was what Joe collecting was all about! Not only owning toys, but playing with them, and sharing the adventures with others in a way that wasn't readily available when I was younger - photo plays. And with access to literally billions of people via the World Wide Web, what better way is there to publish the work?

Incidentally, these guys did the most amazing diorama for the 35th Anniversary of the GI JOE Adventure Team that I have ever seen! They do good work!

I lucked out in February and found a "Hicks vs. Aliens" set at a Kay Bee Toys for $9.99. The box was torn, but who cares? It was torn much more when I was through digging Hicks and the Alien out. And after reading Loose Ends it just seemed natural for me to combine my many interests in creating a story with GI JOE and Aliens. Also, WalMart was selling their exclusive articulated 12" Aliens for ridiculously low prices. I think I got them for around $8.00.

My friend, Sean Dickinson, was eager to help in any way he could, so he jumped on board right away.

I began storyboarding right away. I was originally going to place it in space, but I didn't want to have to build a bunch of space ships to explain how the GI JOE Adventure Team got from planet to planet. I had originally intended to reproduce the Kane face-hugger discovery scene, complete with face-hugger, warped helmet, and chest-bursting. I may yet do that as a prologue or epilogue to this story. So I instead set it in a genetics lab right here on earth.

I knew I wanted it to be a humorous story. I think I was originally aiming for a serious story interspersed with some humor, but the whole idea of the Iron Giant against the aliens was so absurd that it lent itself to an all-out parody, rather than a serious tale. So the storyboard developed, and grew, and as Sean D. and I talked about it and brainstormed, we kept adding little pieces, and snippets of dialogue from the "Aliens" movie, and other Science Fiction references. Lord knows I had enough 1:6 scale figures and other toys to include many Science Fiction references.

So I started out making sets. I used foam-core, and I really wish I had taken pictures of the sets in progress, because they were easier done than most people think, and pictures of the sets in progress would encourage others to make their own stories. It's easier than most people think.

I always wanted to use the XX and XY bathroom joke, and I have done so as a cartoon in the past. But with that in mind, I created a corporate section of GENETRIX complete with employee washrooms. I even put in a corporate hallway light, which had a functioning bulb. It really did light up. For all its effectiveness, however, I could simply have put in a lens-flare in Photoshop later. It kinda looks like I did.

Then on the other corporate wall, I wanted the establishing shot to have the GENETRIX logo, so I designed a second flat set with two lights. I printed out several of my favorite impressionist paintings, to hang on the walls along the hallway.

The third and final flat set was the loading dock door. I wanted an honest-to-goodness science fiction airlock, so I built one. I'm not all that happy with the paint job but it got its point across. Also, this one had a light in it as well, kitbashed from a Burger King Frankenstein operating table. Again, an effect that could have been done in Photoshop with less effort. Live and learn.

Sunday, July 22nd was the original date of the shoot, and I was going to use an SLR camera and shoot on film and scan the images later. My co-worker Charley Bandes was willing to help out with equipment, lights, and even himself, if possible. But Sean Dickinson couldn't make it on the 22nd, so we rescheduled. The same day one of our interns, Sean Koriakin, brought in his spanking-new digital video camera. It was amazing! I asked if I could use it, and he readily agreed. He even offered to do lighting. I couldnt' believe the support I was getting for this project! I no longer needed Charley's equipment, and we both agreed it would have cost a lot of money to do it on film anyway.

But Sean K. had to cancel his lighting involvement because of other commitments, so it was just Sean D. and me again. (So many Seans!)

So on Sunday, July 29th I set out to the office, Joes dressed in full costume, gear and vehicles ready, a grab-bag of craft supplies, a tool-box, man, you'd swear it was a real photo shoot. My seven years experience in video production taught me to be ready for anything, and to have "stuff" ready if it was needed.

I began setting up the first shot right away, and just as I was ready to shoot, Sean D. showed up, and we began. My daughter was on set for the first half of the day. Poor kid. She was bored to tears most of the time. Not much fun for her, seeing all these toys, but not really being allowed to play with them (cause they were mostly all on-set.)

The sun was unbearably hot. We were sweating buckets by the time we finished, and we were very glad to get inside into the air-conditioned office for the rest of the shoot.

We didn't skip a beat. We got the set flats ready for the interiors, and I began shooting. Sean D. managed the lighting. Packing cardboard forms were used, taped to my flats, as the walls of the industrial section of GENETRIX.

I now know why people who work with miniature sets for film place their stuff on tables! Being on the floor the whole time is back-breaking! I had to take many Excedrin to keep from collapsing from back pain.

In the middle of the shoot we realized we hadn't storyboarded a good, traditional battle scene, so we whipped one out on paper quickly, made sure it fit the rest of the storyboard, and shot it. Then we realized we didn't like the cut from Hicks in the corporate section of GENTRIX to the industrial section, so we storyboarded Hicks at the loading dock door. We improvised like this throughout the shoot, but I'm amazed we actually stuck very closely to the original storyboard.

14 hours after we began, we wrapped the shoot. We had plans for some shots of the cast and crew behind the camera, but only got to do a couple of those. We were going to set up elaborate "bloopers" but didn't feel so inclined to do so after 14 hours of back-breaking agony.

Getting the images from the camera proved to be a chore. Sean K. tried to get the images from the FireWire system, but didn't have a computer that could do it. So he pulled the images out through the RCA Video Out jack, which explains some of the video artefacts you see in the shots. When I got the CD with the images, I thought the image quality was not quite what I wanted, but was workable. Funny, though, the exteriors were the worst. The shots in mid to low lighting conditions were better than expected, and the exteriors were blown away. Hopefully with the FireWire system, we'll get image data rather than video signal, and I'll rework the story with better images. That remains to be seen.

So I had to reshoot the exteriors. The next Saturday, I went back to the office, dug up all the Joes and gear again, and reshot the exteriors using my company's digital camera. The reason I didn't use that camera in the first place is that it's very fuzzy, and you can't get a close-up. But luckily for the exteriors, it actually did a good job. I just wish I had thought to use it to take safety shots during the original shoot. Live and learn.

Then began the task of shot selection, and level-adjustment, cropping and special effects. Of the 76 final images, I had to add special effects (lens flares, lasers, blurs, etc) to over half of them, and text to almost all of them. Then I had to come up with a title image.

Arduous task, but I got it done. Then I converted the images to JPEGs and formatted the web pages.

And now it's done. And while I still have a thing or two to improve, I'm damned proud of the work we put into it, and I think that despite the incredible amount of time and effort, it was well worth it.

Work has begun on my next photo play, which will likely be based on "The Prisoner" TV show.

Thanks, and I hope you enjoyed GI JOE vs. ALIENS.