ImpossibleFX - photography | filmmaking

Purple & Pink

During the summer of 2005 I was commissioned by Chi-Rho Ministries and Crossroads Baptist Church to produce three machinima short films, plus one promo, in the vein of Red vs. Blue to introduce segments of an advanced Bible study weekend retreat for teenagers called Disciple Now: iGod Weekend.

The Original Promo
I wrote and directed this promotional video with Jorge Martinez. We also voiced the two most prominent characters. In the series, Jorge’s Gunnery Sergeant Gunney appeared in Episode One, while Private Parts never made another appearance.

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Series One

Episode 1: Faith and Purpose
When Blue soldier Cpl. Blake is gunned down in the heat of battle, G.Sgt. Gunney has to find his faith in a medical officer who is actually the company cook.

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Episode 2: Sexuality
After a deadly mission, Lt. Mills finds himself the recipient of a Red soldier’s feminine elation. Too bad he’s a Blue.

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Episode 3: Family and Career
Fellow Red soldiers Bob and Steve overcome their differences in a wintery hell and are soon joined by specialist Sanchez, who only speaks Spanish.

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Behind The Scenes

The trouble with writing the episodes came from the fact that I couldn’t make it as violent or as aggressive as I would have wanted them to be. Episode two’s violence was cut to minimize the blood and an entire opening battle sequence was dropped from the first episode. The third episode merely suffers from not having a real ending.

As I was writing the episodes I was attempting to imagine them taking place inside a much larger universe. As you can see from watching this mini-series each episode teases larger events in the P&P universe. Written with the intent of making a full series later on, the first episode sets up Blue characters on one besieged planet, the second episode eludes to a Romero and Juliet re-telling and the third episode hints at a long, arduous journey.

The Future

I’ve been considering going back to revisiting the Halo universe to create a dramatic series of anti-war short films with Halo 3, but I’ve been so consumed with Real World obligations that I haven’t put much thought into it. It’s just something I’ve been fooling around with in my head, but I’m not quite sure what all the future holds. Is Purple & Pink dead, though? Probably.

Technical

The shorts were created over a period of three days using Halo 2 two X-Boxes, 5 controllers, a Canon Optura 20 mini-DV camcorder to record the footage, and an Apple PowerPC G4 Macintosh with Final Cut Express to put it all together. Voices were recorded and edited on a PC laptop computer with Adobe Audition and a $9 microphone. The theme song was created in Soundtrack using Apple loops.