The last two years, I’ve taken part in the Rochester Movie Makers Summer Shorts Challenge. Two summers ago, I helped with a film called X-Girlfriend, and last year worked on The Wingman and Virgin Fang.

This year will be my first time directing a summer short, one called “The Interrogation” written by yours truly. In the writing phase, I decided to keep my characters and locations to a minimum to make it easier — especially since one of my characters is ANIMATED.

I’ve been wanting to try a live action / animation combo project for a while now. The process will be similar to how films like Who Framed Roger Rabbit or The Phantom Menace were shot. I’ll have an actor on set playing the cartoon character, and we’ll shoot his scenes two ways. One version with the actor, one without. That way I’ll have a performance to mimic in the animation phase, but I’ll also have a clean shot to use when I want to composite the character in. (No, I won’t be doing motion capture. That’s overkill for what I have in mind.)

It was a fun script to read to an audience, which is what went down at the March meeting of Rochester Movie Makers. We read 15 (!) screenplays that night. When everyone voted and the dust cleared, it turned out I was the winner of our script competition. It doesn’t mean the movie itself will be the best, but it’s nice to be loved.

Soon I’ll be finalizing the cast, crew, and picking some dates to shoot this thing. At the same time, I’m working on designing props and the cartoon character known as Mad Monster.

Read the latest version of the script here.