The Night Shift: First day of shooting

The Night Shift is the on-set diary of Fighting Owl Film's new independent supernatural-adventure-comedy of the same name currently in pre-production in Mobile, AL. Over the course of the next several weeks and months, you'll get an insider's peek at what it's like for filmmakers to craft a new entry of paranormal pop culture from Erin Lilley, a producer and actress on the film.

First Day of Shooting

The good news is we're pretty much on schedule, and have some downright fantastic looking footage. The bad news is: It hasn't come easily. Not by a long shot.

When I think of Saturday, and our first day of shooting, the word "disaster" comes to mind.  "Catastrophic" and "plagued" are right up there with it. Now, I could sugarcoat this or pull some PR spin tactics and tell you that it was a learning experience, or that we're referring to it as a dress rehearsal, but I respect you too much to do that. Besides, this is a blog about filmmaking, and rough days happen, so here you go.

For starters, the weather that's been absolutely gorgeous for weeks decided to turn on us with gray skies and tropical storm force winds. Then the camera decided to act up, which led to several hours of phone tag with the Director of Photography (DP), who was called out of town at the last minute with a family emergency.  The girls on the crew had a blast watching my cute, curly hairstyle fall and tangle into a mess that no hairbrush could handle, despite the use of three different anti-humidity hair products, one of which was so strong that it will literally take the color off of your hair if you use too much. The icing on the cake was when Herbie, our robotic skeleton, broke.

Not the robotics, but the actual skull, itself ...

New photos surface of Amazon pink dolphins

While they don't technically fit into the cryptid category - because there is proof of their existence and science can explain them - the Amazon pink dolphin, or boto as they're also known, are so rarely sighted that they may as well be creatures of mystery.

But not to photographer Kevin Schafer, who says he is the first to photograph them in 2008, and who will be showing off his work in June's National Geographic. In an interview with AOLNews, Schafer calls the photos a "project of a lifetime."

The male Amazon pink dolphin gets its bubblegum pink color because of scar tissue from fighting with other males, but interestingly the color has nothing to do with the shapeshifter legend of the dolphins. Within South American Amazon River folklore, the boto transforms into a handsome man at night to impregnate human women - or to sometimes lure men and women to underwater cities, wearing a hat to cover its blowhole while in human form - only to return to the river as a dolphin in the morning.

Schafer apparently didn't photograph any transforming dolphins, but to read more about how these creatures affect the Amazon culture, visit eco-adventurer writer Bill Belleville's site to read an excerpt about the boto from his book, Sunken Cities, Sacred Cenotes and Golden Sharks: Travels of a Water-Bound Adventurer.

Michael Imperioli joins ghost & mortgage horror 'Foreclosure'

The Hollywood Reporter revealed today actor Michael Imperioli (The Sopranos) would be leading the new mortgage crisis/haunted house horror Foreclosure.

Written and directed by Richard Ledes, the story has a tagline of "ghosts don't move out" and "sets its action in a nearly empty, economically depressed neighborhood block, amid the real-life context of the mortgage crisis where so many homes are bank-owned." It's set to begin filming in Queens, NY, next week.

For Imperioli, who also starred in The Lovely Bones and wrote/directed The Hungry Ghosts, this isn't his first work with a paranormal theme. It is unclear what his role will be in the movie, but we're crossing our fingers he is haunted by the ghost of his ex-girlfriend, FBI mole Adriana, who annoyingly calls him "Chris-tuh-fuh" for two hours.

ABC News: Russian governor alien abduction victim

God bless journalist Alexander Marquardt of ABC News. The guy is an accomplished reporter who has covered U.S. presidential elections and is now based in Moscow as a correspondent.  But for right now, he is most known for his alien politician story.

Marquardt reported yesterday about the strange story of Kirsan Ilyumzhinov - the wealthy chess champion and Russian governor of the Buddhist Republic Kalmykia shown here - who revealed on TV last week he was an alien abductee. Ilyumzhinov claims he was taken from his Moscow apartment to a space ship where aliens communicated with him telepathically. He added the aliens weren't ready to reveal themselves to humanity, but were willing to show him around the ship and to let him leave. Ilyumzhinov also claims he has three eyewitnesses to the event.

As if that's not juicy enough to make it into mainstream network new, ABC also reports Russian parliamentarian Andrei Lebedev wants Ilyumzhinov interrogated by President Dmitry Medvedev. Lebedev made a written request to the president and expressed concerns that Ilyumzhinov may dished to the aliens on secret information, and wonders how much the governor told the aliens about his job. Lebedev also wonders how Ilyumzhinov's visit has affected the governor’s ability to perform his duties.

So not only is it interesting, and a nice chunk of paranormal pop culture, that a politician is claiming to be an abductee and that other members of his government believe/suspect him and that the Russian head-of-state may get involved, but this has picked up traction in the mainstream media and become big news - and is unfortunately the largest story poor Alexander Marquardt will likely ever cover.

On the upside, maybe Marquardt will at least get a cool alien abduction lamp as a gift from Ilyumzhinov for his troubles. 

UFO lamp beams up cattle, beams down cool

Now this is one piece of DIY home art that oozes otherworldly style. Created by artists Jason Dietz, these Alien Abduction Lamps will be featured at the Bay Area Maker Faire May 22-23, reports Make magazine.

Standing at 5-feet 5-inches tall, the paranormal pop culture lamps are made out of recycled glass tubes, light diffusers and acrylic rings. They hold 10 gallons of water each, and use a series of different lights with an air pump that produces the tractor beam bubbles. Dietz says, "the theme is a cow being abducted out of a grassy pasture - look carefully to see the cow in the giant plasma tube."

Check out the lamps in action in the video after the jump.

'Sasquatch vs. Chupacabra': Clash of the crypto titans

I don't know how they got these two to sign on for a project together since they're both so busy with artsy flicks and nature documentaries - oh, and with evading discovery too, of course.  And yet it looks to be happening.

In 2010, from the director and producer team of Fred Olen Ray (Sea Snakes, The Lair), and Kimberly A. Ray (Woke Up Dead, Komodo vs. Cobra, Megaconda), "cryptozoology meets the crypt" in Sasquatch vs. Chupacabra.

I haven't been this excited since De Niro and Pacino shared screentime in Heat.