The Great Story Of A Female Messiah

In the Gospel of Mark, the oldest of the four versions of the life and passion of Christ, as far as I know, we encounter Jesus as a full-grown man. The two miracles that push the story —the Virgin Birth and the Resurrection— are not there at all. The story begins with Jesus’ adult baptism, and it ends with a cry of desolation as he is crucified. It’s left to the Roman centurion to recognize him as the Son of God after he is dead.

In Seditiosa we meet Yahel as a grown woman, with no particular connection to the divine. We don’t have a nativity scene, mandatory on every household of the Catholic persuasion in December. If we did, it would have to be like this:

Seditiosa begins with the three protagonists arriving to the Hill of the Skulls, the place where thieves, rebels, murderers and others meet their ghastly end. It is called that because there are skulls on the ground, most of the time.

When Yahel and her companions arrive to the area, not their destination, they are just passing through, they stop to look at the place, the skulls, the dogs eating from the scattered bones.

Yahel has a vision, that of Janai, her ancestor, standing by one of the tree trunks, obviously a cross. She doesn’t say anything but she seems to be telling Yahel who she is and who she will be. A sort of baptism.

Thus the story begins, the three women are on their way to the open market near the big city, they need to get supplies. The market is known for the great variety of products that merchants bring at certain times of the year, and for a short time, a day or two, and from all over the known and not yet known world. The products Yahel needs are those herbs and plants that arrive from many of those parts unknown, many of them with natural properties that are close to miracles.

At the market, Yahel faces the ugly world of deceit, slavery, hypocrisy and she goes nuts. Judith and Magdalena will try to protect her by intervening, getting in front of the incoming roman soldiers who are there to preserve the peace, an act resulting in the death of one of the soldiers. The three women get arrested and taken to the place of execution where they will be scourged, sentenced to die on the cross and all the rest.

As you will notice by my description, the beginning of the story is described in some detail, even tough in script terms it is only the 1st act. A script has 3 acts.

And here is where the story meets its main obstacle. The budget.

Ben Hur, a film made in the 50’s, had a budget of 15 million dollars. Spartacus came in cheaper, a miserable 12 million dollars, the 1927 King Of Kings cost 1.5 million dollars, while The Last Temptation of Christ cost 30 million dollars and The Passion of The Christ came in at 25 million… The cheapest of them all Jesus Christ Superstar was made with 3 million… yes, only 3 million. What do they have in common? Expensives sets, star actors, elaborate costumes, huge number of extras… and so on. Except for the 3 million musical that relied mostly on natural sets, hippie clothing that the actors probably had in their closets, a few rented prop machine guns, instead of swords, a couple of tanks and a couple of jets flying over which probably was stock footage anyway.

Where am I going with this?

Well, many of those films were in development and pre production for a very, very, very long time, in some cases many years. Their budgets were in the millions and they had a lot of people involved in making them and still, they had to cut corners, they had delays, they had all the normal problems a big film production has. In some cases, there were lawsuits, during and after the production, and in all cases they had to invent their own reality, close to the historical times, but their own, nevertheless.

Yes.

Well… with the immense budget we have of less than 20,000 dollars Jac has to decide how to make the location, the cast, the crew, the art, the costumes and everything else work. One way is to bring down the shooting time to an eXtreme Minimum… from a few weeks to a few days and have everything fit into place in a good way.

The Great Story of Yahel is now set to be produced in 7 days… yes, 7 days. And the story covers two days in the lives of the Crucified Three.

The first three days of production will be dedicate to the 1st act. That’s when Yahel and her companions arrive to the Hill of Skulls, stop the stoning to death of a woman, heal a possessed man, have dinner and finally arrive to the market to have their confrontation with many people there, including Roman soldiers.

By following the story in a linear way, a lot of time will be saved. The production crew will be using three or four cameras, to have different angles for each take. Saving lot of time time too.

The other three days, four if necessary, will be dedicated to the 2nd and 3rd acts. The second act starts at the moment the three women get arrested and it goes all the way to the moment when the three are sentenced to die on the cross.

The number of people involved in the cast will be big enough but it cannot be bigly like Ben Hur, or King of Kings, or Last Temptation, not even like Jesus Christ Superstar, but enough so we can have a little crowd during the sentencing and the crucifixion.

The location itself must carry the day, not by us turning it into an ancient city with ancient buildings, like they do in Hollywood, but by staying the way it is with some little decor added for realistic effect.

In other words, we have to work miracles to bring the story of Yahel to the big screens. They are all big now, whether at the theaters or at home. Unless, of course, you watch movies on your cell phone and miss all the details.

The third act begins when the women carry their crossbeams and ends when they agonize on the cross and that’s where most of the cash will go. I will go into more details of the production as it begins to happen.

On my next post I’ll be discussing the Scourging of Yahel and the other two. The pictures I’m sharing here are from a recent MakeUp FX (effects) test that was done a couple of days ago.

It was the opportunity for our new MakeUp woman to show her talents and skills, and she demonstrated that she had what it takes to be part of the team. All Jac said to her was “I need you to create make up effects of a heavy lashing, where the whip breaks the skin“. That’s what she did, but that’s another story.

As we set on the road to produce Seditiosa, you can help us add some needed cash to our treasure box by watching our films, all of them, beginning now!

You can also join Patreon and get the updates on our projects, with great pictures and videos, here:
https://www.patreon.com/rfpix?fan_landing=true

During the production of Seditiosa we will have exclusive posts, with pictures and videos at our Patreon page. There’s a video of the MakeUp FX Test which is fascinating to watch. It shows, step by step and almost in real time, how the effects were made.

We will also post videos of all the testing we’ll go through, one particular video will be when we build the crosses and we’ll have The Crucified Three becoming acquainted with the positions they will have during their crucifixion.

You can also help by watching our amazing movies over and over again, you just have to get them