INSPIRATION FOR THE MOVIE:
THE AGE OF TESLA IS HERE
The whole Tesla thing actually began in the summer of 2002 when Rich and I were searching the web to learn more about the special vacuum tubes in Rich's Laney amplifier. Somehow we got into this connection about how a vacuum tube works like the universe and then before we knew it, we were reading all about this amazing genius... whah-la... here came Tesla!

Turns out Tesla was like the "Man Who Fell to Earth" (great sci-fi movie from the 70s starring David Bowie)... a brilliant inventor, who gains immense celebrity, is betrayed by the greed and fear of his benefactors... Tesla was as great a human being as they come and just so happened to singlehandedly invent the modern world we live in today: AC electricity, the induction motor, tesla coil, radio, tv, x-rays, vacuum tubes, the loudspeaker (for both the telephone and amplifiers), ignition systems, the speedometer, neon, fluorescent lights, radar, robots, particle beams, microwaves, etc...over 700 patents worldwide and many more that were never patented.

What was especially amazing was that Tesla's most secret inventions were kept private. Many of his inventions had been stolen and he often worked in complete seclusion and secrecy. In the context of "NOVUS ORDO SECLORUM," there were very significant achievements that were greater than anything Tesla ever released publicly: Wireless Electrical Energy harnessed from Nature itself and his Electric Flying Machine. 60 years after Tesla's death, we believe that the flying saucer is humanity's greatest invention and continues to be hidden from the public for reasons of National Security.

On a very personal note, I saw my first flying saucer, along with 20,000 other people, while living in Buenos Aires, Argentina in 1969... the same year we landed on the moon.

What is incredible about Tesla is that he was not only the world's greatest inventor, but was also a very spiritual man, a great poet and a visionary whose work is finally seeing the light of day after 100 years of obscurity... he certainly made the impossible, possible.

I am completely in awe and tremendously inspired by the genius of Nikola Tesla and hope our humble movie spreads the message that it is indeed time for a NEW ORDER OF THE AGES - NOVUS ORDO SECLORUM... THE AGE OF TESLA is here!

--John Pritchard

RECORDING THE MUSIC
As an improvisational band, we are nuts about recording everytime we play, because everytime we play is completely unique and full of surprises at every turn.

Charlie is our hero and the one responsible for bringing his awesome Roland VS, multitrack, digital studio to rehearsal every Tuesday night. He then mixes down the results as a rough cut CD which he brings the following week. Needless to say, we have many, many hours of cool music backed up on CD and the sound quality is pristine.
Oh yeah...we also use ART Technology Pre-Amps with 12AX7 tubes to warm up and "humanize" the digital signal going into the Roland VS.

Adam has taken our favorite tracks and embellished them with his tasty musical treats that takes the improv into a whole new dimension... best of all, he really gets the "VyZ."


EDITING THE MOVIE

The final audio was mastered using Logic Audio to fatten up the sub-bass and EQ the tracks with compression for movie-theatre viewing. Editing the movie in Final Cut Pro was a dream come true and the entire movie/dvd was put together in less than three months on a G4 Powerbook with an external 120 gig harddrive. We especially loved using "Livetype" for titles and "Soundtrack" for sound design.



You can check out our production notes and scribbles below.

Special note to Filmmakers: Apple's new "Compressor" software for mastering the video and audio tracks for DVD, surpasses all previous expectations for DVD burning and rivals anything we see from Hollywood DVDs at Blockbuster... we love Apple Computer!!! ...see for yourself and order our NOVUS ORDO SECLORUM DVD...play it big and play it loud!

THE FORGOTTEN MASTERS OF ANIMATION Ray Harryhausen - MASTER OF STOP-MOTION ANIMATION Ray's first film series was "Mother Goose" in 1946 which contained animations of "Little Miss Muffet," "Old Mother Hubbard," "Humpty Dumpty," and "Queen of Hearts." All four nursery rhymes have been integrated into "NOVUS ORDO SECLORUM" to reinforce the "fairytale" aspect of Tesla's life, as well as, to serve as punctuation points to help the audience "Connect the DotZ." See a list of all Ray's movies here at Amazon.com Check out his new book: Ray Harryhausen: An Animated Life by Ray Harryhausen ,Tony Dalton. Who among film fans and movie buffs cannot remember with fondness the marvelously realistic dinosaurs, fantastic aliens, and imaginative mythological creatures in 20 Millions Miles to Earth, Jason and the Argonauts, One Million Years B.C., and Clash of the Titans? Who cannot recall the battling skeletons in The 7th Voyage of Sinbad or the chaos and destruction wrought from the skies over our nation's capitol in Earth vs. The Flying Saucers? These and other classic movie moments represent the work of Ray Harryhausen, arguably the greatest stop-motion animator in the history of motion pictures. Inspired by Willis O'Brien's King Kong and schooled by animation genius George Pal (The War of the Worlds, Time Machine, The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm), Harryhausen blazed new trails in special effects from the 1950s to the 1980s. Now, in the animator's own words, accompanied by hundreds of previously unpublished photos, sketches, and storyboards from his personal archive, comes Ray Harryhausen: An Animated Life. Anecdotal, insightful, illuminating, and honest, the book takes readers through Harryhausen's entire career - film by film, triumph by triumph - from the impact that watching The Lost World and King Kong had on his life to creating the magnificent creatures seen in Clash of the Titans, his last movie. In words and images, it explains the basics of special effects and stop-motion animation, along the way telling tales of working with the film stars of the day - such as Laurence Olivier, Maggie Smith, and Lionel Jeffries, to name a few - and revealing how Raquel Welch was picked up by a flying dinosaur in One Million Years B.C., why the octopus in Mysterious Island was really only a sixtopus, and what Madusa's blood was made from in Clash of the Titans. * No motion picture animator has greater recognition than Ray Harryhausen * The book explores in detail how the animation models were made * It also offers a film-by-film breakdown of the animation techniques used * And it includes never before seen concept sketches and movie production drawings from films such as The 7th Voyage of Sinbad, Jason and the Argonauts, Clash of the Titans, and many more * And provides frame-by-frame deconstructions of how ground-breaking effects were achieved * Finally, it contains previously unpublished behind-the-scenes photos revealing Harryhausen's expert artistry, unique talent, and production secrets * Foreword was written by Ray Bradbury, legendary author of fantasy and science fiction. Max Fleischer - MASTER OF ROTOSCOPE ANIMATION Max is the animation pioneer who created Betty Boop and Popeye. An amazing fact is that Fleischer actually used Tesla as the inspiration for the "Mad Scientist" in the Superman series and the Tesla character appeared in several different episodes. For NOVUS ORDO SECLORUM, a short segment is taken from the "Magnetic Telescope" cartoon where Superman actually starts-up a Tesla generator and serves as a "live wire" electrical connection to power the telescope and save the day. Checkout buyoutfootage.com to purchase films and cartoons in the public domain. See a list of available Fleischer animation at Amazon.com Check out the entire Superman series with 17 episodes on DVD: Complete Superman Cartoons (1941) by Max Fleischer. These cartoons--animated features--are astounding. They were produced during WWII(1941-1943)and some of the themes involve SUPERMAN assisting Allies in battle with the AXIS powers. Max and Dave Fleischer are the driving force who creatively superintended work of more than 600 artists and technical specialists on cartoons costing a much as $100,000 per feature! To this astonishing budget was brought the radical technique of what is now termed ROTOSCOPE. Ralph Bakshi perfected this combination of LIVE ACTION and ANIMATION using it to film such underrated masterpieces as THE LORD of THE RINGS;WIZARDS & AMERICAN POP. But the Fleischer Brothers were innovators of this startling mode of film making that predates CGI fx by almost 40 years and...with exception of Disney's epochal FANTASIA(1940)...employs sophistication in "background" lay-out not seen for more than another decade in seminal matte work of sci-fi classics, THIS ISLAND EARTH(1955) and(Disney assisted)FORBIDDEN PLANET(1956). These cartoons are technically amazing. John Sutherland - MASTER OF INDUSTRIAL ANIMATION John Sutherland had worked with Disney on Sleeping Beauty and several other Disney productions before starting his own production studio in 1945. Unlike Disney, Sutherland produced commercial "public information" cartoons that were literally some of the first industrial advertisements in history: films to persuade, films to impress, propaganda films for big business. "A is for Atom" was produced for General Electric (GE) and plays a feature role in "NOVUS ORDO SECLORUM" since the footage is used ironically to point out the negative side of GE in relation to Tesla. Download the "A is for Atom" movie at the Prelinger Archive site. The following text was written by Rick Prelinger and copied from the Internet Archive site. Although the "Atoms for Peace" campaign was formally launched in 1957, corporate America began to promote peaceful uses of atomic energy as early as the first few months after Hiroshima. A is for Atom, an artifact of this effort, takes this highly loaded and threatening issue straight to the public in an attempt to "humanize" the figure of the atom. A Is For Atom speaks of five atomic "giants" which "man has released from within the atom's heart": the warrior and destroyer, the farmer, the healer, the engineer and the research worker. Each is pictured as a majestic, shimmering outline figure towering over the earth. "But all are within man's power & subject to his command," says the narrator reassuringly, and our future depends "on man's wisdom, on his firmness in the use of that power." General Electric, a long-time manufacturer of electric appliances, power generation plants, and nuclear weapon components, is staking a claim here, asserting their interest in managing and exploiting this new and bewildering technology. Its pitch: this is powerful, frightening, near-apocalyptic technology, but managed with firmness, it can be profitable and promising. This "Trust us with the control of technology, and we'll give you progress without end" pitch resembles what we've seen in films like General Motors' To New Horizons (on the Ephemeral Films disc). But the automobile, of course, wasn't a weapon of mass destruction. In its first two years of release, A is for Atom was seen by over seven million people in this version and a shortened ten-minute theatrical cut. In 1953 it won first prizes in both the Columbus (Ohio) and Turin (Italy) Film Festivals, the Freedoms Foundation Award, an "oscar" from the Cleveland Film Festival, and a Merit Award from Scholastic Teacher. In 1954 it won first prize in the Stamford Film Festival, a Golden Reel Award from the American Film Assembly, and a second Grand Award from the Venice Film Festival. The film was remade in the mid-sixties and is still available for rental. Like other John Sutherland films, A is for Atom presents a portentious message in a visually delightful and often self-deprecating manner. "Element Town" and its quirky inhabitants, including hyped-up Radium and somnolent Lead, is unforgettable, and the animated chain reaction manages to avoid any suggestion of nuclear fear.

THE PRELINGER FILM ARCHIVE - www.archive.org/movies/prelinger.php
The Prelinger Film Archive is one of America's greatest historical treasures. It features thousands of old industrial, training, and promotional films that would otherwise be lost in time. Rick Prelinger has aptly called these motion pictures: ephemeral movies. We used dozens of audio-visual clips from the Prelinger archive and are most grateful for all the JFK footage. We were especially amazed at finding the old restored print of a very young Louis Armstrong performing the "Saints Come Marchin In" which nearly became the official theme song of NOVUS ORDO SECLORUM.




EDISON FILMS - THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS
This website is at the library of congress. We were amazed to find out how prolific Thomas Edison was in the early days of filmmaking. He most famously invented the "Peep Show" and quite a number of bizarre films between the 1890s and 1920. He was really quite unethical in his business dealings with hired hands and fellow inventors. We feature Edison as the primary nemesis of Tesla who did the most to assassinate Tesla's reputation and label him a "Mad Scientist."




NASA SPACE TELESCOPE INSTITUTE - Hubblesite.edu and NASA.gov
The HUBBLE site is produced by the NASA Space Telescope Institute. It is just a phenomenal resource for scientifically accurate Space imagery, high quality animations and professionally produced video...so many inspiring photographs and visualizations of how the Universe works. There are many black hole animation segments that are used in NOVOS ORDO SECLORUM, as well as, tours of the Universe, planetary map zooms, narrated video segments and one-of-a-kind photos.





PRODUCTION NOTES

The Structure (download pdf)


The StoryGrid - Film to Music (download pdf)


Original notes for the Connect the DotZ series (download pdf)


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