My Exploding Son

For the last several weeks my life has been volleyball volleyball volleyball. It's been a lot of fun trying to get through the season, but when I spend lots of time filming every game, and then even more time carefully sorting through and editing all that footage, often on a frame by frame basis.. suffice it to say I can get a little bit tired of watching the sport. So it's good to have little breaks once in awhile.

And this season, my break was... more video production. Yeah.. I know.. I'm nuts. As reported on many times throughout the summer, the boys and I have had a goal to make our own Indiana Jones movie. We began filming in mid-July and we continued, filling up spare weekends and evenings here and there, until we finally finished filming a few weeks ago. No, the film is not done. I have edited quite a bit and am pleased with the results so far, but several tricky sequences still need some work. With volleyball having tight deadlines, I have to stay on track, but this whole Indy film has been a nice break.

So while it may be a few weeks still until our little movie is done and released on the web for the world to see, here is a brief look at one of our trickier scenes, where I got to blow my sons head up. Yes, you read that correctly. I got a lot of strange looks from people when they asked "what are your plans for the weekend?" and I got to answer with that. But it was true. Not to give away to much, but in the movie, the villain, played by my son Tyler, gets his head chopped off by a supernatural sword that doesn't seem to like evil baddies. (Apparently supernatural swords only like good guys). To make the movie a little more "Indy like" (and because it sounded cool) we added a little flourish to the scene by having this decapitated head blow up after it hits the ground (blame the sword.. they have tempers after sitting in caves for hundreds of years).

This gave us a challenge... how to film the decapitation (Little Calvin figured out that one) and the head explosion. After some sick, twisted brainstorming, I came up with a plan that might work. And so, with the girls gone for the day (of course) it was time for the boys to pull out our toys.. and in this new YouTube age, document each step of our gross journey.

So.. without further ado... It's time to blow up my son's head: