Moonshine Over Keplar County

Poster Designed by
Chaz Jenkins

Moonshine Over Keplar County
Directed by
Kyle Lee

October 2023

In 2023 we took part in what would be our most ambitious so far, as we dipped our toes into green screen, and practical miniature SFX. The story and characters where fun along with designing the ship and blaster props. This was a nice project to sink my teeth into as an actor and prop maker.

The Mothership

The Mothership miniature was created by pretty much LITERALLY what I had available. Keep in mind, we hardly had any budget so I had to improvise. By improvising I used, Paper Plates for the ships frame, plastic package interion cut into pieces to form the frame and wrapped with Electric, Duct and masking tape for the hull, and for the bridge canopy a silver plastic spoon. Held together with hot glue and super glue. spray painted with gray and aged with black acrylic paint.

Ship Concept Art 2	Ship Concept Art
Mothership and the gravity disk seperated	Mothership Gray base
Front of Mothership	Back of Mothership
Angel Fox tying Mothership to boompole	Mothership with truck stuck in both sides
Ship after crash

This was the gun prop director Kyle Lee decided on for us to use in the short film. We took a Nerf Rival dart gun, spray painting first a white then black base enamel spray paint. then painted over it with silver metallic acrylic with yellow, red and green fluorescent acrylic paint.

Blaster Concept Art	NERF Rival FATE XXII-100
Greg spray painting and touching up the props	Black base over white base. Blaster Pistol
Blaster Asssault gun with black base enamel	Greg spray painting the blasters
Blaster Pistol full detail from the side	Blaster Pistol with full paint detail and flourescent yellow, green and pink
The Captain and his Blaster	The Captain and his Blaster 2

Blaster Pistol

Blaster Gun(Unused)

This blaster prop was not used in the short sadly. Pretty much the same method as the pistol,, using a Nerf Rival dart gun and did the same paint, detailing and aging.

NERF RIVAL VISION XXII-800	Blasters with a black base spray paint
Greg Picklesimer spray painting the black base for the blasters	Blaster Assault with metal detail and flourescent
Blaster Assault from the side	Blaster assault gun with detail and flourescent paint

Truck Miniature

-SPOILER- In the end of the film the hillbillies truck gets stuck...or in this case, fused with the ship due to transport error. I bought a toy truck that looked as close to the Black Chevy Silverado truck we used in the film. it was originally white so I had to repaint it black. Then had someone take a grinder and cut it in half. I hot glued the halves to the sides of the ship miniature after we shot all the scenes that take place BEFORE the finale. Took some silver metallic and coffee brown acrylic paints to add a metal and muddied detail to the underside along further detailing to add realism to the miniature

Ship Miniature with Toy Truck before paint & detailing	Chevy Silverado
Truck Miniature Bottom, underside detailed	Truck Miniature Front
Truck Miniature top	Back half of Truck attached to Ship
Mothership after truck	Mothership with truck sticking out
Ship after crash	Starship up close after crash accident