When I started
cosplaying again a few years ago, I had a dream to work with my filmmaker
friends to make short films that represented characters I love the way I've
always wanted to see them. With my Black Widow costume falling apart, I knew it
had to be first. I went to my friend Jon with an idea: what if we made a James
Bond film starring Natasha instead of Bond? Black Widow is a super-spy. She is
the female, comic book equivalent of James Bond and no other representation felt
like it would do her the justice she deserves.
The short takes
place during the period of her career when Natasha is making a name for herself
as a solo super-hero (and keeps bumping into Daredevil). Since she regularly
went up against The Hand during that time, we came up with an idea to bring in
the feel of the classic Bond films where James goes up against a seemingly
big-time villain with some faceless organization backing him. We looked up
leaders of The Hand from over the years and landed on 2 options: Jon as Kingpin
or Shawn as The Mandarin. We weren't completely convinced Shawn could pull off
the look of The Mandarin, but our urge to include him lead us to the phone
conversation featured in the short and the idea that Kingpin has other leaders
looking over his shoulder.
We filmed this short
over 1 weekend and the entire process took approximately 3 months from original
concept to final product. We brought in a fantastic team of friends from
college - Alex for cinematography and color, Jon for editting, Scott for props,
Matt for an original score, Peter and AJ of Random Encounters for a Bond song
for the credits - and I feel incredibly blessed to have been able to work with
such incredible people.
Please enjoy Black
Widow in: High Hit -
My goal was always
do do a video for every cosplay I complete, but production time and schedules
make that hard, so for now, enjoy High Hit and look forward to the fact that
more will come. Hopefully sooner rather than later. ;)
CosPlay with me...
-Angi
