Team Of LiViT and Space Chabad
Team Of LiViT and Space Chabad are perhaps the stupidest epic idea I ever had in mind as a movie project. And which taught me a great bunch of things. This is why I want to write about the expenses of these projects.
I did this project between being 12 and 14, so I might forget multiple key details.
Idea
The idea was to make 6 films which would represent two connected trilogies. One half "Team Of LiViT" would be about a group of kids who have superpowers. The other half "Space Chabad" would be set way into the future. And follow a discovery of those same kids. And some futuristic political drama surrounding it.
Plot of Team of LiViT
Jason Crown is a 12 to 14 year old kid ( because I wanted to play him ) who discovers one day that he has a superpower that let's him fly. There is a theory being developed that homo-sapience are not the final stage. And that there would be homo-Leviticus ( a flying human ). Jason Crown is one of the first homo-Leviticus.
There is a villain that also knows how to fly. That doesn't have mustaches. But has a bushy beard. He is a TV reporter. And that's he who spoke on TV when Jason Crown realized that he can fly.
The first movie would be an origin story of a kind. Where Jason Crown teaches his family to fly ( for which you just need to believe ). And where they fight that TV reporter. That is trying to use his powers for evil.
The second movie would introduce a mutated person as a villain. I remember trying to figure out how to make an effect of a human face melting and turning into a monster. And the third film would end with Crown family finding a time traveling device. And using it getting way into the future.
Plot of Space Chabad
Space Chabad is taking place on a planet called "Israel". Where every country has it's planet now. And what once was the Earth is now Israel and populated mostly with Jewish people that are immortal. There is a messiah prophecy in Judaism that states something similar. So I used it to construct the world of the future.
A professor named Bernstein is a general type scientist person. He makes robots and stuff. And one day he is called off for a secret meeting in a huge building. Where they found something extraordinary.
The villains of the film are a race of aliens called Pirantians. They are green cyclops with tails, but other than that, they are very human-like. They sensed a huge energy burst coming from the planet Israel. And so they are preparing to attack the planet, since they want the energy.
They send a trooper upon the planet that finds himself in a very desperate fight with Space Chabad ( an elite religious space force ). He is captured and brought to the same building where Bernstein is. Though Bernstein didn't come there for him.
The alien describes harsh conditions on his planet. All kinds of mistreatment. And other things. And he is rather prepared to work against his race, than for it. So he joins Space Chabad. And the first film is about a group of Space Chabad agents that go to the alien planet to attack them. They learn a bunch of bad things and find out that those Pirantians are rather evil indeed.
Meanwhile Bernstein discovers what he was actually called for. Which is a group of 12 to 14 year old kids ( Team of LiViT ) that suddenly materialized out of nowhere ( releasing the energy burst ). They are getting interviewed by Bernstein. And he finds out that they are homo-Leviticus. While he and other people are not. Which is strange.
The other 2 films would be about the fight against Pirantians with the help of the Team Of LiViT.
Rough history of the project
In 2009 I just moved from Ukraine to Israel. And was put into a very religious school almost immediately. Where I didn't speak Hebrew. I knew maybe a few words, but that wasn't enough to even compose a sentence. So I was left to myself during lessons.
My father, being a huge GNU / Linux user, made me try GIMP. And with the help of GIMP I was able to make a shot where I was flying above the buildings. I took a single photograph of myself. And a single photograph of the background. And by cutting out myself, and pasting it on the background. I made enough frames, that when scrolled through in sequence looked like I was flying.
I got so inspired by this that I started imagining stories of flying kids. I had no idea what a movie script looks like. X Agents were written mostly in a kind of comics. But I knew that people write scripts before filming. I just didn't know what those scripts look like. I thought that since movies are shot by shot creations, the script should basically describe each shot. Thought I know that it's a shot list. Not a screenplay. Anyway, since I was busy doing nothing at school, I took my time to write a shot-list for the first movie of Team of LiViT.
It would be only when I would do Sinking In The Fire when I would read an actual movie script. And when I would stop writing shot-lists. But back then I didn't know better.
At first the project was supposed to be rather small. I thought about what I could do with things available to me. With friends I could get. With even shots that were not too grandiose. For example, at one place I wanted a shot from above. And I knew that we could use a window of our home for it. But then I watched the making of Avatar.
By that time I was already learning Blender. And the way Avatar was made would potentially be possible to re-do if I had enough patience. So I didn't want to do a bad, kids movie anymore. I wanted everything to look as best as possible. And because I can do whatever I want I wanted everything to take place in New York.
I launched a forum on a website that no longer exists where I described my plans. And by that time I already had in mind the story outlines for 6 movies. Of course the way I was behaving could be explained by Dunning-Kruger effect, a cognitive bias that shows that when people learn something new. In the very beginning they are so excited about it, that they fail to realize how much they don't know. And it's only when you are utterly scared of everything, you can claim that you started to know something. I was absolutely and utterly convinced that I'm doing the best movie series ever. Even though my plan was to use a resolution of something like 250 pixels. Because well, larger resolution would require a render time that was far beyond my, then, patience. And because the only camera I had available could shoot video roughly at that size ( if I wanted to cut the frame to be wide-screen ).
I was returning to that forum that I started way in the beginning of the project. And most often than not me, my brother and my girlfriend would laugh at it hysterically. Too bad, that probably because of the war, the website which hosted the forum is no longer operational. If you will see it working please tell me. The domain was
Some time later I realized that I can do everything in the computer. And this would alleviate the need of using the crappy camera. And with that I could also, perhaps, increase the resolution a bit. I was not daring to go HD, since I used an old CRT monitor. But I've upgraded to something like 500 pixels.
This is when I tried to produce the beginning of Space Chabad 1. And here is the result of my attempts.
https://yewtu.be/watch?v=GLHFDyJBppI
This little video burned down the CPU of the computer. And I was left with no means of producing anything. Unless of course I would not waste my time and actually design everything. I remember for Avatar they've designed everything. That's when I started drawing yet another comics. Since this was the best way to know what I should design. I outlines a large portion of Space Chabad in a comics form. And other kids actually kind of liked it. They even told me that I should do that as a comics. And not as a movie. I didn't want the comics. I just didn't have the resources to do the movie.
Anyway a few years went by and I was already not feeling particularly interested in this story. It was too simple. Too blockbustery. Not serious enough. Instead I started doing Sinking In The Fire.
Origin of "J. Y. Amihud"
When I was writing the first shot-list I accidentally spelled "Jason" as "Jeison" which stuck. Later when making the account on the blender forum website I used the name "Jeison", because back then I still wanted very much to play the role of Jason Crown.
My real birth name is Yehuda Amihud. You can imagine how frustrated people were with this name. So I thought why can't I be Jeison Amihud, or Jeison Yehuda Amihud. You know, so people would have better time pronouncing my name.
In 2011 after falling in love with a little movie about kids my age that make movies, called "Super 8", I thought a lot about the way the director of that movie Jeffrey Jacob Abrams spells his name. He does it like this - J. J. Abrams. So I though why can't I spell my name the same way? So I took a paper and spelled J. Y. Amihud. And I loved how it looked. So since then, it's my name.
( Though in some legal documents I'm still just Y.Amihud )
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