Gregory Lamberson's Blog, page 17
April 8, 2013
DRY BONES Days 5 and 6
DRY BONES Days 5 & 6
Shooting on weekends only is weird. On the one hand, you have five days to prepare for each two days of filming; on the other, your body has to get used to getting tired all over. This was our third weekend of filming, at the second entirely in my house. My daughter – recuperated from the flu and strep – and our cats are now accustomed to having the equivalent of a special forces team in our home.
It was sunny on Saturday, when we shot some exteriors out front and on my back deck, so it was nice to get out of the confined rooms for a few hours. Among the scenes we filmed in my living room was one between Michael O’Hear and John Renna. Michael is the lead: Drew, a troubled man who returns home thirty-five years after being traumatized by a monster under his bed. John plays his police chief brother in law, who’s upset because Drew’s sister has divorced him. In the scene, Drew believes Carl has paid him a visit to discuss all of the people who have been disappearing, but Carl is more upset about his divorce and breaks down. It’s a comical scene, but John was able to summon real tears for three takes. We were in stitches and mesmerized at the same time.
Throughout the film, the bodies of people who are sucked under the bed by the succubus turn up as emaciated husks. In one scene, Drew discovers the husk of a woman he picked up in a bar. Snap! Crackle! Pop! The husks roll up like sleeping bags. Our effects gurus, Rod Durick and Arick Szymecki worked around the clock (I think three times around the clock) to deliver our first husk. Drew rolls the husk up with trembling fingers. It’s a surreal moment, and Michael played it for all the pathos it was worth. We pushed a similar scene involving two additional husks to Sunday, but otherwise we made our day, and over the course of the weekend we picked up some shots we missed last weekend, so we’re all caught up except for a couple of pickups.
On Sunday, we shot the scene where Drew finds two additional husks, and this time when he rolls them up he sings the title song. I was pleased with the result. That was his only scene, which we shot at the end of the day. The rest of the day was spent on a sequence in which Paul McGinnis, as Tom, brings home Cindy/Mindy (a running gag), played by Jessica Zwolak, and they encounter the succubus. Tom is Drew’s best friend, a slob type who provides a lot of comic relief. All of his scenes with Cindy/Mindy were played for laughs, including his demise, for which we swapped out my bed with an elevated platforms so it was easier for Sam Qualiana to shoot Tom getting sucked under the bed. In a twist, Drew actually pulls himself out from under the bed, which leads to a bigger payoff. We made our day again.
The only drag about shooting in my house is the two hours of cleaning up after we’ve wrapped, but that’s primarily on Sunday since we’ve been leaving stuff up Saturday. On Sunday we moved out of my daughter’s small, confined room and into my larger bedroom…which was somehow more confined and harder to shoot in. We spent most of the day in there, and I think we were all glad we wrapped on that particular location. I held the boom pole for most of Sunday, something I haven’t done since I WAS A TEENAGE ZOMBIE back in 1984. Boom poles have gotten a lot nicer.
We’re almost one third of the way through the shoot, which is hard to believe, but we’ve got some weekends off coming up because I have some convention appearances. Debbie Rochon has joined the cast as the female lead.
April 2, 2013
DRY BONES Days 3 and 4
For our second weekend of filming I scheduled a heavier day for Saturday, by which I mean a standard twelve hours, so we could do a shorter Sunday and everyone could have Easter dinner with their families if that mattered to them. We already pushed the shoot for St. Paddy's Day, and i didn't want to slow our momentum. Special thanks to Scotty Franklin for helping out with lighting on Saturday, and Chris Rados and John Renna for jumping in on their day off from The Romans on Sunday.
Saturday marked the first day that Paul McGinnis, John Renna, and Amelie McKendry appeared on camera for the project. Everyone was excellent, and Renna looked great in his cop uniform. We shot our first exteriors, first with Renna in the daytime and then various shots of Michael, Amelie, and the house at night. We also did our first dolly shots for the film, using a homemade dolly and PVC track which had been sitting in Rod Durick’s backyard for a year (or was it two?). Dolly shots are fun and add production value. Our DP Sam Qualiana’s been getting some nice shots lit by Kash Costner, and Paul McGinnis has been recording audio when he’s not on camera.
For a scene in which Paul wakes Michael up by throwing a rock through the bedroom window, we raised my daughter’s bedroom window and removed the screen, and I climbed an extension ladder and threw a rock through the blinds. Nailed it in one take, and the scene should be funny. I didn’t fall and break my neck, but I did endure Rod’s jokes about my ass. Rod provided custom made stick-on “Dry Bones” graffiti so we don’t have to paint my living room wall ten times.
Our first big effect came when Michael’s character rolls over in bed and discovers that his bar pickup has been reduced to an emaciated corpse. Specifically, he grasps her breast, which my script describes as a “rasin tit.” It was funny seeing Rod walk in with the corpse, which is on top of my entertainment unit now. That night Rod assembled the platform that our key bed will sit on; the platform elevates the bed so the succubus can pull her victims under it without anyone suffering scrapes, bruises, or unplanned belly reduction.
Sometime on Saturday Kaelin got sick, and I don’t think I got more than an hour’s sleep.
Sunday morning we shot a funny scene between Michael and Paul outside, then moved on to delayed shots of the succubus grabbing Amelie so Amelie could make her flight.
We moved downstairs and did a couple of non-effects scenes on the dolly, one with Michael and Paul and one just with Michael. I cut some scenes from the day’s schedule to get everyone out at a decent hour as promised, so we didn’t make our day, which means we’ll have to simplify scenes down the road so we can squeeze in what we missed. That’s showbiz, and the show always goes on.
March 28, 2013
Better Late Than Never: A Contrarian's Review of LES MISERABLES.
A Contrarian's Review of LES MISERABLES
Les Miserables is a decent movie adaptation of a mediocre musical stage production based on a classic book. Hugh Jackman and Ann Hathaway act and sing the hell out of really unmemorable, faux opera style songs; you know, the kind that go like this: "I'm GO-ing to the DEL-i; oh, WHY won't they sell me SAU-sage!" Jackman is so perfect singing bad songs that you almost take for granted how good he is in the movie. One thing bothered me about Jackman in the film: the story takes place over a period of decades, but Jean Valjean doesn't age a day, except for a few discreet gray hairs, and then at the end he ages all of the decades and more practically overnight. Worse, his old age makeup makes him look like Mel Gibson does now. I kept thinking during the heartbreaking scene in which an Angel forgives him for turning her into a prostitute who dies, "Don't die, Jean Valjean! You can play Mad Max if Tom Hardy doesn't work out!"
Whether or not you've seen the movie, you've no doubt heard how awesome Anne Hathaway is, and how she's guaranteed a Best Actress Oscar. I loved Hathaway as Catwoman in The Dark Knight Rises, and I wish she'd win an Oscar for her performance in that, but since she isn't nominated for meowing it's unlikely. A couple of months ago, I read on Entertainment Weekly's website that some people don't like Hathaway because she "tries too hard." This made no sense to me; how can an actor try too hard? Isn't this like Jeffrey Jones's "too many notes" line in Amadeus? If I pay in part to see an actor perform, I want him to work at it. But after seeing Les Miserables, I know exactly what that snarky EW columnist meant: sometimes Hathaway does try too hard, and Les Mis is one of those times. When she collects that Oscar I'm just going to pretend it's for wearing the cat suit, not for getting her hair cut on camera. For me, the movie became interesting the second Hathaway's Fantine died, because that's when Hugh Jackman and Russell Crowe crossed swords, and Jackman made an apparently suicidal leap from a window into some water, ala Harrison Ford from that sewer opening in the waterfall in The Fugitive, based on a TV show which was also based on Victor Hugo's novel (Roy Huggins, the creator of The Fugitive, named Barry Morse's Inspector Gerard after Hugo's obsessive policeman Javert, get
it?)
Russel Crowe has taken a lot of barbs for his role as Javert, mainly because he can't sing. Well, that isn't exactly true; Crowe was the front man for a rock band for many years. He can sing, he just can't sing melodramatic faux opera. I actually loved Crowe in the film, which I thought lagged whenever he wasn't onscreen. I also thought two other actors frequently singled out for criticism in this film were excellent: Helena Bonham Carter and Sacha Baron Cohen, who both appear to have wandered in from the superior movie musical Sweeney Todd, directed by Carter's husband, Tim Burton. Oh, and the little girl who played Hathaway's daughter was very good, and the little boy who (SPOILER ALERT!) gets killed in the French Revolution was great. The stage show of Les Mis, which has been playing for a decade short of forever, has always featured an illustration of a child on its poster; I'm not sure if that's supposed to be the little girl, the little boy, or Fantine, since all three performers of those roles in the movie resemble it.
Tom Hooper has gotten a lot of credit for having his actors sing live during filming instead of lip synching, and for shooting his cast in tight close-ups, which is uncommon in movie musicals. I have no idea if singing live helped the performers, although I do know it resulted in the heat taken by Crowe, but as I watched the film I thought, of course Hooper shot the songs in close-up: in almost every instance, the leads are all alone when they're singing; it would have been boring if they had sung in wide shots with no one interacting with them, I honestly think most directors would have done the same thing with that material. I did have to laugh early on in the film when Jackman lifts a cart off an injured man, saving his life just like Wolverine would, and the music swells in a really dramatic way, just like it did when Javert forced Jean Valjean to lift a French flag mounted on a mast at the beginning. Dum-DUM-da-da-da- DUM-du-duh! This one didn't have to go to eleven, boys.
If you think I'm being too hard on Les Mis, I actually enjoyed the film quite a bit, and I was completely ambivalent about the Broadway show. My wife loved the film, and she doesn't love too many things we see. My daughter liked it too, but she cried whenever someone died. That's life in a movie musical about the French Revolution.
March 25, 2013
DRY BONES Days 1 & 2
My screenplay is 85 pages long, and for a variety of reasons I've decided to keep our shooting days light. I usually schedule six and a half pages a day, and on this film I'm scheduling only five (I think we aimed for twelve pages a day on BattleDogs). On indie films the goal is to try to shoot twelve hour days. If everyone does his job, it can be done. We shot mostly twelve hour days on Slime City Massacre, but I've worked on films that should have been twelve hour days and went to fifteen because something went wrong in the chain. An executive producer once told me, "I have yet to work on an indie horror film that had twelve hour days." Well, there's a right way and a wrong way. My feeling is that if your cast and crew are volunteering because they believe in the project and want to be a part of it, you shouldn't work them to death. People don't do their best work when they work a fifteen hour day. When you're paying people and have to meet a budget, it's a different story - movies are expensive propositions, even cheap ones like ours. We worked 10.5 hours on Saturday and 9.5 hours on Sunday, and "made" our days with ease.
For the first weekend of Dry Bones I only scheduled four pages a day because I wanted us to have a weekend to get our act together before the crew gets bigger and we start working with special effects. We're working with a minimal crew which was even smaller for this weekend. Sam Qualiana, who wrote and directed Snow Shark, is the DP (director of photography), and Kash Costner, who worked with us on BattleDogs, is the gaffer (a gaffer lights the scenes); on our first day he also held the boom. We're shooting this film on a T2i, which is a DSLR camera. For laymen, this is a HD camera that looks like a still camera. The advantage to using it is that you have access to a variety of lenses. Lighting a scene properly and using multiple lenses is how you get a strong image - a "film look." We shot some really nice footage.
The disadvantage is that the T2i has no real capacity for audio recording other than the "on board" microphone, which is no different than a built in mic on any camera you might own. On board mics are not suitable for recording professional sounding audio. Typically, sound is recorded separately from picture, and an editor (or assistant editor) marries them together before he begins "cutting." On Slime City Massacre we ran the sound through a mixer and into the camera so the audio was already synched for the editor. I was pleased with how this worked and wanted to employ a similar technique on this film, so Michael ended up buying an "audio box" which attaches to the camera and feeds the audio signals into the camera. This plan caused a lot of concern (and some frustration) during pre-production but worked out fine. We're basically eliminating the person who mixes the audio. Since all of the scenes in the script involve one, two, or three characters, and we're booming almost everything, mixing different levels isn't as big a concern as it might be on another shoot. On the first day we left the box attached to the camera and Sam listened to the audio while shooting, and Kash held the boom. The audio box added a lot of weight to the camera, so for the second day Paul McGinnis - a supporting actor and co-producer on the film - bought a cable which allowed him to hold the unit while booming. For next week we'll get a pouch for him to wear the unit at his side. See? The "weekend warrior" plan allows us to improve our set operations as we go.
Our actual on set crew for this weekend was three people plus Michael and myself; we also had three cast members - Michael, Kathy Murphy, and Tia Maurice, I'm essentially directing shots and Michael is directing cast. Kathy plays Rebecca, Drew's sister, and Tia plays Carly, his niece. Kathy was an extra on Slime City Massacre and played a key role in Snow Shark: Ancient Snow Beast. I wrote her role in Dry Bones for her and she did even better than I expected. She also allowed us to shoot in her beautiful home on the first day, and provided us with lunch, which was going above and beyond the call of duty. In one scene, she sings the title song ("Dem Dry Bones") and dances with Michael in the kitchen; the scene shows that Drew is close to someone, and makes both characters likable, Kathy was quick to point out she's no singer, but she did a great job: over and over. We shot multiple takes from different angles, really fun stuff. For Carly, I wanted someone who looked young enough to be a teenager and had a resemblance to Kathy. In real life, Kathy's sons are approximately the same age as my seven year old daughter, so her cinematic daughter had to resemble a real teenager for this to work - we couldn't go the 90210 route. We cast TIa Maurice, who I met at FanExpo Canada in Toronto back when Johnny Gruesome was published (she wore the Johnny Gruesome Tattoo). Tia experienced a few hiccups getting here from Toronto, but everything worked out. She did a great job, and the chemistry between her and Kathy and Michael kicked right in, which was important for these "family friendly" scenes, and now she has her first feature credit. Networking!
A funny side note: 60,000 - 100,000 people attend FanExpo each year, and when Paul picked Tia up at the bus station they figured out that one year they had actually taken a photo together when Paul went in costume as Shaun from Shaun of the Dead.
On Day Two, we set up in my house, which serves as the principal location for the film. I shot Slime City and Undying Love in my Brooklyn apartment, and this is the first film in 22 years that I've shot where I live (excluding some backyard shots for Model Hunger). This will be the first film I've shot in my home since getting married... and having a daughter. Tamar has been doing more production work with me on each project, and did the schedule for Dry Bones. After working on two films in 2012 which kept me away from my family - it's what we all do - I wanted to shoot in my house so I could still be around them. It's a big inconvenience to home owners to turn their home over to a film crew, and I knew shooting here would make things easier overall. Kaelin has a small role in the film, which she's looking forward to, and I let her slate some shots to keep her involved. She loves having the people around (for one day she had a big sister in Tia, and a peer in Paul), but it will be a challenge shooting around a seven year old who demands to be the center of attention. It's going to be a great experience for her, though. Her room is the bedroom where the succubus lives, and the green hills, blue sky and corner tree I painted on the walls are going to look great on film.
As small as the crew sounds, there were quite a few people working behind the scenes. Shannon Kramp is our costume designer, and she's doing a great job. On a shoot like this, the costume designer chooses and obtains the wardrobe, sews additional costumes, etc., and creates a system which allows the actors to know which costumes they need to wear in which scene. Right now our wardrobe department is a clothing rack which we roll back and forth between my kitchen and living room depending on where we're shooting. Rod Durick and Arick Szymecki are our special make-up effects artists; Rod is also our production designer and Arick is our visual effects artist... and our technical adviser. They've been doing their work at their respective labs and will be on set soon. Chris Rados is a co-producer on the film and is loaning us equipment, and will be helping out with lighting when he's not on another shoot. Scott Franklin, who worked on BattleDogs, also loaned us equipment and is going to help with lighting. Chris Santucci, my SCM DP, loaned us some stands. This is going to be a very well lit film! Chris Wroblewski, who's an associate producer, and "MonsterMatt" Patterson loaned us some retro toys for the key bedroom.
Thanks to everyone who helped out this first weekend. We were a cohesive unit, very laid back with no egos, and we did good work - this is going to be a special film.
March 20, 2013
CARNAGE ROAD is coming!
http://www.goodreads.com/giveaway/sho...
Buffalo Dreams Fantastic Film Festival
I'm excited to announce the launch of a new film festival, Buffalo Dreams Fantastic Film Festival, which will replace Buffalo Screams Horror Film Festival. I formed a new partnership with Chris Scioli, with whom I collaborated on Buffalo Screams,for this new venture. We built Buffalo Screams into a respected international film festival but needed to do some restructuring behind the scenes and saw the opportunity to expand our programming; re-branding made the most sense. I retain the name and domain name for Buffalo Screams.
Buffalo Dreams will screen the best independent science fiction, fantasy, horror, action, thriller, animation, cult and fan films from around the world, and it will run for a full week at the DIpson Amherst Theatre, which I managed for three years. The theater is located across the street from the UB South Campus, so we'll have high visibility among the college crowd, something we lacked for Buffalo Screams. We'll be accepting submissions through Without a Box, something else that's new for us. And we have some wonderful promotional opportunities. This is going to be big.
I've always loved horror and science fiction equally. Incorporating the other genres opens the door to superhero films, bizarro cult films, westerns, musicals, the whole shebang - anything that strikes us as cool.
Here's the Buffalo Dreams website:
http://www.buffalodreamsfilmfest.com/
Here's our Facebook page:
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Buffalo-Dreams-Fantastic-Film-Festival/289253677872414?ref=ts&fref=ts
And here's our Twitter feed:
https://twitter.com/BuffaloDreams
Sponsors' logos will be posted on the website and all literature, and will run on the screen before each block of films. Sponsorship is only $200, which is a bargain; the sooner you take advantage of it, the more benefit you'll see.
February 28, 2013
2013 Conventions
First up, April 27th and 28th, is C2E2: Chicago Comic & Entertainment Expo. This will be my first time at this event, but I was a guest at Chicago Comic Con last year so I hope to see some of the same people. These shows have so many celebrity guests it would be easier to list who's not going to be there. Deep dish pizza will be on my menu! This will be one of three events I'm doing courtesy of Medallion Press this year. http://www.c2e2.com/Home/
May 4th I'll be a guest at the second ParaHorror Con, this time held in Niagara Falls on the US side. http://www.parahorror.com/ I'm posting the link to the con's Facebook page as well because my browser is giving me trouble with the main site: https://www.facebook.com/Parahorror John Wayne Bobbit wil be there! At least most of him will be. I remember when I started doing cons and Ron Jeremy was a regular on the circuit. Thom Matthews from Return of the Living Dead will be on hand, and so will scream queen Monique Dupre and a number of paranormal investigators, and a number of local filmmakers. I'll be so close to home that I'll probably brown bag it.
June 8th & 9th I'll be a guest at Falls Horror Fest in Ontario, Canada, sponsored by Fangoria magazine. So far the headliners are David Prowse, Tom Savini and Kane Hodder. This is part of Niagara Falls comic Con, and I heard last year's show was a blast. I'm thrilled to have both sides of the Fals covered! I'm not sure if I can smuggle food over the border, so my culinary curiosity will have to be satisfied by whatever the hotel has, maybe I'll grab something to eat with Fango scribe David Goodfellow.
http://niagarafallscomiccon.com/horrorfest/
August 22nd - 25th is Rue Morgue's Festival of Fear/FanExpo Canada in Toronto. This has always been my big event every year, when Medallion pulls out all the stops to promote my upcoming titles. This year they'll be pushing Storm Demon, which comes out in October, and The Julian Year, scheduled for December. I take the whole family to this event and we always have a ball; I have a ton of friends and readers I look forward to seeing each year. The Medallion & Lamberson families have a tradition of closing out the weekend at a Chinese restaurant I don't recall. http://www.rue-morgue.com/events/festival-of-fear
October 10th -13th is New York Comic Con. I'll be returning to my old home city with Medallion Press. Last year's show was the biggest I've ever attended, and I can't wait to follow up with all the people I met last year. Friends, family, Romans and Manhattan food! NY Pizza, diner food, overpriced street vendors, I can't wait! A great way to end my 2013 run. http://www.newyorkcomiccon.com/
Something tells me that isn't all. We hope to be finished with Dry Bones over the summer, and it would be nice if we make it into and to some film festivals, and I co-run a film festival in Buffalo which will have some big announcements soon. Model Hunger will definitely be finished soon, and I'm sure that will be a hot ticket on the circuit.
February 22, 2013
Marketing Micro-Horror: SNOW SHARK Chews Chums
Now look at some of the films that follow Snow Shark: something called The Mooring, released by horror heavyweight Lions Gate; Night of the Demons 2, Riddle starring Val Kilmer and William Sadler; Bath Salt Zombies; Lake Noir from indie specialist Brain Damage; and Fangoria Presents: Axed. Not a shabby list of fellow releases, with some pretty heavy promotional value behind some of them. Now, the way Amazon sales ranking works, it only takes a few sales of any title to shake up the order, and the real test of a film's success is whether or not it has "legs," or in our case, fins. Word of mouth could elevate or sink our prehistoric monster, but I'm encouraged by our debut, and this is the kind of information I like to share with our investors.
Remember, this film cost $7,000, it was directed by a first time director with an amateur cast, and... did I mention it cost only $7,000? By comparison, my own Slime City Massacre, hardly a big budget film, cost $55,000.
So what accounts for the film's initial success? The quality of the film is not a factor at this early stage - that's what will determine the film's long term life. The reviews have been average, ranging from "This is stupid and low budget, but sincere and fun" to far less charitable comments. Here are my theories:
What's In a Name?
Sam Qualiana created a brilliant title. The title is what attracted me to the project in the first place. PollyGrind Film Festival even gave the title an award! This is a title that grabs your attention.
Special Effects
Some of the film's reviews have been quick to point out the film's CGI, but in reality there are only a few CGI shark shots, and several more CGI blood-in-snow effects, and these were added by our editors Brett Piper and Mark Polonia. I love them. But that isn't all there is. The gag of the shark fin gliding through the snow is practical, except for one shot at the end, it was carried over from the short film Sam made several years ago, and it is awesome. John Renna, who plays "Santa" in the film, built a giant shark head that is borderline ridiculous, but Piper and Polonia edited it just right. Who can look at that thing and not think of the dinosaurs in those Amicus Edgar Rice Burroughs adaptations, The Land That Time Forgot, the People That Time Forgot and At The Earth's Core, or the giant rats in Bert I. Gordon's adaptation of H.G. Wells's The Food of The Gods? Andrew Lavin sculpted, and Arick Szymecki painted and equipped with amazing little shark teeth, an 18" hand hand puppet shark that pops up and down a tabletop snowscape not unlike those used in the Rankin Bass stop motion holiday specials, and which rears it head in forced perspective shot with an actor (a shot I gleefully designed). That's a hulluva lot of fun effects...in a $7,000 film.
Distribution
We had an advantage when we started looking for distribution: I have a longstanding relationship with POP Cinema, the company that re-released Slime City and released Undying Love and Naked Fear (all available on the 2-disc DVD Greg Lamberson's Slime City Grindhouse Collection). POP just formed a new label, Independent Entertainment, for micro-budget genre titles. Who knew that my friend Paige Davis would place the film for rent with Family Video in the Redbox in Canada, or for sale in FYE and Suncoast, and Walmart Canada? We really beat some odds, and Paige did a fantastic job for us. I co-run a film festival called Buffalo Screams Horror Film Festival, and twice Paige has delivered a fascinating and informative talk on DVD distribution. I pleaded with local filmmakers to attend both talks, and the filmmakers who heeded my advice are better off for it. Those who passed missed a great opportunity to speak to a distributor in person, an extremely valuable contact. I tell indie filmmakers all the time to aim for real distribution and only settle for brokered VOD deals once they've exhausted all other possibilities. Filmmakers who license their VOD rights first will have a very hard time landing a DVD deal later. Next up for POP CInema, next month, is Crimson: the Motion Picture, another micro-budget film from Western New York, which we screened at Buffalo Screams.
Marketing
There's a right way to market a micro-budget genre film and a wrong way. I do freelance publicity for indie filmmakers if I like them, and I have a pretty good track record promoting these projects. As others have discovered, it isn't hard to get a press release posted online, and now there are even sites which allow you to upload your releases. But here's a free piece of advice: tell the truth and show a little humility. Don't represent that your film is bigger than it is, because if anyone sees your epic and it's just another badly directed, badly acted micro-budget film, people will remember you the next time you shoot off your sensationalizing mouth. Don't use adjectives to describe yourself and your film; leave that to viewers. Your job with a press release is to present a dry depiction of your production; leave it to magazine and website editors to add color. Any indie filmmaker who presents himself as the next David Lean or Steven Spielberg earns every bit of ridicule he receives. My approach for Snow Shark was to call it "a fun creature feature in the tradition of Don Dohler's films." Don Dohler was a micro-budget filmmaker who made bad low budget films that had fun special effects in them. He was a hero to many of us, and we hold his films in our hearts with affection, but no one is going to say, "Who the fuck do you think you are, comparing yourself to Don?" If your film is going to be finished on April 1st, 2014, and you're planning to have a premiere on that night, don't tell the world that this is the film's release date. That isn't a release a date; it's a premiere date. Your release date is the day a distributor makes the film available to the public beyond your friends and family. If you don't have distribution, what's the point of saying you do? "Misrepresentation" like that will only bite you on the ass. We actually announced our distribution deal for Snow Shark at our premiere,, and we left it to our distributor to announce our release date.
Anyway, that's how we launched our little $7,000 monster movie, which you can buy on DVD right here:
http://www.amazon.com/Shark-Michael-OHear-Jackey-Qualiana/dp/B009H3LP64/ref=sr_1_5?s=movies-tv&ie=UTF8&qid=1361545227&sr=1-5
February 18, 2013
A Liitle Shark, a Little Storm, a Little Dry Bones in Your Pants
Snow Shark is the brain fish of Sam Qualiana, a local filmmaker from Lockport. It's a feature length sequel/reboot of a short film Sam made as a much younger man, and the short is included on the DVD, along with two other shorts, "Something After Midnight" and "A Love Story." Sam wrote, directed and stars in the feature version, which was filmed on his family's property in the winter of 2011. I produced the film, which is being released by Independent Cinema, a new imprint of POP Cinema/Alternative Cinema, the same company that released my films Slime City, Undying Love and Naked Fear (all available on the 2-disc set Greg Lamberson's Slime City Grindhouse Collection). I produced the film, and I've been talking about it for what feels like forever, but it's a long process from conceiving a film to finishing it and getting it released. POP designed a great cover for the film, which will be available for rent at many Family Video.locations.
I wrote Storm Demon , all 93,000 words of it, in ten weeks. That's a record for me, but it was just a matter of putting my nose to the grindstone. This one is full of surprises, none of which I wish to spoil, but I do love this cover art by Arturo Delgado and Jim Tampa at Medallion Press, which publishes the novel in October. When I wrote Personal Demons I hoped it would spawn a series, and I'm indebted to Medallion for making that possible.
We're a month away from shooting Dry Bones, the next micro-budget opus. I wrote the script and am producing, and Michael O'Hear is directing and starring; he initiated this one. Melantha Blackthorne and Kevin Van Hentenryck co-star. We just reached our $3,000 fundraising goal on IndieGoGo two weeks before our deadline, which is great news. We're still accepting donations here:
http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/dry-bones/x/78828
II have five convention appearances lined up for this year which I'll be announcing soon.
February 14, 2013
DRY BONES Part II: Dark Bites & IndieGoGo
I started the IndieGoGo campaign for DRY BONES, a horror-comedy film I'm producing from my own script, which Michael O'Hear is directing, with trepidation. I've used investors for all of the previous films I produced and most of those investors have returned for additional projects. I view the investor route as the professional way to go, and I lined up more investor capital for DRY BONES than I did for SNOW SHARK (coming to DVD in five days! Look for it in Family Video), but the fact remains that it's hard to raise money in the current economic environment. I didn't wathnt to make DRY BONES, which starts shooting in a little over a month, for $10,000, so I launched an IndieGoGo campaign to supplement my investor contributions.
You've seen people campaign for IndieGoGo or Kickstarter for all manner of projects: it gets annoying, and filmmakers - who have been conditioned toward desperation - can be among the most unbearable. As Mr. White said to Saul on BREAKING BAD when his son started a charity website for him, "It's cyber begging, rattling a tin cup for the whole world."
I took the plunge because I saw other micro-budget filmmakers funding their entire films this way, and also because I saw people raise money for films that will never be made or for finished. Because I have a track record for finishing projects and getting them released, I believed I could reach a realistic goal. With just over 15 days remaining in our campaign, we've already raised $2,510 out of our $3,000 goal, which is pretty respectable. We've also begun pre-production: our special make-up effects team has cast the faces of two of our actresses, including Melantha Blackthorne, and we had a cast reading which went well.
Here's an audio interview that Rick Hipson conducted with me about the project and fundraising process for his DARK BITES blog; he added photos for YouTube and some pretty funny commentary. Thanks for the help, Rick!
And here's the home page for our campaign, where you can read more about the film or make a small (or generous) contribution:
http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/dry-bones/x/78828?c=home
