Newsletter -- February 21, 2003
Greetings, Dreamers!
Welcome to the irregular announcement list for Guerrilla Production's feature animated adaptation of H. P. Lovecraft's "The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath".
As you roll the ragged end off February and head into the flower-laden pre-spring growth orgy that is March, just remember that deep in the bowels of a distant and bizarre land called Tigard, I'm slavin' away at animating this movie.
The latest news is good as always (and acompanied by way too much coffee). The more-or-less final animation sequencing is at the 1/3 mark and chugging right along. I've had a bit of a lag on the work what with being employed and all, but I try to get as much done every evening as I can. For those of you more familiar with the story than the timeline, Carter is about to be dropped into the Vale of Pnath, where crawl and burrow the enormous dholes.
All that from memory!
I went to San Francisco a few weeks ago. Finally met Jason Thompson, who is one right nice fella, and our most awesome artist on this project. Do follow the links at the end of this note and check out his work. I also had a chance to meet up with Cyoakha O'Manion, our composer, and hear a couple of new tracks for the movie including the beautiful music accompanying Carter's dreams of the Sunset City. The three of us had a fabulous time gradually taking over an entire corner of a restaurant, along with other friends who joined us out of some misguided sense of adventure. Got lots of pictures and I hope to have them up on the website soon!
For those of you who ply the convention circuit, we're planning on having a bit of a showing at Norwescon. Don't know if we'll have much to give away, probably just a buinch of postcards. We might have some posters soon, but that's far from guaranteed. If we do, we'll hand a few out. It's also possible that our lovely Producer will create another batch of the very-well-received Zoog cookies. Fact is, we'll be pretty busy with our annual Let's Make a Movie workshop, which is the most amount of fun you can have and still talk about with your spouse the next day!
It also seems pretty likely that our wonderful composer Cyoakha O'Manion will be performing a variety of tracks from the Dream-Quest soundtrack at ProgFest in 2003, accompanied by a director's cut montage of scenes from the movie to be projected, probably on a screen behind them. This should be very cool! I'll keep you posted on that and I'll betcha dollars to donuts that there'll be a buttload of copies of the soundtrack for sale there, as well as copies of the movie. Not to mention that the music at the whole thing will probably be remarkably cool!
Those of you closer to the project might be pleased to hear that I've finally managed to beat some sense into my system and burn my first quasi-functional DVD. I don't EVEN want to go over the torturous path that required. It seems as if no one component of my system works sufficiently well enough to just do what I want. Yet somehow, we now have exactly one shiny happy DVD-R with the past couple of Lovecraftian shorts from Guerrilla Productions ("The Call of Cthulhu" and "The Testamant of Tom Jacoby") and the latest teaser for Dream-Quest, which includes actual music from the movie, instead of my hokey multitrack nonsense. It looks like we'll still have to eventually buy a dedicated production box when we start building the main timeline (a $2000 expenditure we're not looking forward to!), but at least we now know that the technology will work.
I want to take a minute and thank the people who have been helping with the animation. It's really the most tedious and unforgiving task I've ever done and all the people who help have been just tremendous. They are: Saif Ansari, Mike Biel, Sven Bonnichsen, Dave Candage, Alan Claytor, Stephanie Dunlap, Lyndsey Fink, Andrew Haley, Paul Henry, Christine Holmes, Daniel R. Johnson, Luciano de Maria, Katrina Martin, Kathleen Mattson, Stacey Moore, William Morris, Craig Mullins, Pieter Paulsen, Julietteanne Petrusek, Jason Rogers, Jacob Skaaning, Christopher Alan Slater, Jed Sullivan, Julie Tillinghast, Tony "Ng" Wamsley, Van Wanless, and Joshua Wentz. These people are awesome! Thank you, thank you, thank you! (and when will you be ready for more assignments?!) And if I've forgotten anyone, please write back!
Here's the "public broadcasting" portion of the announcement: We still need SCADS of help, especially anyone who is familar with any or all of the following: Photoshop, Premiere, or After Effects. They would have my eternal gratitude and the gratitude of countless Lovecraft fans if they could help out. The pay is, as expected, no money, but helpers receive a copy of the movie when it's all done (this is in addition to my gratitude and the adoration of Lovecraft fans worldwide). Also, if helpers have a website or online business, I'll be a happy fella to put a link from the Dream-Quest site to their site.
If you still want to help, but aren't sure how, well, take a peek at http://www.petting-zoo.org/Dreamquest_Help.html and see if anything looks do-able.
Even if none of that looks like your style, the least you can do is pass the news around. Let's get more people aware of this project and keeping tabs on it. Feel free to pass this note around if you wish, or to pass around the URLs below. The more, the merrier!
Well, the most common phrase in my life these days applies perfectly here: "Back on my head!"
Cheers,
Edward
