Newsletter -- July 7, 2003
Greetings, Dreamers!
I trust no one (in the US, anyway) blew their fingers off with fireworks? Good, very good.
Welcome to the every-once-in-a-while report of the progress of our feature film "The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath"!
Speaking of good news, we crossed a major threshold this weekend. We finished all the final animation for the movie. Wow, was THAT ever a trek! I would be a very happy fella' if I never saw another flying spear, flapping butterfly, lurching mountain, drizzle of rain or snow or soaring nightgaunt again! I know that some of these animation sequences contained THOUSANDS of nightgaunts. All duly hurled through space using Adobe After Effects. Whew!
For all of this, I dearly with to thank my assistants, who busted hump, right up until the very last day: Alan Claytor, Andrew Haley, Christine Holmes, Christopher Alan Slater, Craig Mullins, Daniel R. Johnson, Dave Candage, Dwight Stone, Eric Scheur, Greg Higgins, Jacob Skaaning, James J. Dominguez, Jason Rogers, Jed Sullivan, Joseph Kentspeth, Joshua Wentz, Julie Tillinghast, Julietteanne Petrusek, Kathleen Mattson, Katrina Martin, Luciano De Maria, Lyndsey Fink, Matthew W. Stevens, Mike Biel, Paul Henry, Pieter Paulson, Saif Ansari, Stacey Moore, Stephanie Dunlap, Sven Bonnichsen, Thomas Ray, Tony "Ng" Wamsley, Van Wanless, and William (Cyberhorn the Dragon) Morris. Thank you!
So, what's next?
I'm going to spend the next few days rolling over the entire timeline. There are a few places where the scene change is more abrupt than I would prefer. These kinds of edits are pretty quick to make -- I can do about twenty minutes worth in an evening. Plus, the tail end ought to go quickly. So, I expect to finish this soon. It'll add maybe another minute or two total to the movie, but I think it'll help a lot.
After that, there's nothing left but sound. Ha-ha, I make it sound easy, don't I? Well, this is the collecting of about a thousand different sound effects -- insofar as the foley's concerned. Our composer, Cyoakha, has the lion's task after that -- scoring the entire film. On the plus side, I've been sending her lots of advance clips, and we already have seven or so pieces of music. But still, a hundred minutes is a crapload of music and she's been trying to actually make ends meet. So, wish her all the speed you can!
And that, dear Dreamers, would be the last thing necessary before the movie's ready for the Lovecraft Film Festival in October.
We WILL see you there, right... 8)
On another front, we've been contacted by a distributor who is interested in two other films of ours, "The Call of Cthulhu" and "The Testament of Tom Jacoby" (two short films that have shown at the Lovecraft Film Festival in the past). We're very excited about this situation and our breath is most assuredly bated.
A few people have asked us what's next for Guerrilla Productions and we've usually screamed incoherently at them for it. However, once we calm down a bit, it's nice to think about what's coming up.
The most hopeful thing coming up soon is a very short piece called "Innsmouth Legacy". That will be, like "The Call of Cthulhu", something we put together over a frenzied weekend. We're also making our very own Star Wars fan film, which is a goofy li'l thing called "Extreme Force: Ultimate Jedi Battle" which will contain the most INTENSE Jedi battle ever filmed. In fact, we've already shot the principal photography on this and only post-production and sound remain!
There are some other shorts that are in various stages of preproduction, such as "Under the Mountain", and "The Summoning", both of which are very cool live-action things. The Summoning in particular is going to be an especial challenge as it contains some, er, interesting special effects.
As far as features go, we're wavering over a couple of possibilities. "The Launch" is a nice teenager coming-of-age vehicle that gives us a great excuse to drive cross-country with a bunch of video gear, and "Eaters of the Flesh" gives us a chance to practice our, um, more-purple-gore skills. 8) There are several other features already at script level that we are jazzed about, too, but for a feature, a lot depends on money. Anybody feel like funding a feature? We can do product placement! 8)
Okay, it's way late and I gotta hit the hay and do that dreaming thing, so that I know whereof I edit.
Have fun! Dream! Live!
Cheers,
Edward
