So finally Myctophobia has premiered!  We hit up the Days Of The Dead and when The Collective Vol. 4 premiered I was happy to see a pretty decent sized audience.  Even happier when Myctophobia played and there was a pretty big applause afterwards.  Made my heart flutter.  And now finally it’s out on DVD.  At work on Rhoda now and hoping for either a feature afterwards for myself or even part of an anthology.  Phew not enough time in day anymore.  Hope to be back soon.  Oh and pick up The Collective Vol. 4 now!

So a lot has been happening since my last update.  First up my episode of Shivers Down Your Spine from Deadlantern.com went up.

The episode I was asked to do was one called Bait.  I knew right away that I wanted Mike and Wes in this.  And to break with tradition on most of my films I didn’t ask Wes to be the monster/killer/shadow creature.  He finally got to just be a normal guy . . . that coughs up a lot of blood.  Come on.  Can’t let him get away with not at least getting dirty.

We shot over a Saturday back in October and had a great time.  Dave did the camera work and editing.  I think it came out really well.  We had fun doing it, it was super simple, and I think came off as fun.  Had a lot of praise for it.

Then at the end of February we shot my new short film Myctophobia.  I was asked to be part of a compilation called The Collective.  The idea is 10 filmmakers create 10 short films based on one theme.  This one was emotions and I was given the emotion of fear.  Right up my alley.  So I set out to gather my minimal cast and was super lucky to get Kitsie Duncan, Steve Christopher, and Eric Shellito on board super quickly.  It was kind of funny but after Whisper I promised to never shoot a film over one weekend again.  Just wears everyone out and can cause some stress trying to get everything done.  Well with this since I had an actress coming from out of town I knew I’d have to do it over a weekend again.  Luckily this was only an 8 page script as compared to the 18 page script from Whisper.

The shoot went very smoothly.  It helped immensely that a good director friend of mine Tony Wash (of Scotchwory Productions) came down from Chicago to run a second camera.  So we were able to get multiple angles all in one shot.  So we were able to breeze through set ups pretty quickly.  Unfortunately a lot came to a halt when we started shooting some of the green screen stuff upstairs.  Light for green screen can be hard and tedious.  Luckily Tony grabbed some of the reigns and we went downstairs to shoot some solo stuff with Kitsie.  We got some great shots and after starting at 10AM finished up at 3:30AM on our house location.  We got everything we needed.

I went home and collapsed in my bed.  I woke up to go meet up with everyone and shoot our scenes at the therapist’s office.  Those went super easy and we knocked them out in no time.  Overall we had a great time and I think after watching a rough cut that it is coming together nicely.  This is the first time we’re using CGI effects and I think they’re turning out pretty good.  I think everyone is going to enjoy it when it comes out.

One day I logged onto Facebook and saw that the Rondo Awards nominations had been posted.  Some friends of ours are always nominated for best podcast and we never seem to make the ballot.  So I decided to check out the ballot to see if we had maybe made the cut this year.  Always cool to see what movies and magazines get nominations so I started to go down the list and check out what had been nominated for what.  I was happy to see that some of the movies I had enjoyed this year had made the list.  I figured I might vote as I sometimes do but since DZ hadn’t made the list I probably wouldn’t.  But then as I was looking at the list I saw something that I had to double take.

My short film Whisper had been nominated for a Rondo!  I was not expecting that at all.  It came as a complete shock and I was flabbergasted.  Of course I voted immediately.  I tried to spread the word as much as possible but knew I was probably going to lose out to The Giant Rubber Monster Movie.  Thomas is a friend of ours and I was happy for him for getting nominated.  I knew that he had a ton of horror hosts in his film and has been touring the convention circuit so I knew he had a ton of people behind his film to help promote voting and such.  So I was going to have to settle for just being nominated.  And lo and behold I was right.  But it’s still pretty awesome to be the director of a Rondo nominated film.  Was really happy about that.

Other than that I’m gearing up to finally get Rhoda started with Brandon and Darrin.  This summer is going to be FULL of film making for that.  After that I have a few other things I’m going to want to try as far as film making goes.  Want to do a feature length at some point and have a few ideas.  Ideas of which I should be turning into a script for ScriptFrenzy this month but just haven’t sat down to get started yet and I know this month is going to be crazy with 2 Drunken Zombie Deadly Double Features, C2E2, and Chicago Fear Fest all coming up in the next 3 weeks.  Ugh.  But some fun things are happening and I hope they continue to get bigger and better.  Here’s hoping.

So once again I’ve fallen down on trying to keep this thing even remotely updated.  So what’s been up?  Well since the last post I was asked to be a part of an upcoming collection of short films for a DVD called The Collective Volume 4.  With these Collective DVDs they get a bunch of filmmakers together and give them all a theme.  This one the theme is emotions and I was given the emotion of Fear.  So after doing some research I found a phobia called Myctophobia which is labeled as a Fear of Darkness.  I was hoping to find something outside of the typical fear of the dark but the way this one was labeled as a Fear Of Darkness I was intrigued.  That classification seemed to give the dark a presence.  Darkness.

So I pounded out a script one night, sent it off to some hopefuls, and had a majority of my cast within two days.  It all came together really easily.  I am super lucky to get Kitsie Duncan to come on board.  She has an indie horror following and is going to be great as my lead.  And of course I can’t seem to do a project without Steve Christopher involved.  I had him in mind as Kitsie’s therapist.  Meeting with a few actors here next week to figure out who will be playing her husband.  After that we had a lucky break and was able to get a house that is for sale to use to shoot in.  We have full run of it and won’t be putting anyone out.

And with this one I decided rather than pay completely out of pocket I’d try to raise some cash to pay the actors and such.  So we’re up on Indie Go Go but still not close to our goal yet.  Hoping in the last few weeks we can get some last minute donations.  Here’s to hoping.  But if you’re reading this and still want to donate feel free: Myctophobia Donations!

The cool thing is that this is already set to premiere at the Days Of The Dead convention in Indianapolis on July 6th.  Going to be very cool to have one of my films playing at a festival that I will have a table at (with Drunken Zombie).  So lots of things looking up in 2012.  Just in time for the end of the world.

So it’s been awhile.  Why so quiet?  The main reason is that this year’s film festival was bigger than ever so I was swamped with film festival work.

As with last year our good friend Lord Blood-Rah was kind enough to take some time out of his schedule to fly out here to MC the event.  The show went off without a hitch.  Friday night we had a lot of one day people showing up to check out some indie horror films.  Skew, True Nature, and Toxic Lullaby all played to rave reviews from those in attendance.  True Nature was one of my favorites that we were showing so I was glad that everyone that watched it seemed to agree.

Saturday started off kinda slow but it usually is and picks up later on.  Had a lot of people trickle in through out the day.  As with last year we had some great short films show on Saturday.  One of which was my latest short film Whisper.

One of the good things was we didn’t really have any technical issues all weekend. . . until Whisper hit.  Of course  the DVD player started glitching just as Whisper started.  But it never really failed completely so people got to see it none the less.  They seemed to enjoy it and I got a lot of compliments afterwards.  Whether they were being nice or honestly liked it who knows.  Either way I’ll gladly accept their praise.  So after the festival was over I finally got to relax.  We also filmed some fun stuff with Lord Blood-Rah for a DVD that will contain both Shadows and Whisper along with three other short films.  Can’t wait for that to come out.

After the festival I put Whisper up online and so far it seems to have gotten some good buzz.  Some fantastic websites like Horror Society, Dread Central, and Arrow In The Head have posted it.  Which is great.  Getting it in front of more eyeballs.  Going to start the fun (sarcasm) process of sending it out to some film festivals here soon.  Ugh.  Well if you by chance read this blog definitely feel free to take a gander at Whisper yourself below.