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Two Shorts In

2/27/2023

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It's been an interesting couple of months!
We spent our February shooting two short films that we had previously mentioned on this blog. The first was Gina Bryant's HOLE IN THE GROUND. That one was a western drama and a ton of fun to shoot. Our bodies hurt the next day after spending some time digging graves, but it couldn't have gone better. We already have a rough cut of this film and reception among our team has been pretty good. Still a lot of work ahead on it, but we're sure this is one we'll all be proud of.
The other film we worked on was a much larger undertaking. That being the horror short helmed by David Wayne Young and Kurt T. Choate, BLINDSIGHT. With a large team of the best of the best at our side, we underwent a four day shoot. Long nights, little sleep, you know the drill. This one may take a little longer to finish, but we still hope to have it out in time for the fall season.
As these two films enter post-production there is still one more short to shoot on our schedule and a few larger projects looming soon after. But that's a topic for another day.

Lastly, we just released our newest podcast episode sampling from the filmography of Stephen King. The episode features special guests Roy Nugen and Gina Bryant. Give that a listen as well!

- Tyler
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Happy New Year 2023!

1/1/2023

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Hello everyone!

2022 has officially come to a close and we're moving in to a new year. Ol' 22 was pretty decent to us. We saw the premiere of our latest feature, a new animated short film and a handful of great collaborations. As you can imagine, we're still very early into 2023, so there is a lot to be determined. However, I'll do my best here to highlight everything we're looking to accomplish.

PERSONAL HISTORY
With the film having made its debut, there has been a long waiting period on what our next move will be. That said, it may be a little longer before we know. Broadly speaking, the film will see a digital release, likely in the middle portion of the year.
In less important news, we released the soundtrack album a few weeks ago. That can be found HERE.

SHORT FILMS
We have a couple of co-produced projects that have yet to be released online left over from last year. Fritz Robinson's GOOD LISTENER will likely be released after wrapping up its festival run. The Take36 project, CHEKHOV'S HAND GRENADE, is just waiting on a bit of ADR.
​Briefly mentioned on the latest episode of our podcast, we have been working on a horror project with Kurt T. Choate. We will be shooting this in the first part of the year. The short is called BLINDISGHT and will be helmed by David Wayne Young and Kurt.
We're also continuing to work on another short film with Fritz Robinson called DEATH IN LAVENDER. This is a 16mm crime short. There is one more day of shooting left to go in the spring before we move into post-production.
Finally, we are producing a short film directed by Gina Bryant called HOLE IN THE GROUND. Also to be shot in the early part of the year.
Needless to say, we'll be busy for the next few months.

NEW FEATURES
We've sorta softly announced these in the past. We are currently developing a live-action horror feature as well as a new animated comedy. It wouldn't be smart to say much more this early in the game. It will probably be a while before there is any news of substance on these. I'll leave it at that. ANYWAY!

COMICS
It's probably a good time to throw out an update on where these projects sit. Ideally, we would love to release THE DOG PARK Volume 2 this year. We made a good amount of progress last year. The animated short definitely sidelined it a bit. I'd say at best, we could try for the end of the year on this one. It will be a big undertaking no matter how you look at it.
As for A SCRIPT CALLED MISERY, there has been no major movement since the last time it came up. It's a low priority at this point. We are still determined to get it out there eventually. This project has just been a victim of circumstance.

PODCAST

We're about to move into the ninth season of our movie podcast. We'll be kicking things off with our annual tradition of The Golden Jamie Awards, running down every new film we saw in 2022 and declaring our top five favorites. We're all very excited for the line up of episodes we have this year. We have a lot of fun topics and guest appearances that we can't wait to do.

​The future remains unwritten as usual. We'll see how everything goes. Bottom line, we hope to putting out cool projects for you to enjoy.

Have a Happy New Year!

​- Tyler
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HOLLY JOLLY HOLIDAY is here!

12/7/2022

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For anyone unaware,
The new animated holiday special THE DOG PARK: HOLLY JOLLY HOLIDAY officially released last week. I'm finally getting around to making this blog post about it just now.
We had a great premiere stream followed by the companion episode of THE DOG PARK PODCAST. We're very happy with how the short turned out and hope you'll take time to enjoy it this holiday season.

As far as anything else coming up for the rest of the year, we do have a holiday themed episode of our movie podcast where we will be talking about Bob Clark's BLACK CHRISTMAS. The episode will feature David Young and I with special guest: Kurt T. Choate. That will also serve as the season finale. We decided to have Season 9 start off in January since we are no longer taking breaks from the podcast in November. Anyway, stay tuned for that and of course, a year-end blog post.

​- Tyler
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Premieres: Past and Upcoming

11/7/2022

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Polaroid from the PERSONAL HISTORY premiere at Tallgrass 2022 (Featuring: Lolo Loren, Jillian Terrell, Patrick Poe, Tyler W. Moore and Samantha Montero. Photo by Ethan Bachelder)
Hello everyone!

​Figured it was about time for one of these blog posts again. There are a handful of things to talk about here so I'll jump right in.

FESTIVALS:
The fall festival run has been extraordinary. GOOD LISTENER, the short film we worked on with Fritz Robinson, has been doing pretty well, screening at the likes of No Coast Film Festival, Bird Watching Film Festival, Bass & Belle Wild West Film Fest and the Will Rogers Motion Picture Festival.
The major highlight however, was the premiere of PERSONAL HISTORY at the Tallgrass Film Festival right here in Wichita. It was a week of great films and great friends. We screened on the final day of the festival at the Exploration Place Dome Theater to a fantastic crowd. During the week, I ended up doing a few interviews one with Gadi Elkon of Selig Film News which can be seen HERE and a brief interview with The Movie Moron Podcast which can be seen HERE. We're extremely thankful to have been a part of Tallgrass and hope to have the opportunity again. We're looking at a couple more screening opportunities during the spring circuit. We'll see how that pans out.

​THE DOG PARK: HOLLY JOLLY HOLIDAY:
​​One of the bigger pieces of news we have for this update is that our holiday special for THE DOG PARK will be premiering via livestream on November 30th on our Facebook page. It will be immediately followed by our behind the scenes podcast episode on the special, featuring David Young and I talking about the production. Both of which will be available following the stream. You can view our event page for more information on the premiere stream.

PODCAST:
The ILLUMINATION CINEMA MOVIE PODCAST has been releasing some pretty good episodes lately about all sorts of various topics. Most recently, Torture Podcast VII featuring special guest: Roy Nugen. Our holiday special for that one is coming up next which should also feature a special guest. That one will also serve as the Season 8 finale, with the new season starting in January.

That's pretty much it for now! See you next time.

​-Tyler
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PERSONAL HISTORY is Coming to Tallgrass!

8/29/2022

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The cat is out of the bag!

We've had to keep quiet about it for over a month, but it has finally been announced that PERSONAL HISTORY will be screening at the Tallgrass Film Festival on October 2nd. It's hard to illustrate how big this is, but needless to say, we are very excited. You can find out more information about that screening HERE. We did our primary form of announcement with a video where we try a little sampler of hot sauces from the show Hot Ones. You can see that video HERE. In addition to the Tallgrass screening, about a week before, there will be sneak previews of the film happening around IBC 2022 in Amsterdam. We're still planning more screenings for the future as well, we can't wait.

That isn't the only great news we have! We are also adding a new member to the team. That being, Jillian Terrell! Jillian helped us tremendously with sound on PERSONAL HISTORY and has since joined us for several upcoming projects. Having gotten to work with her, it became very clear that we would love to have her be a part of our crew.
Additionally, we have done a few co-productions with other local teams. First was Fritz Robinson's GOOD LISTENER. This was a fun little comedy short we shot in the spring and it will soon be premiering at No Coast Film Festival in Emporia, KS on September 10th.
We also recently participated in Take 36 (a 36-hour film competition) with our friends Gina & Roy in which we made a short film called CHEKHOV'S HAND GRENADE. This screened at the Orpheum here in Wichita and at the Tallgrass Film Center a few weeks later. We've decided to do a little bit of extra ADR work before releasing it online. It was a lot of fun to make and we plan to work with them again fairly soon.

​Lastly, we've been working on our animated holiday short for THE DOG PARK for the last few months. Animation is well underway and while the upcoming busy months will surely bring turbulence, we are still on track to release the short on time. After screening the animatic, I think everyone will really enjoy it.

With that, I'll disappear again until the next update. See you when I see you!

- Tyler
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PERSONAL HISTORY Trailer & 4 Months of Other Catching Up

5/7/2022

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Hello everyone!

Did I mean to go four whole months without a post? No. Is this the longest we've gone without updating the blog? Maybe. I'm not willing to check. Could someone else have stepped up to the task? Definitely. Did they? Nope. Is this getting question/answer thing getting old? Absolutely.
I'm happy to say we've had several things happen in the last few months to make this nice and jam packed. Honestly, every time we go a while without a blog update, it's because I'm waiting for the next big thing to happen so I can talk about it all. So let's just get into it. Enough horsing around. Starting with the most important stuff first.

PERSONAL HISTORY
Lots to say here. The movie is completely finished. I spent the winter editing. We had a really great set of sound mixing sessions in a nice studio setting in the early months of the year while I wrapped up the score at home. Just a very good experience in post. Since then we've just been making a ton of plans for the future of the film. Sadly, it's still too early to say anything one way or the other. It's a long process.
However, what we can do, is show off our new trailer that just dropped this week! We'll keep updates coming as they happen. ​
COMICS
I'll do this as an all encompassing thing. This year as a whole will be fairly quiet on the comic book front. We've been doing some work behind the scenes, but it'll be a slow process getting anything new out there.
We do have something happening today though! With Free Comic Book Day happening, we always like to do a little something. Check out a special edition of THE DOG PARK PODCAST with a little free something-something. This is something we're doing just for fun. Not to the caliber of a genuine Dog Park story. But I do think anyone who is interested in the history of this project will be able to appreciate it.
Other than that, we'll talk more about THE DOG PARK on the podcast. Including everything we've done so far this year. I won't waste your time making you read it now.
​
As some of you may remember, we do have another comic. A SCRIPT CALLED MISERY has been on a long hiatus. It went mostly unannounced because it was totally up in the air for a bit. The long and short of it is, Beth hit some major burn out with the project after Issue 3. Getting the fourth going was a struggle, so we gave her some time off. That expanded to several months and that turned into making the mutual decision to take it off her hands and find another way to deliver it. We have two final chapters left. It's been an awkward run. The second we started off, Beth's work on LEFT HOOK prevented her from working on the next part. I think that shook things up more than we could have anticipated. It's certainly not her fault as far as keeping momentum is concerned. It was virtually impossible to do. That said, with some cool down time, I have jumped in and penciled the last two chapters. Layout is totally done and it took me about a week of focused work to get it done. This was generally the longest stage on the first three issues. That said, with other things kicking into gear, ink and color will take longer than usual. I will not promise a finish date for the final parts of the story, but it will get done eventually.
For one last piece of bad news, we teased a full length motion comic to go along with the release of the omnibus version. That's not going to happen anymore. We recorded most of the dialogue, but that was back in 2020 when we were doing everything remotely. Those who were not used to remote recording, had a lot issues. It was too much to deal with, especially since it was meant to be an easy project any way. I'll probably use some of the scenes as promotional videos, but the goal at this point is to move forward and finish the book itself. Companion material is of very low priority.
All this said, expect another long silence before we jump back in. When it's all said and done, it will be a fun read. I hope it will be worth the embarrassingly long wait.
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EVERYTHING ELSE
We've had a few cool events go on this year. The main one being ICT Comic Con for this year. They moved the event a little earlier this time around and we had a great time as usual. We were also surprised to find out about an encore screening of ANOTHER DAY COLDER happening at Doc Sunback. I had gone to see Patrick Poe & Lolo Loren's new movie ALMOST, SORTA, MAYBE and found out that we were playing when our poster was featured outside. A pleasant surprise for sure.
We're helping Fritz Robinson on his latest short film, GOOD LISTENER. I served as Assistant Director and Director of Photography. Now we're handling post-production. We've got a few other collaborative projects in the works and I'm sure we'll post about those as they come to light.
​
As for now, I think that's all we've got. Hopefully another update will come sooner than four months from now. No promises!

​-Tyler
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Catching Up To 2022!

12/31/2021

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Another new year is approaching and with it, several new things on the horizon. 2021 was interesting to say the least. We stayed busy from beginning to end. A feature, a short and a graphic novel certainly saw to that. Before we get into what is coming, I'll take a second to mention that on January 1st, our holiday sale will be coming to an end. All of our movies and comics will return to their regular prices. In the meantime, head on over to the store page to take advantage of some discounts.

THE DOG PARK
A few things to mention here! We've wrapped up everything we needed to with this first volume. Previously, in the deluxe digital edition, we hadn't finished every motion comic upon release. I'm happy to let you know, they are all now available.
We have also finished the lineup of companion podcasts. David and I go in-depth on every chapter of Volume 1 and there was quite a bit of fun to be had in doing so. Feel free to check those out HERE.
Although this was covered in the last episode of the podcast, I feel like it's worth mentioning a few spark notes on the future of THE DOG PARK. Firstly, Volume 2 is currently being written. However, we aren't expecting to have it ready for release until about 2023. Some prep time will be necessary to make sure it comes out as good (if not better) than the first one.
That said, 2022 will not be left empty handed. We are currently working on an animated holiday special to release just in time for next November or December. The script is great and it should be a lot of fun when it rolls around.
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PERSONAL HISTORY
Let's do a short update for our new feature film! The movie is currently in post-production. We spent Christmas Eve getting a handful of pick-up shots and only have a little more material to collect before we can move on to sound, color, etc. We recently had an in-house screening of a work in progress cut and the reactions so far have been pretty good. If all goes well, we've got a great flick on our hands.
Now as for release plans, much like some of our other films, it'll be a slow burn process. We want to explore a few avenues that we haven't before. That said, the earliest one can expect to see this will be in the fall. I'm sure there will be plenty more updates in the future, so stay tuned for all of that. For now, I'll go ahead and let you see a poster...

PODCAST
This month we ended season 7 and began season 8! We plan on this new year having plenty of new episodes, of course. Though the line up is still a little up in the air. Currently, we do plan to have our January episode be the new Golden Jamie Awards (still plenty of movies left to catch up on).
I would say expect another lighter season. Not as many episodes as we used to do. Who knows, we may surprise ourselves. You can of course follow all of this on the podcast page.

ANYTHING ELSE
There are still plenty of things left up in the air for 2022. Who knows, maybe we'll try to squeeze in another short or something. We do plan to attend the next ICT Comic Con happening in March. We'll see if we can sneak our way into a couple other events too. Playin' it all by ear!
Regardless, we hope everyone has had a great holiday season and of course, has a happy new year! There should be a lot to look forward to!

​- Tyler
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WISH YOU WERE HERE IS HERE (& MORE)

11/11/2021

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WISH YOU WERE HERE
WISH YOU WERE HERE is now available to rent or own on Vimeo and VHX!
It is $5 to rent, $10 to buy. The package also comes with a commentary featuring David and I, as well as an outtake reel. This is definitely worth checking out! We've spent this year getting all kinds of awards and nominations, which has been nothing short of an honor. Just in the last week, the film screened at the Will Rogers Motion Picture festival where it was nominated for "Best Comedy Feature" and over in Florida we were nominated for both "Best Comedy or Musical" and "Best Motion Picture" at the Prince of Prestige Academy Awards. It's been a great journey finally getting this movie out to an audience and this is, of course, one of the biggest steps of all. 
If you want to watch the film, head over to the WISH YOU WERE HERE page to learn more!
NEW PROJECT
As for new business, we just finished principal photography on a new feature film, PERSONAL HISTORY! Still a lot of work to go in this one, but a big deal nonetheless. We shot for 13 days with a fantastic crew and an amazing cast including Samantha Montero and Patrick Poe. I took the directing helm on this one and I'm very proud of the work everyone has put in to make it happen. It is going to be a long post-production process. I'll probably be at it for a few months, but we all can't wait to see it come together.

THE PODCAST
​Moving on over to the podcast, we recently put out episodes for Halloween Kills and our annual Halloween Special. We still have at least one more episode this season (maybe an additional bonus episode as well), that should be coming this month. So keep an eye out for that very soon!

There is always more great news to come! So stay tuned!
​-Tyler
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DOG PARK, FESTIVALS & MORE LONG OVERDUE UPDATES

9/30/2021

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Why make an update today when another month could go by without one, right?
Oops! Slipped up a little bit there. We've been so busy doing stuff, it's been a little hard to sit down and unpack it all in a long form update like this. I guess I'll do my best here.

THE DOG PARK
It's here, folks! THE DOG PARK is finally available to everyone for purchase. We're trying something new by making paperback copies available directly through our website. We'll see how well that works. It is also available digitally through VHX and Amazon. There will be one more platform soon. But that will be an update for later. The VHX version will be the "Deluxe Digital Edition". This means it will include bonus material such as fully voiced motion comics! The first two chapters are currently available in that form with the other three soon to follow. There's been a bit of a delay getting that ready much to our chagrin. We'll be catching up very soon.
We kicked off the release at ICT Comic Con and had a great time doing it! Probably one of our best convention experiences. Comics were sold, much fun was had. Maybe next year we can do a couple conventions, instead of our usual one. We'll see.
Also, we are still producing our companion podcast series, THE DOG PARK PODCAST, we'll be going in depth with every chapter about how each story came together behind the scenes. Should be a lot of fun, so tune in!
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FESTIVALS
Speaking of fun, we recently went to No Coast Film Festival and had an absolute blast! CARRIER PIGEON screened along side many great shorts in an absolutely gorgeous theater. This November, we'll be going to Claremore, OK to see WISH YOU WERE HERE at the Will Rogers Motion Picture Festival.

STORE PAGE
Notice anything new? We now have a dedicated store page for all of our films, books and now merch that we have available. It's still a bit of a work in progress, but a single page seemed like the best way to display all the options everyone has for everything we've been making. Go give it a look!

OTHER NEWS
We've been working on a new film this summer and leading into the coming months. It's been a lot of work, but should be well worth it. It's not really something we're ready to talk about in detail just yet, but we will soon. Keep an eye out for that.

Also, anyone who was paying attention may have noticed, but our Twitch Thursday streams have come to an end. There were several reasons for this, but it was a fun experiment while it lasted. We may still pop in occasionally for a one off. For now, you can enjoy this archive page.

Lastly, we're well into this season of our movie podcast. We still have some exciting episodes coming up. The newest one being a long teased Robert Rodriguez episode. (Seriously, we said we'd do it in our first episode like 6 or 7 years ago) Stay tuned for those as well.

​That's all we have for you for now. Big announcements are still to come. Like, pretty big. You'll know. Can't miss it!

​-Tyler
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CARRIER PIGEON!

6/29/2021

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I'm a little embarrassed to admit that not only have we not posted about the release of our newest short film here on the blog, but I haven't mentioned it at any stage of its production. That said, it has been a busy year and we have talked about it elsewhere!

CARRIER PIGEON is the newest short film directed by David J. Cantu! It follows a teenager as he takes a seemingly easy paper route in order to earn some extra cash, only to wind up in a turf war with a local biker gang.
The concept was originally developed in the early days of IC by Jamie Zin and I as a short film Jamie would direct. That film never happened and the script collected dust in the years since. However, in 2020, it became clear that once things were back up and running, it would be a good time to shoot a new short with Cantu and this was my first suggestion as far as scripts were concerned. He and I worked on a new draft to punch it up and fit his sensibilities and I think it works very well as a goofy summer comedy.
Pretty much the whole short was shot on an iPhone, not only to keep things simple, but to also keep equipment light for chase scenes and anything close quarters. It was a fun shoot, but as the cinematographer, I don't know if I'd shoot a whole movie on a phone again any time soon. It certainly had its limitations.
We hope you enjoy the short, which can be viewed HERE. We don't plan for much of a festival run for this one, if any, but we'll let you know if there is any news on that front.

-Tyler
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