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Hello everyone!
I almost did a good job keeping up with updates during that campaign. Now it’s almost the end of June and there’s a lot to say. BRIMSTONE TERRACE The campaign ended in May and we received a decent amount of help. I’ll take the opportunity to extend another thank you to everyone who helped! Before it ended we released a behind the scenes video featuring many of the voice talents from the film. Oh look! Here it is!
We also did our first Twitch stream in quite a while. David Young, Jillian and I were joined by special guests Tori Kamal and Melissa White for a stream counting down the final hours of the campaign. It was a lot of fun, we showed off a few animatic clips and ended up promising a few additional streams if we hit certain goals. We did in fact hit a few of those goals and now we will be streaming a marathon of the original 2013 series in July and we’ll be doing a cooking stream featuring segments of our upcoming Brimstone themed cook-book in August. We also did one last weekend where we announced a bunch of the updates you’re about to read. All this to say, there is a lot going on over on the IC Twitch channel. So I dunno. Maybe follow it or something to get notified when we’re live.
On the production side of things, we’ve been making major strides. Animation is complete! We are now onto the compositing phase, while Jillian revs up for the sound mix. As of last week, I actually finished compositing the first act. So we’re making very good progress. Hopefully that holds up. PRELIMINAL REFRAMING Speaking of Jillian, she recently completed work on a short film of her own called PRELIMINAL REFRAMING. It is an experimental narrative, sort of sci-fi leaning short and may be a piece of a larger idea. We’ll be digging into release possibilities for that in the coming months. A COMPLEX HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES Great news for any Wichitans wanting to check out Christopher Strong’s documentary feature! We will be screening at the Tallgrass Film Center on July 19th. Tickets will be available soon, so keep an eye out. Chris will also be in attendance, so be sure to bombard him with questions when the movie is over. Not during the movie. That would be rude. I think that does it for now. We have a few more things on the horizon that we’ll be sure to let you know about. After a sizable gap, of course. Wouldn’t want to keep this blog updated frequently or anything crazy like that! - Tyler
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If we posted this a week ago, we would've been telling you how excited we were to announce the premiere of the film. However, First City Film Festival, which was set to be the premiere screening, had to cancel the event this year. It's a sad announcement to have to make. We've enjoyed screening there in years past and we hope they are able to bounce back for next year. As for our premiere, we're cooking something up. Don't you worry.
PODCAST We've kicked off our 11th season of the Illumination Cinema Movie Podcast. Starting with our annual Golden Jamies episodes and more recently, Direct to Dumpster Vol. 10. Be sure to stay tuned. There will be lots of great episodes this season.
Man, this is awkward. I haven't updated this thing since September. I'd say I had a good reason, but...
2024 Catch Up Probably the biggest thing that happened between posts was the premiere of ARRIVE ALIVE at Tallgrass. It was yet another great year. You'll have to take my word for it. I didn't take any photos. We had a really good turn out though. We're excited to see where we'll go next with it. Also, vaguely related our scores for ARRIVE ALIVE and PERSONAL HISTORY are now on Spotify. Lastly, as of December, we wrapped up our tenth season of the podcast! My goal was to get 30 episodes, but we fell just short. The last few months of the year were very busy. You'll see why. A COMPLEX HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES In the gap between updates, we finished Chris's documentary. We completed the edit just before Halloween. This is new territory for us, so navigating the release of the film next year will be a journey for sure.
The film is a blend of retelling the original story and concepts for what would have been a second and third season all sort of packaged in a digestible new story. I'm writing and directing with the help of my producers David Wayne Young and Jillian Elaine. Needless to say, I've been developing the story for a very long time. There are notes in my phone from over a decade ago that are finally becoming scenes. We've worked really hard to make sure audiences new and old are able to enjoy it.
Production started in the summer of 2023 with Tori Kamal, Jamie Zin and I returning to voice our respective characters in a crazy three-studio international voice over session. Since then, we've been balancing working on two other features as well as commissioned projects in order to keep this one afloat, while also trying to squeeze in time to work on it. The good news is, we're about 2/3 of the way through animation on it. That said, there is still a lot to do. 2025 will be a busy year with a major focus on producing this film. There will be so much more to share in the coming months! Hopefully that means I'll keep this blog updated too. We'll see. - Tyler Hello everyone!
A new month, a new update. There have been developments on all our current projects. PODCAST I usually don’t lead off with this because it’s such a side project, but although we released three new episodes in July, until recently, only one of them made their way to all major podcast platforms. It seems annually we had some kind of issue with our hosting service and it’s that time again. When I got in touch with them, their response was about as good as, “fix it yourself”. Ultimately, we moved over to a new host that has been much more accommodating. So be sure to check out Direct to Dumpster Vol. 8 and Deadpool & Wolverine. The former featuring special guests Lolo Loren & Patrick Poe. New episodes coming this month! ARRIVE ALIVE Good news! We know when are where we will be premiering our next feature. Where? We can’t tell you yet! I’m sure we’ll be whipping up a fun way to do so, very soon. Or we’ll just tell you in a boring blog post. I dunno. We’ll see how much effort we have to expend. ANIMATED PROJECT It’s happening, folks! We’re one month into the animation process and progress is being made. Still not ready to announce a title yet, but it’s worth checking in. We will also be completing a few more sessions for voice over soon. All focus is slowly shifting onto this. COMPLEX HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES Speaking of voice over, David Cantu’s narration sessions have come to an end. We’ve been spreading these out over the last couple months and wrapped up a little over a week ago. Now on to more editing! That’s pretty much it for the moment. Here’s to more great news in the near future! - Tyler
A COMPLEX HISTORY OF THE US
This one is making some strides! Chris has completed his first cut of the documentary. The biggest thing happening right at this moment is that our very own David J. Cantu is recording narration for the film. OUR NEW ANIMATED FEATURE The often mentioned, yet to be revealed animated project has also had some major developments. As mentioned in the last post, we held a screening of LEFT HOOK to raise funds for a new drawing tablet, as the one I had been using croaked. Good news! The new tablet is in and it's being put to use! Now a year into this production, it's still the one with the biggest hills to climb. That's making an animated movie for you. We're still not quite ready to announce what the project is, but that will come soon enough. The animation process has officially begun and personally, I'm really thrilled about it. Things are really heating up with this one, can't wait to share more about it. That's all I've got for now. No promises when the next blog post will be. I've already tarnished my record. Don't want to break your heart again. - Tyler
Hello everyone!
It's that time of year. The beginning of the year! 2023 was a wild ride in so many ways. We had so much going on that we couldn't fully get to everything we wanted to do, which might be a good problem to have. I'll do my best to catch up on everything we've done since our last update and let you know what we have coming up for the future. 10TH ANNIVERSARY As many of you may know, 2023 was the studio's tenth anniversary. There were a lot of things we wanted to do in celebration of that, but not a lot we had time for (as mentioned before). What we did manage to do, was a fun stream in celebration featuring Chris, David Young and I. We chat about past experiences and play a little IC trivia. That can be seen HERE! A SCRIPT CALLED MISERY After five years of off and on work, it is complete. The first comic book series we produced is finally finished and fully available with all five parts of the story. Links to every issue can be found HERE! It feels very good to have weight of this one lifted off of our shoulders. There was a point in time where we wondered if we would ever see the day, and it seriously bummed me out to think we would leave something half finished like that. Luckily, we were able to strap in and get it done. THE DOG PARK While on the topic of comic books, it's probably a good time to jump to this one as well. You'll probably notice that the last couple updates on it were more or less giant shrugs. We sort of surprised ourselves with a major push to complete the other project, which we pretty much anticipated the opposite of. Sadly, it meant there was no movement on this series and that may remain the case for a while. Optimistically, I would love to put out a single issue or something, but that will also be hard to promise. There is a lot of work finished for the second volume. All of the scripts are complete and many of them have been penciled. It all comes down to time, which I know I won't have much of. We'll make announcements if progress is made, but I certainly wouldn't expect it. SHORT FILMS We spent the entire year talking about a couple of short films we made. Those being HOLE IN THE GROUND and DEATH IN LAVENDER. Both of which is still currently in the festival stage. I'm sure we'll be switching gears to an online release for the former soon-ish. Probably some time this year? Definitely. I have to assume at least. The other is completely up to Fritz, whom we co-produced the film with. 2024 should see a couple new short film productions as well. We've been talking about some possibilities recently and are excited to pursue them. ARRIVE ALIVE Getting into the big topics now! Principal photography for our live action feature was completed in November. To call it an undertaking would be an understatement. We had 18 shoot days spread over 3 months and it was a lot of work to coordinate. We have a few things to pick up here and there and editing will begin soon. Needless to say, December was spent enjoying a bit of down time. Time will tell where this thing goes, but we're excited to send it out to festivals this year! THE TWO OTHER FEATURES Yep. We've teased both of these a bit, so here's a little update on them. Considering we're not giving titles yet, don't expect much. First up, something that has only been lightly talked about, Christopher Strong is directing a feature documentary. We're very excited as this is the first real foray into this field. We did a nice readthrough of the script last month and we're ready to go into production this year. As for the other, we have previously mentioned a new animated feature film. This finally made some real strides in 2023. We spent a good amount of time gathering voices and making storyboards, which culminated in screening the first complete animatic of the film at our studio holiday party. All in all, it's coming out great. I guess I haven't said it here before, but I will be serving as writer and director for the movie. Much like our last animated feature outing, the process will be long. However, we are employing new methods in this production which could potentially quicken the pace (or maybe it will slow us way down, who knows). THE PODCAST Last but not least, we have the podcast. Season 9 wrapped up with a nice holiday special. While the studios tenth anniversary has come and gone, the podcast's has just begun. Season 10 will be premiering very soon with the Golden Jamies as our launch episode. Should be lots of fun. We're trying out a lot of fun new stuff in this year's schedule, so we're all very much looking forward to it. I'm sure there is more to say. But hey, what ever that's enough for now. We all know I'm terrible at updating this blog. So I'll probably see you next January! - Tyler |
