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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-Nugen 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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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.
Wow. I can’t believe I haven’t made a blog post since Halloween. Yet at the same time, I can. Things have been busy around here, but there has also been a lot in the air. That said, I believe it’s time to unpack all of it. HOLIDAY SALE Before we start getting into the meat and potatoes, I just want to mention that we do have a holiday sale going on over on VHX and with our two films on Vimeo OnDemand. We knocked $2 off of everything. Movies, comic books, you name it. Okay, pretty much just those two things, but still. Definitely worth checking out if you’ve been wanting to get any of these things. This will be going on until December 31st. LEFT HOOK This month, we’ve been releasing some fun material for LEFT HOOK on our social media pages. Mainly mini-featurettes with some of the cast. Also a special IC TRIES where we do the One Chip Challenge to bring attention to the film. The biggest development however, is that among all the other spots it has landed, LEFT HOOK can now be streamed on AMAZON PRIME! It took much longer than I would have liked to get that finalized, but I’m just glad I can finally say it. Recently, I was interviewed on INDIES ON INDIE to talk about the film. It was nice to follow up because I also appeared on the show back in early 2018 to promote the fundraiser. It was nice catching up with Patrick Poe and I hope everyone enjoys the episode. While the main focus was LEFT HOOK, we also touched on a few other things that I can announce here today.
A SCRIPT CALLED MISERY Our current comic book, while moving slowly, is moving along. With 3 out of 5 parts released, I fully expect for this to be wrapped up next year. The idea is to finish releasing the singles digitally and then to print an omnibus for conventions. While that is cool news, the even cooler news is the additional plans we’ve been putting together throughout the second half of this year. When the omnibus is released, we will also be putting out a motion comic movie paired with a fully voiced audio track. We pulled in several of our good actor friends to be a part of it and I’m equally as excited to get that out there as I am the other two issues. With cast members like Elijah Muldrow and Harrison Hallows leading the project, how could I not get excited!? It will be similar in presentation to this promo for Issue 3. I don’t want to give a solid timeline for it just yet. However, we do expect it to be out next year. THE DOG PARK Well-well-well! Something new!? That’s right. I announced it a little sooner than I originally intended on that interview I mentioned earlier. But I couldn’t pass up the chance. Honestly, I’m super passionate about this one. It’s a big deal to me. I won’t do a deep dive into exactly what it’s all about until later, but it’s a graphic novel featuring multiple episodic stories following a very fun group of characters. They’re all dogs. Don’t worry, there are no bad dog puns or anything. They just happen to be dogs. Seriously. It’s not even a big deal. The approach to this one will be different to that of A SCRIPT CALLED MISERY. Aside from being released all at once, we are going to try out a pre-order format through Indiegogo this time. That seems to be the common way to handle indie comics these days. Though, we do plan to have copies at conventions as well, whenever those get going again. THE DOG PARK is a series that I used to write when I was a kid first learning to be a writer and an artist. So like I said, it’s a passion project. This time around I’m illustrating things myself and mostly writing by myself as well, with fantastic contributions from a story team of Beth and the Davids. All of this said, DOG PARK will be more than just a comic book. We already have plans for companion cartoons and a few other fun things to go along with it. Alas, these are all things we will need to cover later as well.
First off, the short will be making its debut at the Starlite Drive-In! Once again, IC is supporting HorrorFest, this time in the form of Scary Movie Mondays. NIGHTMARE DRIVE will be playing during the first intermission on October 12th. Should be a fun night, they’re doing a triple feature of FRIDAY THE 13TH 5-7.
Like we said, NIGHMARE DRIVE will play between Parts 5 and 6. Then ANOTHER DAY COLDER will also be playing between Parts 6 and 7. Should be a good night. The features start around 8PM and tickets are $7 for a single patron and $14 for a carload. You can read more about Scary Movie Mondays HERE. The other important date is October 24th, when we will be doing a special stream for the online premiere of NIGHTMARE DRIVE. This will be a whole event of its own. We’ll be screening ANOTHER DAY COLDER and THE BROKEN KEY as well as playing some horror trivia games with the cast of the short film. That’s all going down on the IC Facebook page. So keep an eye out over there.
PODCAST
I know for a fact that we've had several podcasts come out since the last time I mentioned them on the blog. The most recent one being our episode on Boomerang Movies. Chris, Beth and I watched a few classic cartoon films on the Boomerang app. It was a lot of fun. That one had to be done remotely, like the old days. We'll probably be doing that for the next few as well until all this crap blows over. It didn't seem to make a difference in quality though. So no loss there. We planned for very few podcasts this year to give ourselves a breather. Perhaps with the current conditions, we may increase the amount we're doing by a little bit. OUR OTHER PROJECTS I've been hesitant to really dig into how the current conditions have made us change plans. Mainly because things have been so up in the air for the last several weeks. That and it's just a bummer and everyone, well most people, are sick of hearing about it. However, I feel like there's plenty to be addressed, so we kinda have to. First off! While LEFT HOOK's current line up hasn't made any changes since our last post, there have been several other events that were unannounced that were shifted around or all-out cancelled. Some of which are extremely disappointing. We planned to make a convention appearance this year, but we're having to pull out (if the event itself even proceeds) because with the change in timing, our plans for that time will no longer line up. The idea of releasing in the spring is a lost cause. The summer is more likely, but impossible to confirm. We will know where everything is truly sitting in a month or two. We've been making plans for every avenue we may come across in order to be prepared. We'll try our best to keep a level of optimism about it. Then there is WISH YOU WERE HERE. Full transparency; I finished my edit in March and we are picture locked. Feels good to have gotten that far. We now have sound and music being worked on by outside collaborators and we are giving them plenty of time to do those tasks. A big thing we won't be able to accomplish will be ADR. Again, something we'll just have to wait for this to blow over to execute. We preemptively eliminated any worry about our window of time as we have decided to move the film's release to next year. Which may sound like a big jump, but in all honesty, if we had started the festival run in autumn, the film wouldn't have been released on digital platforms until about next spring anyway. With the beating LEFT HOOK's release is taking, I wouldn't want to see this movie suffer the same fate. As for NIGHTMARE DRIVE, we technically haven't budged on it since February anyway. Since I haven't talked about it here, I can quickly say that we shot a majority of the live-action elements for the film already. We still need to do animation and miniature work, but that is currently on hold. We planned to get rolling again this month but we have yet to discuss the new plan. Something I'm sure we'll be meeting about soon. I'm sure the release will be effected, but I can't tell just how yet. Hard to say when there is still so much work to do and no way to do it for a little while. Yet another thing we'll tell you about when the time comes. All of this said, I can happily say that we aren't coming to a complete and total halt. I've seen plenty of good work getting done and from the second conditions began to change, we have been discussing what can be done to keep things moving. We'll try to keep a little hope if you do! That's all for now! Later! -Tyler Bad news, folks.
Both screenings scheduled in March for LEFT HOOK have both been postponed. Treasure Coast International Film Festival has announced that they will be moving to June and we will be screening on the 26th. No word as of yet from First City as to when they will be moving everything to. We'll be letting everyone know as we find out. I'm sure that this will also change the conditions of a few other festivals and events that we could be a part of. That's just something we will have to deal with as it comes up. This really sucks for everyone. We spent three long years working on this movie and already had to wait to screen it after other ridiculous delays last Fall. Hopefully this will all be cleared up soon and we can have a good idea as to how all of this will be playing out. Until then, here's some good news! We will be releasing a new issue of A SCRIPT CALLED MISERY sooner than planed. In fact, we're releasing it on the 14th. In addition, we will be making both Issue 1 & 2 only $3 on VHX for the rest of March. If everyone is staying home for a bit, they might as well have some new comics to read. I can't promise a regular schedule for these releases still, but I can say that there won't be over a year in between each of them anymore. Stay safe, wash those hands and stay tuned, folks! -Tyler Sorry for the sparse updates. As you can imagine, we've been very busy. The goal of this post is to get everyone up to speed on everything we've done recently and what is to come with all of our projects.
LEFT HOOK I'm not sure where all I have said this. The backers have known for a little while now. But, the movie is finished. We have made a few submissions and we will hopefully know when screenings will be happening in the next few months. We're very excited for people to start seeing this thing. As you know, we've put a lot of time into it. We have a plan for over-all release of the movie, however, things could always change so I will keep my lips zipped. There will be plenty of updates on this project on the future. No need to worry about that. WISH YOU WERE HERE In November, we re-shot a few scenes and got some additional footage. Consider this project in post-production now. We're not currently in a rush to edit it, but will probably do so this spring. We've been attacking this one a little bit at a time. For those brief moments, it is going by pretty fast. I don't want to make any assumptions for this one because it could go any which way, but I'm confident in our ability to knock this one out pretty fast once we get around to it. HEY MAN Right after our re-shoots, David Young put together another little project. This one is a short film made specifically for IGTV. We shot it on an iPhone with the intention for it to be watched on a phone. It was a fun experiment. This is the first chance I've had to talk about it here. You can find out more HERE! A SCRIPT CALLED MISERY It has been a while since we've been able to budge on this one. In late 2018, not long after the release of the first issue, Beth had a majority of Issue #2 illustrated. The entire thing has been roughed out and most of the pages had finished line-work. Work on the book had to come to a stop so that Beth could focus fully on her responsibilities for LEFT HOOK. The project has sat there ever since. We are currently getting back on track with it. Issue #2 should actually be done very soon. I don't know when we plan to release it as we want to take advantage of the break in order to get a little bit ahead. But the long and short of it is, the comic is Beth's priority this year. We plan to get as much done as possible. NIGHTMARE DRIVE With LEFT HOOK in the bag, the other person who can focus their efforts on their own project is Scott Reacher. A few of the live action elements of this hybrid short film have been done, but a majority of the work is still to come. We do have a plan to execute this one and we will see how the results turn out. It'll be nice to finish this one. Most of it rests on Scott. There will be more updates on this one soon. PODCAST I honestly don't even know where I left off on this one. Our last update was in early October. Since then, we've ended Season 5 and launched Season 6. A lot of episodes have come out. The main thing that wrapped up was our mini-series following the Godzilla films. FINALLY! It was a chore to say the least to get through all of those. Especially when time was tight while working on LEFT HOOK. But we managed to finish it. Unfortunately, we had to cut some episodes last season to keep things moving. I tried to have episodes made without me, but nothing much came of that. This year, the schedule is a little more loose. I haven't planned very much, so we can add to it or stick to the plan. Expect an episode a month. Give or take. Plenty of fun should be had. That should be all for now. 2020 is shaping up to be pretty exciting. A lot of projects led by a lot of people should be making their way out and we couldn't be more excited. Last year was a little poopy considering we spent all that time working on these projects and didn't get to release any of them. The future is looking pretty good. We'll see you in it! -Tyler
We unfortunately won't have a new issue of A SCRIPT CALLED MISERY to release there, but there will be copies of the first issue available. Issue #2 was nearly ready, but we had to postpone the coloring process to focus on LEFT HOOK. Next year, we plan to get lots of work done on the project and have a couple issues out. We're used to multi-tasking, but a few other things had to take priority. We're totally committed to finishing it though. Won't leave you hangin'! Well folks, that's where I'll leave you. There are plenty of cool things brewing behind the scenes here and we can't wait to share them with you as always! With that, feel free to play spot the Tyler in the photo below! Catch ya next time! -Tyler  Hey everyone!
We've had a bit of a slow start to a big year. We're making lots of progress on LEFT HOOK right now, chugging through our current responsibilities and planning the next phases. Today we have lots of good news, but a small bit of poopy news as well. Let's jump right in. UPCOMING SCREENINGS: Some great news we got recently is that HOW MUCH will be screening at Apex Film Fest in Tucson, AZ on February 23rd. David should be in attendance and it should be a great time. More info on Apex can be found here! We also received word that Fritz Robinson's film, THE BROKEN KEY, which we worked on, is screening at Doc Sunback's Kansas Day on January 29th! Info for that one can be found here! Also, the film will show at First City Film Fest in Leavenworth, KS. That one is in March. We may try to make it to that one, but I'm not quite sure yet. More info about First City Film Fest can be found here! SOME DELAYS: Man, so I probably should've thought twice before making an announcement last time. My bad. Essentially, we've been looking at where we are on LEFT HOOK and it is becoming obvious that we need to cut back on some of our side projects to keep a good pace. The podcast is sticking around because it take virtually no effort to produce most of the time. However, we'll be slowing down production on our comic, A SCRIPT CALLED MISERY and our new short film, NIGHTMARE DRIVE. With the comic, we are nearly done with Issue 2, so at least one release should still be expected this year. But the following issues may take a while to come out due to the hiatus. With NIGHTMARE DRIVE, we will be limiting the amount of work we can do on it until LEFT HOOK is completely finished. At that point, we will be working to wrap both of these projects up. Sorry about that! PODCAST: We have a new episode of the podcast on DRAGON BALL SUPER: BROLY featuring myself and Cantu. It turned out to be a pretty good episode. There were plenty of laughs shared. So I hope a few of them can transfer to you. We'll have another new episode coming out pretty soon, starting a little mini-series on the Godzilla films. Should be fun! But I have to say, that's about all I got for you! I'll be back fairly soon with a new update. So just sit tight. Until then, keep enjoying the new year! -Tyler
PODCASTS: Season 5 of the podcast is here and that is cause to get excited! In the past couple weeks, we have released two new episodes. "Creed II"; featuring Chris, Tyler and Beth. As well as, "Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse"; featuring Tyler, Beth and Scott. Our next episode will be the newest Christmas special with a fun twist. We listed several Christmas films (good and bad) and randomly selected them out of a hat to do a "Christmas Roulette". Should be a good time....for you. Like I've said before about this and every season previous, we will be constantly trying new things with this year's line up. One long form mini-series within the show that I'm particularly excited for. So stay tuned.
There are several small concepts for side projects that we would like to explore. Such as more live streaming and more content for Instagram. We have already been taking advantage of streaming and IGTV for our "IC Tries" videos. In which we try interesting or potentially gross items. Usually snacks and drinks. We've also played a few card games on livestreams this and we may do it again in the future. We may also do some other things on streams. We aren't sure yet. Lots of possibilities.
We do plan on releasing a few more issues of the comic next year as well as at least one short film. You may have seen the title, NIGHTMARE DRIVE, floating around and that would be the film's title. We're not entirely ready to say too much about it, but we have recorded with several actors and plan to begin working on it as work on LEFT HOOK slows down (similar to how HOW MUCH was made). The project will be spearheaded by our newcomer, Scott Reacher. He and I co-wrote it from his own concept and David Young and I will serve as producers. We're very excited to make it happen. The idea is to take as little time away from our priority projects as possible, but we do want to create some free content for you next year and short films are the best source. There will be more updates as time goes by. Speaking of which, that's all I've got today. See ya next time! -Tyler |
