Category: A Script Called Misery

Post-Sunback, Pre-Air Cap

6/21/2019

Hey everyone!
Time has been flying. Lots of wonderful things have happened in the last couple weeks and I will try to cover all of it.

LEFT HOOK
We're making heavy progress. I am now in the compositing phase, assembling everything and these shots are looking great. I'm so glad to finally see it coming together. We're working like hell to finish this movie and hopefully we'll reach the finish line on time.

PODCAST
There has been one new podcast episode since our last post. With LEFT HOOK picking up, things have slowed down a little bit. David Cantu, Scott and I had a chat about "GODZILLA: King of the Monsters". Our next episode will also be Godzilla related. Stay tuned for that!

OTHER EVENTS
Recently, FALLING OUT and THE BROKEN KEY screened at the Doc Sunback Film Festival. It was a really great time! We got to see some of our filmmaker friends and watch some cool movies.
The screening for THE BROKEN KEY that I attended went very well. I missed FALLING OUT, but Cantu was present and apparently it had a good turn out.
It's been cool to see this festival grow since last year. They really brought things up a notch in quality. Can't wait to see what next year is like!

Screenings may be winding down a bit this year, at least for the short films we've already released. Maybe a couple more. I don't know.

However, one thing we do have coming up is another year at Air Capital Comic Con! Last year went very well and we're trying some new stuff out this year. The even takes place on November 16th & 17th at Century II here in Wichita.

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

First Post of 2019!

1/20/2019

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

Exciting Things on the Horizon!

12/17/2018

Hey everyone!

We've only got a few things to cover. But since this might be the last post before the end of the year, I just wanted to briefly talk about how great this year has been. It really feels like we've made a hell of a lot of progress this year and I couldn't be happier. Two short films released, a debut comic book and our friends, family and followers helped us to raise additional funds for our upcoming feature film. We attended more film festivals than ever this year and had our first booth at a convention. We even added a new member to the crew. All-in-all, it's been wonderful. I speak for everyone here when I say we are very thankful for all of the new followers we have gotten recently and all of you who have shown your continuous support throughout the years.

Believe me when I say, the achievements listed above only speak to what we have publicly released. We have accomplished much more than that behind the scenes and we can't wait to share everything else in the coming months, years and so on.

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.

LEFT HOOK:
I've done a pretty bad job of keeping this blog up to date on all things LEFT HOOK. Mostly because we have been posting about it elsewhere. A lot of progress has been made. Can't stress that enough.
Speaking of the help we received with funding, the animators that you helped pay for have finished their work on the film! Everything else is being handled here, in the studio. Can't thank those who donated enough, because the work these artists have produced is incredible.
We've been slowly releasing our behind the scenes videos to the public (six months after the backers see them) to give insight into the process of a film like this. All of these videos can be seen HERE. There are plenty more on the way, so check those out.
We are still on coarse to release the film next year, though I would never give a release date until I'm 100% certain that we will hit it.

NEXT YEAR:
Speaking of next year, we have several plans for 2019! With some of them, it is too early to talk about. We recently had our company Christmas party and discussed a new major project that will be underway after the completion of LEFT HOOK. Very excited for that one to say the least.

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

November Catch Up

11/28/2018

It's been a little over a month so it's about time I write an update! Lots of things have happened, so hopefully I remember everything.

A SCRIPT CALLED MISERY:
We released the first issue of our comic book series, A SCRIPT CALLED MISERY. It's been doing pretty well so far. We launched it at Air Capital Comic Con earlier this month and nearly sold out. It was a great time for sure! We are making plans for further hard copy releases, but currently the issue is available digitally through Amazon and VHX. You can find the links and a few preview pages HERE.
The series is meant to be a quarterly release so there will be a few month in between each issue. The full script is written, so Beth works on pages during down time from LEFT HOOK. Can't wait for you guys to see the rest of this thing, we're all very proud of it.

PODCAST NEWS:
So this month has been our yearly hiatus, meaning no new episodes for now. However, we will be returning next month with Season 5. We have some cool things planned for this season and something I'm excited to say is that we have a new announcer for the intro and outro; fellow Wichita filmmaker, Lief Jonker. This dude is a local legend and we're so happy to have him on board.
More than likely, we will be returning next week with Creed II. Hope you'll tune in!

HOLIDAY BUNDLE:
Lastly, until January 1st, we have a special deal happening on VHX. We have created a bundle with LIVING AFTER MIDNIGHT, BRIMSTONE TERRACE, ANOTHER DAY COLDER, HOW MUCH and FALLING OUT (plus all of their bonus features) for $5. That's 8 hours of content. Along with scripts and an art book. If you ask me, it's a pretty great deal and it's also a great way to support us. All funds from this and our comic go towards funding LEFT HOOK. So check out the deal HERE.

That's all I've got for now. See ya next time!

-Tyler

How Much, Broken Key & Podcast Season 4 Finale!

10/26/2018

Hey everyone!

It’s been a little while since we’ve posted on here. That’s because every time I’m about to write up a post, there’s something else that is about to come out. So at this point, we just needed to make a recap at the end of the month.

HOW MUCH:
First things first, we released our short film, HOW MUCH on October 2nd for the world to see. It almost feels like old news now, but it’s pretty cool if you guys haven’t seen it. Make sure you definitely check that out!

PODCASTS:
We have released four podcasts this month! The first was “Alfred Hitchcock” with Chris, Beth and I. We talked about Rear Window, Vertigo and Psycho. The next was “First Man” with Chris and I. Followed by, “Halloween (2018)” with Beth, myself and newcomer, Scott Reacher. Finally, we have just released our “Halloween Special 2” where Beth, David Wayne Young and I cover three classic Universal monster movies (Dracula, Bride of Frankenstein and The Wolf Man).
It’s been a great month for this season to go out on. We will now be taking a month hiatus before we start season 5 of the podcast.

THE BROKEN KEY:
Back in the end of September, we assisted Fritz Robinson in the production of his new short film, THE BROKEN KEY. After which point, we took the role of the post-production studio on the film. We edited, mixed and did special effects work. It’s a nice little spooky short and we had a lot of fun working on it. Give that a watch, why don’t ya!

ANYTHING ELSE:
Coming pretty soon, we will have yet another LEFT HOOK Behind the Scenes video going public. That will be on the first Friday of November.
Don’t forget, we will also be launching the first issue of our comic book A SCRIPT CALLED MISERY at Air Capital Comic Con on the 10th & 11th as well. Lots of things to look forward to.

Hope everyone has a Happy Halloween! That’s all I’ve got for you.

-Tyler

Upcoming Events & New Podcast Episodes!

9/1/2018

Hey everyone! A few new things to talk about today and a few reminders.

NEW MEMBER:
I'm happy to introduce a new member to the team, Scott Reacher! Funny enough, he's been around for a project or two before now. He was actually a production assistant on LIVING AFTER MIDNIGHT and more recently worked on HOW MUCH and FALLING OUT with us. We're all excited to have him on the team and show you what he's capable of.

HOW MUCH:
HOW MUCH will still be premiering on the 7th at the MTH Theater in Kansas City. David Wayne Young will be there along with Beth, Chris, Scott and I. We hope to see you there!

A SCRIPT CALLED MISERY:
News about this has been a little on and off, so I'll get everyone up to speed. This is a comic book mini-series that I wrote a few years back and Beth is currently illustrating. We've made a good amount of progress on it and it's turning out amazing!
The story itself revolves around a team of freelance writers working for an eccentric producer to bring his heavily plagiarized vision to life. The inspiration comes from some of my own experiences in freelance writer, squishing them all together into a 5-part comedic story.
The great news is, the first issue will be coming very soon! In fact, it will make its debut on November 10th & 11th at the Air Capital Comic Con here in Wichita. It will be going online for everyone else at the same time. It will be available on mostly digital platforms but we are testing out a limited release of physical copies.
There will be more news on all of this soon.

PODCAST:
There have been two new episodes since our last update. Those being, "Seven Samurai" and "Tarantino Deep Cuts: Writer". Both turned out great. We'll be recording another episode while David is in town and that should come out on the 11th.
Also, I made a few lists of episodes under specific categories. Including: Anime, Golden Jamies, Star Wars Films and Tarantino Films. These lists can be found at the bottom of the Podcast page.

That's all for this update! See ya next time!

-Tyler

HOW MUCH! And other new developments...

3/22/2018

It's been a second since I've been able to sit down and type out a whole blog post. So here we go!
Currently, we're in the process of moving into our new home/studio with a ton more space for working. We've already done quite a bit and I'm sure we'll be showing off some of it in the next IC RECAP. It feels great to be making progress.
On a completely separate note, I feel that it is finally time to officially announce our next short film, HOW MUCH! First and foremost, to put any worried minds at ease, this does not really effect our work on LEFT HOOK. Our feature-length projects are always the main focus, but in our spare time we also want to create other content to not only fill the void during long production processes, but use these as opportunities to show our growth and introduce you to the new voices on our team (much like we started with Beth's ANOTHER DAY COLDER). This project is spearheaded by David Wayne Young. We've been slowly but surely working on it for about a year now from script to now being fully in production. While I am taking a few of the more complicated shots on, my focus will mostly remain on LEFT HOOK while others take on the bulk of animation. This is thanks in part to the interesting style the short is presented in blending animated characters with live-action backgrounds. We managed to find time early last month while David was here to film our background shots and snagged a couple behind the scenes photos while we were at it.

If you look hard enough, you can see my big fat gut in a couple of those pictures. I should work on that. But I've gotta sit around and animate all day. Yeah...that's why...
Anyway, HOW MUCH should be very interesting when it comes out and I have nothing but faith in David and his vision.
I'm not sure when the damn thing will actually come out. Hopefully we can do something cool with it when the time comes.

However, with the exciting news of something new happening, I also gotta bring some bad news. Not REALLY bad news or anything. Basically, Beth is focusing full time on LEFT HOOK with me, so we are having to cut back on her outside work load a bit. What this means is that the comic book series we sorta announced (A SCRIPT CALLED MISERY) is needing to be pushed back a bit. We were hitting a few snags to begin with (though we did make quite a bit of progress), so this will help in the long run. No cancellations or anything. Just a brief hiatus.

Other than that, we will be covering everything else in the upcoming IC RECAP. Lots of great stuff on the horizon! See ya then!

-Tyler

2018 IS HERE!

12/31/2017

Happy New Year, everyone!

Man, what a year 2017 was. Although content-wise it might not have seemed like as much as usual, we've made all kinds of massive steps this year. Going from a cloud-based group to localizing here in Wichita, becoming an LLC, making major progress on new projects; that's only the tip of the iceberg.

We have a lot of plans for 2018. We'll start it off with a fundraiser for the big project we've been slowly but surely working on for the last year and a half, Left Hook. During which we will finally be able to show off previews of what we've been working on all this time. Ideally, we also want to release a couple short films and premiere our first ever comic book series. Not to mention, we have an awesome line up for new podcast episodes. We've been working hard throughout the year to prepare ourselves for all of this. We're all extremely excited to bring this to you.

Also, to play a bit of catch up here, we have released three new podcast episodes since our last update. Those being: "Star Wars: The Last Jedi" (featuring David Cantu), "Christmas Special of the Thrill" and "Don Hertzfeldt" (both featuring Beth Christine). The next one will be later this month on the films of Mamoru Hosada. None of us have seen any of them yet, so we're excited to check them out!

Something else that has happened recently is that our feature, LIVING AFTER MIDNIGHT, was put on both Amazon Prime and Vimeo On Demand. There will be links to all of the options on the film's page, HERE. The content you get on Vimeo is pretty much the same as VHX, minus a pdf booklet. The version on Amazon is free to watch for Prime members, but it is only the film by itself, no bonus material. Maybe give that a watch. It is a New Years movie after all.

Finally, I believe we have mentioned that we were going to have another screening of our short film, ANOTHER DAY COLDER at some point. That will be taking place on Friday, January 5th in Kansas City, MO as a part of the First Friday Film Festival. The event starts at 7:30 PM and takes place at MTH Theater at Crown Center. For more information on the festival, you can consult their website, HERE. Some of us will be attending and I'm definitely looking forward to seeing what else is screening. The event is totally free, but they do suggest getting tickets in advance.

Anyway, that's all I've got for now. Hope you've all had a great holiday season! I can't wait to roll out some big news in the coming weeks / months!

Later!

-Tyler

The Last Week

8/23/2017

Hello everyone.
How've ya been? Good? That's great. We have been making a lot of progress on our end. In fact, that's what I'm here to talk about. I'll try to break all of this down, because there will be quite a bit of information...

WE ARE AN LLC:
So for the last few years, we've been working towards having most of us in the same place and officially becoming an LLC. This year, we accomplished both of those things. Personally, I'm so happy to have reached this point. We have been working very hard to get here and we can finally start moving even further along. I have to give major thanks to David Young. Without him, we would still be sitting around wondering where to start.

WEBSITE 4.0 UPDATE:
Since you are here, you've probably noticed the update. This is definitely the biggest one so far. I've been holding back on going with the more modern website design because for a long time, they just looked ugly to me. But I'm actually really pleased with how this tuned out. I feel like everything is a bit more streamlined.
You may have noticed that we have new photos as well. Special thanks to Scott Reacher for helping us take the group photos on Friday.
We have also added a few new things in the "Our Work" section. Specifically, ANOTHER DAY COLDER and a section for Comics with a promo for A SCRIPT CALLED MISERY. Neither of these things are actually out yet, but will be coming fairly soon. I wanted to include them as part of the portfolio. I will talk more about the comic later.
In the "About Us" section, we have updated the personal profiles of each of the members and added a new introduction video. We figured it was time to replace "WHAT IS ILLUMINATION CINEMA!?". It was a little out of date. I'm very happy with the new video and hope you enjoy it.
Additionally, we will be launching a new page soon. The page will be called "Services". It will be full of different jobs you can hire us for both locally and online. I still need a bit of time to get the page ready, so it will probably be up some time next month.

OUR PROJECTS:
We've been posting quite a bit on social media about all the aforementioned topics as well as some work on our current projects. There is still quite a bit we aren't prepared to talk about. But we have been extremely busy balancing a lot of stuff. Pretty much everyone in the company has something that they are working on right now. In general, we've been recording several voice over performances, storyboarding for our current feature, punching up scripts and working on getting ANOTHER DAY COLDER set up with a release date.
As promised, I want to briefly talk about the comic. It is based on a screenplay I wrote a couple years ago and it's being illustrated by Beth. I just finished looking over the sketches for the first issue and it is turning out really great. I'm not sure when it will be rolling out, but I'm very excited for it to happen. I'll tell you more when I'm able to.
As for everything else, I can't say much. But I'm equally excited about those things too.

PODCASTS:
While David Young was in town, he, Chris and I recorded two podcasts. One being "Directed to Dumpster Vol. 2". It was released a few days ago and I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. There will be another episode going up (hopefully) on September 1st. After that, I believe the episode releases will be a bit slower.

Anyway, that's all I've got for you today. I hope you'll stay tuned for everything coming down the pipeline. The future is looking pretty bright right now.

-Tyler