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Hello all! As is tradition, we kick off the year with a blog post going over every project we have. I'll try at least. As expected, 2025 was a pretty busy year. 2026 will involve you getting to see the results of all of that work. BRIMSTONE TERRACE Let's get the big one out of the way. This took up a majority of our time last year and now it's heading out into the world. Our little sneak preview in Kansas City back in November went really well. We scored the award for Best Animated Feature while we were there. That was nice of them! It's going to be a minute before we hear about any further screenings, so right now the film is cryogenically frozen until the time comes. One thing we can show you in the meantime is the trailer! Not right this second. Like, next week! We'll be doing a live stream on our Twitch channel where we are all going to hang out and watch it with you. Doesn't that sound fun? It's happening Tuesday the 6th at 7pm central. Be there or be square! Or watch it the next day when we post it. Do what ever you want. I'm not the boss of you. PRELIMINAL REFRAMING This short film also had a screening in November and it also went very well! Here's the thing: it's screening again in a couple weeks at the Old Times Not Forgotten Film Festival. The fest is January 17th - 18th in Derby, KS at the Derby Plaza Theater. I actually popped by last year and it was pretty fun. Can't wait to pay them another visit.
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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
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 There were many times I sat down with full intention to update the blog and thought, "it would be a lot funnier if I didn't". At some point, the bit has to come to an end. I do unfortunately have to write a post. What a sad day. PERSONAL HISTORY Our feature film, PERSONAL HISTORY, was released in July. It is available to rent or buy on Vimeo OnDemand. You should totally check it out. I heard all kinds of great responses on the festival circuit. Such as "Wow good job", "I liked it" and "Please tell me that was a real documentary. I'm afraid of dying". 'Nuff said! Go to the film's page HERE! A SCRIPT CALLED MISERY This was another thing we released, that I talked about on the last post. Issue 4 was released in May. That leaves one left to go in the series. The good news is, it's pretty much finished! I have a few notes that need to be applied, but other than that, I wrapped it up back in the spring. The team seems to have responded very well to the ending of the series, so I look forward to having everyone see it. I'll go ahead and throw out a release date of November 24th! Why not? A BUNCH OF SHORT FILMS At the beginning of the year, we were working on a few short films. Those have hit festivals and have made for a great fall run! HOLE IN THE GROUND has especially been doing great. Kicking things off at 307 Film Fest in Wyoming, going to Tallgrass along with DEATH IN LAVENDER and it will be finishing up this leg of its run in November with the Will Rogers Motion Picture Festival. We'll see what the future plans are with all of them some time next year. We're debating on what else we want to do. Keep an eye on our upcoming events and screenings to see if any of them are coming to a fest near you.
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 |
