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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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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.
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.
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 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 |
