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CARRIER PIGEON!

6/29/2021

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I'm a little embarrassed to admit that not only have we not posted about the release of our newest short film here on the blog, but I haven't mentioned it at any stage of its production. That said, it has been a busy year and we have talked about it elsewhere!

CARRIER PIGEON is the newest short film directed by David J. Cantu! It follows a teenager as he takes a seemingly easy paper route in order to earn some extra cash, only to wind up in a turf war with a local biker gang.
The concept was originally developed in the early days of IC by Jamie Zin and I as a short film Jamie would direct. That film never happened and the script collected dust in the years since. However, in 2020, it became clear that once things were back up and running, it would be a good time to shoot a new short with Cantu and this was my first suggestion as far as scripts were concerned. He and I worked on a new draft to punch it up and fit his sensibilities and I think it works very well as a goofy summer comedy.
Pretty much the whole short was shot on an iPhone, not only to keep things simple, but to also keep equipment light for chase scenes and anything close quarters. It was a fun shoot, but as the cinematographer, I don't know if I'd shoot a whole movie on a phone again any time soon. It certainly had its limitations.
We hope you enjoy the short, which can be viewed HERE. We don't plan for much of a festival run for this one, if any, but we'll let you know if there is any news on that front.

-Tyler
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More DOG PARK & 1 Year of LEFT HOOK

5/16/2021

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Lots of fun news that we can cover today! It can all be broken down into two categories.

THE DOG PARK:
Things have been going well for THE DOG PARK. We released the first in a series of podcasts called...wait for it....THE DOG PARK PODCAST! Very creative name. Basically David Young and I chat about each story and go into detail about any behind the scenes info that we can. This first one however, was mainly focused on the origins of the series itself. This is a video show and we will be streaming new episodes on Twitch every second Tuesday of the month. Afterwards, they'll be available on our website at THIS PAGE or on our Facebook page.
We've also made a limited number of paperback copies for the free first chapter available at a couple local Wichita comic shops. Those being Hero Haven and Prairie Dog Comics. Many thanks for them for allowing us to give them out there.
Coming this Tuesday, there will be another cartoon out. I'm very excited for this one especially. Can't wait to share it with you.
For anyone who is interested and hasn't jumped on it yet, you can check out the Indiegogo page to pre-order your paperback or digital copy of Volume 1.
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LEFT HOOK:
It has officially been a whole year since LEFT HOOK made its debut online. It has had one hell of a run in spite of everything 2020 threw at it. We've decided to pretty much end the festival run to make way for WISH YOU WERE HERE, but it is still available through Vimeo OnDemand, VHX and TromaNow. Maybe we'll offer up some more screenings in the future or expand the platforms, but this is where it will sit for now. We're pretty comfortable. You can get links to all of those at the LEFT HOOK page.
Additionally, as a fun little release for this first anniversary, I put together a full "deluxe edition" soundtrack on Bandcamp. This includes every piece of score in the film, plus a few bonus demos and such. Feel free to check that out HERE. We haven't spoken much about our Bandcamp on here, but we have released score albums for all of our features (including WISH YOU WERE HERE) and an EP for our work on NIGHTMARE DRIVE. Feel free to check all of that out.

I'm sure we'll be checking in again pretty soon. Lots of great stuff still on the way!

Catch ya next time!

​-Tyler
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All About THE DOG PARK!

5/1/2021

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Today is a pretty big day for THE DOG PARK!
Well, this whole month is, actually. We'll get in to all of it here.

First and most importantly, we are starting pre-orders for Volume 1 through Indiegogo. We go more in-depth on the campaign page, but I can briefly explain here as well. The campaign is to support the distribution of the book. It's a direct way to secure yourself a copy (whether that be digital or paperback) and helps us with additional printing, as well as setting us up for conventions. Definitely consider picking yourself up a copy! We'd greatly appreciate it!
INDIEGOGO CAMPAING CAN BE FOUND HERE!
Additionally, as you can see right above, we've also made a companion cartoon. This is one of two animated promos we created to support the new book. It was a lot of fun to put together. This one features the usual in-house voice cast along side Tori Kamal and Ciara Duarte. The other cartoon will be coming in the middle of the month. Stay tuned for that!
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If you want to sample some of THE DOG PARK, then you're in luck. IT'S FREE COMIC BOOK DAY!!! What, do you think I picked today to start on accident!? That's right, folks! We're making the first story of the book, "Some Like It Burnt", free to read on four platforms. Including: VHX, Webtoon, Tapas and GlobalComix! (For VHX, you'll have to use the code "FREETDP" at checkout. They wouldn't let us make it free.) We hope you enjoy it as much as we do!

I think that covers everything for now. Stay tuned this month for more great THE DOG PARK related content.

​-Tyler

EDIT: I've seen that the actual Free Comic Book Day "event" has been postponed until August. We'll still be doing ours in May, like it's always been. Plus, ours is all digital after all.
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WISH YOU WERE HERE is Here!

4/13/2021

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Hey everyone!

A lot has been going on, it's been a little hard to keep up! The biggest thing was our premiere screening of WISH YOU WERE HERE. Big thanks to everyone who came out, it was an absolute blast! To tell you the truth, ever since the whole COVID thing started, I've been beating my head against the wall, trying to think of the best possible ways to get all of the great work we've had going the last couple years out there. We initially planned for this movie to come out last fall. Instead, we took our time and waited for spring. The horizon is looking much better with every passing day, which is exciting news for this movie. Hopefully this means we'll have a good year of screenings here and there. We will certainly keep you up to date on that.
In the meantime, WISH YOU WERE HERE has been having the makings of a great awards run so far. We took home "Best Narrative Feature Film" at the Indie Eye Film Awards. David snagged a Semi-Finalist spot in the categories of "Best Indie Feature Film" and "Best First Time Director (Feature)" for the Best Director Awards. We are currently in the running for "Best Indie Feature Film" and "Best Acting Duo" in the Oniros Film Awards. Hopefully, we can keep adding onto the good news as time marches on.
For anyone who is curious to learn more about the movie, David has done a little Q&A video about the movie. This can be seen below.
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Speaking of features and Q&As and the like! Our first feature film, LIVING AFTER MIDNIGHT, will be celebrating it's 5th anniversary on April 15th. Therefore, we will be livestreaming the film on our Facebook & Twitch pages along with a Q&A featuring David and I taking a look back at the film. It all begins at 7pm central. Hope you'll tune in!

We have a lot exciting things coming up in the next few months. Some of which we haven't really been able to touch base on here in while. So stay tuned as we switch gears because it's going to be a fun spring / summer!

​-Tyler
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Watch the WISH YOU WERE HERE Trailer!

3/12/2021

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Check out the trailer for our new feature, WISH YOU WERE HERE! With our world premiere set for April 5th at the Starlite Drive-In, we are really excited for you guys to check it out. Hope you guys enjoy!

​-Tyler
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WISH YOU WERE HERE Premiering Soon!

3/5/2021

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BIG NEWS!

WISH YOU WERE HERE is making its world premiere on April 5th at the Starlite Drive-In here in good ol' Wichita, KS! We've been working hard behind the scenes to form a release plan and especially make this screening happen.
We've been dying to release this movie that we have been more or less sitting on since 2019 and this seems like the safest, best way to pull that off. It's a way all of our cast and crew can attend and given our previous great experience with the Starlite through HorrorFest, it seemed like a no-brainer.
Ticket info will be coming soon. I believe that will be done through their website. We'll find out. We do have a Facebook event page if anyone wants to follow that. We'll do our best to update it with any new information.
As for the future, it will be a game of wait and see. We plan to take our time with the theatrical / festival side of release. There are many ways to approach this and we want to explore every avenue. 
In the meantime, there is plenty to look forward to. We will be releasing a trailer next week and we've already shot a handful of fun IC TRIES episodes to promote the screening. Stay tuned for all that!
In other news, you can now catch us every Wednesday on Twitch (in addition to Thursdays) for new art streams. We'll be working on our new comic THE DOG PARK. Feel free to come hang out and chat with us! 
There are even more cool things we could talk about. But why do it all now? I'll save some of it for later. That's all I've got for you. Catch you next time!

​-Tyler
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News for this year and next!

12/26/2020

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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.
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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.
WISH YOU WERE HERE
David Wayne Young’s feature film WISH YOU WERE HERE, for those unaware, is a live action film we shot back in the summer of 2019. Back then, we thought it would probably be released this fall, but the world had other plans. We took our time in post-production because of this. Now I’m happy to say, the film is complete.
Release is something that we are discussing right now and we’re still figuring things out. Ideally, we would like to get things moving next spring and hopefully we’ll have better luck in 2021 as a whole. We’re all pretty stoked about how this thing turned out. While it certainly had its challenges, seeing the final product feels really nice. I mean, you didn’t hear it from me, but I’m very proud of David’s work on the movie and I’m elated that we got to work on it together.
Look forward to more updates about that one as time marches forward.
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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.
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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.
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THE PODCAST
Season 7 of the podcast has begun! We kicked things off with our annual holiday special and much like last year, we tried to get as many IC peeps on the episode as we could. We will have an episode all about Mandalorian Season 2 coming up soon featuring Cantu and I. This will be the exception to our plan which is to have one episode every month. The goal is to release each of them on the last Tuesday of every month. Also, we will be premiering each of them on our Twitch channel. Speaking of…

TWITCH THURSDAYS
We’ve been going strong over on Twitch every Thursday, with an occasional bonus stream. We’ve done a couple special events for the holidays. Usually with multiple hosts and some type of theme. Something we have coming up though, for New Years Eve, we will be streaming LIVING AFTER MIDNIGHT! You can follow our Twitch page and check ​the schedule to stay updated about the goings on over there. We usually also post on our social media stories whenever we’re on.
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To wrap this up, we all hope you had a great holiday season and boy, oh boy, a happy new year would certainly be nice! That’s all I’ve got for you today! Catch you later!

-Tyler

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Happy Halloween!

10/31/2020

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Boo!

Did we scare you? We stuffed this month pretty full of Halloween themed content. Or at least as much as we could given the circumstances. Here's a full list of what has dropped and links to see them.
  • NIGHTMARE DRIVE (Our newest short film!)
    • Bonus Features for NIGHTMARE DRIVE! Including an Outtake Reel and Behind the Scenes Documentary!
  • IC HALLOWEEN PARTY (An abridged version of the stream without the short films is now available)
  • The new HALLOWEEN SPECIAL 4 of our podcast is available to listen to. David Young and I talk about the 90's Dracula and Frankenstein films.
  • We also released several new IC TRIES episodes centered around various Halloween themed treats.

Hope everyone has had a Happy Halloween! Big news coming next month!
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Catch Up & Coming Attractions: October & November

10/18/2020

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Fall generally ends up being our busiest time of year for one reason or another. No exception this year. A lot has happened. To the point where we've been making posts almost every day. I'll try to break it down here as simply as possible.

NIGHTMARE DRIVE
Our newest short has started it's festival run. I said before that I didn't expect much. We got two selections so far out of the very few festivals we submitted to. Very proud of it. The most important screening to us was definitely the premiere back on the 12th. We played at the Starlite Drive-In here in town (both NIGHTMARE DRIVE & ANOTHER DAY COLDER). We went to the first showing and had an awesome time. There was also an encore presentation on the 17th. As we've said before, big thanks to Leif Jonker for making that happen. We also had a screening in Columbus, OH on the 15th as a part of the S.O.S. Horror Film Festival.
Currently, there are two other events related to this film. The first is the IC HALLOWEEN PARTY. This will function as the online premiere of NIGHTMARE DRIVE, but will also feature a couple of our other shorts along with special segments we've programmed where the cast and crew play horror trivia and do a special IC TRIES. This is a pre-shot show, but we will be streaming it on the IC Facebook page on October 24th. After that, the film will be available here on our website.
Speaking of IC TRIES, we prepared several new Halloween themed episodes to go with the release of NIGHTMARE DRIVE. There will be a new episode every Monday in October.
Lastly, we have a screening on the morning of October 25th in Austin, TX as a part of the Ethereal Horror Film Festival. We've also been nominated for "Best Animated Film". I'm sure it will be a great time. The jury is still out on a couple other festivals, but those were all delayed until next year, so who knows what will happen.
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Beth Christine & Scott Reacher at the Starlite Drive-In for Scary Movie Mondays
LEFT HOOK
This year has been rough on LEFT HOOK. We had big plans, but they had to be ever changing to compete with all the twists and turns. All-in-all, it hasn't had the worst run. It hasn't had an ideal run! But not the worst run. We've garnered several nominations and even a few awards along the way. Recently, the film was put on Vimeo OnDemand (to buy or rent) and Troma Now (to stream). We're excited to expand the platforms for the film and hope to have more in the future. You can see all your options on the LEFT HOOK page.
But, the biggest piece of news for local fans and film lovers, we're actually going to have a screening. On November 6th, LEFT HOOK will play at the MTH Theater in Kansas City, MO as a special presentation by First Friday Film Festival. A huge thanks to Matthew Dunehoo for setting this up. Honestly, this is the cherry on top for me, I've been dying for a festival experience with this one and I'm finally going to get it. Plenty of precautions are being taken and I feel really good about it, you can read up about the event HERE. 

TWITCH THURSDAYS
We've recently introduced something new that hopefully some of you will be interested in. We've launched an IC Twitch channel. This is something a few members of the team have been wanting to do for a while, but it always felt like it should be separated from all of our more serious work. Twitch seems like the best place to do this. As of right now, the goal is to stream weekly on Thursdays with a rotating cast of hosts. We've been playing around with it for a couple weeks now and seem to be getting the hang of it. We also have archives of streams up on our Miscellaneous Stream page, for when they roll off of Twitch. We're looking forward to seeing what fun we can have on here.

I'm sure more great news will be rolling out soon. But for now, that's all I've got. Catch you next time!

​-Tyler
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Comics, Drive-Ins & Streams

9/18/2020

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Hey everyone!
How is everybody? Great? Good. I’ve actually got a few things to cover today, so I’ll cut the pleasantries and get started.

NIGHTMARE DRIVE
The NIGHTMARE DRIVE trailer dropped today. Hope everybody enjoyed that. Our journey to find festivals for it has been rocky. Honestly, after the beating LEFT HOOK took, I wasn’t surprised. A majority of them have jumped over to next year and that’s fine. We’ll let you know if anything happens with all of that. What’s important is, we have two important dates to announce.
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.
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​A SCRIPT CALLED MISERY
On Friday September 25th, we will be releasing the third issue of our comic series A SCRIPT CALLED MISERY on VHX and Amazon. This is definitely my favorite of the series, so give it a look. Beth did an amazing job as usual with the illustrations. Things are moving slower than we would like, but the time is well spent. The bar definitely keeps getting raised with each issue.

STREAMS
Speaking of streams, I’ve had a handful of old streams sitting around gathering dust. I always felt like I might do something with them, but I kinda felt like some of the dead air in them might have been a turn off for rewatchability. So I’ve made a new page for MISCELLANEOUS STREAMS and I’ll be posting highlights from older streams there. There will be a variety of stuff there. Video games, card games, maybe other stuff where we are just chatting about our work. I’ll be looking around for any of our old stuff to throw on there.

Well, I'm sure there's a million other things to say, but they aren't important right now. So I'll leave you with that.

Until next time!

​-Tyler
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