Authoring and Marketing and Bears. Oh My.

Well, no, not bears.  That was "Indiscretions".  But on "Jack vs Lanterns" we're  up to the point where the movie is finally finished and I have to move in to getting it out to the public.  For a lot of filmmakers this would mean hitting festivals to try and drum up some buzz.  For me that would mean spending more money on entry fees and waiting longer for the movie to start paying off.  This movie has been in post way too long for me to wait another year to start selling it, no less adding another 25% to the budget spent on very unsure entry fees.  (It's not really a "festival baby" kind of movie.) Add to that the fact that the cast is scattered to the four corners of the country (well, three) and very busy, so lining any of us up to be present at conventions or festivals means we would have to get into some very specific shows.  If any conventions want to host us after it is available for public consumption, I'll gladly work with them the best I can, but my impatience is showing here.  I do think a panel on the still sub-$5k feature would be helpful since so many people now try to raise more than that for shorts.

So, that moves me on to getting the DVD authored, the cases designed (we usually have two separate designs), I worked on a Blu-ray version and of course we have our VOD files being reviewed.  The reason I have two DVD case designs is simple.  I go with a higher ink consumption design for the discs available through CreateSpace.  For the ones that I'll be printing on demand here and for the cast I go with a design that uses high contrast on the back. where the description is.  Also, it's easier to use CS's designs since they'll be adding graphics after the fact and inevitably it will overlap with something in my design no matter how much I follow the downloaded templates.  (I swear they move that "DVD" box every few months.)  Both versions are DVD-R, but the ones I make myself are generally only available for a limited time because I eventually get burned out on making them in small batches.

High Contrast Back panel for in-house DVD-R case.

This time around I also tried something new.  Blu-ray.  A lot of the movie is just gorgeous and I want people to be able to own it in HD, not just stream it that way.  But, up until now I have only used BD-R's for screeners.  No menus.  No extras.  So, I foolishly believed the disc could hold the 25GB advertised and that the files were the sizes they said they were.  I had the brilliant idea to fit both "Lumber vs Jack" and "Jack vs Lanterns" on one Disc.  With loads of extras.  And in the initial set up it looked to be working.  I kept track of the memory the whole time, but after the encoding, the numbers all shifted up and the disc wouldn't burn because there wasn't enough room.  I started cutting content. This took two days partially because there were a lot of menus involved and I also tried more compression on some of the extras.  In the end all I had left was "Jack vs Lanterns" and a blooper reel from "Lumber vs Jack".  I was pretty disappointed.  So, there may be a BD-R version available, but it probably won't have as many extras as the DVD, which I don't like.


Now I'm in the waiting game.  I'd love to give an official release date, but with closed captions for 1hr and 45 min of movie waiting to be proofed by Amazon and knowing that they may think my rating is "inappropriate", I don't want to give a date until all of the files are approved.  I should know more by mid-week.


My question now is, how do I get the word out?  How much do I spend and how much do I try to do with press releases and teasers?  How do I keep the message that this is a monster movie with a retro tone rather than a blood and guts gore fest or an edge of your seat horror film?  The movie is finished, but the work isn't near done.  And these aren't my favorite tasks.

Catch the original On Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/v/hocusfocusproductions



Thoughts and suggestions in the comments would be great.

New Art and Cool Actors

As a reader of this blog, especially if you've seen any of my unedited posts, you have probably noticed that I am not much at typing.  I do it all the time.  Partially for a living, some may say, and yet, I find myself having to correct a lot of mistakes.  I blame short fingers and a lack of concentration.  Largely, I get two or three words ahead of myself as I tend to compose and type as I go.  I'd blame my wrist injury from three  years ago, but that's mostly healed and I was a pretty lousy typist long before that.

Anyway, that makes me a bit leery when it comes to typing out credits.  Actors really like to have their names spelled out correctly.  I mean, for most of them, my getting their names and faces on the screen is a large portion, if not all, of their pay.  So, when the third render and export of the finished "Jack vs Lanterns" had a typo at the very end of the movie, I was a bit..."miffed".  I was  hoping to move onto the DVD Build, but that wasn't looking too promising.  It would be another few hours of rendering and exporting video and as my readers know, Spring into Summer is the busy time for my "day job".  I have a few social obligations coming  up, and as an anti-social (except when I'm standing behind a bar) kind of guy, those use up a lot of my energy.  Pushing this movie a few more weeks back after nearly two years may not seem like much, but to me it was a weight I really didn't want to deal with.

So, I emailed the actor, pled my case and within a few moments got the coolest response ever.  Read this bit of trivia that let me off the hook.  I just want to say that Micah Christein is one cool guy.  Very talented too.  He's nothing like the asshole character he plays in "Jack vs Lanterns".  In fact, I had him slated as a possible for a different role, but the fates changed that.  I guess that will be another piece of trivia down the line.

THE ART!

I'm still awaiting approval from IMDB, but I hope to have this up as our primary photo there soon.  It's a bit of a work in progress, but the layout has been in my head since the beginning (much like the "Lumber vs Jack" monster carry poster was always what I wanted to shoot).  Since this mock-up I've cleaned up quite a few things mostly only models and graphic designers will notice.  That's roughly 50% of my friends and family.  

I give you the first "poster" for "Jack vs Lanterns"! 

Rough Draft of what will likely be the Amazon Art for "Jack vs Lanterns"

There is a slight chance that I will have to make some changes for Amazon.  They don't like weapons to be the primary focus of a poster, but in general, I find that they allow a gun to be a prop like this.  Pointed straight at the camera may cause a bit of a problem. We'll see.

By the way, if it looks a bit like an  homage to a 70s TV show with a monster in the background, that's not an accident.  Jack takes a bit of a back seat in this sequel (Don't worry.  I still swing an axe here and there.)  I thought all of the phone calls and information sharing he did with the real heroes of the movie harkened back to my days of playing Bosley when the neighbor girls wanted to be the Angels.  The fact that there are three here is a happy coincidence.

I hope you're all looking forward to the movie.

Like many sequels, it's even sillier than the first, but I think a fun time.
If you haven't seen "Lumber vs Jack" yet, it's FREE until the end of May on Amazon Prime.

After June 1st you'll need to be a member or pay for it.

More on Day for Night.

If you follow my YouTube channel and the "Jack vs Lanterns" page, you've likely seen me do some talking about relighting things in post.  It's not really "easier" and it's a "digital trick" I've tried to avoid in my movies up until now in keeping with my retro style, but sometimes it's a necessity.

A shoot we did at a house once, in 3D, a camera captured some light from a room that gave away the time of day, so I added a shadow obscuring that room entirely.  It was very helpful.  You can't really use the feature to fix a scene that isn't lit at all (it can make terrible a bit better, but not good), but you can take an over lit scene and add some mood, color and depth.  It's much easier with a static camera.  When you plan for it, the post process will be time consuming, but reasonable.  I don't suggest shooting with an eye for digital lighting unless you've used it a lot and there is no way to get the lighting situation you want in camera.  Lab Day on "Jack vs Lanters" was a good example.  I lit it cleanly for the blue screen.  Adjusted lights to make sure the actors looked their best and then tweaked everything in post.  Colored gels in a small bluescreen room don't work well, so post lighting was the best choice for efficiency and effect.

We talked about that in this video.

Other situations are thrust upon  you.

Due to schedules I had ONE night at the cabin to shoot the scenes with Christina Daoust and Brewier Welch and because of the mountain location I had what is a strange situation for a filmmaker.  We weren't losing the light fast enough.  It was well past what I would consider night time, and I'm sure it was getting dark in town, but up on the mountain, it was still pretty light.  I wanted to get their two shots in before some extras arrived, so I shot as soon as the sun was basically down.

Deck Scene as shot with Fog F/X added.

I actually liked the sort of "dusky" look of it, but when cut with my footage shot at "true night" in other locations that were being intercut with this, the differences were too much.  You can see in the photo above that I used some shutter control to minimize the exposure and I added some digital fog to tie it into some studio shots, which helped with the lighting a bit (and with audio helped bridge the indoor and outdoor scenes brilliantly).  What you can't see here is that I was using a handheld camera and at one point I caught a blue sky behind the house.  That had to go.

So, I added post lighting.

Deck shot with shadows added.

If you look to their sides, you'll see tht I added some shadows.  I also then relit their faces with a bluish filtered light too cool the light of the overall scene.  The difference is subtle, but it will help with continuity.

I did all of this to the layer behind the fog, so as to not effect the fog's orange tinge, which was also accomplished using post lighting.

Overall, I'm happy I put in the effort.  This effect can be addictive and  you can definitely overuse it or depend on it too much.  I know I did in this film.  Between weather forcing us into the studio and only having limited access to some locations, the time of day we shot during wasn't always a choice or the studio lighting was just too "clean" to match with the outdoor elements of the scene.  I do encourage people to shoot some shorts, light them way too evenly and work on adding depth and mood in post just to get a feel for it. The day you need it, you'll want to know how it works.

In X-24, the ability to use negative lights to add shadows was also SUPER HELPFUL.  One shadow hides a camera that snuck into shot because we forgot to move it.