When things start happening for your movie...three years later.

 I made Jack vs Lanterns, quite awhile ago.  Did a little independent release of it and didn't really make back the production costs.
Finally, I got up the courage to submit to the one distributor I thought would handle right, Wild Eye Releasing.  They needed some deliverables I didn't yet have and being already a few grand down on the project, I got to work on them myself.  I have two other jobs.  Might have been three at the time.
So, I got to work, slowly, getting the deliverables together.  They were a big help along the way as were Fresh Music Library and the gang from Movie Captioner

Like all distributors they promised me some promo copies of my very own.  Unlike many, they delivered.  Quickly.  And they're beautiful.

This is one of my favorites of my own movies because of the cast involved and because I had made a toy of the monster involved this movie from other action figures and Halloween decorations back when I was about 9 years old.  That's like...well it was last century at the very least, and the beasts in the movie, goofy as they may look, are the realization of a 9 year old's dreams and nightmares and Halloween spooky adventures.

And if you'd like to see the new trailer:

There are no days off in filmmaking.

There are no days off in filmmaking.  Okay, there are, but you don't really get to plan them.  Days off are days that get canceled due to weather or when you have to not write, plan, shoot or whatever because your "day job", home or family obligations are pulling you in a different direction.

The Plan: Today I planned as a "day off" from writing, shooting and mostly editing because my wife is off and I have a  hot water tank being installed in the basement. It's right under my office, noisy work and making Chaya, my dog, crazy.  If you read my last blog, you also know it's an expense I don't need right now.

I decided I'd work outside while they work on the house, then run some errands and then have lunch with my wife, come home, maybe edit a bit, but mostly spend the day taking care of the homestead.  A cold shower this morning, which I thought I would be fine with, proved this was not a job I could put off.

How the Plan "Went South": To start things off, they arrived about 90 minutes later than I expected.  They called to tell me that they would be about 30 minutes late.  By the time they had gotten here at least half of the work outside I planned on doing while they were here was done.

Add to that the job which was done on my wife's jeep last week seems to need a bit of adjustment.  The new brakes are smelling like they're still binding a bit. Hopefully a twenty minute adjust will do it, but it will be in the middle of the day now during those errands I was hoping to run.

Finally, even the break from film wasn't meant to be.  A potential client, which I can really use right now, called just before these guys got here.  So, a return call after the house gets quiet is in order.  It's a good change in plans, but proof that planned days off don't often happen as ENTIRE days off when you're in business for yourself, especially when you run multiple businesses at a time.

Sometimes you get away with just working the morning or evening and my wife has gotten better at covering entire days for me when I have to dedicate myself to specific other jobs.

You never know: This person that called me today is someone I spoke to years ago about maybe collaborating on something or doing a project for hire.  After a few months I honestly thought he had just changed his mind.  People sometimes lose interest in projects, especially after the estimates start coming in.

But you never know.  Will this turn into something? I hope so.  Will I be the person for the job?  I'm the person for every job, except brakes and water heaters, apparently.

Meanwhile, it looks like I have this weekend off at the cabin, so I can edit, but that can change with one person deciding they need a quick get away to the mountains, so we shall see.

Making Your Little Movie BIG

There are a few ways to add production value to an independent effort. In one of my recent "Inside HFP" videos I talk about how, like with anything in life, you have to ask in order to get.  We had quite a few local businesses come to our rescue for completing "Jack vs Lanterns", and I appreciate them all.  That video will be cycling into this blog eventually, so I won't post it here, but I would like to expand on the subject.

In my Indie Movie Review Blog  this morning I reviewed a movie entitled, "Close Encounters of the 4th Kind: Infestation From Mars".  There was some acting, some F/X and a few audio moments that gave away the movie's smaller budget, but the scale was HUGE.  It seemed like the whole town was behind this film and in a good way.  There were celebrities, police cars, fire trucks, a burning building, tremendous crowds and more.  Pop over to the review for my take on it.

Now, getting the town behind your movie can be tricky.  If they say "no", you can put yourself on a radar screen you don't want to show up on.  But if they say yes, the results can be amazing.  For "Stopped Dead", I had written in a scene that took place at fun park.  It was way more than my budget could handle, but I had a plan to shoot most of the scenes as the characters walking around, and doing the dialogue in a corner that didn't matter much.  I made that my back up plan.  Then we went to Fun Spot, told them my budget for the day, and were treated like royalty.  The scene adds some huge scope to the movie.  We still went with the montage, but the park had staff and put up signage to cover use for "extras" that may be scene during filming.  I was very glad I had done it.

Being able to shoot wide shots from high angles adds scope.

With the right score, this shot added a really eerie feeling to "Stopped Dead" 

The one drawback to favors like these is that if your film looks "too big", other shortcomings, like low budget F/X will not be so easily forgiven as "well, they didn't have the money", because now you LOOK like you had a lot of money.  So, there's a balance there.  For example, we couldn't get by with our usual canned music after the movie appear so large in other ways, so we enlisted the help of award winning composer Rob Reider to create a score.  He worked with our budget and the score is amazing.  We were lucky enough to work with Rob just before he became an award winning composer (like literally, he had finished the score that won him that early award, but the festivals hadn't run yet while he was composing the score for "Stopped Dead")

So, what's my advice here?  Ask for help when you need it.  See if you can get  help when it will just improve your movie, but realize that once you raise certain parts of your production to a higher level, it may take the shine off of your more indie looking scenes.  That small office you shot in might not have looked small until you filmed another scene in an actual crowded movie theatre.  I always think it's worth the risk to get as many big scenes done as you can, so long as they fit the story and move things forward.

In the short film, "X-24" we had a whole building to shoot in, so we tried to take advantage of the space

to create an ominous feeling of isolation by showing our character as a "small" thing in this 

huge empty place.

What the World Needs Now, is More Dinosaurs

OK, maybe not.  The Jurassic Park Franchise is still kicking out movies and there are all those old classic dino movies.  SyFy did a year or two of B CGI-laden dinosaur flicks and indies pump out coat tail riders and mockbusters every time a "Jurassic" movie hits theatres.

So, I guess what I mean is, MY world needs more dinosaurs.  I just finished shooting the season 2 Finale of "The Simplest Things" (Season 1 is Already available on Amazon Prime) and went back and released the Season Premiere, shot six years ago, onto YouTube.  I had never loaded the full movie up there.  It features, as you may have guessed, a dinosaur.  Not one of your fancy CG dinos, but a stop motion, shot with a digital still camera, plastic toy dinosaur.  And you know what?  I love it.  It's cheesy, but so much fun.  It made me feel like a kid again, when the dinosaurs I saw on TV rainy afternoons were a lot like the ones I played with.

So, in Season 3, I'm bringing back the dinosaurs.  When I make my holiday movie, I may find a way to get a dinosaur in there. ( "The Dinosaur that Almost ate Christmas" is my first holiday movie to accomplish that.)

  If I send astronauts into deep space, maybe they'll encounter dinosaurs.  Who  knows?  The possibilities are endless when you embrace the power of a green screen and the time consuming process of stop motion animation.

So, keep an eye on our YouTube channel and look for our name, Hocus Focus Productions, on Amazon if you want to see upcoming dinosaurs and maybe a giant spider or two.