Nuggets of News

My life this week in bite-sized nuggets:

We met with one of our investors on Monday, ate and talked about Splatter Movie and other events in our life. He gave us money.

That morning, a check arrived from another of our investors (which may lead to a big announcement very soon, actually). As far as funding for the movie, we're doing pretty well. Appreciate the support, fellas!

Tuesday we met with one of the owners of the Hundred Acres Manor and met the production designer for the first time, Ethan. We did another walk-through and started to figure out what rooms would be best for certain scenes. Ethan and his crew are actually redesigning a number of rooms for the grand reopening of the haunt in September, so we'll have the opportunity to utilize a lot of brand new backgrounds and settings before anyone else ever lays eyes on them.

Before we left, a deer came running down the hill and scared the shit out of itself - not to mention us. There were about six of us in a group and the thing was running straight for us. A yearling, so it wasn't very big, but it started to skid when it saw us and almost plowed into one of the partners' cars. We took its not hitting us or stomping us to death in a panic as a very good sign. An omen, if you will, of good things to come. At least, it was a portent of our not being stomped to death in the future.

Just got off the phone with the distributor who picked up Abattoir - sorry, A Feast of Flesh. As I detailed today on the Happy Cloud Pictures Blog, the title of our little vampire opus has been changed due to popular demand. Something less French has been requested. We discussed the contract and what special features will eventually be offered on the disk. We're still on track for a fourth quarter 2007 release. As soon as the ink is dry, we'll make a big announcement.

As for the rest of the day, I spent it in the garage and in the attic, hauling out equipment, cleaning it and writing "Property of Happy Cloud Pictures" on it in black and silver sharpie. We have to leave a lot of various bits and pieces at the haunt. I'm not worried about anything stolen, more that something will accidentally get mixed in with the haunt's equipment property. Still, I came away feeling very proprietary.

So we meet with various cast and crew members on Saturday, shoot some b-roll and head home to rest for the big shooting event on Sunday. We have to shoot somewhere in the neighborhood of ten-to-twelve pages in around eight hours. Not even a record for us. Still, a lot to do and a lot of rust to shake off and get our Happy Cloud family back into the well-oiled machine it was while shooting Abattoir. We'll all miss Carlos Savant--he's down at a shop in New Orleans and busy to the gills right now--but welcome Eric Molinaris into the mix. There are a couple of people we've never worked with before but who come highly recommended.

This should work out to be something quite special when all is said and done. But then again, I tend to say that about every production. It's certainly unlike anything we've ever attempted before. To that end, I recommend that everyone check out the two Myspace pages: The Official Splatter Movie Page and The Official Tesseract Page, which is dedicated to the movie-within-the-movie Amy's character is shooting. Awesomeness is coming soon.