Gumdrop, a short horror - Soundtrack Update

I am currently in post-production with my short horror film, "Gumdrop, a short horror" which is beginning to coalesce into a viable film. It's now just under fifty minutes in length. Another thirty to forty minutes and it would be a full-fledged film and not a short. Technically at over forty-eight minutes, it is not a short film.

Post for Gumdrop, a short horror

I have been working since we wrapped principal photography last summer on editing this film. I haven't had the time every day or at times even every week to work on it, but it is finally approaching something that resembles a movie. I am still editing shots, sequences, and scenes, but I have also been adding audio effects and music and tweaking transitions.

By the way, my other major project, "The Teenage Bodyguard", my true crime biopic screenplay I have spent years researching and writing and am currently working on with producer Robert Mitas, is still healthy and underway. We're waiting on a lookbook to be finished up for the project and will then be moving on with finding a director and production company to film it.

As far as Gumdrop, I started looking into music for the soundtrack a few months ago. I contacted producer Joe Wilson who offered the use of one of his artists, Alex Dewell, with songs from her 2018 album, "Hund". It is on CDBaby and where you can hear samples of the songs I've used. I have discussed this artist in a previous blog in 2014. I met her some years ago and even then she was obviously talented.

The songs I settled on for "Gumdrop" are: Get Away, Gotta Run, IDK, and, Tell Me I'm Alright. This album was produced by Joe when he took Alex to London and recorded it at Abbey Road Studio with some great backing musicians. Here are some older songs by Alex on CDBaby.

They are already now incorporated into the film. These are lighter, more pop songs and represent a female character in the film named, Miranda (played by Aura Stiers, a practicing event "Mermaid" which I incorporated into the film.).

However, my film needs rougher songs, something harder for the main character, "Sampson" (played by Tom Remick). He who's Sampson character grew up extremely abused in old Czechoslovakia back when the Iron Curtain still existed back in the 1950s. I also needed more current music.

My original thoughts were to come up with some 1950s Eastern European Soviet Bloc country's music and maybe fuse it with heavy rock music of some sort. As well as plane old modern heavy metal, or post-metal, or Gwar or some such.

A while back, friend and fellow filmmaker Kelly Hughes at his Lucky Charm Studio, got hooked up with a band in Italy, Postvorta, when they contacted him about a collaboration. We liked their music and so he did a music video for them using their song, "We're Nothing."

I'd considered asking them if they would like to be involved with my film, as I knew that Andrea whom Kelly worked with on the video, was interested in doing some film soundtracks. So I asked Kelly to ask them about it for me.

We've been busy with our current endeavor, the Bremerton, Washington monthly event for horror and local indie horror filmmakers, "Slash Night" at the Historic Roxy Theater.

Brief aside... Slash Night has been going on now for four months as of this coming weekend event on January 11th, 2020. Last month our last show of the year was our best show so far and it's getting bigger and better each month. Drag performers Bobbie Lee and Bobby Rae, a local performance team did a live performance for us that they created just for this event and it was pretty amazing!

Since I hadn't heard back from Kelly yet on the Postvorta request I'd made, I was about to remind him, when...

I got a suggestion to like a Facebook page called, 22Decemeber Records. They claimed they were into Post Metal, Sludge, Post Rock and Ambient. Which I thought was great. What a coincidence!

So I liked them and emailed their 22December company email account. I got a timely response.

POSTVORTARavenna, Italy

As it turned out, they were interested!

But unexpectedly, it turned out that it was Andrea Fioravanti, from Postvorta! He whom Kelly had done the music video with. He was excited to look at my project. And so we are communicating and moving forward. Now that I think about it, I think Kelly did once mention something about a 22Decemeber. I just forgot. Living with my memory is an exciting and at times annoying condition. To be sure.

There is still much to do before finishing the film and getting it out there to film festivals. I project another month or two before I'm ready. I will be submitting it to our own Gorst Underground Film Festival, now in its third year. As I've been a judge and nurturer helping Kelly in his efforts (and each year it's been bigger and better),

I obviously won't be judging my own film. And I don't expect any extra consideration because of my position. Honestly, we just don't work that way. Trust me, Kelly is pretty critical. But then also, because we're an underground festival, we don't necessarily judge things as many mainstream festivals would. Which is part of our charm?

Our Slash Night monthly event is attached to our annual festival as a way to build a community for the annual GUFF event. But my film won't show in the monthly events as it is not a "short", even though, it is indeed, short.

GUFF will be moving to the Historic Roxy Theater this September and perhaps an after-party at another venue. We're still working out the details.

OK, Kelly is still working out those details. And a great job he does, too!

Stay tuned. For all of it!

Slainte!

Burning Down the House

Don't Kill Grandpa Until We Strangle the Babysitter (2016), curiosity that it is, is a bizarre short horror film by director Kelly Hughes, that has been picked up by Troma Enterprises and founder Lloyd Kaufman for streaming from their new Troma Now horror streaming service.

JZ Murdock as Grandma's Ghost

Located at Watch.Troma.com, Troma Now is an Amazon Prime type of monthly subscription video streaming service. Troma Entertainment, Inc. are the producers as they like to say, of "disrupting entertainment"; of B- cult classics like the cult favorite, the Toxic Avenger series of films. In case you don't now Troma...

released 1986

Troma Entertainment is an American independent film production and distribution company founded by Lloyd Kaufman and Michael Herz in 1974. The company produces low-budget independent movies that play on 1950s horror with elements of farce. Wikipedia

By the way, my own LGN Productions efforts have been continuing to work on the Mea Culpa film. It's an expansion of my original story also contained in, Anthology of Evil and expanded in Death of heaven as a section titled, Vaughan's Theorem. It is to be a ten minute horror short but it's gotten so complex we're first going to shoot a shorter three minute film from our new Garage Tales series. First up, The Rapping, a kind of homage to Edgar Allen Poe. On all that, more to come....

So, about the Grandpa film. Just how did this happen?

If you want to know how the film happened, it just kind of did. In a previous blog I discuss one of Kelly's other films, The Mephisto Box and touch on the Grandpa shoot:

"It's fun that we got to shoot some at my house and around my property in a couple of films now. The first being Kelly's recent short, Don't Kill Grandpa Until We Strangle The Babysitter. In the teaser you can see me as Grandma's ghost while my son pours gas on the fire behind me. Good times."

If you would like to know how I came to know Kelly and his film came to be on this new streaming service, Troma Now....

Back in 2016 I was contacted on Stage32, a site for filmmakers, artists, actors, talent and crew and so on. It was director, Kelly Hughes (the John Waters of Pacific Northwest Horror, as one magazine labeled him). We had both been producers on public access cable television back in the 1990s so he thought he'd reach out and connect. I'm glad he did.

Kelly produced Heart Attack Theatre! for years. Weekly he was producing a half hour horror film and playing it on public access TV in the Greater Seattle area. It was the wild west of cable television back then. Many of his films from then are available as DVDs and as you're seeing, beginning to be available for streaming.

Kelly and I planned to get together at the upcoming Seattle Crypticon horror convention and had a great time. It was my third con, as I'd been to ZomBcon and ZomBcon II.

ZomBcon II was held at SeaTac Hilton where Crypticon was being held so I felt pretty familiar in being there. We had a great time all that day and evening along with actor Jason Hughes (no relation). We stayed in touch,

Kelly now has a new media center, Velvet Underground, in Port Orchard, WA. The next town over from me. Pretty handy. He recently had an established director Steven Boe, teaching a class on film production and there are supposed to be more. I had some things reinforced I already knew and I learned some important things I hadn't even known about.

One day Kelly called to ask if I wanted to be involved in his next short project. He wanted to get back to filmmaking. I did too. So he came over to my house in Suquamish, WA where I had been living for over fifteen years on a couple of pastoral acres in the back woods of Suquamish. I've since sold that house and now live in Bremerton, WA.

Kelly ended up shooting Don't Kill Grandpa Until We Strangle the Babysitter (2016) there. That led to his shooting another film there, The Mephisto Box (2016). A film he has since expanded into a web series. It has some interesting characters as well as the actors in it.

Like Alison Arngrim who played Nellie Oleson  on Little House on the Prairie. I was in a scene with her that was also shot at my house. We even put her up at our house for the night. She was funny, smart and professional and very easy to work with.

During all that as filmmakers tend to do, Kelly submitted Grandpa to regional film festivals. It got the front page mention on the 2016 Portland Film Festival's page on 18 Things to Do and See in Portland Oct. 14-16.

Kelly had been involved with the filmmakers of Grindspoloitation for some time now. So when II came around, he had some new footage to share and they were happy to include it. It's a film that has gotten a lot of mileage out of it for something through to be just a practice run for a bigger project.

So Kelly got Grandpa into Grindsploitation 2: The Lost Reels. Lloyd Kauffman, founder of Troma had given the intro in that first Grindsploitation film and he also shows up in this sequel. One thing led to another and he had this new streaming service starting up so it was an obvious fit.

And there is the connection.

Oh, you're wondering what the Burning Down the House is all about in the title?

I'll just let you check out the trailer for the Grandpa film. That's Kelly behind the camera and me in Grandma's ghost costume. My son handling pyrotechnics. Behind me, as the character, Satan. Very close behind me.

I think it will all be quite apparent.

Cheers! See you at the next viewing.

The Mephisto Box and Alison Angrim

Side stepping the insanity of the Republican National Convention last week and the upcoming and as yet unknowns to come from the Democratic National Convention this week, I wanted to share an industry related article by Director Kelly Hughes that he wrote for Huffington Post last week.

Alison Angrim Saves Hollywood (Part 1)

There are also a couple of YouTube fun videos where one of the actors in The Mephisto Box interviews Alison.

Starting last year, we have been working with Kelly on his film The Mephisto Box. It's been an adventure as most film productions are.

The Mephisto Box - A Horror film and an open door

And now back to being creative....

Director Kelly Hughes, was once called the John Waters of Pacific Northwest Indie Horror Films by Digital Dead magazine back in November of 2015. With more to follow. As of the posting of this blog, Kelly now has eight episodes of his latest feature film, The Mephisto Box up on YouTube.

From Kelly's website:

In this highly anticipated new web series, a disgraced psychiatrist redeems himself by treating a fragile mental patient, only to unleash a demonic attack. Subscribe to the official YouTube channel and watch a new episode every Friday: Video.

Cast of, The Mephisto Box (2016)

Yes, there I am in that lower row.

We had shot some of the film here at my house, which I am currently in the process of selling. We also shot in various other locations around the greater Seattle area. Including in a large church up on Seattle's Capitol Hill along its famous Broadway Avenue. I got to play sound man and general grip that day.

In the shoot at my house I got to fill the positions of F/X man, pyrotechnic and for a while, talent wrangler I suppose. It was fast paced, guerrilla filming, colder than the tip of a witch's nose in Antarctica and at times even a bit hotter than we needed.

We "burned" a guy to death, then chased him down, put arrows through him and later resurrected him as a demon in a ring of fire. Among other things.

You can see many of those shots on Kelly's website.

As I said I'm selling my house. I live on a couple of lovely acres in a forest and I love this environment. It's so peaceful and tranquil here. But I'm looking forward and need to move so I can devote more time to working on my writings and film productions from now on, as well as moving some place more local to what's happening.

My house listed for sale last Friday. There's been a stream of people through here checking it out. I heard one agent tell his client she might want to decide soon as he didn't think the house would be on the market much longer. Which is nice to hear. I've heard one person wants to put a bid on it, that it's the right price but she has to wait till some of her financial dealings are complete in a couple of weeks.

Back in 2006 I had tried to sell... just as the market started to tank and then the bubble burst in the housing market. Now ten years later, here we are again. Though I'm better situated and more motivated to sell. So far so good.

But this is about Kelly's film.

It's fun that we got to shoot some at my house and around my property in a couple of films now. The first being Kelly's recent short, Don't Kill Grandpa Until We Strangle The Baby Sitter. In the teaser you can see me as Grandma's ghost while my son pours gas on the fire behind me. Good times.

That short ten minute film was created for the upcoming DVD compilation GRINDSPLOITATION 2: The Lost Reels. It was a lot of fun to shoot and it turned out better than expected.

However that was just a short. This is about the feature.

In The Mephisto Box, there are some great scenes and acting by many of the actors, including always excellent actor Betty Marshall, a long time veteran of Kelly's films since the 90s. This time she is a disgruntled all around helper for someone of means, and very jealous of her position. There's some real gems in this film for those into indie horror. I even got a short (short) scene as a street preacher.

Here is a teaser for it. Synopsis - A disgraced psychiatrist attempts to redeem himself by treating a young mental patient, not realizing he is tampering with demonic forces in this new series by director Kelly Hughes.

We will be stumbling around Crypticon this upcoming final weekend in May over the Memorial Day weekend. Say hi if you happen to make it. It's a fun film, a fun crew to work with and Kelly is an indomitable force and enjoyable to be around. Just like Crypticon.

I hope you have a great weekend too. If your passions is for creating, film production, or just writing stories, or simply viewing or reading them, find your passion and start acting upon it. Life is just sitting out there, waiting on us, hoping we will knock on that door which will be opened, if you just take the time to look for it and step through.

For me, The Mephisto Box was a part of that door opening. As was my book, Death of heaven. Or my work with a studio some years ago as a screenwriter in absentia (I worked remote as I was in Seattle and they were on the east coast). As was In Memory, Yet Crystal Clear, my first published short horror story (also contained in and the first story in another book of my short stories, Anthology of Evil).

These were my doorways into my passion, writing, getting it out there for people to read. And film production. Something that goes back to being a public access cable TV producer in the early 90s, just like Kelly Hughes. That project so long ago, led to us finding one another on Stage32.com. Kelly's entry through that door start then and there, so many years ago.

You never know where what you do will one day lead you. So if you have the inclination, then do something. Act on your desires. Even the little things count sometimes. They are all just one more step up to that door you have to bring up the courage to knock on, to turn the knob on, to push open that heavy creaking door into, your future, your passion, and possibly your bliss.

You will never know if you simply don't try, and try again, and keep trying, until finally one day, probably when you most think it will never actually happen...it happens.

Get involved.

Get involved in yourself, in your community of creatives and in ours too by watching and sharing what we have done. So that one day perhaps, you too will be sharing what you have done with us, and we will share it with all of our community.