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!

Gumdrop, a short horror -.The Editing Continues

I've been editing the video I've shot on my short horror film, "Gumdrop, a short horror". This blog is for those new to filmmaking really, as more experienced filmmakers already know much of what I'll say and may even roll their eyes from time to time or simply shake their head wondering how I even turn out a product. Well, it's working for me. For now. And I'm learning as I go. And as we all do.

I passed twenty minutes in length yesterday and I'm hoping to keep it under 30 minutes total.

First, I would like to congratulate my friend and cartoonist, Pat Moriarity! He is doing very well with his first animative project, "The Realm Beyond Reason"(using Adobe Animator with Adobe's aide in software development) which he world premiered at our Gorst Underground Film Festival recently. He just won a "bloody" award at the Bellingham, Washington, Bleedingham A Northwestern Horror Short and Film Festival! Congratulations, Pat!

Moving on...

If things go well this coming Saturday, November 2, 2019, at the Bremerton Historic Roxy Theater "Slash Night" event I will be screening it for attendees along with other horror films, live entertainment, and filmmakers with their films. If I don't get it ready in time with a rough cut, I'll premiere it again the following month on December 14, 2019. Slash Night is first Saturday night at 10PM (December saw a previously scheduled event on the first Saturday so we're using the second Saturday).

Gumdrop", is my short horror film, a prequel based on my original short horror true crime story, "Gumdrop City" which was published in 2012 and I first heard about in an abnormal psychology class at Western Washington University toward my degree in the major of psychology and a minor in creative writing and team TV script and screenwriting.

[Note 2/22/2022, UPDATE: our film has won some awards and continues to do so...]

It was a horror show of a class the day we were told about this crime. And so I wrote it as a fiction story and worked it up as an unfinished screenplay with a producer in Hollywood a while back. I may still finish that feature film as I'm not signed and have a producer attached to my other true crime and biopic, The Teenage Bodyguard with producer Robert Mitas.

My blog for last week was also on "Gumdrop" but I've made progress and because I may (hopefully) be showing it this next weekend, I'm updating my progress leading up to it.

I'm new to this editing software and I started editing film as a kid. Then did a phenomenology film in 1983 on black and white reel to reel videotape, a documentary in 1993 using VHS videotape and a short last year using this Sony Vegas Suite software on "The Rapping", which won one small award and showed at the NY Midnight Horror Festival.

One of the things that bugged me in this new effort with many hours of video shot and about thirteen actors involved was the paring of my separately digitally recorded audio with the visually recorded shots. What is the fastest way? I tried several things and it was painfully slow.

So I just moved forward, finding the best shots, following my screenplay roadmap, cutting them in, sometimes finding better shots or "lost" shots and replacing what I'd edited. Sometimes finding that a different order of shots or scenes comes out better than the planned route and readjusting to fit that new slightly different story and editing it as what turns out the best film. Or perhaps I should say, movie, as it moves along and isn't on film but video.

This was/is all rather frustrating at times, but the end product, not my feelings, or energy levels, or emotional state, or level of perseverance, really matters. On that plane, the thing that matters really, is your audience and your intentt in your project. First off? FINISH IT!

What I've settled on is to just cut and edit. Finish it.

Then I will go back, list all the audio clips/filenames and video clips/filenames and process the audio in my audio software (I'm using Reaper), then marry the audio to the video and replace the video in the editor. That will replace all the clips all through the project. Not for the faint of heart, but in the end, it will certainly produce a much better product and... audience experience.

I do have a backup mic ON my camera but if I'm using autofocus (which I seldom do but has almost accidentally given me some incredible shots...when it works right), you can hear the motor on the autio focusing. Besides, the digital recorder (Roland R-26) using a boom and separate and better mic (Rode) allows me to better position the mic where it needs to be recording from.

The amazing & talented "Bobby and Bobby" as "Gays for Jesus" with lead actor Tom Remick

So far? It's been an interesting experience editing.

I've learned how to push through the frustration things I missed on set, like an actor "spiking" the camera (looking into the lens, breaking the "fourth wall" and ruining a shot. Or my saying "cut", too soon in a shot (do NOT do that!). Always record a bit before acting begins after saying "action" (or whatever you say, as the Clint Eastwood story goes that he doesn't because he was used to not hearing "action" on a set with horses so as not to spook them and the same goes with some actors).

And let the camera record too much even in silence, at the end of a shot. You never know the gold you mine in that sometimes. Everyone rushes on camera for some reason. Well, inexperienced actors whom I'm mostly using. Oddly enough, the most experienced actor n my production is Jennifer True and I only used her for some voiceovers, sadly. But she came late to the production and... maybe in the next production. Hopefully.

Whenever an actor during a shoot has an alternative to how I want something shot, I listen to them. I don't always take the shot, unless they insist and then sometimes it's just easier and faster to shoot it and move on than to argue over it.

Sometimes, they don't want to do what I want but another way. So I listen, and if I can't get them to drop it, I just sa:

"OK, let's shoot it your way. But, and especially because I wrote [when I have written] the screenplay, let's also get my shot down also because it's stuck in my mind. Since I wrote it and I may indeed while editing, use your idea/shot and I will honestly look at using it. But I can't move on with a clear mind unless I get MY shot. It will continue to bug me going forward, just as not getting YOUR shot as you want, now. So please...and, action!"

Filmmaking is indeed a collaborative endeavor. Even though I AM my entire crew now. I do hope to get a crew eventually. It would be so much easier, though scheduling then becomes the nightmare it usually is.

Still, I do believe that you need to choose the right actors for the parts because that's half the work. The actor learns the role (hopefully) and knows the character (again, hopefully). So when they say, "I think they might do this, or say that...", listen. Give it a moment's thought. Even if it's "ridiculous".

Because sometimes you don't et it at first and they are right. it can take time to absorb it. Understand it. But the4y are living the character more than you and that is collaborative,, and highly useful. Use ALL your resources. Not just your desires, your roadmap, your style. Be open. And you will find a wealth of two things. At times, utter annoyance and frustration. And at others, sheer bliss and perfections as if touched by the Gods.

More to come...

Editing and History of "Gumdrop, a short horror"

First, some housekeeping and promotions...Last year I shot my first short-short eight-minute narrative film, The Rapping. It was a festival selection at the New York Midnight Film Festival, actually, showing in New York and won the Weekly Online Once A Week Film Festival for January 2, 2019. I shot this with a single actor, Nikolas Hayes. We had worked together previously on Kelly Hughes' horror films.

I have worked on several projects with Kelly and lately, we've been working on the ongoing annual GUFF, the Gorst Underground Film Festival. We began it and held it for two years at Blue Collar Art but are moving it to The Historic Charleston Theater in Bremerton. Both venues are perfect for it.

Our most recent event series is "Slash Night" at the Historic Roxy Theater here in Bremerton which I recently wrote about here. Gorst is a small community right next to Bremerton, Washington. Kelly started both events and both are now becoming standard annual and monthly events, respectively.

This past summer I shot my short horror film, "Gumdrop, a short horror" with multiple actors. I wrote the screenplay and directed and shot it myself. It is a prequel to my short horror story based on a true crime, "Gumdrop City" (2012) on Amazon as an ebook and included in the collection of my first short horror tales in "Anthology of Evil" (2012). I have a manuscript ready for a sequel as, "Anthology of Evil II", but haven't had the time to deal with it.

On Gumdrop, a short horror and Gumdrop City, the new piece is a prequel. The story is about Sampson, an odd character who in the short story is older and more decrepit but just as dastardly and deadly, but even more despicable a personality. In the current film, In using the short story as a roadmap, I drew a character who had been abused as a child and had grown up traveling to escape his birth country of Czechoslovakia and his horror of a childhood.

In those restrictions of his accent and so on, I gave him a background of having traveled to South Africa and to various locations that affected his accent. His father was Irish, his mother Czech. So he has an accent that is an odd juxtaposition of a Slovak accent with a South African slant to it and words of an Irish orientation. He knew his father but didn't know him long enough for it to affect his accent that much, but enough and in odd ways. This makes him confusing for those he interfaces with. His mental status and his orientation led him into criminal enterprises and to avoid traditional forms of employment and sustenance.

Actor Stan W with lead actor Tom Remick as "Sampson"

Sampson is one odd character and not to be trifled with. As the character, Manz (played by actor Stan Wankowsky) discovers int he film.

Okay now...editing.

First, apologies. I'm more concerned with working on this project than blogging. And I'm adding to this as I'm editing, and think of things to mention.

Like treats. I get up in the mornings around 6-7AM and have breakfast, sometimes just toast and peanut butter, or oatmeal, and two cups of coffee. Years ago I limited myself to two cups a day, maybe tea mid-morning if needed. I watch something on TV, usually news of some sort, or a late-night talk show. Then I get to work. If things go on too long, watching a show, and it's really interesting, I'll stop, and save it to watch at lunch as a kind of reward. Understand I'm retired from IT and work on film production and writing from a home office which at this point happens to be half my living room.

I've found tricking and treating myself works wonders for my motivation and stress levels. Have something to look forward to. And use any way you can think of to make yourself do what you woin't or don't want to do. Whatever works. Just find a way to be productive, and try not to (have to) kills yourself over it. IF there is any way possible to make it entertaining/ Do that. But save the wasteful time spending for after you have worked for a day's amount of work, or more.

I have no formal training in film production. Just theory and doing. Self-taught you might say. I've read a lot of books on film production but should have spent more time ready about editing. Well, I've spent some time learning about it, but this project is in part that education. My next project will look a lot better edited, I'm sure. I'll also be reviewing some videos on editing now. I'd meant to do that already before starting this but the flu had messed up my timing. And other things...

 Sony Movie Studio Suite 16 - Gumdrop
Shown, actors: Luke Remick (Jinks), Tom Remick (Sampson)

I am using Sony Movie Studio Suite 16. For that matter, I write screenplays using Final Draft 11. One of these days when I can afford it I may switch to Final Cut. My first edit of a film was at Western Washington University. I used a half-inch black and white reel to reel rig and had to edit in the camera. At some point, I was soldering wires to add music. And it was a nightmare. But I produced a phenomenology film for my department advisor, Dr. Rod Rees in part toward my degree in psychology. I also got a minor in creative writing and team script and screenwriting.

My next production came years later as a Viacom public access cable TV producer where I shot and directed and edited with a few friends a documentary for the twenty-fifth anniversary of the old Lost in Space TV show. I shot on VHS using my own camera as I'd had a bad experience in college where the battery in every camera rig was dead or almost dead in my case, which was the problem.

I didn't know it was "dead" as it worked some and so I shot a bunch of film to near-disastrous results. Still, some of those shots made it into the film. I used a Panasonic VHS editor deck at the studio and it did cablecast twice in the associated region.

For both The Rapping and now with Gumdrop, I'm using my own equipment and software entirely under the auspices of the production company started in 1993 for the LIS doc, LgN Productions (Last good Nerve Productions). I'm using a Canon DSLR 80D, a Roland R-26 digital recording, an HP video editor system from 2016 and the aforementioned software.

Shooting the film I am using the 80D and a Rode mic on top of the camera as a backup, with the Roland R-26 and a boom mic and tripod for main audio. I highly recommend a backup mic, it can be a lifesaver. But that means you have to marry the proper audio with the proper video and that can be a real job. Especially if you are not documenting your shots as you go. Which, I haven't, sadly. But which I hope to in the future.

Beginning the editing I pull out the screenplay and follow that roadmap. I start to insert the video media and begin to edit. Once I have a sequence of shots or a scene edited, I start to locate and insert the digital audio media. Then I begin matching it up. Part of my problem in not matching up the video and audio first and then ordering up and cutting is I could end up doing a lot of work for naught.

IF I had annotations taken during the shooting, this would go much smoother. But in having actors, especially amateur or nonactors in a production, considering timing as they are working people, not working actors paid to have their time on a schedule to act in my production, it makes life and shooting problematic.

I don't have the time to take the time myself to document and clapper my shots. I have to shoot quickly as on any production, without the safety net of documentation and in shot annotations (clapper and onboard notes).

Another issue was the processing of the audio clips. I really didn't know if I could edit this film, then go back and select only the audio I need, process it (I'm using Reaper for that) and then replace the clips I've used. That is, replace the base media in the editor and have it replace all those snippets all throughout the project. Finally, I took the time yesterday to first do a test and it worked out great.

Another issue I had was I built the opening titles sequence first. In this project the opening titles are the end credits to an extent, only reversed. So in building the opening, I figured as it was fresh in my mind, I might as well build the end. And so I did.

However, that put the end at the actual end of the screen, the project, the file. While editing the other day, and this can happen, I deleted a file and didn't realize I had deleted the end sequence. I realized what I did and could feel a nervous breakdown coming on. So I just sat there absorbing it, thinking if there were ways out of that. Putting off the breakdown until necessary. As it turned out, I found it and from then on every day I save a new version of my work that day and begin a newly named file for the next day. I also saved the end titles in a separate file. THAT won't be happening again. I had also created a couple more unneeded tracks and put it alone at the top out of the way. Which was where it was. Not lost. So my habits aren't too bad after all.

Aside: This happened once after college when I had a dul 5.25" floppy disk PC. One disk had the OS on it, the other was data. I had just written a short story. Sometimes I get in the zone and a story just dumped out onto paper. And it's usually pretty good. I did that once while working on a paper on synesthesia in college. I was exhausted, it was midnight and a short story, one page, single typed, come out. I dumped it onto paper (typed it out) and handed it in to my psych prof, my department advisor in class that next day. The following day we all got a handout. I loved his handouts. I was stunned to realize it was my short story (Perception, which grew along with my short story, later novella, Andrew, into my first full book, Death of heaven). Anyway, I was writing this short story on the dual floppy system and suddenly (and it had done this before), it locked up. Because the data disk got full. At that point, there is nothing to do but reboot. But I hesitated an hour before buying into that need. Finally, I rebooted and immediately rewrote the story. Now when I was almost done with the story I was thinking at the time that it was the most perfect short story I'd ever written. Obviously, I didn't rewrite it word for word but close, but it was not the same as I had written. That was lost.

My point? When you think all is lost, don't accept the breakdown. Breathe. Then think. And do what is productive. And move on.

So I have what I have.

This has been so much easier than editing physically with film or VHS as I had in the past. I was the film editor in my family when I was a kid. I had my grandfather's physical film editor (I still have it) and I did cut and tape film. VHS editing was easier. Digital editing is a dream. As in writing is in using a computer over longhand, or that's how I find it anyway. So much faster to cut and paste than as I did in college, literally cutting and pasting and then typing it all up (back then after being in a queue at the library to use a typewriter).

Yes, I did edit The Rapping last year. But that was a shorter film, a much less complicated film. A film I shot and edited just to prove I could do it. And since it got shown in New York and won one festival, even a micro-festival online, I did prove I could do it.

After a week of editing, the nightmare effort began to get easier as I got into the swing of things. Yesterda I was about six minutes into the diting (six-minute of edited video under my belt) and I hit potentially the toughest scene in the film.

It is the scene with hitwoman Wanda (actress Amy M) and Sampson (Tom Remick). The difficulty came in an interaction that required a lot of insert shots and bouncing back and forth from mid shots to close-ups and some ECUs (extreme close-ups) of a tool. That scene, that sequence of shots took me a couple of days. When I started again yesterday, I felt pretty hopeless, like I'll never work it out.

I thought I was done with that scene but today found I had a mirror sequence (gotta have a cool/bizarre mirror sequence in a film like this). I just finished it and I'm now done with that scene and moving on to the Rowan scene with Tacoma actor Jason Lockhart.

But I'm dumping my media I'd inserted into the project at the end where I clean it up and inject it into the timeline with the other assembled pieces of shots. It's important to remember to clean up. I overuse files/copies in my pre-editing end area of the file to avoid having to reapply a clip. Though I end up with a lot of extra pieces  (also in clipping, and expanding), and just need clean up between sequences, which isn't much of a problem.

I'm also thinking now it might be easier and faster to just video edit and then focus on the audio. As you get used to one thing, video or audio, you get in the swing of it. But when I'm jumping between, I seem to cause myself too much confusion. A few days of this will prove the point one way or another.

But, you take a deep breath and begin again, or continue on as it were. by midday, I was feeling much better. Do not accept the breakdown. Or, accept it, but don't have it. Be productive. Always moving forward.

Professionals produce. Be a professional.

As it is this project needs to be done by the second of November so it can premier at the Slash Night event here in Bremerton, at the Historic Roxy Theater. If I'm not ready, then I can show it in December, and then I'll have more flyers sharing its premiere. And so I may show it twice in a row. We shall see.

At the end of each day's edit, I am rendering a movie of what I have done. Essentially finished rushes. Sort of "finished". As this is all going to take a rough cut, and then a run-through for other issues and another rough cut, over and over as any editor knows.

I have also created a Facebook group, a private group just for the crew and actors on Gumdrop under the LGN banner. There I/we can share issues about the production.. Actors can speak up and hopefully, everyone can learn something, or at least, be made away of progress. I found as an actor you know so little about progression on a production and it can be frustrating.

In making this private group I was hoping to have the actors be more involved, aware of progress (and delays) and hopefully as I said, learn something.

Yesterday I found a few useful links about film production/editing I'd like to share and I shared in our private group.

IFH 113: Post Production Process – Understand It or Suffer the Consequences

Understanding the 5 Stages of Indie Film Production

The 6 Stages Of Editing As A Film Director

I'm into filmmaking, I retired from a very well paying job and a career in IT of 20 years, to make films. To write. To turn my past writings into screenplays and sell or shoot them myself. I couldn't get a film made if I were dying. Like so many others. So I finally just thought, "To hell with it, I'll make my own damn films!"

And so I am.

I made The Rapping up and shot it. I am now finally, for the first time shooting a film based on my own past writings. I first heard about the story behind Gumdrop City in 1983 in an abnormal psychology class. A story so affecting of the entire class, I felt I needed to share it with the world. So I made it entertaining and slipped it into a story about a damaged guy and a serial murderer across the street from him.

I worked for a while with a Hollywood producer on a feature film-length version screenplay of Gumdrop City (I just finished working on a screenplay rewrite of my true crime biopic The Teenage Bodyguard with producer Robert Mitas who has worked with Michael Douglas a lot). I thought that story would be the easiest thing to shoot on my own as my first film of a story I wrote years ago. But to shoot the original itself would be problematic in many ways. So I wrote a prequel and added in some interesting characters and elements. Still, it is a difficult story. But doable. And that's all I needed.

What are those interesting characters and elements? In time you will see.
Hopefully, in very little time.

Victim? DPCR - Defensive Passenger Car Riding

This isn't just about being a passenger. More broadly it is about being put in the position of being a victim and then, how you handle that. What do you do when you are trapped in a car with someone attempting to take control away from you?

When you are with someone who is driving and they won't let you out, how do you handle it?

Ask, please? If you're going slow, leap from the car?

The best way may be to distract them so you can grab the keys in the ignition, turn the engine off, extract the keys, possibly throw them out the window or toss them when you exit the car. If you can blind them, perhaps with the extracted keys, you can get the car to stop pretty quickly.

It may be better if possible, to crash the car. At times death is preferable to living through what may be coming. But that takes reading the situation correctly, during a very difficult situation.

The website, crime-safety-security.com suggests:

• Wait and see what happens – then decide what to do.
• Reason with him, if at all possible. [Because odds are it will be a "him".]
• Outsmart him – using Outsmarting strategies. Some of their suggested options are a bit out there, but you do need to think "outside the box". [This is basic martial arts. It is not unlike Bruce Lee's Jeet Kune Do style of scientific martial arts. Use what works, be smart. Use your capabilities, your environment, your options. SEE your options. Maintain a clear head. Act. But act wisely.]
• Invite him to “a more comfortable place” – one that provides an escape. [decades ago my fiancee found herself in a situation with a guy she thought she could trust. Who I thought we could trust as he was my best friend at the time. A time when I was in basic training 2,200 miles away. Once she realized what was going on, and that she was trapped, in a car by the way, she suggested a motel room, for him to take her to her car, which was at her house so they could both drive there and leave from there. When he got her home, she got out, said thank you, good night, and moved quickly into her parent's house where she was staying until I got out of basic training in the Air Force. She outsmarted him. She was smart, but she was also lucky. [This actually worked for my fiancee years ago by someone we thought to be a friend. She suggested taking her home to get her car and they could go to a motel. Then said goodnight when she got out and went quickly into her parent's home. But it takes being believable to perhaps an unrealistic degree and selling something they want.]
• Initiate violent action – preemptive self-defense – before she’s taken to a secluded place.

Slamming the car in park is good or reverse is good, if the car will allow it or if you can get it to work. Even getting it into neutral may be useful, or downshift can be lit hitting the brakes... but you'd have to hang on to the shifter for dear life. Not the safest option by they way. Should they realize others in the area may notice who can see the car, and they will take serious efforts to stop you.

That is something you want to avoid. Keying them up to be hypervigilant and defensive. You want to take action that permanently stops them and lets them know that hurting you will not help them but will indeed hurt them in some way (be it physically, socially, legally, whatever works that stops them). It's all about believability and excessive reward or punishment. However many times the only thing that will stop them, is disabling them.

Consider that they may not be fully rational in some way or another. You may just have that single moment or specific situation and you need to exploit it.

Mostly physically taking control away from them is always best (e.g., throwing the keys out of the car on a busy highway). Be aware however that some cars, mostly older vehicles, may have a capability of the keys being removed while remaining fully in operation. But those cars today are few and far between anymore.

It may be better to force a crash, than to allow them to remain healthy and intact. You would have the element of surprise if done correctly, giving you the opportunity to brace yourself which they hopefully may not have.

If you have a seat belt on, pulling the steering wheel hard toward you and not letting go, or some degree of that. Faking turning hard one direction and when they apply steering to the other direction, go fully and hard with that, can be a very effective technique.

Basically, it's whatever works, just do it. But be prepared to reverse it in order to surprise them and take control. But once you grab the wheel, don't let go... literally to save your life. You may have to ask yourself which is better, going with them, or taking a chance on dying. Once you apply something to change the direction of the situation to your direction, hang on and even if they beat you, don't let go.

Carrying pepper spray? Not a bad idea either. On that matter, whatever you do carry, and I've said this for years about the foolish who practice "open carry" of firearms...if you show it they know you have it and you lose one element of surprise, power or control. If I know you have it. I can take it from you. Yes, at times the directed display of a gun can end the potential for a situation. But showing it to all. Is just stupid.

Guns are about security (as are other protective devices). Security has several levels.

Security by obscurity. Security by obfuscation. If say, you have a safe, if no one knows you have it, how can they rob it? Or if you have a safe, and they know you have it, but can't find it, or you slow them down until police can arrive, you again have them at odds. Security is frequently about those two things. As well it is about time.

Nothing is 100% secure and mostly security is about slowing down access until it is too costly in some way making it untenable. Either because of time or their own issues of security in committing a crime. You have to make the object of their desire too expensive for them to go all the way to the end of their attempts against you.

And so it is much in the same for weapons and defensive tools. Their surprise at your suddenly using some device (pepper spray, gun, martial arts, etc.) on them, gives you one more level of control. The element of surprise and their inability to not be prepared to protect themselves from something they didn't even know they were about to get presented with.

If you are put in the trunk, if you have your cell, well, call someone. If you can, pull the tail or brake lights, wave through the tail light lens or if possible, break it out (quietly). If you can stick your hand out the tail light, that is a pretty good indication that someone has been kidnapped. newer cars have anti trapped in trunk release devices. If they are smart and prepared they will have disabled it, but it's worth it to verify that first.

But that is getting pretty deep into this situation. The best defenses are to be aware before it happens. As far as when it is happening, visualizing it far before the situation helps you be able to think clearly when it is happening and then to be better able to act on your best possible exit or end to the situation.

Once you get to a certain point, however, in waiting too long, you have given up one potential opportunity after another until finally, it may simple be too late. That is a situation you want desperately to avoid. Tough at times there may be no choice.

It depends on if this was carefully planned or a chance event, a crime of opportunity without aforethought. Not something you run into with serial killers or offenders. But you don't know that in the beginning. And that is part of the problem. Part of the reason criminals have an edge over citizens. YOU don't know you are being involved in a crime until it's too late. At least that is their desire in how they present things to you and set it up.

But even then you have the potential for survival.


One clear and painful example is Alison Botha, who was a twenty-seven year old from South Africa. She made a documentary film about it titled, Alison.

She had been abducted, raped and left for dead by two men.

Alison Botha, right, with Christia Visser, who plays Botha in the film version of her ordeal 

One of the men stabbed her in the throat so badly her head later flopped back when she tried to rise and she literally had to hold it up to be able to seek help from the location where they had left her for dead.

Alison was stabbed more thirty times in the abdomen. Had she just lied there, she would surely have died. But she first tried to move, to find help. She really had no other course to follow if she wanted to live. Through her own massive efforts in moving to a better location, she was found.

In the end, she survived. It is a lesson for us all.

Never. Give. Up.

An After Christmas eBook Giveaway!

So, it's almost New Years? Want a New Year's Eve eGift?

I'm giving away another ebook today and tomorrow called, "Gumdrop City".

It's a murder story that doesn't mess about. "Gumdrop City" was published in 2010 in Zilyon Publishing’s “The Undead Nation Anthology”. It is a horror story, pure and simple, but also a true crime story about a child serial murderer. I have also worked on this as a screenplay with a producer in Hollywood. So, hard telling if someday you may be watching a movie and think to yourself, "Gee, this seems kind of familiar."

This story is also included in my book, "Anthology of Evil", which I will be giving out free on New Year's Day.

Happy Holidays!

Tomrrorw? Another freebie!

Also, Death of Heaven will continue to be free through New Years Day!