Bigfoot Stole My Six-Pack (Part Two)

It appears to be Monster Week here at the blog, as my hometown of Muncie, Indiana gets dragged into the latest Bigfoot hoax. Naturally, I am getting some stray google hits because of my Bigfoot movie AMONG US, currently enjoying a run on the Canadian cable channel SPACE-TV (thanks, my northern brothers). For the record, that movie actually takes place in Wellsboro, Pennsylvania, where the Polonia Brothers are from, though I did put in a little shout-out for my wife's family in Tell City, Indiana. For old times' sake, here is a link to "Bigfoot Stole My Sixpack," a video made from the song that runs under the closing credits.

I finally found a picture of me from BlogIndiana 2008 that wasn't of the back of my head. I suspect they actually wanted a picture of my stylin' friend Scooby and I was just standing next to him.

It seems like Twittering was all the rage at the conference, so I'm going to check it out for a few weeks. You can see fresh stuff from me in the sidebar.

In other tech news, some smarter people than me have been weighing in on my comments about grassroots DV on the Microcinema Scene message board here.

I was down with a migraine yesterday and feeling the aftershocks today. Curiously, I almost always have a burst of creativity after. Which is good, as I am knuckling down on a rewrite of a sci-fi script I wrote under a non-disclosure last year, which should soak up this weekend.

Until later, I am at johnoakdalton@hotmail.com.

From Montauk with Love

Not suprisingly, it looks like the Montauk Monster stuff turned out to be fake (I thought it was a de-shelled turtle, myself). Somewhat surprisingly, it seems to be tied into a movie in production called Splinterheads, which I learned about when I started getting a lot of Google hits on my site from surfers looking for "Splinterhead Movie." Splinterheads is apparently a comedy about carnival life, whereas my Splinterhead, for Polonia Brothers Entertainment and I think in post-production right now, is naturally, about a killer ventriloquist dummy. To really complete the Circle of Life, Polonia Brothers Entertainment has Monster Movie coming out next month, and damn if that creature doesn't look a bit like the Montauk Monster (only more realistic).

Mysteriously, there are approximately 297 miles between where Splinterheads is being shot in Patchogue, NY, and where Splinterhead and Monster Movie were shot in Wellsboro, PA.

More as this story evolves; until later, I am at johnoakdalton@hotmail.com.

1,825 Days Later

I once had the idea that when I got to my 5th anniversary on this blog I would have reached 1,000 posts and would have back-tagged all of my previous posts and have some wise words to share. Three strikes, and here I am. I have posted 964 times, which if my math isn't too shaky means I have posted an average of almost every other day for five years. I never knew I had that much to talk about. And loyal readers know I probably didn't.

But a lot of stuff has happened in five years. Both of my kids are grown and out of the house, I had a significant job change after sixteen years, my movies finally started coming out to a DVD shelf near you, and a lot more.

Five years ago AMONG US was in the can but had yet to be released, I was working in fits and starts on THE PAYBACK MAN for director Ivan Rogers, had just polished RAZORTEETH and was starting on DEMONS ON A DEAD END STREET, the fourth script in a four-feature package with Polonia Brothers Entertainment/Intercoast.

I had just got back from GenCon 03 in Indianapolis and was enthused about CrossGen Comics. I was reading WAR MEMORIALS by Clint McCown, THE SMILE ON THE FACE OF THE TIGER by Loren Estleman, and THE GANGSTER WE WERE ALL LOOKING FOR by Le Thi Diem Thuy.

I was just starting on the Microcinema Scene website with Jason Santo and Gary Lummp, which is still going today under Christopher Sharpe's tutelage, who I would one day work with on SEX MACHINE (and I think landing that rewrite job was directly correlated to Chris having read this blog). I was excited about two microcinema features I had just seen, HARDCORE POISONED EYES and HALL OF MIRRORS. Thinking on this today, these are still two of the best microcinema features ever.

My mom was freshly retired, my dad was yet to be diagnosed with cancer. The thing that strikes me the most when I read back over the old posts is that a good friend, prolific b-movie director John Polonia (who I collaborated with on several scripts), was still alive. He died suddenly this year and took a lot of good future projects with him.

I wish I could remember why I started blogging, who I read early on or who egged me on to start up. All that is lost in the dustbins of history. But it is interesting how much it all has grown and changed. I just got back from a blogging/social media conference in Indianapolis Sunday, and it doesn't seem that long ago that one of my students was showing me what email was.

Thanks to literally tens of thousands of readers (and I would have never thought I would be typing that) who have peeked in over the years; unless it was just my brother logging in from tens of thousands of IP addresses around the country, then thanks to him alone. If you'd like to stroll back in time, check me out in the Wayback Machine here.

Give me a yell at johnoakdalton@hotmail.com.

Live from Silicorn Valley

I just got back from Blogindiana 2008, Indiana's first blogging and social media conference, held at IUPUI in Indianapolis. Although loyal readers know I spent a number of years in IT, I have been out for a while and since it basically moves in dog years I had some catching up to do. A lot of other dudes have blogged about this, posted photos and the like (I found one picture of my back here), but I will add a few humble words (and I would post my own pictures, but I dropped my camera on the concrete at the company picnic, the storm over which has yet to subside at home).
It was quite a good conference with many compelling speakers, a neat facility and a good lunch, with the extra benefit of bumping into some old some old pals. My wife found it funny that I came home Saturday night and spent another hour surfing the web looking at the blogs of the people I had just met, but that's how we bloggers roll.
I learned a lot about Web 2.0, web analytics, social media platforms, and a lot more that puts me at the edge of a migraine to think about, but even more importantly is figuring out how to apply some of these ideas to the next-generation distribution model for movies, TV, and the like that I have been percolating on all summer. One thing I decided to knuckle down and try for a month or so is Twitter (see sidebar), which seemed to be the tech du jour at the conference. It was funny to see people sitting around chatting amiably while a vast wave of snark was unspooling on a Twitter wall being projected onto the wall in the main conference room. For the first time in my life I had a sense what it would be like to have the mind-reading superpower and know what people were really thinking.
The other thing that struck me funny was how lo-fi the goodie bag was; all pens and pencils and notepads, not a mouse pad or thumb drive among them. It gives me hope for our humble "legacy technologies," and the lonely boy who proudly trooped off the Ball State University in 1984 with his new electric typewriter. The older and somewhat wiser version held his tongue during discussions of citizen journalism, as he knows that it has existed for many years: as public access television, his day job. But it is interesting to see the new two-way model that Web 2.0 stands for, and to follow where it may be going.
Until later, catch me at johnoakdalton@hotmail.com.

Or the Tropic of Sir Galahad

I feel kind of Hollywood. A lot of times lately we've woken up and heard something outside and said, "Is that Miley Cyrus?" and then we hear kids yelling out her name and we realize that it is indeed Miley Cyrus.

Of course, the neighbors who moved here from California named their puppy Miley Cyrus.

Unfortunately the great Russian writer Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn died. I have enjoyed myself some chewy Russian literature from time to time but I would recommend One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich to anyone, and is a great, and greatly accessible, work by this notable writer.

On Saturday night we drove over to Losantville with some friends to a diner called the Blue Moon. We ate meatloaf and fried fish and fried chicken and watched a 16-year-old kid named Brian Wallen belt out some old-school bluegrass. It was a fun evening and someday when this rural prodigy is down in Nashville I will remember I saw him in the waybacks.

I am currently doing a rewrite of a project I scripted last year under a nondisclosure, which makes this blog less fun. So until later, I am at johnoakdalton@hotmail.com.

Go Horse!

The Colts are in the opening game of the preseason--damn, is it almost football time again? The scary thing is that the Colts are all a year older and a bit more dinged up. But I'm ready as my Pacers have imploded, the Fever are just okay and my Reds have thrown in the towel and traded Griffey. If only we still had Arena Football (go Firebirds!) there might be more to hope for.

Nerd City, USA

I really did not know San Diego Comic Con was the same week I happened to be in San Diego. My wife will go to her grave believing otherwise. I went on Thursday and it ended up being quite a day. I intended to meet up with Scott Phillips and Bill Cunningham (who both did a lot more blogging about the Con than I have) but ended up bumping into a ton of other people instead. I guess that's the difference being in the middle of Indiana and fairly close to LA.
For instance, literally the first person I set eyes on when I walked into the convention was Steve Seagle. Steve used to work as a contract faculty in the Speech Department at Ball State University right across the sidewalk from my office, and we both went to the same (read: only) comic book shop in Muncie at that time. But it was more like I knew of him rather than knew him as at that time he already had a little street cred writing some indy comics and I had done nothing (no, this wasn't a week ago; it was many years ago). He later left Muncie and wrote Superman and Uncanny X-Men and created the popular program Ben 10 under the curious moniker "Man of Action." I have often thought that if only he had hung a little tighter with me, he might have been able to make something of himself. So we are standing there chatting and I forgot to remind him how much I loved Primal Force because suddenly he said, "Hey, there's Grant Morrison," and there went Grant Morrison.
A short time later I am checking out some DVDs at a distributor's booth when I hear a guy talking about a movie that sounded familiar. And I turned and said, "Are you talking about Tomorrow By Midnight?" which he was, because he was the director, Rolfe Kanefsky. It took me a few minutes to remember that his pal Jay Woelfel had sent me this unreleased gem and I told the guy at this booth his company should definitely pick it up. So if it gets picked up somebody should send me 10 percent commission. I'm just sayin'.
That was just the first hour or so. I saw enough of geekdom's finest to fill many more posts, but I will let the reader speculate. I checked out a bit of the independent film festival and stood in a long line to hear J. Michael Straczynski (worth it, I enjoy his work and his writing and found it inspirational, except he said he never had writer's block) but spent a bulk of my time in the Artist's Alley and the few rickety aisles in the back where they stuck the independent comics people, where my heart always lies. This is also where I bumped into some people that knew Sex Machine director Christopher Sharpe who I happened to overhear talking about A Scanner Darkly and can be added to the long list of people who can't believe I never meet most of the people I work with (again, the Indiana thing). I will soon provide a list of what I picked up in Indy Row that was good, bad, and indifferent but am still sifting through it all and will have to report back later. However, my pal The Mighty Caveman has alread inventoried his swag here.
More later; until then, I am at johnoakdalton@hotmail.com.

California Knows How To Party

I have been offline in San Diego, California, which might as well be another country. It's 75 degrees pretty much all year round and people stay home from work if it rains. You see oranges and lemons all over the place and exotic flowers growing out of cracks in the sidewalk. It is basically a paradise on earth except for the "sun tax," which means $3 cokes and $8 hamburgers everywhere, and the fact that if you didn't pump in water you'd be living in a place that looks like the above photo. Which I know because I have seen Chinatown a few times. But it houses one of the nicest places I have seen in any city on planet Earth, Balboa Park, home to art museums and botanical gardens and the San Diego Zoo and other sites, many of them free. We also ate at nice restaurants in the city's Little Italy and in La Jolla (which I found out is the same place as La Hoya), visited the Gaslamp District and the maritime museums (memorably the docked Midway Musuem) and chilled out at night at the Keating House. We went down to the Gay Pride Festival and caught Kathy Griffin's act. And yes, for loyal readers, I spent an interesting day at Comic Con. More later; until then, I am at johnoakdalton@hotmail.com.

More Dead and Long Live

I got a lot of hits on my musings about grassroots DV and its next incarnation, and lots of comments here and in emails. Thanks to one and all for the continued feedback.

Longtime reader Scott writes, I read your blog post on the new face of grassroots cinema. Interesting stuff, and certainly a lot to think about. I'm not sure how much I like the idea of working hard on a project only to make it available for free, or at least doing that on a regular basis. I think there's a sense of entitlement that young Internet users have -- they not only want everything without paying for it, but they also take pride in being the first to make something that should be paid for available for free...I realize that what you're talking about is different than the wholesale theft of movies, but I think it all comes from the same place. I also think a lot of this "mumblecore" and whatnot stems from impatient people wanting to make movies, but not wanting to make the effort to do it right -- they want to invent some half-assed way of crapping it out without bothering to light or mic anything or even do a halfway professional job of shooting it, then turn that half-assedness into a new "movement" to lend themselves credence. Maybe it's the crotchety old man in me talking, but I don't have any interest in that sort of stuff -- I feel like I work hard as a writer and as a filmmaker and it irritates me to see both those forms reduced to Internet shorthand (don't even get me started on the self-proclaimed "writers" that litter the Net). I guess my opinion could be summed up thusly: the easy, worldwide availability of shit doesn't make it any less shitty, no matter how much people try to make you think you're looking at gold. Jeez. I'm gonna go back out on the porch and whittle my stick.

New reader Michael writes, I enjoyed your blog post and feel your perception of technology and media is right on. Itunes seems to be the leader in the technology of transporting media via Itunes, but it is all mainstream and one has to find other sources for projects that are more grassroots or independent. I don't like watching full length movies or reading lengthy manuscripts on my computer either, but I've noticed, though it's too expensive right now, Apple selling Apple TV and large TV monitors so one can watch their computer media content on their big screen TV's. Then you have Amazon's release of the KINDLE.
The wirless reading device is suppose to read like paper, but it's pricey at the moment too. But I think the switch in technology and media that you mention in your article is inevitable, which is why it was great for the writers to fight for their part in it all now.
Another new trend I see is webisodes. Many people, who might have never gotten their break otherwise, are getting Hollywoods attention by creating a webisode series, each on being 3 minutes long. Why 3 mins? I think it's because, like you and I, people don't want to 90 minute movies on their computer. But people, including me, will watch a 3 minute webisode (even during their break at work).

This is basically the kind of thing I'm talking about.

I'm trying to get smarter by going to this.

By the way, my alma mater, Ball State University, is working on a feature film this summer with one of probably our top ten most famous Telecommunications alums (after David Letterman), Doug Jones. Unbelievably, he was the sports mascot for the Fighting Cardinals when I was in town, now he's in Hellboy movies and Pan's Labyrinth and played the Silver Surfer and more. Meanwhile, one of the dudes in the bottom ten alums wasn't asked to do anything with it.

Keep hollerin' at me at johnoakdalton@hotmail.com.

Grassroots DV is Dead; Long Live Grassroots DV

Every summer I like to sit down and write one script entirely for myself. I have actually never sold a spec script--every one of my fifteen or so projects have been for hire--so I generally write something that I alone might enjoy and then if something one day happens with it I can be pleasantly surprised.

This summer I decied I would write the script on the Celtx open source platform and then release it under a Creative Commons license. The summer is half over but I have barely gotten started. I think part of it is that I have been sensing some new trends and trying to sniff them out, of which all of the previous stuff I mentioned is a part.

Back around the turn of the century, 1999 or so, I decided with my career settled in and my kids growing along, I would spend a year trying to get my freelancing career on track again. In the late 80s I saw the mom and pop video store boom lead to a strong need for direct to video content (that old pals like the Polonia Brothers filled), but at that time I was a young father and rookie employee and I watched from afar. Content is a hungry beast that always needs to be fed, so when I saw DVD taking off so strongly I knew that need for direct-to-DVD content would be there.

I started trying to re-learn the genre content again. I had grown up on Japanese rubber monsters and Italian sword and scorcery and Russian sci-fi but had a long layoff in college studying film and watching French New Wave and Italian Neorealism and the like. I watched the movies and felt out the trends and started off with two specs; a horror story about a backyard wrestling star possessed by a demon called ONIBOCHO: THE DEMON KNIFE and a dark fantasy everything-but-the-kitchen-sink scarefest called SWORD OF THE ZOMBIE and later DOOMED SWORD RISING and later RING OF THE SORCERESS based on various people's interest. But as I said I have never sold a spec. But I did catch the eye of longtime b-movie producer Mark Polonia, who tested me out on a bigfoot movie script titled AMONG US that is still playing on cable today, and the rest is perhaps history if not truly current events.

At that same time I was starting on a parallel track. I found out that there were a lot of people making their own movies, b-movies and other genres including some that don't easy bear defining. People were screening these in all kinds of funky places and swapping them in the mail. The technology gap was closing such that people felt empowered to produce their own content outside of the mainstream. Where these movies screened were called Microcinemas, and before long the genre for this type of movie was called Microcinema, dubbed so by no less an authority than Wired Magazine.

For me, the big site at the time was ReWind Video, started by a bunch of Canadians who espoused "amateur" filmmaking. I was personally involved in public access television at that time (and now manage the third largest public access television facility in Indiana) and saw this as a natural extension. They launched a film festival, Microcinema Fest, which ran for seven consecutive years before going on hiatus this year. I met a lot of very talented people through this site and the fest and before long filmmakers Jason Santo, Gary Lumpp, Joe Sherlock and I were swapping VHS tapes in the mail and writing each other intricate and sometimes scathing reviews of this work. Santo has always been an ambitious dude, and five years ago this month he launched Microcinema Scene with Gary and I as contributing writers. I wrote hundreds of articles and reviews for the site over the years and piloted the ship for about a year after Jason moved on and before Christopher Sharpe, who I worked on with SEX MACHINE, took over the helm.

ReWind Video has become a wiki and Microcinema Scene is not as active as it once was. The Fest, that I contributed to in judging, MCing, and otherwise the last four years in South Dakota and Illinois is in transition. I think a lot of the early adopters of microcinema in the late 90s have gotten more into family and job commitments, and I saw a disconnect between them and the next generation coming through the ranks. The change in troops didn't really impact me, because I waited until I was an older guy already before I ever got involved. I just kept getting older as most of the people around me got younger.

I think part of what happened was the technology gap has narrowed even more, and I think that with YouTube and its related ilk, as well as the impact of DV in Hollywood, the need for community has lessened somewhat. Back when everybody was shooting SVHS, Hi-8 or even early GL-2s and the like nobody was fooling anybody about where their work was ending up, and I think there was the sense you could be more experimental. Now I think the young Turks can see a more smoothly-paved road to acceptance than their predecessors.

But as this light dims somewhat I have sensed something else on the horizon. There is a lot of talk of free independent content and of the internet as a delivery platform for this content. Again we see a lot of early adopters (too many to list here), from people like the Four Eyed Monsters folks who released their feature free on YouTube in sections to the Butterknife detective show by those mumblecore guys to Cory Doctorow releasing his novels free in a variety of forms to Warren Ellis writing Freak Angels for the web to people writing pulp fiction and otherwise and setting it loose as PDFs. There is Creative Commons and tons of content readers for video and text. People catching fire through viral video is becoming commonplace.

Mainstream movies and television are trying to figure out how it all works by posting TV shows on their sites and so on but again my interest lies with the grassroots efforts. I think we are on the cusp of the next thing, but I fear I am too old to fully grasp it. When microcinema took off I was still doing video production on a daily basis and pretty much knew what was going on tech-wise. Now I am in management and the production guys hope I don't interfere with what they're up to too much. I had only shot a little HD before I left my previous job and I had to finally admit that too many versions of FCP have gone by and I can't keep up any more, which is a shame because I was a pretty good editor, I thought (though my shooting and directing are still pretty sharp, in my opinion). Part of my problem is that I don't like to watch movies on my computer screen (except my own movies on Netflix's "Watch It Now" function, of course) and I don't like to read books on the computer much either (but somewhat tolerated The Shadow on my old Palm Pilot). I don't watch YouTube often and never download music.

But lots of people do all of the above, and again the cry for fresh content is or will be as deafening as it was with VHS and DVD. I think part of the problem is people trying to figure out how best to use the web to deliver new content, and I'm not convinced anybody has it right yet. I do believe, however, that a large amount of this content will run along genre lines, pulp content most specifically. There is something about the immediacy, and some would say the easy digestability and quick discardability, of pulp fiction that seems ready-made for the internet.

None of this is news to people who are involved with it or have been following it longer than I have, but I am taking this summer to figure out my part in it. I have released some of my work under Creative Commons licenses (and they can be found on this site) and my next spec will be as well. I had pitched the idea that this year's Microcinema Fest be an intensive production workshop with the goal being shooting and releasing a feature under Creative Commons with all of the raw footage being made available to the public domain. Although there was some interest, there was not enough to justify resurrecting the Fest this year, but I am still thinking about doing this on my own this Fall.

It seems to be an interesting time. But though I have guessed right on trends before I have also guessed wrong. I never thought CDs would take off because they just looked like little versions of records. I'm not sure if this "free content, internet platform" trend has a name yet, but I'll keep looking.

In the meantime, give me a yell at johnoakdalton@hotmail.com.

Straycationing on the Fourth

I've had more people email me about my Westie puppy than my last few script projects, so I thought I would post a new pic. This is Bonnie and I at Whitewater State Park at the beginning of a three-mile hike for which I only carried this five-pound weight for about two of those miles. We had a nice picnic and stopped for frozen custard on the way home.

For I Am The Great Cornholio

I'm probably opening myself up to a lot of bad google searches, but as longtime readers know I try to offer a plethora of helpful information. Here I am showing how I built a cornhole board set. When I was a kid, this used to be called "beanbag toss." Somehow, at least in this great midwest, it has become known as "cornhole" and is now sweeping the heartland. I have seen a lot of people playing it in their backyards, on camping trips, etc., and I was like, I should get myself a set. Then I learned they were clocking in at $100 a more. So, thanks to the trusty interwebs, I found some free cornhole board plans online and started building. Here I am with about $40 worth of lumber and some plans I am trying to make heads or tails of.

Mesure twice, cut once. You can buy the main board pre-cut at a store., and the rest is basically 2x4s. I thought I would need to buy a big piece of plywood and cut it to shape but then the kid was like, "Are you making a cornhole game?" and he gave me the secret handshake and took me right to the pre-cut "gaming boards." Even if you aren't a dude that likes tools much, you will never go wrong in life with your own mitre box saw (pictured here).

Here I am putting the frame together. The American Cornhole Association has very specific parameters for how these are supposed to be built, and I am totally serious.

Here I am trying to figure out, with a 99-cent compass from Wal-Mart, how to make the hole exactly to ACA regs. This was a colossal pain in the butt.

So I said to hell with that and bought this bad mamma jamma off of ebay. With paint, a few extra nuts and bolts, and paint I had a shade under $50 in this project. I decided not to include the cost of this six-inch hole saw (I paid about $35 on ebay, they are about $45 in stores) because I rationalized that I would be using this for other projects. During the course of building this initial set my kids both asked for a set and two more relatives have expressed interest as well. Santa's cornhole shop is going to be busy.

These legs should actually be inside. I misread the directions and cut the legs to 12" before realizing I needed to cut an angle to snug them up inside the box. So to follow ACA regs I just wing-bolted these to the outside. They do fold up flat for easier carrying. These are heavy mothers, though.

Boring picture of finished boards, painted with a quart of white glossy house paint. I also sanded all the raggedy-ass edges. I used wood screws that I alread had to put together the frames and nail the tops to the frames, but had to go to the hardware store for the wingnuts and bolts to make the legs close up. Again, about $50 all together.

I bought an industrial-strength marker and drew my own pictures on the boards. I know my drawing is a little shaky, but I wanted people to know I had made these myself and didn't settle for some crappy decals or something.

I doodled around for a long time and finally settled on kind of a generic monster theme, partially based on what kind of paint I had in the garage to finish these out with. Yes, I actually practiced these on scrap paper beforehand.

My son got conscripted into using his artistic talent to help me finish the painting on these. That was a bacon double cheeseburger I grilled for bribing purposes. Also I think he realized if I finally get these done I will start on his Colts cornhole game for fall tailgating.

You can see the colors of my kids' rooms, my bathroom, and my garage door on display.

My son, actually more talented than I am in artistic endeavors, redid all the lines after the paint dried. Can you tell I went to see "The Incredible Hulk" shortly before doing these designs? Having a lot of green paint around (see garage door) didn't hurt. The other one was supposed to be sort of a Godzilla thing but now I am going to tell everyone it's The Abomination.

We finished these in the backyard in the shade.

Field-testing. I fear my son has done more tailgating than I thought.