No Trailer This Week For "Into the Madness: A Documentary".

Well, I was planning on having a trailer for my second feature, Into the Madness: A Documentary. However, I had a monkey wrench thrown into my hands on Thursday. I had a neighbor come up to me and inform me that there was a kitty cat under my trailer. Naturally, Into the Madness was in the dark recesses of my mind and trying to save this wild kitty was my main priority. I noticed that someone had put an orange Solo cup of hard cat food under the opening of my trailer where the skirting has broken apart. I decided to pour the contents of the cup out and see for myself how much would have been eaten.

While working my morning shift at my day job, I happened to grab two cans of generic cat food for about $1. I wanted to try to catch this little guy as the weather is going to get bad. I get off work at 5:30 P.M. and I check and see that the cat had eaten what I had poured out of the cup. I wanted to wait longer and try to get him at night. 9 P.M. rolls around and I get out of my trailer completely bundled and I open the first can of cat food. I place near the Solo cup and decide that an hour is a good waiting time. I return at 10 P.M. to find the contents of the can completely licked clean. I am baffled. It pulled the wool over my eyes and had himself a good meal on my two quarters. I decided to switch up my times to check on him from an hour to anywhere from five to fifteen minute increments.

I would see that a nibble or two would be taken from the can. I wanted to test it and I wanted to put the Solo cup over the can to see what he does. I come back out fifteen minutes later to find the cup knocked over and half of the can digested. The time is getting late and I had a shift at work that was almost half a day. I needed to get some rest. The time was now 1 A.M.

The biggest question on my mind was simple; "Was it really a cat?"

I grabbed my Kodak that I shot portions of Into the Madness with; the tripod light; and a plastic bag. The light and it's tripod screws wouldn't fit with the camera in the bag. I decided to undo the light from the screws and throw both items into the bag. As I went back outside to the spot, I tried to set the camera as upright as possible in the small opening. I placed the Solo cup over the food again to see what happens and I leave to go back inside.

I come out and check on it within a half hour, surprisingly, the cup was still over the can of food. Was he gone or was he full from the previous can? Puzzled, I went back inside. I kept running the possibilities through my head on this cat. Finally, 2 A.M. arrived and I decided to call it a night. I went back to check and oddly, the cup was still over the can of food. I brought the camera and light back inside and pulled out the SDHC card from the camera and placed it in my netbook.

I watched the footage for the first two minutes. Getting bored quickly, I decided to skip ahead. As I skipped ahead, I noticed a brown blur on the screen and realized that I had captured an encounter on video. I tried to go back as fast as I could and lo and behold, from the left side of my screen; it reveals itself. It didn't walk in from the opening, but, from the left which tells me that it was back at the front of my trailer and was watching me the whole time. I found it to be a slick little cat. Watching its motions on the video, he's a curious little one.

Saturday was different story. In the morning, I decided to grab a torn up wife-beater and rubbed it on my body to give my scent off to the cat to show it that I am not a threat. The last thing I want to do is show it harm. I left for work and as soon as I arrived something bad happened. A snow storm came in briefly, but, the temperatures dropped. I decided to grab some more cans of cat food and some catnip to get him going. I got home at 11 P.M. and I feel my whole face freezing while waiting for a cab. I got down and went underneath my trailer, I noticed that my shirt had muddy paw prints all over it which lead to me calling out for the cat. I got no response. I opened a can of food and left it out.

As I checked on it, there was no bites. I kept going out and for one of the first times that I prayed that the storm did not take the cat out. 3 A.M. comes and goes and for the final time that night, nothing. I started to feel horrible that I couldn't have actually snagged him instead of putting my camera down there. I decided to go to bed and not having a good night's sleep. I kept hoping that when I got up on Sunday, the can would be munched, I was wrong.

I hope he's ok. I only know him from this one minute of video.

New Blog Title; "Das Leben Des Opfer!"

I'm about to go to bed. The other day, I unearthed from the depths of the my two external hard drives the drafts of This is the Life. I wrote the script in 2008 right around the time that I met my second ex-fiancee and right after I graduated from Leilehua High School. It was very Silent Hill-esque in terms of story. I was going to direct it as soon as I finished the script, but got very sick with my kidneys.

I think I am going to give the script a new polish, but, I am going to pass on directing it. I think I am going to be saving it for my planned hiatus. We're working on getting contracts ready for Traumatic Possession 3D: Hawaii. And come January, I am going to be giving my buddy Stephen the script for the movie he is directing. We're getting things ready!

So, My Twenty-Fourth B-day.

I have left the blog unattended for some time. My birthday was back on the 21st. I was supposed to go out to Comic-Con in Columbus and get some photos with Laurie Holden and Ray Park, but, plans were hijacked. Despite that, I mainly sat around played through Grand Theft Auto V. It blows GTA IV out of the water. Trevor is hands down one of the most twisted characters that I have ever seen. To those who've played it, I was shocked with his introduction and a certain couple from GTA IV is brought back for a quick cameo. The ending to the game was spectacular and this unlikely friendship between Franklin, Michael, and Trevor blow Niko and Roman away. Here's my two favorite songs from the game.

Went and watched This is the End for the fourth time. I love the movie even more and more. I am planning on picking up the German Blu-ray when it comes out in December. I also ended up ordering some German Blu-rays from my favorite Swiss Webstore Grooves Inc. Got the German Blu-rays for Ca$h; Ghidorah, the Three Headed Monster, and Good Time Max for $33. I'm waiting until mid-October to order Iron Man 3D and R-Point. Very excited for R-Point as it is one of my favorite South Korean horror films.

Studio wise, getting stuff ready to go for Traumatic Possession 3D: The Director's Cut and editing Into the Madness: A Documentary. I am going to show Abby a rough cut of the film in October whenever I go out to Columbus in October. And then we're going to start filming Traumatic Possession 3D: Hawai'i. Honolulu is no longer safe and someone or something is coming after a survivor who encountered Simon Lange.

Announcing a Segment!

I know that I haven't discussed my little anthology project Stories in a long time. I'm announcing a segment which we will be filming soon; Stand Off: A Prisoner in Exile. It will be the first of the five or six segments that I will be directing of the nine. Abby is toying around with doing a short on a television pilot I wrote about nine years ago. If we do go ahead, I think I might let her do the whole pilot episode to get a reaction out of viewers.

I am also going to be doing another HD master for 2D version of Traumatic Possession 3D: The Tape after not being too pleased with the first round of encoding. One thing that I am going to do with the transfer is window box it slightly and add a border around the sides of the scope image, kind of like how Disney window boxed the Studio Ghibli films on DVD. I'll probably have that ready to go in another week or so.

Went to the dollar theater and caught Man of Steel for the fourth time. Hands down the best film of the year. Probably the best comic book adaption as well. That first twenty minutes of all hell breaking loose on Krypton is one of the strongest openings to a film. How it shows the sacrifices that Jor-El and Lara-El have to make is pretty powerful.

And then, oddly, the dollar theater got Oblivion back for two days and Monday was the last night it was playing. The thing was, it was one of those closed caption screenings for the deaf and hard of hearing, so it has English subtitles on the screen. It's been a while since the dollar theater has played one of those, I think the last one that I can remember was The Change-Up with Ryan Reynolds. However, this print was in horrible condition and laser must have been dirty of something because the subtitles jumped and were blurry as hell as the rest of the print was fine. It wouldn't have been worth it if you were deaf anyhow. But, I thought Oblivion was a pretty good sci-fi thriller.

Also working on a little pet project of remastering a movie which will never see the light of day in terms of getting a legit release. Working with only VHS footage transferred to a DVD is pretty mind numbing. Only trick to cover up the interlacing is to add a layer of grain in Sony Vegas.

Film Festival Problems...

Well, the celluloid portion of my film festival might be in jeopardy as I am having problems finding theaters in my state, Ohio, that are catering to all film formats. It's all digital now, so, where do I go from there? I do have a high definition version of Night of the Living Dead that I downloaded off of the Internet Archive.

What I am thinking is this, since we have to go digital, I will divide up the price and have several other indie filmmakers involved and have them pay a fifth or sixth of the rental cost depending if we screen five or six films. That's the plan so far. I will confirm that Traumatic Possession: The Director's Cut will be screening in the Summer when we do it. Probably screening another film or two and Night of the Living Dead to have possibly half or two-thirds be my material.

Other than that, I am leaving in another two hours to go see Rifftrax Live! Starship Troopers. I am excited to see it. I missed Birdemic last year but caught the screening of Manos! The Hands of Fate. Sorry that I haven't been writing much lately. Relationships take up a lot of time and writing movies takes up even more. Looking forward to showing you some stuff soon.

EDIT 8/21: *IGNORE* 1080i Screencaps for "TP2D:TT".

Edit: 8/21/13: I am re-doing this transfer.

Yesterday, I created the 1080i high definition master for the 2D version of Traumatic Possession 3D: The Tape. I've also got some plans regarding the new 3D transfer which will be for 3DTVs and not the old school anaglyph 3D that we used for the theatrical release. We've scrapped that and we're going to re-do that transfer as well for the big "Bootleg Edition" DVD set coming at the end of 2013/beginning of 2014.

I created the 1080i transfer in MultiAVCHD from the original 720p material. It is slightly upscaled as I was originally planning to release the film on Blu-ray in 720p, but, ultimately decided against it. With a bitrate of 17.54 kbps at 10GB in the Mpeg 4 AVC format. The plan for the disc is to be:

• 2D Theatrical Cut (with unrated audio, commentary, isolated score) - 10 GB
• 3D Theatrical Cut (with unrated audio, commentary, isolated score) - 10 GB
• Director's Cut - 10GB
• Into the Madness: A Documentary - 10 GB
• Bonus Materials (Workprint, subtitle tracks, etc.) - 10 GB

Now, the plan is this; it's going to be a two disc set called The Traumatic Possession Trilogy. Disc two will contain Traumatic Possession 2-3D and Traumatic Possession 3D: Apocalypse in both 2D and 3D versions on a BD-50. We'll be working on getting this all together in the following months after the sequels are shot and edited. However, I am trying to get a Blu-ray release in the works outside of the U.S. and have been seeking out studios in Asia. Visit the 1080i images here at Postimage! http://postimg.org/gallery/9jsmlb8e/2b4dfdb7/

Viva La France. Reviving "The Past".

Today is Bastille Day meaning that it's French Independence Day. After spending some time in France and Germany and the rest of Europe; I can say that I really had an overall pleasant experience in France over Germany. I consider it almost a second or third home to Hawaii being the first. And I have another stalker to add to the list too. Jesus Christ bananas people.

I found a giant busted binder full of notes that was written between 2003 to 2006. That would be the years I spent living in Europe. I found a lot of crazy shit in there that made me feel like that "lost American living in Europe" that I used to have. Going into shops and having to speak a totally different language other than English to get what I wanted. I had to be on my toes in order to speak either German or French because it's not only speaking it, it's hearing the people respond back to me and having to translate that within an instant of it being said.

Back to that binder, I found my passion again. I found a film I started writing in 2004 and I am totally wanting to do it. Since the filming for Traumatic Possession 3D: Apocalypse is probably getting pushed back, we could probably film this in it's place. That film was called And the Past Was Us. I remember thinking about that film for years. Even back when I was writing the stuff for Traumatic Possession 3D: The Tape.

I want to break away from horror and show how I can handle different genres. With having a studio, I want to cater to everyone. Make a comedy, horror, romance, etc. This film, And the Past Was Us is a film that does not have a basic protagonist/antagonist story to it; it's about a man who goes through hell and back. I started writing it while I was with my first ex-fiancee. Will I convert the film to 3D? Of course.

When will these planned films debut? For the film festival. We are going to do some kickstarter or indie-go-go campaign to raise money to take the films on the road. We'll screen all the films together back to back. I'm thinking we'll have the first screenings be in Columbus, back at the Grandview. Then, after that, Hawai'i?