Monday, August 23, 2004

They're heeerrre

Yes, the DVD's have finally arrived!
Warner was taking forever to ship boxes of them to us, which was freaking us out - since we have to send them to reviewers, and such.
Seeing them, boxes of them, is an incredible experience. Years of work, finally, for honest god, really happening.
And they are beautiful. I'm not just saying that because I'm the proud Pappa either. It really is a good looking box, as is the disc.

Oh, boy I hope people like it. We've worked so hard on it... though that alone doesn't mean anything in the end.

Also got new sandals (teva, thank you very much) and a replacement keyboard for this laptop - which I was able to replace in about 3 minutes. Ah, thanks for easy things once in a while, Sony.

Now, I go back to work on poster signing and promotion of our movie.

Friday, August 20, 2004

Rolling our own

Packaging posters, that's what Friday nights are all about.
Marianne and I are fulfilling poster requests for the movie. We've figures we can fit about twenty in one tube. So everything is in twenties. If somebody requested 30 - hey - they'll probably get 40.

It's cool to be cutting into the stack of posters. It also makes you realize what the numbers are really like. A number, like 40 or 50 means a lot more when each of those posters has to be signed.

The keyboard on this computer is behaving oddly. It's a laptop, means expensive keyboard. I ordered a new one today. Of course, once I did, the problems went away.
Hope it's not a viral thang of some sort. 6666666666 yup, the six works now. ---------- as does the dash. They weren't earlier on.

Hey, have you told your friends about my movie yet? You haven't? Well, what are you waiting for. It's "The Ghosts of Edendale" and it's coming out on October 19th.

Tuesday, August 17, 2004

life and death

Had a party this past weekend for my birthday. Lots of fun with only the closest of friends.
Daniel and Laura (new friends met in Vegas) and I ended up talking about people we know, plans, the future, dreams.
They were telling me about how they're going to produce several moves with Neal Fredericks. The guy is a D.P. - biggest credit was Blair Witch (ugh) but was really busting butt making a name for himself. Nice guy on all accounts.
Marianne and I are talking at an "indieclub" meeting in the next week, and supposedly Neal would be back from the Keys, where he's shooting. I messaged boarded with him a bit last week.

Past tense, present tense, future tense. They all get mixed up in a situation like this.

Got word this morning that Neal went down in an airplane while shooting. Crew got out, he didn't. He was tightly strapped in, with the camera.

He was dead when Dan and Laura and I were talking about those plans. Just, nobody knew it quite yet - hadn't recovered his body yet. Murky water due to Hurricane Charley and all.

You just don't know what to do. It's unfortunately the third person I know of (closely) that went down in a small airplane. All of them in "the biz", two of them camera men.

What can you say?
Life is fragile.

Saturday, August 07, 2004

damn imdb.com

Damn it!

Ghosts of Edendale is rated a 4.2!??! on imdb.com. In spite of the fact that the movie has a majority of scores over 6, including a bunch of tens, three, count them 3 bad scores has driven the movie into the ground?

How is this possible? What kind of a "Weighting" system are they using? This is really killing me, because it could directly affect my bottom line. It's no mere trivial game. This is my life!

So, if you read this - even if you HAVEN't seen my movie, please help me out. Hey, after you see it, if you hate it, you can change the score... but at least you'll have a better chance of actually seeing it.

Thanks from a frustrated Stefan Avalos

Friday, August 06, 2004

No quake - HA!

So, "Ha" says I. "HA"

No quake as I dreamt, which proves, uh, nothing that hasn't been proven a million times before.

Got a comment from a previous thought! wow, cool. Somebody is actually reading this.
Thanks James!

He brings up just what I think a lot of film people (who tend to be democrats) think: "If I want to be scared, I'll go to the movies. This damn government is taking the fun out of horror".

The whole Tom Ridge, Bush, Cheney thing has really made 'Dr. Strangelove' seem kinda quaint. I liked Peter Sellers better than anyone, and even George C Scott, with all his crazy evilness, didn't seem half as evil as Cheney.

Strangelove was B/W. This is all sorts of shades of color. Too bad though there are still no shades of gray.

Movie promo talk: Our contest is coming together. We're about to go online with it, which means that the next couple weeks will be all about promoting a "Win a trip to Haunted Hollywood" contest.
It will be cool, and whoever wins will have a good time. We just want to make sure that the contest translates into rentals/buys of our DVD. Afterall, that is the point.
So - no purchase nesessary but it would help you out a whole lot more if you can pore through the DVD in great detail. Ha. Gotcha!

The onion.com has a funny story about how the CIA is unhappy with George Bush's personal blog. Seems he's giving up too many national secrets.

Wednesday, August 04, 2004

imagine that - old data

The furor is how Tom Ridge tried to scare everyone with old data. I wonder how many people were scared. This whole orange yellow color thing is so old, so tired, so - 2001.

That said, what next? Going to work on the ad for Video Store magazine. Last ad we can afford. We are tapped. I'm really wondering how effective that mass mailing was. God, so much money. Let's hope it pays out so that this blog has a happy ending.

Off to sleep.

Tuesday, August 03, 2004

quick dopey "gotta put this down on paper"

Okay, I'm an atheist. In case you didn't know and but somehow cared.

That said -- I had a dream about two months ago, that stuck.

Earthquake in Los Angeles on August 4th.
I had to write this down before the day cause - well, if something did happen, I could point to this and say a HA!

And, if nothing happens, then I can point to this and say A HA!

It's been said. So let it be.

Over and out.

I am a geek and I can't beat it

So, I'm going all over the www trying to promote the movie in whatever way possible. A stop at www.indieclub.com's message board has me going back and forth with somebody about the merits of one video camera vs another.

And I'm getting into it. Jesus, Marianne better get back soon. I'm reverting to irc style warring all over again -- about -- whether 24p is better than 30.

God help me. I'm a geek.

But I am right.

In other news - the Warner machine has begun rolling. Good, finally. When it goes though, not much will stop it, I'm guessing. I am over the star struckness of the whole thing. They are just another distributor. It is completely amazing though to see it go into action.

Gotta get another movie in the pipe.

Monday, August 02, 2004

A sea of Blog

I just checked on the ten most recent Blog posts... uh... I guess most of us are just writing to ourselves.

Gotta sleep. I'm doing an interview with Fangoria Magazine tomorrow morning.
Cool! Promotion for the movie.

my very first blog

So, now I'm a "blogger" too. Will I be cooler than I was? It seems that I was doing this in 1995 on a "10 megs free with your account" website.

Well, I have no idea whether anyone will ever read this, so what the hell. Than again...

October 19th has become a very important day. It's the day when all the work, all the thinking, planning, etc. will focus into a release - the North American Home video release of my movie.
See, I made this movie called "The Ghosts of Edendale". It's been done for quite a while now, and we've been through quite an adventure. Maybe I'll tell you about it. The culmination of this adventure thus far is that Warner Brothers picked it up for home video. Now that's a really HUGE deal in the film world, in case you didn't figure out on your own. Yup, pretty darn cool. Only thing is that we are still putting lots o bills on our credit cards as we go promoting the release of said flick on said distribution Giant's label.

Lots of fires to put out and to try getting started.
So, I think this will be what my blog thingie will be about.

Oh and if anyone does actually see this: check out the official website for "The Ghosts of Edendale" at www.ghostsofedendale.com


Hey, how about that Orange Alert? I guess Bush's ratings must have dropped somewhere.