Dear “Catalyst” Diary… Vol. 2
Gratitude… I could actually stop and hit “send” now. None of that has changed since the last newsletter update.
The short film — our proof of concept scene from the feature film — is now internationally funded as a check came this week from one of our dearest supporters in Canada.
More ghost stories were posted, so we continue to hope that their popularity — combined with the short scene we’re about to shoot — will assist us this summer when we seek traditional deep-pocket investors for the cost of the feature film, which we hope to shoot by the fall.
Speaking of the popularity, our Twitter following is over 1800+. We should certainly break 2000 by our next update.
I’m pleased to announce we’ve hired Timothy Naylor as our Director of Photography.
Click here to see Tim’s credits.
Click here to see samples of what Tim can do with a camera and light.
Tim has worked on four feature films with our producer, Anthony Vorhies, so he comes highly recommended. He seems equally comfortable with bright and dark palates, which will be be important since our film starts out chipper and slowly falls into moodiness.
I am particularly pleased that Tim owns the DJI Ronin system for stabilizing the camera. Think of it as a Steady-cam. This will be very important because we intend to make a visual statement by mashing up slick moving master shots with crazy handheld shots.
The slick moving masters will represent “normal life” and be reminiscent of Roman Polanski and William Friedkin’s work in Rosemary’s Baby and The Exorcist.
The handheld camera — as often used in today’s “found footage” thrillers — will be how we show what the ghost sees as it learns to be a ghost and becomes a greater and greater threat to our innocent family. Tim will literally make his camera “react like a ghost” when we reshoot scenes with the family for the Ghost’s point of view (POV).
Visually, imagine this as “Jaws in a haunted house.” What I mean is, remember how Spielberg made us be the shark swimming up to legs, then how he cut above the water, leaving us worrying what was going on beneath the water? That intercutting between predator and prey is a big part of “The Catalyst.”
Now, if you can imagine that, add Lucien and Fangge of Mechanism Digital tweaking the handheld ghost POV footage to seem as if the ghost was looking in from another dimension with bloody cataract eyes!
Tim’s next job will be to survey the proposed location and interface with me and the special effects house. Hopefully, we can lock down the location by the next newsletter.
Monkey Brains, LLC, the production company producing “The Catalyst” is filing papers with SAG (Screen Actors Guild) to make it a signatory. Once that happens and it is legit, we can hire our casting director who must be sure we are in compliance before assisting. Hopefully, our next update will be about casting.
Please consider donating a ghost story as it helps drive our Twitter following and will possibly influence investors to fund our feature film. (We are now accepting written stories and not just videos. It has been taking too much time to create videos for them.) Underneath your ghost story, we would be pleased to cross-promote anything (within reason), the message reaching not only our Twitter followers, but we have calculated retweets and favorites from just our top 20 Twitter influencers could potentially be seen by over a million people! DONATE STORIES HERE
I still can’t thank everyone enough, but I’ll keep trying.
Thank you everyone!
If you would like to be emailed these Catalyst Filmmaker Blogs rather than remember to visit our site, please click here…
Alan Fine
alan@catalystghoststories.com
catalystghoststories.com
@Catalyst_movie
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