Blog reshuffle

Hi folks

This blog is mutating as part of our ongoing online redevelopment, so check out http://www.jinx.co.uk for our latest info. The front page is a repurposing of most of the content from here.

Cheers,
Pat

Endless Post-Production in the Digital Age

I've been editing bits of KillerKiller this month. Tweaking little moments (a close-up here, a dfifferent line-reading there) in a movie that was already been released across most of the globe in 2007. It's also having a polish on the sound-mix and a completely new picture grade.

The reasons for this? Well, the movie will be finally coming out in the UK this year, where it has never been seen outside of festival showings (and imports, I guess, and naughty bittorrent downloads). Seeing as the territory is a bit of a clean slate for the film, I wanted to make sure that it turned up looking its best. Various territories ended up with a 4:3 crop being released back in 2007 (when the movie was shot 16:9) so it was already a no-brainer that I'd have to make sure that the version for my home territory didn't suffer any such ignominy. Ultimately, of course, once you're back in the project and making sure you're happy with the ratio, it's a very small jump to tweaking this and that and before you know it you've got a director's cut on your hands. Not a massively reworked version, granted, but something significantly different from the original release to warrant pointing out.

Thing is, where does this end? Is this the road that leads to George Lucas madness? Am I embarking on a foolish mission, and do I even have the right to take something back and screw with it once it's already been out on release?

Let's take that grade, for example. KillerKiller circa 2007 is massively desaturated, with a brittle, cold look to the whole flick. There's not a great deal of colour variation, even in the nightmarish kill sequences; the whole thing has more or less the same level of extreme desaturation. Ultimately, this was a decision I made under a specific set of circumstances; those circumstances being that I'd been staring at the movie on the edit line for months and months. After a while you get a bit edit-blind and start to mistake different for better. I remember the night that I settled on the look of the grade. I was absolutely delighted. I felt that the grade matched the tone of the flick, made it feel more cinematic, just worked.

Of course, I then got used to that desaturated look. As I watched the movie back at festivals, or at screenings, or for commentaries, or whatever, that desaturated look came to be how the film was in my head. Of course, when I came to review a few bits of the original footage a few years later (when I put the first Fake Blood on the Lens live shows together) I flipped out a bit; I suddenly thought it looked gorgeous. All that colour, man... All that colour detail that was missing from the release version...

But was I just falling back into the trap where different equals better?

For the new release I've tried to walk the fine line. I've got a decent colour grader (the multi-talented Paul Cousins, who has been my right-hand man on Battlefield Death Tales) to go through the film with a bit more sensitivity than I did in 2007 and grade accordingly rather than being constrained by what's already on the shelves. I've been feeding back on a scene-by-scene basis and I love the new look of the movie.

But what if other people don't? The version of The Exorcist that was released as 'The Version You've Never Seen' made me realise just what a delicate process messing around with previously released movies really is. I absolutely hated that version (and usually referred to it as 'The Version We've Fucked Up Completely') because in my eyes it broke a very, very delicate balance within the movie; I particularly felt that the addition of a load of new subliminals took the technique from being devastatingly effective to utterly ridiculous, and the whole movie suddenly felt cheap in places it had previously felt masterful.

KillerKiller, of course, isn't in the same league as The Exorcist, so to a degree there's a lot less at stake. I'm not meddling with a cherished classic: I'm tweaking a little indie slasher that very few people have seen. But the point remains as to whether I'm breaking my own rules and behaving in a way that I constantly berate bigger filmmakers for doing.

Sod it, the die is cast, and I much prefer the new edit. I'll just have to ignore the little voice in the back of my head whining that George Lucas prefers his new edits too.

The Devil's Music is finally going to appear on DVD in the UK this year, too, having been a solely digital release up to this point. That one, however, I'm going to leave exactly as it is.

Except for maybe just one shot...

Battlefield Death Tales Video Diary #1

God, it was cold that day.

Battlefield Death Tales continues to rocket through post-production, and we've got some very exciting news about the project which we'll be telling the world soon. To keep up to date with the whole thing (including exclusive pictures, etc.) be sure to hit the official Death Tales Facebook page which we've been updating an awful lot more regularly than I've been updating this blog!

These Crazy Schemes

It’s been a stupidly busy few weeks. We’re deep in post-production on Battlefield Death Tales, of course, with a view to actually locking the movie in a few weeks. Which is, of course, crazy. Absolutely batshit crazy. But sometimes doing crazy stuff is the only way to get anything done.

The original Bordello Death Tales largely came about (as you can discover from the bonus features) because my friend and co-conspirator Jim Eaves and his wonderful wife Laura were expecting their first child. Jim wanted to get another project completed before his daughter’s arrival, and knowing that he wouldn’t be able to fit a feature shoot into such a tight timescale he came up with the idea of putting an anthology together.

He approached me about the idea after a premiere screening of his movie Bane (which I thoroughly recommend you go and pick up). I thought it was a great idea, since Jinx didn’t have enough cash in our coffers to support another feature shoot at that point, but would be able to commit to a third of a feature without too many problems. I suggested Al Ronald as a potential third director, who was, happily, also up for it. And it all just dropped into place.

This time around, rather brilliantly, Jim and Laura are once again expecting a child. Our date to lock picture is dictated partly by industry considerations and required release dates, and partly by good old-fashioned biology. The schedule this time has been crazier than ever, but I’m ridiculously excited about the movie and the footage I’ve seen so far. I’m hopeful that there will be a teaser trailer up in the next few weeks, and then hopefully you guys can start getting excited about it too.



The Battlefield shoot has also given me a chance to work with some of my favourite actors again (take a bow Jess Luisa Flynn and Geoff Sleight), meet some new actors (such as the wonderful Liza Keast, who stepped into a role at the last minute and was utterly fantastic) and also get to play around with rubber monsters and pyrotechnics in a way that we never really have before. It’s been a uniformly positive experience and has renewed my joy and enthusiasm for making films.

I’m already itching to go shoot another Death Tales movie, even before this one has been assembled (the three sections are always edited in isolation by their respective directors before being stitched together into one beast) but I’m also eager to go and shoot a feature again. House on the Witchpit is bubbling away on the back-burner awaiting the last piece of the funding puzzle to drop into place. The screenplay for Chainsaw Fairytale is getting close to completion but still has a question-mark hovering over its eventual destination; I wrote it expecting to sell it to someone else, but now feel strangely reticent to let it out of my sight.

Battlefield Death Tales and more...

Battlefield Death Tales has been shooting in a slightly stop-start fashion for the last few weeks, depending on the availability of actors. It's been a fantastic shoot thus far, and great fun. Rubber monsters, nazis, explosions (yes, proper big-assed explosions! Not CGI ones!) and more. My own chapter, Devils of the Blitz has only got one day's shooting left, and we're aiming to make delivery of the completed movie (rather terrifyingly) in about 5 weeks time.



The first photo from my chapter (as seen above, featuring the wonderful Jess-Luisa Flynn) was first seen over at
HorrorTalk. An exclusive image of the Devil Spiders from my chapter (brought to life by the combined genius of Russ Leach and monster-maker Chris Garrard) is featured in this month's SFX magazine (page 88, issue-skimmers). That issue also refers to me as "The Tarantino of budget gore flicks for style and dialogue", which is a quote that I imagine will be cropping up on posters and DVDs for my stuff for a while. It's in the wonderful Penny Dreadful's column; don't forget to follow her on Twitter. Oh, and follow me too while you're at it.

It's been a busy month. You know that thing about one of our back catalogue I mentioned? The flick in question is KillerKiller, and the good news is that a UK release will finally be happening this year (the flick's been caught up in red tape for the UK since 2007). We're putting together new extras and stuff, plus giving the movie a little polish, so it should be a great package. Really looking forward to it.

Strippers vs Werewolves will be in UK cinemas on April 27th, apparently. I'll be curious to see how it's turned out.

My Fake Blood on the Lens live show will be back over the summer. We're planning to get one of them properly filmed, and then we'll look at getting it digitally distributed somehow. It's 90 minutes of filmmaking advice, anecdotes, clips and arsing around. Way back in the late '90s I spent a few years as a stand-up, and I think that's one of the reasons I love the live shows so much. They give me the buzz of doing a show without the pressure of having to get a laugh every 10 seconds. Anyway, I'll try and make sure that the one that gets filmed is a good one. There'll be a whole load of new stuff in it, so even if you've seen the show before it'll hopefully be worth a return ticket. Details to follow as soon as we've sorted out the dates.

Oh, and the script for Chainsaw Fairytale is revving towards completion. It's one of the best things I've ever written.

Rock on,
Pat

Round up of stuff..

Ok, lots and lots to get through. That's my fault for updating this blog so goddamn rarely. If you'd like more regular updates and info you'd probably best follow my Twitter account, where you'll be able to find out all sorts of fairly useless information.

First of all, if you haven't seen The Devil's Music yet, click the widget above to rent or buy it wherever you are in the world. Plus you can make money embedding it on your own site. Distrify is cool.



Second of all, if you haven't seen Bordello Death Tales yet, you can buy that sucker from Amazon, HMV or wherever. It's all over the place. HERE, for example. Or you could try and win a copy somewhere like HERE. Oh, and don't forget to sign up on the official Death Tales Facebook page OVER HERE

Third, we proudly announced last month that filming has started on Battlefield Death Tales; all the madness of Bordello Death Tales but significantly more war. All three directors (myself, Jim Eaves and Al Ronald) are back, and you can check out the very first images from the shoot over at HORRORTALK. It's been a blast so far, and there are many more brilliant images to come from the Battlefield shoot. Keep your eyes peeled for an exclusive monster-tastic image in one of the big genre mags next months.

What else, what else? Well, as of this morning something cool happened with one of our older titles, but I can't tell you about that just yet. Soon, though. Soon.

Oh, and the Strippers vs Werewolves trailer hit the web a while back.



As I type these words, I'm actually laid up with a stinking cold which has completely taken my voice away. It's a very weird sensation. Funny how you get used to being able to communicate so effortlessly; I keep forgetting that I can't talk, and then I'm all surprised when I open my mouth and nothing emerges but a strained squeak. It's pretty bloody horrible, (especially as I was hoping to record some DVD supplemental stuff this evening, and now can't).

Pretty sure I haven't even mentioned Chainsaw Fairytale on this blog yet, have I?

Maybe that's a story for another day.

And they lived happily ever after.