Cases.

Got 100 clear DVD cases from Uline.com for about 41 cents each after shipping, tax, etc. A good price, I think, and I'm very impressed with the quality of the cases.



Recommended, if you don't mind buying in bulk.

Also, one of those cases in the photo is stuffed with the "Mark II" festival screener cover art.

Happy Christmas, everybody!

I hope Santa was as good to you guys as he was to me. Check out these awesome retro Star Trek action figures I found under the tree...



Happy Christmas!

Teaser redux.

While our buddy (and Hide and Creep DP) Robb Rugan puts the finishing touches on the "official" Interplanetary trailer (which is awesome--can't wait for you guys to see it), I thought I'd clean up the old "teaser" a bit and post it to Vimeo.

Interplanetary Teaser Trailer

I think the picture quality on Vimeo is a (small) step up from YouTube. You can also view the teaser at Vimeo's site in "HD."

Screener season.

We finally have Interplanetary in good enough shape that I've started submitting to festivals (two so far!). If it's time to send out screeners, that means it is time for DVD and cover art design.

Here's a (grainy) photo of the "Mark I" version of the disc and case that went out to a fest last week...



Props to Ted Speaker, who designed the Interplanetary Corporation "Mars Base Two" logo that inspired the screener artwork.

First screening of 2009.

Looks like the first festival screening of Interplanetary in 2009 will be in Oxford, Mississippi, courtesy of the awesome folks at the Oxford Film Festival.



The festival will be held from February 5 - 8, though I don't yet know which night Interplanetary will be showing. According to Google Maps, the Oxford fest's screening theater is less than three and a half hours from Birmingham, so it isn't too far if any of you hometown folks are interested in driving over.

I believe this will be our last "work in progress" screening of the flick. I'm really excited about the current cut of Interplanetary, and, if it plays well in Oxford, I think we'll call it "locked."

Special thanks to Melanie and Michelle at the Oxford Film Festival for inviting us!

Trust the art, not the artist.

I've been telling everybody that Hide and Creep (my first feature, co-directed with Chuck Hartsell) is about the small Southern town where I grew up, and Interplanetary is about my (day job) workplace experiences as an adult.

But I've been wrong.

Hide and Creep is about where I grew up, and Interplanetary is about the stuff I watched on TV. Battlestar Galactica. Buck Rogers. Movies like Star Wars, The Creature From the Black Lagoon, and John Carpenter's The Thing. And, most significantly, Star Trek.



Now, I wasn't totally wrong. There are plenty of Interplanetary bits informed by my Office Space-like professional life. But when you get down to it, Interplanetary is me trying to make my "Menagerie."

Wouldn't you know, it was my sister Somer who set me straight. I let her borrow a DVD of the Norway cut of Interplanetary, and she emailed me with her review. She hit the nail on the head during the first paragraph...

"I felt like I was reliving all of the Star Trek shows/Black Lagoon/sci-fi stuff we watched when we were younger!"

I mention all of this just because it amuses me that, after years of work on Interplanetary, I am still discovering new things about it.

So thanks for watching, Somer. And thanks to the cast and crew of Interplanetary for helping me unleash my inner Gene Roddenberry.

Norway Thursday.

As I mentioned in the last post, you can get the Norway Thursday Bergen recap from John's blog. To his notes on the day, I'll just add a few photos...





One of my favorite things about Norway this time of year is that it never really quite gets daylight. Bergen and Os are far enough north that the sun comes up around 8 a.m., hovers along the horizon, and sets around 4 p.m. I took this next photo around 12:45 p.m. local time. Notice how low the sun sits in the sky.







Anticipating cold, wet weather, I actually left my beloved Converse Chuck Taylor sneakers at home and wore a new pair of Gore-Tex hiking shoes while in Norway. Here are my shoes (and me) on the way down the funicular.



Finally, a reflected-from-above shot of John, Stacey, and me in the ferry boat on the way back to Os.



Stacey stayed in Thursday night, while Bjørn treated John, Jen, Stianpian, and I to a special private screening of Sex Galaxy at the local sports bar, walking distance from the WT fest community center. I gotta say, Sex Galaxy is a trip. Most of the movie consists of re-dubbed and re-edited public domain footage from old sci-fi movies. So the look is quite old-school, but the dialog is modern, as is the plot, which concerns a group of astronauts leaving a future Earth where pre-marital sex has been outlawed.

It was great seeing an off-beat movie in an intimate setting, and it gave us our first opportunity to hang out with Bjørn and Stianpian away from the relative craziness of festival central. The only downside was we missed the night's "big" screening, Jack Brooks: Monster Slayer. But Brooks is now available on DVD here in the States, so I'll Netflix it at some point.