To the Citizens of Kanab
Danny Daneau
Director
The following letter was published a few weeks ago by the Southern Utah News to thank the entire town of Kanab, Utah for lending so much support for our little indie film.
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Archive for October, 2007
Art Department Preproduction
Alex Eastwood
Production Designer
Second part in a series. To read “Part 1″ click here.
I had talked it over with my wife, budgeted our finances to make sure we wouldn’t be homeless and made the necessary arrangements to take time off of work; I was officially the Production Designer of The Attic Door.
Part 2…
Filmmaking can be broken down into three categories; Pre-Production, Production, and Post-Production. When most people think of the fun and exciting life of a filmmaker. they are usually thinking of the world of Production where all the filming takes place. They might also be thinking of Post-Production, where all the pieces of filming are brought together, assembled and polished into the final product that you see in the theater. However, I think very few people are enamored by, or even aware of, the world of Pre-Production where almost everything you see in the film is conceptualized, researched, illustrated, budgeted, created, collected, sewn, constructed, painted and many other verbs that would take to long to list. The reason I hold this belief is because before I did this film I was that person.
Alex Eastwood takes notes on the first location
scout in March of 2007.
It is amazing how naive I was at the beginning of this project, and also how blessed I was to be befriended by the very talented and experienced Production Designer and film professor, Phil Peters. I was beginning to meet regularly with Danny in January, and these meeting would often times be with Phil who was one of Danny’s film advisors. Phil was a Hollywood production designer for many years for film and television and had infinite amounts of wisdom and experience to draw from. Even more, he could relate to this project as his career started in Australia where he was use to working in small towns, in extreme environments, with a very tight budget. Phil helped guide me through the necessary steps of pre-production and truly filled in gaps that my inexperience was leaving wide open. Even though I was so excited to go out to Utah, start building sets and get the camera rolling in production, I quickly learned that one of the best kept secrets to any successful film is pre-production.
Continue Reading…
Monster now iPhone / iPod Touch Optimized
An iPhone in the Attic
Danny Daneau
Director
Thanks to the designers of the iWPhone, A Monster in the Attic is now optimized for the iPhone, iPod Touch, and other web-based mobile devices.
What does this mean?
Well if you visit our website using one of those devices you will automatically get a simplified version of the site that has larger font (no need to zoom) and easy “touch-of-the-finger” links to other pages and sites. You can see an example of this with the picture on the right.
So head to your nearest Apple Store, test out the website, program the link in the bookmark bar, and tell everyone in the store how cool the A Monster in the Attic Blog is. When you do this you should stand up on the table and wave your hands violently to attract attention.
Thanks iWPhone!
Technorati Tags: iPhone, iPod Touch, iWPhone, TUAW, Apple, Mac, Apple Store
Support our Film!!!!
Erica Harrell
Producer
If anyone is interested we have extra A Monster in the Attic bullet keychains for sale. If you would like one please click the button below and your donation will go towards our post production costs!
Thanks!
Erica
Four Eyed Monsters - A Resource for All Filmmakers
Danny Daneau
Director
Today I was browsing the Four Eyed Monsters “tutorial” page and was blown away by the wealth of information these guys share. I was especially taken back by a section called Dealing with Massive Amounts of Footage. The doc team behind A MONSTER IN THE ATTIC shot over 100 hours of video and I am sure they are going to love the tips and tricks presented here.
About Four Eyed Monsters:
“It’s the first feature film to have been legally uploaded to YouTube and made 50,000 dollars to date through sponsorship showing the film for free. Also did a DIY theatrical release that grossed 30K and got to over 30 markets. Did a DIY download/DVD release through the online store of the site which has grossed almost 30K. The Filmmakers are looking to make more projects and would like to talk to potential collaborators as well as sponsors and no-profit organizations with an interest in technology to make all of this easier for filmmakers to do themselves.”
These guys are paving the way for future filmmakers to share their films by building an online following. Check out the official blog here.
Technorati Tags: Four Eyed Monsters, Indiewire, DIY
Must Love Blogs… Or How I learned to stop worrying and love the Blog
Erica Harrell
Producer
I’m not crazy about blogs. When Danny first had the idea to have people who worked on A Monster in the Attic blog about the process of filmmaking I hoped I wouldn’t have to do it. Danny always had to gently remind me every once in a while to blog. I never really saw the point, but that is because I wasn’t educated on the power of the blog.
When I was in Orlando before production began on my other feature, Baker, Danny and I met with our adviser Mike Monello. Mike is the genius who worked on the massive internet marketing campaign behind The Blair Witch Project. Which was a film made by students also from the University of Central Florida. Mike encouraged Danny and I to keep up with our blogging so when A Monster in the Attic was complete we would have a built in fan base of our blog readers who would then want to watch our film. This made a lot of sense to me and a realized the power of the blog because, even though I am anti blogging, I read and am influenced by several blogs: Candy Blog, Defamer, LOST Blog, and Schrute Space. Now months later I have learned to like the process of blogging. Mike Monello has his own blog here and at Indiewire.
According to Wikipedia, Blogging began around 1983. As of September 2007, blog search engine Technorati Profile“>Technorati was tracking more than 106 million blogs.
Last Friday in the Los Angeles Times, there was an interesting article on a film blog for the recently released documentary Kurt Cobain, About A Son. The filmmaker, AJ Schnack, began his blog to promote the film, but soon the blog is what AJ became known for. This blog has made AJ “something of an authority figure for the world of documentaries, covering various issues faced by nonfiction filmmakers.” His blog has become so popular as a source of news and information for filmmakers. So much so that AJ had to create a separate blog just for the film Kurt Cobain, About A Son.
I think its amazing that his blog has united the documentary community as well as promoted his own film. Soon the A Monster in the Attic Blog will also feature clips from our behind the scenes documentary series Making a Monster along with other exclusive online content. This summer in Kanab the A Monster in the Attic documentary crew also made a short doc on the Heritage House. We hope to also have clips from that on this blog soon!
Technorati Tags: Blogging, Mike Monello, Haxan, The Blair Witch Project, Candy Blog, Lost Blog, Schrute Space, Campfire NYC, Indiewire, Los Angeles Times, Kurt Cobain About A Son, AJ Schnack, Making a Monster
Reliving a Monster - Down with the Sickness
Danny Daneau
Director
The original idea for the Reliving a Monster series was not to go through a day by day account of the production process. That will be seen coming this January when we premiere our video podcast series, Making a Monster. The idea behind these postings have been to shed light on some of the moments that stand out for me while directing the production through the ups and downs of feature filmmaking. However, ending today, I will finish my recap of the first three days of production that were cut short due to an unexpected illness with our lead actor, Jake…
It was beautiful Thursday morning in Kanab, Utah. I awoke to Day 3 with a renewed feeling of hope and excitement after getting a decent nights rest. Day 2 of production ran so smooth that many of my inner worries were melting away. Today was going to be an even lighter day as the one prior in terms of pages and camera setups I needed to get through. Things were definitely looking up.
Coming onto the film, Madison had already been booked for only two days of our shooting schedule to finish shooting her part in the film Jack and the Beanstock, starring Chevy Chase and James Earl Jones. So for today we would only have her on set for half the day before she needed to travel back to Los Angeles. This meant our entire second half of the day would be with just Jake shooting sequences that only starred the character of Darrell.
We were preparing to shoot our final shot with both actors when Jake looked at me and said, “Danny, I don’t feel good.” As the final words left his mouth, so did everything he ate that morning.
