There’s a production house in Pittsburgh—Orchard Place—making great horror. They’re the ones that made my favorite film at the Eerie Horror Film Festival this year—The Other Side. They need you to vote for another film of theirs called Green-Eyed, which you can watch and rate accordingly. It’s up for a major screening and award if enough people get behind it. They’d love your support! Go to www.cinema48.com and under “Channels” select “USA cities from N to R” and you will see Green-Eyed there. Thanks!

A blogger on The Independent reviews The Thing (2011), comparing the two in terms of how the special effects were done. In John Carpenter’s 1982 version, digital effects were all but non-existent, and all of the body-crunching gore was achieved using practical means — prosthetics, mechanical contraptions, lots of liquid latex and fake blood, and so on. The 2011 version features digital effects — all the alien violence was made by a team of geeks on their fancy computers.

It’s a controversial topic among horror fans. I tend to agree with most of what the author says about the use and misuse of digital effects. Where do you weigh in? Was he too tough on modern horror using digital effects?

He did make a comment that I can’t completely agree with, however. He says that “modern US horror cinema is defined by lazy cash-ins, spin-offs and other defilements of legendary films.” Lazy cash-ins and spin-offs: yes. Defilements of legendary films: get over your hatred of remakes because of the alleged untouchable holiness of the originals. I’m tired of hearing this kind of argument.

Just had to put that out there.

“Modern horror: Lay off the CGI and bring back prosthetics”

Finally! After months of vlog silence, I come forth and tell you about my progress.

BONUS!

An exclusive still photo from the film!

Progress is being made, as I’ve started shooting. And reshooting.

Mistakes abound this week! Do not use natural clay to mold a fake head, and do not use Precious Molding Gel in trying to make a fake hand out of ballistics gel.

Things are getting crazy as I run around looking for supplies. And I’m a bit concerned about the plot.

Pre-production is at hand! I’ve started to buy things for this crazy project, and I start to think about a lot of the trickier aspects I’ll be faced with.

If you’ve been following me on Twitter, I’ve been talking about the new video camera I got. Now I have no excuse not to make some sort of a movie. Not only that, but I’ve challenged myself to do the whole thing entirely on my own: I will write the script, star in every role, direct, shoot, light, edit, etc . . .

Sounds easy.

I’m vlogging about it on Youtube, and the introductory clip was just posted today. Have a look . . . buy the ticket . . . take the ride.