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Hello. My name is Eric Stanze and I make independent motion pictures. I own a production company called Wicked Pixel Cinema, which was formed in 1995 for the production of a movie called ICE FROM THE SUN.
After ICE FROM THE SUN, I directed SCRAPBOOK, which today is the only movie I’ve directed that I’m really, truly proud of. SCRAPBOOK contains some very disturbing violence and emotionally draining rape scenes... so, while I’m proud of the movie, it ain’t exactly something I can hand to Grandma and say “Hey, look what I made!”
My production company has never had multi-million dollar Hollywood budgets. Yet Wicked Pixel Cinema continues to thrive because it is home to some truly outstanding movie-making artists. I have only been able to keep making movies (for nearly 15 years now) because I am surrounded by such creative and dedicated people. The secrets to my success are A) sleep deprivation, B) caffeine, and C) my supportive and talented team.
Through Wicked Pixel Cinema, I’ll be directing a horror movie called DEADWOOD PARK. The head honcho at Horrorview.com has invited me to write this ongoing column as DEADWOOD PARK progresses.
This will be my production journal, available for all to see on the internet. This is a fairly intimidating situation. DEADWOOD PARK is still in the early stages of pre-production and has not yet accumulated it’s entire budget. We are organizing fund raisers and negotiating with potential investors... but only a fraction of the budget is in the bank. So, if DEADWOOD PARK collapses because we could not raise the money, you’ll read all the gory details here... and you’ll be able to point ‘n’ laugh at my failure. Fun for you. Sucks for me.
But let’s assume we WILL get the budget. Let’s assume that the project will go as planned. You’ll keep reading this journal as shooting starts, on schedule, this fall. You’ll keep reading the updates as shooting extends into next year. You’ll learn how much torture, pain, and stress is involved in making a low budget movie. But hopefully, through this journal, you’ll also gain some insight as to why I’m addicted to this chaotic and exhausting craft.
I’ll probably only update this journal once or twice a month until shooting starts. Then, I hope to submit updates once every week or two.
First, here’s how DEADWOOD PARK began... The most recent Wicked Pixel Cinema movie to be shot was SAVAGE HARVEST 2: OCTOBER BLOOD (not directed by me, but by the talented Jason Christ). On this shoot, many of our conversations were about what kind of “scary movie” we’d like to make. We reminisced about horror movies with spine-tingling spookiness like THE CHANGELING, NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD, HALLOWEEN, and Mario Bava’s spectacularly atmospheric MASK OF SATAN... simple movies, expertly constructed around good stories, good characters, good scares, and coated with a thick fog of chilling horror movie atmosphere. While we all love over-the-top EVIL DEAD style horror, we all felt an urge to attempt this more serious, more chilling, more atmospheric horror movie.
At that time, I had completed writing an epic science fiction horror movie called TEMPEST OF THE DAWN. For about a year, we attempted to obtain a substantial budget to make this movie. The project was huge... it took place in three time periods (four, if you count flashbacks to biblical times), it had a huge cast, major construction jobs, complex makeup and visual effects... it was just... BIG.
We began to claw our way up to the next level. And – after working on it for about a year – got closer than I ever thought we would to landing over a million bucks to make this movie. Most of this progress I have to credit to Jeremy Wallace, one of the major cogs in the Wicked Pixel Cinema machine. He simply kicked ass in pursuing every possible lead and contacting every single individual who had expressed any level of curiosity about this movie. Over the course of this year, an interesting array of people and production companies expressed various levels of interest in helping us make TEMPEST OF THE DAWN. We communicated with Nico Mastorakis, John Carl Buechler, Gunner Hanson, the Stuart Gordon camp, Image Entertainment, Elite Entertainment, Lion’s Gate Films, and various private investor types. I even have this cool letter from Reggie Bannister (of the PHANTASM films) telling me that he liked my screenplay and was interested in playing a part in the movie. In the end, the best deal I was offered MAY have gotten the movie made. But the deal placed all of the financial risk on me personally. My gut reaction was to back away. It was just too shaky...
I began to think that money people may be impressed with our track record... they may understand that we are a competent production team... and they may even believe I’m a good director... BUT... nothing I had directed up to that point was mainstream-friendly. ICE FROM THE SUN was too weird for mainstream audiences. And SCRAPBOOK was just too harsh (none of the big chains like Best Buy would carry SCRAPBOOK, and the movie has been banned in several foreign countries). So if nothing I’ve ever made is considered “acceptable” by mainstream audiences, why the hell should anyone invest over a million bucks in one of my flicks? You don’t make your investment money back by winning awards and getting good reviews... you make your investment money back by selling the product to as many people as possible.
I had a meeting with Jeremy Wallace and Jason Christ to get their opinions on my next move – shelve TEMPEST OF THE DAWN and do something that we could raise the budget for on our own. I told them that I wanted to make that “scary movie” that we had been discussing on the set of HARVEST 2.
At that time, there was no title... only a half-page story concept created by Jessie Seitz, a newcomer to the Wicked Pixel Cinema team. The budget would be more than triple what we’d spent on ICE FROM THE SUN (at that time, our biggest budgeted movie). Yet, the proposed budget for this “scary movie” was realistically within our grasp (unlike the proposed budget for TEMPEST OF THE DAWN).
Also, the “scary movie” that I wanted to make would not be as harsh or abstract as my other movies. I wasn’t compromising... I wasn’t watering down my vision to please the masses... it just so happened that the movie I wanted to make next contained no offensive material that would upset Best Buy, Hollywood Video, etc.
We made it official. TEMPEST OF THE DAWN was kicked to the backburner. Jeremy launched into producer mode for this new Wicked Pixel Cinema project and started the wheels turnin’. I began developing the story with Jessie. And slowly, the team that is still forming as the DEADWOOD PARK crew began to come together.
Next entry, I’ll start giving you some of the nuts and bolts of our pre-production activities, including fundraising, screenplay writing, auditions, location scouting, and begging people for money.
Thanks for reading!
-Eric Stanze
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