Monthly Scoop: November 2012

Stranger Things Studios' most recent film set.

After a grueling October I am now sitting on the raw footage for three brand new movies!  That means the rest of the year can be spent indoors, in the comfort of my home, sculpting away at the footage while it gets progressively colder and darker outside without me.

It is so tempting to feed your curious minds with details and teasers about the upcoming movies, but that is what the Director’s Notes and the Facebook page are for.  You’ll just have to wonder what’s in store for the Stranger Things’ YouTube page until then.

Speaking of which, October marked the launch of the new YouTube channel, complete with its professional sounding “StrangerThingsFilms” username.  We’ve also secured a Stranger Things Studios Behind-the-Scenes username; however, given that we only produce one movie a month, that channel will remain idle for the time being.

If you haven’t already visited the new channel, the complete URL is:

www.YouTube.com/StrangerThingsFilms

Go ahead and click that “Subscribe” button above the video player to become a fan and stay notified on new releases.  You can watch the older STS movies on that page’s main playlist, or even visit the old channel, which will remain up and running (I just won't be adding any new content to it).

Screen Shot from "Stranger Things Have Happened"

The grand opener for the new channel, entitled “StrangerThings Have Happened” has done impressively well.  With being out for only a month, it has already become the 3^rd most popular STS movie.  September’s movie, “Motorstorm: Duel Drive” has easily locked down 1^st place.  If you haven’t seen them, you can click on the titles to check them out!

With the relative success of the last few films, people I don’t know overly well have started approaching me with an interest in helping with future productions.  I know it shouldn’t strike me as weird, but it does.  When we were filming Ashes of Man, it was a desperate challenge to find people who were available and willing to help on any given filming date.  Now people are contacting me.  It’s a wonderful compliment, and an awesome resource.  It means that I can stay behind the camera, which makes production move so much smoother.

It also means that you will be seeing a lot of new faces; but you will also be seeing a lot of familiar faces!  Somehow, Ashes did not discourage them from wanting to act again… ever, much less with me.  It’s good to have them back.

On Saturday, we conducted a extensive eleven hours of filming.  Being late fall, we were lucky that the temperatures held in the forties and the forecasted rain stayed away.  I don’t think the new actors appreciate how lucky they are.  It’s not until you’re standing in the middle of a field in the dead of February with heavy winds and a high below five that you start to rethink your life.

The better part of three weeks went into building an armory of weapon props.

We won’t be doing that again.  Instead, we’ll start playing around with the green screen more, and making sure there’s always four walls surrounding us.  I can’t fully tell you what’s in store, as I honestly don’t know.  I would like to make something sci-fi and dark; there is a James Bond style movie on the docket; and I have an army of gorillas potentially at my call.  What come fruition at this point is anyone’s guess. 

With the holidays on their way, it’s impossible to pull the people to film anything, much less schedule a date.  That’s why we crammed in filming three movies this October.  Come January, we’ll see what new movies Stranger Things is prepared to create.  Until then, I have plenty of raw footage sitting on my plate.