Waking Dream Kickstarter: Exclusive Peak

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Howdy, guys.

I’m taking the opportunity to use this bonus material week for shameless self promotion, which I’m allowed to do because it’s my website.

From time to time I put up short films by the filmmaking wing of Waking Dream Studios, which you may have watched. These we usually make without a budget, as was the case with our debut, award winning feature film, Gabriel Small, and without trying to sound too immodest, I think the results go far, far beyond zero budget expectations.

We intend to embark on our second feature later this year, a horror film called The House on Abbot’s Ridge, and very much intend to step up our game by working with a small budget, and so, as us indie type filmmakers tend to these days, are putting together a Kickstarter campaign to help raise the funds, the details of which you guys are getting an exclusive heads up on.

The House on Abbot’s Ridge centres around a team of Most Haunted style ghost hunters, who, for reasons of their own, have decided to reveal all the tricks of the trade by way of documenting their debunking of one of Britain’s most notorious haunted houses, and as is often the case with these things, everything goes a bit murderously pear-shapped… but is it through supernatural means or something wholly more close to home?

Think The Shinning, mixed with a little A Tale of Two Sisters then add some The Last Exorcism and you’re on the right track.

We’ve put together a pretty nifty mock-trailer that  really helps to illustrate the visual direction we’d like to explore with the film and some incentives that are a little cooler than the average film Kickstarter.

There will of course be the usual blog updates, t-shirts, signed merch, credit inclusions and so on, but we’re also offering our filming and equipment services, commission illustrations by my good self, opportunities to get yourself and/or your writing into the finished film, a ride and photo session in a genuine 1981 DeLorean (!!!) and maybe, just maybe some signed original page art from this very webcomic.

Which I think we can all agree is the balls. So keep watching this space, and I’ll let the boys have the last word.

Abbot's Ridge

I make films too! (part 5)

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More bonus material in the form of a short film by team Waking Dream Studios, and as regular readers might guess, it’s a twist on a tried and tested genre, or might I say twisted.

Produced as part of a 24 hour film challenge set up by Five Lamps of Derby’s ID Film Fest, Dog Day, was, well, made over a 24 hour period. To those unfamiliar, in a 24 hour film challenge one is allowed to work on all manner of pre-production but the film must be shot and all the post production has to be done for the film being handed in within a day of the challenge begining.

Challenges have varying rules, in this case a provided prop had to feature in most shots, a line of dialogue inserted at some point and it had to be shorter than three minutes long, also, if you wanted to theme the film to accompany the festival’s theme, all the better.

The theme of the fest was families, so our screwed up brains clawed on to the fact that the Fritzls were a family, and from there brainstormed a film that could have the set up of your average piece of torture porn but blossom into something rather different.

With the help of a small camera, a single light source, a great location and two talented actors, we, surprisingly, put together one of our better looking shorts and were wholly satisfied with the end results, we even finished with plenty of time to spare.

DO NOT WATCH if you’re one of our younger or more sensitive readers as the themes and language in use are very much of a mature nature, so, consider that your WARNING.