Dr. Squid's Year In Review

It may be a tad premature for a Dr. Squid 2005 wrap-up, but it's already mid-November and soon Thanksgiving will be over and before you know it, it's Christmas and New Year's time with all of the family and friend obligations and then it's 2006. While I'm sure to fall short of my hope to "get everything shot that I have on my plate by the end of the year," I didn't do too badly.

DR. PUDDING'S MONSTER FILES: With my son's help, I made the Underbug and TreeSpirit creatures: UnderBug is shot and Tom Shaffer has everything to shoot the TreeSpirit segment but time. Laura Giglio sent me all of the footage for the "Nurse/Ghost" segment. I still haven't finished the "swimming pool creature" for a segment I'd hoped to have Kimberly Lyn Cole shoot for me. My current plan is to write up a different short for her to do and I have a lead on someone else to shoot a segment for me as well.

TWISTED FATES: Shot the last bits for this anthology's wraparound at the beginning of the year. Came close to casting for the VideoDrone segment in the spring, but things fell through. The wraparound and one segment is shot.

BLOODSUCKING REDNECK VAMPIRES: the wacked-out comedy horror flick is out on DVD from Sub Rosa Studios and it was so cool to be able to add it to my Netflix list this year!

UNDERBELLY: This started streaming on VistaStreetVOD.com.

DEADLY PREMONITIONS: This backburner project came to the forefront for a number of reasons: back in February I was faced with having split the bus & hotel costs with another moviemaker to bring an actress to town (we would shoot for one day each with her) and having my project fall through at the last moment. I pulled this partially-written script up, fleshed out a few scenes and shot some stuff for it. Later, when Tom Stedham offered to fly out to be in a project, the only thing I had anywhere close to being shootable was this. I finished up the script in a few weeks and shot mostly in August and September with only a few scenes remaining to be shot right now.

PREHISTORICUS: I reprised my role as Frank the Astronaut in more shoots for my friend Tom Shaffer's "dinosaur planet" flick, having donned the orange jumpsuit for many weekend shoots over the last several years. Unfortunately Tom had some major computer problems and this project's current status is: needs to be edited...again.

HOUSEBOUND 2: John Bowker and I collaborated on this project which we'd hoped to shoot in June with John directing. The script was done, the major casting was in place and I had a fair amount of preproduction done (shooting schedule, creature designs, etc.) but for a number of reasons, the project had to be cancelled.

SEXY HORROR SCRIPT: I sold a sexy horror script along the lines of WITCHHOUSE 3 and the later WITCHCRAFT sequels to a midwest production company. Hoping it gets made!

ZOMBIE LOVE SLAVE: After a few years of waiting for Tim Davis to shoot an opening sequence I finally told him to forget it and moved ahead with editing. Finally got it wrapped up and now just have to figure out what to do with it (27 minutes long).

TRAILER PARK DOUBLE WIDE TRILOGY OF TERROR: With a lot of post-production and DVD authoring help from Mike Hegg, this comedic horror project shot way back in 1997-1999-or-so finally saw it's way to a DVD-R release in June.

TAINTED BLOOD: Even though I was in the midst of trying to wrap up several projects, I accepted an invitation to contribute a short to a vampire anthology. John Bowker wrote the script and I shot it over a weekend in August. Finally finished it up and sent it off a few weeks ago. Expect it to be a part of ALWAYS MIDNIGHT from Falcon Video.

As I mentioned, the holidays tend to get hectic so it's hard to say if much movement will happen on anything until next year. If anything this blog makes it easy for me to take a look back at what a crazy and busy year it's been.