We Made A MOOOVVIIEEE!

We made a short, really. Entry for a video contest. And I feel bad even saying "WE made a movie" because really it was more like I told my friend Red about this contest and said we should make a movie, and he totally ran with it and filmed, edited, and generally made this whole thing happen in many ways. (YOU ARE AWESOME RED!) But it's the first movie project I've ever been a part of, outside of the odd high-school assignment that is, and I'm incredibly excited about it.

This was for the Midnight Syndicate Video Contest; Midnight Syndicate creates atmospheric music for haunted attractions and the like. Gothic soundtracks, if you will. I've been a fan of theirs for quite some time now, and often play their music as inspiration when I'm writing. Naturally when I saw they were doing a video contest, I was pretty excited. The rules were pretty simple; craft a spooky short silent film and set it to one of their songs.

Do you know what's even more awesome? We put this together in, basically, ONE DAY. I mean, we tossed around ideas and stuff for a while before that, but when it came to actual filming, we just got together at Red's house one day, filmed a bunch of scenes, and then he worked like a madman to edit it all into something resembling the ideas that had been tossed around and to get it submitted before the deadline. And we did it while wrangling four kids (my two and my friend Sarah's two (Sarah being one of the stars of the film)). Child wrangling was probably my largest contribution to the process (and I'm not sure I did it all that well, lol). Oh, and I produced the offspring that is the other star of the film. I like to believe I did THAT pretty well; not that you'd know it from his lack of cooperation the day of filming. (Despite his general apathy towards the ACTUAL work involved in filming scenes, he has already spoken excitedly about the next movie project we will do, lol, so I guess it wasn't as 'boring' as he made it out to be that day!)

So. Anyway. I'm excited. Thanks so much to Red, Sarah, Drake, Oksana, Xander, and Piper. Red for all the work you put into this, you did AWESOME things and it was really fun to get a little taste of 'MOVIE MAGIC'! Sarah for being the coolest creepster ever to grace a short film project anywhere. Drake for being in the movie even when you didn't want to be. And Oksana, Xander, and Piper for being awesome kids in general and for cooperating pretty well with me / us as we worked around you guys. :) I'm looking forward to future movie projects!

Here is our Midnight Syndicate video contest entry, set to their song "Crimson Door".