I couldn’t think of a better heading. Anyway, I figured it was about time to give some kind of news.
INDIEGOGO FUNDRAISER
Thanks for all the donations towards getting the AVGN movie in production! You’ve been outstanding. Even for those that haven’t donated, I still feel your support. I know many are planning to see it when it comes out, so buying a ticket is still a big contribution.
My team that’s been helping with the fundraiser have been trying to email you all the thank you video. I hope you all got it, but I know they send it out in mass email on a weekly basis or so. So if you haven’t gotten it, sorry about that, I hope you get it soon.
The autographs, that’s the real big project. I signed over 2,000 so far, but none have been mailed out yet. We don’t have the manpower to send them out on a daily or even weekly basis, so the plan is to wait until the end of the fundraiser (February 2nd, Groundhogs Day) and then find a way to mail them all out in bulk. I’m real sorry we couldn’t send them out sooner. I was hoping you’d all have them by Christmas, but it didn’t work out that way.
For any updates, check out the IndieGoGo page. They’ve been updating about the status of all this kind of stuff. Just check the “updates” tab.
AVGN MOVIE PRE-PRODUCTION
Well, it’s happening. We’ve been breaking down the script, storyboards, all that stuff. Speaking with visual effects artists. We hope to get back to working on casting and location scouting soon, but there’s been a lot of more urgent preliminary work lately.
I’ll be filming the majority of the movie in California. I’ll be moving out there temporarily, starting in early January. Why California? 1) The east coast weather is too unpredictable. 2) We have some specific landscapes we need. 3) Most of our contacts live there, including my high school friends, Kevin Finn who wrote the film with me, and Sean Keegan, who is producing. We’ve all been working hard lately.
HOW WILL I BE ABLE TO SEE THE MOVIE?
That’s the most common question. It’ll do the independent thing, y’know. It’ll most likely tour in US cities, hopefully around the rest of the world too. Film festivals… That kind of deal. Then, eventually it’ll go on DVD. That’s how I see it going now at least.
STATUS OF WEB VIDEOS
Now that I’m getting closer to shooting the film, I’m going to have to devote myself to it 100%. But still, there’s going to be lots of videos on the site. Mike and I got it all planned out. In fact, a lot of the videos you’ve seen lately were shot several months ago, and I’ve just been working on the AVGN movie prep behind the scenes. The AVGN Episodes are the hardest thing to make. Even the shorter ones take a lot of scripting and careful editing to put together. This is time that would be taking away from the movie, so for the meantime, the AVGN episodes will be on halt. If I can still find a way to bring out some spontaneous AVGN content, I will. But the main priority is getting the movie shot. Let’s get this fucker in the can, man!
SOPA CONCERNS
It’s hard to ignore this topic right now. If the SOPA or Protect IP bill pass in the next year, some say it won’t affect sites like mine. Others say it will. Right now, it’s all a guessing game. But it won’t be “the end of Cinemassacre” as many of the emails I get say. I feel all your concerns, but if worse comes to worse, and I can no longer show film clips in my reviews, we’ll just have to change the format. We’ll still talk about movies, maybe in an unscripted podcast format. My main goal is making my own original movies, and that’s what I’ve always been doing before I started critiquing other movies. There’s no shortage of plans. Cinemassacre will go on.
MAGFEST
This is the last east coast convention I’ll be appearing at, before I head westbound. I’ll be there on the 6th and 7th of January. See here for more details.
That’s about it for now, hope you all have a nice holiday break!