The ALTERED DVD story

BLAIR WITCH co-director's next film going straight-to-DVD! PART V

PART I - PART II - PART III - PART IV 2006 will go down as one of the worse years of my professional life. There isn't any aspect of my abilities that I haven't completely doubted this year. There were a lot of dark paths that I went down in 2006, a lot of sleepless nights. Personally, things couldn't have been better. My family, friends and especially my partners are responsible for me being able to get through it with only some sleeping problems and three or so tiny ulcers in my stomach. Gregg, Rob, Mike, Jamie, Bob, Jeff and Matt have been great. They know I'm disappointed but they all feel proud of the film and have shown nothing but total support for what I've been going through. One day after some meeting in New York, Gregg told me “ALTERED doesn't suck. We made a good film. And even if you think it sucks, great directors make bad films sometimes. No one is batting 1000.” I don't think the film sucks. I really don't. I LOVED this film before December of last year, before all the screenings. But the road since then has been very hard and nothing is quite as painful as people not digging my work. It's like people not loving your kids. It's hard, man, and I don't know how artists do it, to tell you the truth. It's one of these things that I've examined in myself this year wondering if my skin was tough enough to keep going through this shit with every film. The jury is still out on that one. At this point, less than a week until the release of the film, I honestly just want to be done with ALTERED. I want to move on. What reaction do I expect? Well, some people will dig it, some people will think it's all right, and some people will hate it. What else can I say? Maybe it'll do great on DVD. Maybe it'll flop. We're not angry at FOCUS or ROGUE or UNIVERSAL or anyone on that side of the equation. They've been nothing but fair and very cool to us and as great a partner as we'll ever get as a studio is concerned. After our hardships with ARTISAN after BLAIR WITCH blew up, we really appreciate the fact that they've always treated us with the utmost respect. They did what they needed to do with ALTERED and if we were in their shoes, we would've done the same thing. We really hope to make more films with them. We on the ALTERED side of things all believe in the film. Last month, we began our own little marketing campaign with UNIVERSAL'S (who is distributing the film on DVD) approval and paid for with our own money. We've all been working hard on it, we still want to get the film out there to as many people as possible, we still support the film 100%. But we're not hiding from the fact that everyone, including ourselves, expected that this film was going to go theatrical. I mean, how can you go from one of the biggest INDIE successes of all time to a straight-to-DVD release? How? Well, like this. We just did it, folks, and even though pretty much every word of these five blogs was painful to write, we're not afraid to talk about it, because in the end, it's just another movie. Don’t get me wrong, I love ALTERED. I think it’s a fine piece of work and fun as shit and I’m really proud of the work all my collaborators and I did on the film. But it’s just my next film. My next film after a tiny, 30K, shot on HI-8 feature that happened to become THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT. My partners and I will make more films. We're already working on a few things for next year, including a slate of films we hope to shoot in China. Gregg will direct one. I will direct one. Bob and Matt are involved already. I'm writing my script with Jamie. Rob, Mike and Andy are ready to get involved again as soon as their time comes. We're all still together. The band hasn't broken up. ALTERED has taught me many things, but the biggest lesson I learned is that this is the group of people I want to continue to make films with. I couldn't have asked for a better filmmaking family. Talented and smart and sexy as hell, too. I ain't no SCORCESE, people, and these guys know that and still want to make films with me. That's what family is all about, isn't it? -ed ALTERED MYSPACE ALIENPAYBACK YOUTUBE

BLAIR WITCH co-director's next film going straight-to-DVD! PART V

PART I - PART II - PART III - PART IV 2006 will go down as one of the worse years of my professional life. There isn't any aspect of my abilities that I haven't completely doubted this year. There were a lot of dark paths that I went down in 2006, a lot of sleepless nights. Personally, things couldn't have been better. My family, friends and especially my partners are responsible for me being able to get through it with only some sleeping problems and three or so tiny ulcers in my stomach. Gregg, Rob, Mike, Jamie, Bob, Jeff and Matt have been great. They know I'm disappointed but they all feel proud of the film and have shown nothing but total support for what I've been going through. One day after some meeting in New York, Gregg told me “ALTERED doesn't suck. We made a good film. And even if you think it sucks, great directors make bad films sometimes. No one is batting 1000.” I don't think the film sucks. I really don't. I LOVED this film before December of last year, before all the screenings. But the road since then has been very hard and nothing is quite as painful as people not digging my work. It's like people not loving your kids. It's hard, man, and I don't know how artists do it, to tell you the truth. It's one of these things that I've examined in myself this year wondering if my skin was tough enough to keep going through this shit with every film. The jury is still out on that one. At this point, less than a week until the release of the film, I honestly just want to be done with ALTERED. I want to move on. What reaction do I expect? Well, some people will dig it, some people will think it's all right, and some people will hate it. What else can I say? Maybe it'll do great on DVD. Maybe it'll flop. We're not angry at FOCUS or ROGUE or UNIVERSAL or anyone on that side of the equation. They've been nothing but fair and very cool to us and as great a partner as we'll ever get as a studio is concerned. After our hardships with ARTISAN after BLAIR WITCH blew up, we really appreciate the fact that they've always treated us with the utmost respect. They did what they needed to do with ALTERED and if we were in their shoes, we would've done the same thing. We really hope to make more films with them. We on the ALTERED side of things all believe in the film. Last month, we began our own little marketing campaign with UNIVERSAL'S (who is distributing the film on DVD) approval and paid for with our own money. We've all been working hard on it, we still want to get the film out there to as many people as possible, we still support the film 100%. But we're not hiding from the fact that everyone, including ourselves, expected that this film was going to go theatrical. I mean, how can you go from one of the biggest INDIE successes of all time to a straight-to-DVD release? How? Well, like this. We just did it, folks, and even though pretty much every word of these five blogs was painful to write, we're not afraid to talk about it, because in the end, it's just another movie. Don’t get me wrong, I love ALTERED. I think it’s a fine piece of work and fun as shit and I’m really proud of the work all my collaborators and I did on the film. But it’s just my next film. My next film after a tiny, 30K, shot on HI-8 feature that happened to become THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT. My partners and I will make more films. We're already working on a few things for next year, including a slate of films we hope to shoot in China. Gregg will direct one. I will direct one. Bob and Matt are involved already. I'm writing my script with Jamie. Rob, Mike and Andy are ready to get involved again as soon as their time comes. We're all still together. The band hasn't broken up. ALTERED has taught me many things, but the biggest lesson I learned is that this is the group of people I want to continue to make films with. I couldn't have asked for a better filmmaking family. Talented and smart and sexy as hell, too. I ain't no SCORCESE, people, and these guys know that and still want to make films with me. That's what family is all about, isn't it? -ed ALTERED MYSPACE ALIENPAYBACK YOUTUBE

BLAIR WITCH co-director's next film going straight-to-DVD! PART IV

PART I - PART II - PARTIII The test screening was held in a suburb of NEW YORK CITY at a Mall movie theater with bad sound and projection. This was actually in the same area where we did our BLAIR WITCH test screening. This is one of the places where studios go to test their films. You've heard all the stories of test screenings before, so I won't bore you with details. It was one of the worse nights of my life. I mean other than the birth of my two children, where my wife ended up having an emergency C-Section each time, this was number three. Probably. Well, maybe the time I got beat-up in middle school by Tony Leebrick was worse. Or the day my lung collapsed. Yeah, those were probably worse. But you catch my drift. The audience was the “basic horror crowd,” whatever that is. They had recruited people who had seen HOSTEL and the SAW movies. We had a feeling we were going to be in trouble. Once the film started, things were great. They were laughing in places, seemed into the film. Cheered a bit during the climax. We thought we had them. Seriously. We thought we had them. The test scores were terrible. People hated the film. “Not scary enough.” “Too hard to follow.” “Stupid.” Fucking brutal feedback. Man, does writing this bring on the PAIN!!! We were crushed. I felt worse than before. I slid into a depression and I didn't want to do anything. We met the next day at FOCUS and talked to Andrew Rona, who was heading up ROGUE now. Good guy. You may remember him from PROJECT GREENLIGHT. He was as disappointed as us. They had a lot of hope for this movie and it just wasn't going to be what they wanted it to be. He didn't discuss distribution too much but we knew we were in trouble in that department. Films with these kinds of scores don't go wide. So we all headed back to our respective homes up and down the east coast. We held our heads low for a while but then we started talking strategy. We still believed in the film and weren't going to give up on it that quickly. We thought that the audience they recruited for the test was wrong. It's like they packed horny teenagers into a MERCHANT IVORY film. Or the POOTIE TANG fan club into a Woody Allen flick. Okay, bad examples, but you get the point. We thought that a sci-fi crowd would be into it more. Or horror fans that didn't dig SAW or HOSTEL so much, which I've met a lot of in my days. We knew someone was going to dig the film. And it's not like EVERYONE hated the film. There was that minority of people at the screening that really enjoyed it and thought it was a fun ride. I mean, we got a great review from someone named MILKBONE on AIN'T-IT-COOL-NEWS. The MILKBONE-type audience was out there, we just had to find them. Another test screening was needed. We also went through the test results and tried to address some of the concerns that the audience had. They found it too hard to follow, too much of a mystery, so we figured we'd tack on something to the opening that gave some of the back story, at least the basics. We were going to get Michael Williams to play OTIS again and do a TV news story on the 15 year anniversary of the abduction of the main characters. I called Mike and asked him to get that beard growing again. We were going to have some fun with it for sure. We were also going to tighten up a few places in the film some more and change one of the music cues that we thought could be bigger. Then we were going to do another test screening. And we were going to pay for all of it. Yeah! “Let's all meet in Orlando and really get this ball rolling! We'll give FOCUS a proposal that they won't be able to turn down! Yeah, that's right, we're bad-ass motherfuc...” And that takes us back to the beginning of my story, PART I of this twisted and sordid tale, that sunny day in Orlando where the hammer dropped on our delusional heads. ALTERED was going STRAIGHT-TO-DVD!!! All that was left now was to pick up all the pieces of my broken heart that were all over Rob's beautiful patio floor... -ed PART V ALTERED MYSPACE ALIENPAYBACK YOUTUBE

BLAIR WITCH co-director's next film going straight-to-DVD! PART IV

PART I - PART II - PARTIII The test screening was held in a suburb of NEW YORK CITY at a Mall movie theater with bad sound and projection. This was actually in the same area where we did our BLAIR WITCH test screening. This is one of the places where studios go to test their films. You've heard all the stories of test screenings before, so I won't bore you with details. It was one of the worse nights of my life. I mean other than the birth of my two children, where my wife ended up having an emergency C-Section each time, this was number three. Probably. Well, maybe the time I got beat-up in middle school by Tony Leebrick was worse. Or the day my lung collapsed. Yeah, those were probably worse. But you catch my drift. The audience was the “basic horror crowd,” whatever that is. They had recruited people who had seen HOSTEL and the SAW movies. We had a feeling we were going to be in trouble. Once the film started, things were great. They were laughing in places, seemed into the film. Cheered a bit during the climax. We thought we had them. Seriously. We thought we had them. The test scores were terrible. People hated the film. “Not scary enough.” “Too hard to follow.” “Stupid.” Fucking brutal feedback. Man, does writing this bring on the PAIN!!! We were crushed. I felt worse than before. I slid into a depression and I didn't want to do anything. We met the next day at FOCUS and talked to Andrew Rona, who was heading up ROGUE now. Good guy. You may remember him from PROJECT GREENLIGHT. He was as disappointed as us. They had a lot of hope for this movie and it just wasn't going to be what they wanted it to be. He didn't discuss distribution too much but we knew we were in trouble in that department. Films with these kinds of scores don't go wide. So we all headed back to our respective homes up and down the east coast. We held our heads low for a while but then we started talking strategy. We still believed in the film and weren't going to give up on it that quickly. We thought that the audience they recruited for the test was wrong. It's like they packed horny teenagers into a MERCHANT IVORY film. Or the POOTIE TANG fan club into a Woody Allen flick. Okay, bad examples, but you get the point. We thought that a sci-fi crowd would be into it more. Or horror fans that didn't dig SAW or HOSTEL so much, which I've met a lot of in my days. We knew someone was going to dig the film. And it's not like EVERYONE hated the film. There was that minority of people at the screening that really enjoyed it and thought it was a fun ride. I mean, we got a great review from someone named MILKBONE on AIN'T-IT-COOL-NEWS. The MILKBONE-type audience was out there, we just had to find them. Another test screening was needed. We also went through the test results and tried to address some of the concerns that the audience had. They found it too hard to follow, too much of a mystery, so we figured we'd tack on something to the opening that gave some of the back story, at least the basics. We were going to get Michael Williams to play OTIS again and do a TV news story on the 15 year anniversary of the abduction of the main characters. I called Mike and asked him to get that beard growing again. We were going to have some fun with it for sure. We were also going to tighten up a few places in the film some more and change one of the music cues that we thought could be bigger. Then we were going to do another test screening. And we were going to pay for all of it. Yeah! “Let's all meet in Orlando and really get this ball rolling! We'll give FOCUS a proposal that they won't be able to turn down! Yeah, that's right, we're bad-ass motherfuc...” And that takes us back to the beginning of my story, PART I of this twisted and sordid tale, that sunny day in Orlando where the hammer dropped on our delusional heads. ALTERED was going STRAIGHT-TO-DVD!!! All that was left now was to pick up all the pieces of my broken heart that were all over Rob's beautiful patio floor... -ed PART V ALTERED MYSPACE ALIENPAYBACK YOUTUBE

BLAIR WITCH co-director’s next film going straight-to-DVD! PART III

PART I - PART II “It's not scary enough.” “It doesn't work the way we thought it was going to work.” The message from FOCUS was loud and clear, they expected something else from the film. We were all disappointed but we knew we had something cool and they were looking at a very rough version of the film, with no sound and no music. While we felt that the film was never going to be as scary as BLAIR WITCH, we did feel that there were some great tense moments in there. It was a different kind of film than BW, it was a monster movie. It was more of a fun ride. Creepy, with action and some crazy gore. Also, the script for this film was called PROBED, so a bit of that feeling was still living in the film, which is what I really loved about it. FOCUS urged us to change the name right after they bought it and I came up with the name ALTERED, which we were all very happy about, but just because we changed the name didn’t mean that all the PROBED spirit was going to be instantly exorcised out of the film. So we kept plugging ahead, finished the edit, and Gregg and I spent two glorious weeks with our families at SKYWALKER RANCH in December of 2005. The holidays were approaching and we were eager to show the film off. We all felt we had something special. We headed to New York City (man, my palms are already starting to sweat) a few days before December 20, a birthday shared by Rob, Jamie and me. We rented a screening room at TECHNICOLOR and showed the film in the early morning, before the FOCUS people arrived. Everyone was happy. Proud. The projectionist told Andy Jenkins that it was one of the best films he'd seen at this place. A good omen, we thought. FOCUS arrived. I made my speech, thanked them for believing in us and helping us make the film better with their solid notes. We headed out, went to a nearby restaurant and waited. We were supposed to meet for lunch after the screening and discuss the film. We were nervous and joked about who would be at lunch. If it was just a few people, they didn't like the film. If it was the whole gang, we could expect some good news. The call came. There wasn't going to be a lunch. Big problems. They were going to hold an emergency meeting at their offices in an hour or so. Jesus Christ. And we were joking about a few people meeting us as a worse case scenario. This was a fucking disaster! The meeting was short and sweet. The film didn't work. They called it a “tweener.” Not enough horror, not enough drama, not enough action to categorize into any of those genres. They felt it would not play to the basic horror crowd. They didn't know what the hell they were going to do with it. Needless to say, my birthday was ruined, as well as my holidays. Well, as ruined as they could be with two little ones running around at home reminding me of how lucky I was every second of the day. But I felt like I totally let everyone down. I wasn't thinking suicide, of course, but man, it got as worse as it's ever gotten for me outside of some fucked up times when I was a teenager. I just felt like complete shit. Worthless. Sophomore slump, here I come! I was thinking of contacting someone like Kevin Smith to see how he dealt with MALLRATS. He got a serious beat-down for that one. We have a good mutual friend so I was really considering it. Man, the doubt was massive. Maybe I wasn't supposed to be a filmmaker? Maybe I should stick to handheld, $35K HI-8 video films? Maybe I should go work at TARGET. That wouldn't be bad. I love TARGET! Down the spiral I went, but there was hope. FOCUS was going to do a test screening and we were going to redeem ourselves. We were sure of it. The FOCUS people just didn't get it, man. Yeah, that was it. Well, that certainly wasn't IT... -ed PART IV ALTERED MYSPACE ALIENPAYBACK YOUTUBE

5

BLAIR WITCH co-director’s next film going straight-to-DVD! PART II

PART I The ALTERED saga began with a cool little script called PROBED back in the fall of 2003 or so. Jeff Johnsen, an upstart producer that had been crucial to the early internet success of BLAIR WITCH, sent it to me after months of searching through INKTIP (which is a great site to find material). It was a cool script and I was instantly attracted to it. It turned out that the writer, an almost-tall-as-me white dude named Jamie Nash, lived 45 minutes from me. What were the chances of that? A worldwide search for a script and the writer turns up less than an hour from my house in Frederick, Maryland. It was fate, I thought. Jamie ended up being a great collaborator and we chugged through a bunch of drafts, finally getting to the point where we could send it out. I sent it to my usual circle of writing buddies and the response was pretty good. Gregg Hale, my partner at HAXAN FILMS and one of my closest friends, really dug it. He called me a while later and asked me if I was interested in him and possibly Rob Cowie, my former Haxan partner and producer on BLAIR WITCH, producing it together the following year. I was fucking honored, man. Gregg and Rob got things moving in late 2004, raising the money and moving forward with a start date in the spring of 2005. I cast Michael Williams from BLAIR first and then completed the cast with a talented group of actors from LA and James Gammon, who happened to live an hour or so from Universal Studios in Orlando, where we were shooting the film. Gregg got his friend David Goyer to introduce us to the effects house SPECTRAL MOTION, which had done some impressive effects for BLADE: TRINITY and HELLBOY. Once they got on board we really started having fun. The shoot went really well. Six weeks, not too many snags, came in almost 10% under budget. It was my first big shoot with a real crew and a real film camera and real craft services so the fact that it went great is a real testament to the producing and the cast and crew. We were all so fucking proud of ourselves! Editing went well, we got the cut done pretty quickly with editor Michael Cronin working his magic and notes from everyone and their mothers, it seemed. Tony Cora from BLAIR WITCH fame came back to work the music out with his partner Exiquio Talavera, and we were well on our way to a pretty tight film by early fall. We were all digging what we saw and we knew it could only get better. I mean it wasn't perfect, but hell, it was already a fun film for us. That's when FOCUS saw the first rough cut. That's when our beautiful little bubble in Orlando's Universal Studios began to burst a little bit. Little did we know how much this bubble would blow up in our faces in the months to come... -ed PART III ALTERED MYSPACE ALIENPAYBACK YOUTUBE