The time has also come to unleash the official filmsite of SEVENTH MOON. You’ve waited long enough, and athough we had a production site online all the while, it isn’t until now we’ve been able to truly release the guts of soul of the festival of all festivals - the Hungry Ghost.

Synopsis, trailer, cast and crew, gallery, mythology and behind the scenes are all there, including the option to download to your iPod.

You’ll also note the HAXAN site itself has been overhauled, as well as the forum, with ashtrays cleaned and fresh beer in Rob’s fridge (I think).

Everyone has been instrumental in getting this launched, thanks to Ed of course who keeps me raising the bar (or drinking in one, whichever comes first that day), but also to Gregg, Matt, Rob, Klaus and Johnny, who have all played a major role in getting SEVENTH MOON online.

SEVENTH MOON will be premiering at FANTASTIC FEST in Austin, Texas, on Saturday night, September 20, at 10 pm. Be there or be square. Here’s the write-up.

We are pretty pumped to be a part of FANTASTIC FEST. Gregg and I met one of the guy who runs it, Tim League, a few years back when we were in Austin visiting with the lovely Janet Pierson and her husband, John. Tim is a cool guy, about the same age as us, so we ended up talking a lot about STAR WARS and geek stuff like that over dinner.

Tim loved the film and invited us and we thought FF was the perfect fit for us and the film. So there you have it.

Planning some events around the film and a party for sure. It’s going to be a real hoot.

Karcher is working on a new website with a higher-res version of the trailer and lots of other goodies. That should be up in a few weeks.

Exciting stuff, my friends!

Peace from Urbana.

-ed

Stop by at his forum when you can.

-ed

Gentlemen,

It is official. Seventh Moon is finished!!

The screening went very well. I did not notice any technical problems, except for the possibility of one or two more “hits” caused by the stabilization software. I will contact John and have him investigate.

Mike Elizadle, his wife, Brian Walsh, and one of the other Spectral guys came to see it. Mike couldn’t say enough nice things about the film, and everyone else said they liked it, too.

Ann Lu and her husband Robert were also there, and they were very impressed. They thought all the changes we made since the version they saw made the film that much better.

Several people commented on how good it sounded, one guy specifically said how much he liked the music.

It actually didn’t sound nearly as good as it did at Skywalker, so for them to say that with just a stereo mix, without any of the deep base (no subwolfer in this room — we were in a DI suite), that’s good news.

Christopher Pratt, a friend of mine and Ed, also came, and he texted me afterwards to say how impressed he was.

Congrats, boys!!

–Matt

Yep, we’re done! At least with the actual film itself. Now to sell the sucker…

I had to go up to LA last week for some final color correction, which was a major pain in the ass, since I’d been away from home so much this month. But it was well worth the trouble. We fixed some stuff and it was good seeing the colorist George again. He calls SEVENTH MOON the movie that doesn’t end! This was the third or fourth round of correcting we’ve done with him.
And yes, it was good seeing Compton, too.

Working on some cool trailers and Karcher is hitting the website side of things pretty hard. We should have something new up by the end of August. Printing up some posters, too.

The trailer, poster and site are kicking it hard! John Rice is building us some nice content for the site, too, a little BTS and something else that he’s found in all his research. Should be very interesting.

Reaction to this screening was tremendous. We really think we have something special here.

Now trying to figure out where we’re going to premiere it. Going the festival route for now. Have some great possibilities.

So that’s that, another film in the can. Let’s see what develops with this one…

-ed

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Screening was at 9 am yesterday. The whole crew was there. Post supervisor Andy Jenkins and his fiance Janine joined our merry band of filmmakers the day before, so all together there were a lot of people checking the mix out and giving notes.

It was the first time we had seen the film up on the big screen with some color correction and the sound at 90% at least, so it was pretty exciting. The image looks pretty damn good for a $6000 camera. Amazing. And the theater we saw it at…well, it’s never going to sound that great again. Just a fabulous room to watch a film. It’s the same place Gregg and I saw RAIDERS last month.

The notes were great. We had a ton of them, actually, that’s why we’re running right up to the end of our time here. We ran through the whole film and everyone gave it up for about two hours. Then lunch, then back into the room to make fixes, and that’s where we’ve been ever since. No pool time for us today. Did make that last trip to the Ranch Store, though. T-shirts and junk for people.

So the time at the Ranch is coming to a close, and even though I’ll miss this place for sure, I’m looking forward to getting home. Some good times were had and I look forward to my next visit, hopefully with another film.

My mixing crew did a hell of a job again and I’m so grateful to have such talented and cool people working on my film. They truly brought it to the next level. We’ll see them on the next film, too!

Had a crew dinner on Tuesday night at the Inn, where Adrian and Stef spent the whole day getting ready to feed 20+ people, and it was cool to hang with most of the people that had contributed to the sound on the film. We had a great time and the food was delicious. Those girls sure can cook!

The company was just great. Not only the Skywalker crew, but my homies that I make films with: Gregg, Rob, Matt and Andy. I’m so blessed to have such dedicated and talented people making films with me.

One thing that Rob and I talked about was not waiting two-and-a-half years before our next visit to the Ranch, which means getting started on another film ASAP. I guess I’m up for that. Let’s see what happens with SEVENTH MOON.

Had a hell of time with my filmmaking friends and family here, but it’s time to head out soon!

For the last time this year, over and out from the RANCH!

-ed

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Kicking it large at the RANCH again, this time with the whole family. We came in last Saturday and hung in the San Fran area for a few days before the mix began on Wednesday. Matt then came in on Monday and we tooled around town for a few days. It was a real hoot.

It felt great to come in through those gates again, head to SKYWALKER SOUND and see the old ALTERED crew mixing the new film. I was surprised to see Mark Berger there, a veteran of ALTERED that wasn’t supposed to work on this film because of is schedule. I guess something opened up so it was very cool to see him and Kent behind the big console again.

We’re in the ORSON WELLES studio this time and it’s the same sweet set-up that we had before. There’s the huge mixing room where they project the film and do all the work and then there’s the client room, where we just sit around and get fatter on all the great little snacks and drinks they have at our disposal. The kids love it. They leave quite a mess, though.

On our way back from lunch that first day we ran into Michael Cronin, riding around the Ranch in style in a convertible. I’ve been bragging about this place for so long that he had to come and experience the Ranch for himself.

Matt, Michael and I gave the guys some notes on REEL 1 and we headed back to check-in at the Inn. We got the DOROTHY PARKER suite this time and Cronin got the AKIRA KUROSAWA, which I had never seen before. Pretty damn tight. We ended the night with some chill time by the fire at the Inn and that was the end of that.

Next day was our first breakfast at the Inn and then we headed for the mixing stage again, where we gave the first set of notes on REEL 2. We did lunch, walked around the Main House for a while, then headed to the pool for a mid-day swim. It was pretty hot so the water felt wonderful.

It’s tough work mixing a film.

Back after the swim to give the sound boys some more notes and then we were done for the day.

Friday was Cronin’s last day with us, so it was a kind of a sad day. We gave notes in the morning, went to lunch at the main house, said goodbye to Michael and off he went.

It was good having Cronin around for a few days. We miss him a lot after all the time he spent with us editing the film. He sat in on the mixing of the first three reels and gave some good notes, plus he had a ball just hanging at the Ranch, taking it this amazing place. The family and I were very happy he made it out.

Headed back to SKYWALKER for afternoon notes and then our weekend began! Not a bad first week of sound mixing.

The film is sounding terrific, by the way. I get carried away with being at this place but we can’t forget the reason we’re here, and SEVENTH MOON is sounding better every day. I’m really excited by how this film is turning out. The reaction I’ve been getting from people is pretty unique. It already has a lot of fans.

Gregg, Adrian, Amelia, Rob and his son Peter arrived yesterday so the whole gang is here now. We’re doing a dinner for the whole sound crew tomorrow night at the Inn. Adrian is cooking with some help from Stef. Should be a good time.

Gregg and Rob are mighty impressed by the sound, and they’ve only seen Reel 4, which we finished today. Gregg says he really likes how the music sounds. He’s hearing a lot of it for the first time since we did the mix. It is sounding pretty sweet. I’m so happy with what Tony and Kent did.

Tomorrow we do Reel 5 and then we screen the whole film on Wednesday morning at the Stag Theater at SKYWALKER SOUND. We give them final notes and they implement them the rest of the day on Wednesday and all of Thursday.

Then Stef, the kids and are gone back to Maryland on Thursday night. Leaving at 11:30 at night so that flight should be a real doozy.

Anyway, things are good and the film is working. Let’s hope for the best.

Over and out from the Ranch.

-ed

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I didn’t come to the ALTERED music mix but heard it was a real scream, so I didn’t want to miss out on this party! These composers really know how to mix it up! Actually, Kent kind of scarred me a bit when he told me he was sure Gregg and I were not hearing certain elements in the music that he was definitely hearing in his studio, so I decided to come for the weekend and make sure I was getting what I wanted.

Things are sounding great. They started on Thursday and I got here yesterday, so they got me a CD of the cues they’ve finished and they are sounding really tight. We are on the big scoring stage at SKYWALKER SOUND, which is pretty cool.

Tony is here along with Leslie Ann Jones, who mixed the ALTERED score and who Tony is a huge fan of. Kent has been coming by for a few hours a day since he’s still putting finishing touches on some cues at his home studio.

It’s been a crazy six weeks for these guys and it’s amazing that they’ve composed and recording over 60 minutes of music during that time. The original plan gave them eight weeks after picture-lock to deliver the score, but since the edit took about a month longer than anyone had anticipated and we couldn’t push the sound mix any later, we had to squeeze the score a bit and somehow make up two weeks. But Tony and Kent were real troopers and never doubted that they could deliver the music on time, even with the smaller window.

It’s been pretty stressful for them and next time we’ve promised each other that eight weeks is a minimum for the music, but I’m sure it’ll come down to all-night sessions and last minute tweaks again even with the extra time. It always seems to work out that way.

COLOR CORRECTION

My last trip to the west coast ended up pretty well. We got all the color correction done and I still had time to visit AMEOBA four times during the visit!

Also had dinner with Amy and met her parents, Judy and John, who are about the damn coolest couple I’ve met in a long time. No wonder Amy turned out the way she did. And now I know where Amy gets her great looks, too. Judy’s a real looker!

Ended the trip with a pretty good karaoke session, even though I was pretty spent and didn’t sing as much as I should’ve. It was a good group including Josh Leonard, Paul McCarthy-Boyington and Tim Chiou, one actor from each of my films! That was a real treat!

Speaking of actors from my films, check this out when you can. Could be really cool if it works.

All in all, it was a good trip to LA, but I was glad to get back home to the family. I’m looking forward to them being here during the sound mix the week after next. Can’t wait to see Lukey’s face when he sees the STAR WARS and INDIANA JONES props on display at the main house. He’s really into INDY now and he was only 2 when he was here the last time.

All right, back to the mix, even though I’m doing nothing except sitting here and watching them work. Leslie and the mix assistant, Judy, are getting the next track ready, Kent is in the next room preparing more tracks and Tony is sitting here catching up on some reading.

Heading to AMOEBA tonight (Tony has never been there) and we’re going to visit HOUSE OF NANKING again, and then it’s back to the INN for a nice fire-side chat with Tony. I’m pretty sure we’re the only ones at the INN right now so have the whole place to ourselves! Tony and I haven’t had any time to hang like this for a long time, probably since back in the old days when we were still editing BLAIR WITCH. It’s nice to catch up.

And last but not certainly not least, I just found out a few weeks ago about the passing last December of Patricia DeCou, who played the famous Mary Brown in THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT.

I didn’t know Patricia very well, but she certainly made the production of our film much more interesting. She was the only production assistant we got from Montgomery College (MC) and I remember the art crew coming back from working on the Rustin Parr house after her first day and they were all buzzing about this woman who came out to help. Dan and I had to meet her, they said.

I don’t know who came up with the idea of her playing Mary Brown but Dan and I both knew she was perfect when we finally met her a few days later when we picked her up at a play she was helping out with at MC. We gave her a ride home and saw her trailer and knew we had found our perfect location, too.

Patricia was eccentric, for sure, but her most unique trait was her energy, her enthusiasm for her work. She embraced what Dan and I were trying to do with Mary and added her own take on who Mary was that truly made the character. She opened herself and her home up to us and gave us a remarkable performance in our film.

Thanks so much, Patty.

Karcher wrote some nice stuff about Patty, too.

From the Ranch, Sanchez out!

-ed

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Spent last weekend at WIZARD WORLD in Philadelphia where we announced our first comic series with DYNAMITE ENTERTAINMENT, our very own take on BLACKBEARD the pirate!

For those who want to read more, check this out:

THE BROTHERHOOD BEHIND “BLACKBEARD”

This began a few years ago with my Haxan partner Gregg “White Ape” Hale asking me if I wanted to collaborate on a script about BLACKBEARD with him. I didn’t know anything about BLACKBEARD, except that he was supposedly a bad-ass pirate, but Gregg soon had me hooked with just a few historical facts about who Edward “BLACKBEARD” Teach actually was.

We tried to write a script but our lazy asses never got it off the ground, so we brought in ALTERED scribe Jamie Nash to help us with the script, and help us he did, delivering a 200-page first draft with a budget of about $150 million. We knew we were well over our heads…

In came Robert Napton, a comic book writer friend of mine from LA, husband of filmmaker and friend Ann Lu, co-producer of SEVENTH MOON. I’d been talking to Robert about doing comic adaptations of huge-budget scripts of mine and BLACKBEARD just seemed like a natural fit.

So we brought on Gregg and Jamie, got a few other concepts ready to pitch (with cool cover art and treatments) and GRIM COMICS was born!

Robert was working with DYNAMITE on BATTLESTAR GALACTICA (check out his ORIGINS if you get a chance) and we were huge fans of what they had done with LONE RANGER so we went to them first.

As soon as we met Nick, Joe and Juan, we knew this was the place we wanted to partner up with, and they really dug the BLACKBEARD pitch, so about a year and a half later, here we are, announcing our first title together! And we thought the filmmaking process was slow…

Anyway, we’re very excited about it, being the geeks that we are, so it was cool being a very small part of the comic book world last weekend. Gregg, Robert, Jamie and I signed a few (very few) autographs, bought some Star Wars junk, saw a ton of people in ridiculous outfits and had ourselves a blast. Gregg and I brought the families with us so it turned out to be a very nice weekend.

BLACKBEARD will be out this fall. For way more than you’d want to know, read more HERE.

Tons of SEVENTH MOON stuff going on - heading out to SKYWALKER this weekend for the music mix.

Almost done!

I’ll write more this weekend from the RANCH, babycakes!

Peace to all. Long live OBAMA!!!!

-ed

Death is a Dialogue between
The Spirit and the Dust.
“Dissolve” says Death — The Spirit “Sir
I have another Trust” –

Death doubts it — Argues from the Ground –
The Spirit turns away
Just laying off for evidence
An Overcoat of Clay.

Patricia DeCou passed away just after this past Christmas. Most of you knew her as “Mary Brown” from BLAIR WITCH. I did not personally know Patricia, but the gang here have pa-lenty an anecdote and story on her.

Though her appearance in BLAIR WITCH was but one minute, “Mary Brown” became one of the most discussed supporting characters from BLAIR on the internet and at water coolers across the world.

I suppose all of us have a Patricia DeCou in our lives at one point or another; an eccentric full of stories and opinions, or as Winston Churchill once said “a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma.”

Was it the mystery of Mary Brown, or the brief time she had on screen that left us all in profound curiosity of who this woman was? Or perhaps was it the texture and character Patricia put into her role as “Mary Brown.” Exactly how much did Patricia have to put into that character, or was Patricia simply being herself? This is a question that surfaces time and again.

I don’t envy Ed and Dan’s task of having to edit BLAIR; 22 hours down to 86 minutes is like squeezing a Mac truck into a thimble. And that Mac is fully loaded with content and material.

“Mary’s” scene goes much further than that brief one minute, more-so nearly an hour. And within that hour Heather needs to use the “facilities” if you will, whereas Mary offers Heather the use of her bathroom.

Once inside the trailer, as Mary entertains Mike and Josh, Heather pokes around cautiously, ever mindful she is snooping where she should not be doing so.

She had already done so before they knocked on Mary’s door. Upon entering the trailer park, when they (finally) found Mary’s casa, Heather snooped all around the exterior of the trailer, checking out sheds in the back, boxes of nuts, berries and Quaker oatmeal, even the oil tank below the trailer itself.

Now inside Mary’s home alone, enroute to… a concentrated constitutional if you will, Heather snooped around the sparsely furnished abode in virtual darkness. The trailer had no working electricity. Images of Jesus, mother’s day and PTA cards, angels in tinfoil, candles as well as stacks upon stacks of Avon catalogues were all she discovered.

Once inside the bathroom, also rather dark… that is to say - as dark as Ed Sanchez’s colon, Heather nearly had a stroke when she discoverd not visually… but touched… what she thought was a body. A rather… hairy body. ‘Turned out though to be a furry suit of some kind laying in a corner, but that did not negate at all Heather’s reaction as she hauled ass out of there to resume her interview of Mary outside the trailer.

Again, I don’t envy Ed or Dan in editing BLAIR WITCH. There is so much incredible material in those 22 hours, where do you draw the line? Therein lies the talent of directing and editing.

And in “Mary Brown’s” scene, it was Patricia DeCou who commands every bit of it. Not as a supporting actress, not for the brief time she had on camera, but as one who thoroughly immersed herself into the role, into that world, into that head of Mary Brown’s.

But did she? Was she acting? Or was she simply playing the role of Mary Brown as Patricia DeCou?

I began this by saying we have all known a “Mary Brown” at one point or another in our lives, but in hindsight I think perhaps not. There can only be one Patricia DeCou, and only Patricia DeCou is qualified to be Patricia DeCou.

And of course we all may have known her as Mary Brown, but outside of that one minute on screen, outside of that hour in raw footage, she was Patricia DeCou, born Jan. 14, 1934, in New Orleans, a woman with a love of history, the arts and theater, a devoted mother of three - Christopher, Jennifer and Amy, she was also a grandmother to 10, great-grandmother to 4, a sister to Barbara and Donna, and wife to husband Thompson W. Jr.

Ed and Dan met Patricia when she was the only student (yes, a student at age of 63) at Montgomery College that answered the call for interns to work as an art technician. Right afterwards they immediately cast her as Mary Brown.

That was likely the easiest casting ever made.

Patricia MacDonald DeCou 1934-2007

Ate in the car and headed to SONIC MAGIC for an ADR session with the man of the hour Tim Chiou. It was really good to see Tim. Hadn’t seen him since China. That boy brings a smile to my face every time I see him. Such a great attitude.

Met up with Bob Shoup and Andrew, our ADR engineer, in the studio and we started our session with Tim. It turned out to be Tim’s first time doing ADR, so he was a bit rusty at first but then started really nailing things after a short while. None of us knew that Tim was an ADR virgin until the end but there was some confusion with the countdown beeps that was kind of funny.

The countdown beeps tell the actor when the line that he has to record is coming up to help with the timing. We noticed early on that Tim was either coming in too early or too late and Andrew kept telling him to listen for the beeps to help with that problem. Tim thought Andrew was saying “beat” and figured it had something to do with getting into a rhythm or something, he didn’t quite get what Andrew was referring to. Finally, about a third of the way into the day, something connected and Tim told Andrew that he wasn’t hearing any beeps at all. Andrew fixed the problem and we all noticed a major improvement in the timing after that.

Here’s Tim doing some great screams of death.

Matt showed up a few minutes late and I gave him a bit of a hard time for it, but it was good to see Compton again. I forget how much I miss that boy. He was very helpful, though, taking our lunch order and hanging out…doing whatever he was doing.

Him and Bob (who came down from SAN FRAN just for this) did Amy Smart’s ADR the day before. I was on the phone from Maryland for half the session. It was the only day Amy could do it (she started CRANK 2 the next day) and I couldn’t come in because of a family trip but it worked out all right. I wish I could’ve made it and seen Amy again but it wasn’t meant to be. I hope to hook up with her while I’m here.

It was a long day for each of the actors but we got everything done and it sounds great, so I’m happy. And it was great that Bob came down for it. He really helped things along. And Andrew was pretty great, too. Really great with directions for Tim.

So today I start the color correction at FOTOKEM. 4pm to midnight for the rest of this week and two days next week. Should be fun. Well, not really fun, but it’ll be good to see the film looking it’s best for the first time ever. We’re going to tweak the hell out of this thing.

I also have to do a little bit of ADR over the phone to China tonight. One of the actors is coming in to do some stuff we need from him. Should be really fun. I guess.

MUSIC SPOTTING

The music spotting session in San Fran went very well. Tony and Kent seemed to get along and were soon talking geeky, audio technical shit that Gregg and I didn’t have a prayer of comprehending. We met at Kent’s house studio in his basement and Kent started showing Tony the equipment and the his custom-made instruments and you could tell that these two were going to make some cool music together.

We went through the film, cue by cue, talking about what I wanted and what they were thinking about bringing to it. It was a good run-through and it seems like they have a clear picture of what I want. It helps that I wrote the screenplay with music by both of them playing so it’s pretty much as custom-made a score from beginning to end as you can get.

Ended the trip by going with Kent’s family to a great little Chinese place called House of Nanking and it was just about the best Chinese food I’ve ever had in my life. Highly recommend this place next time you’re in San Francisco. Tony found an interesting place next door, too.

Anyway, a great trip to Skywalker Ranch and a lot of good work done on the audio front, and we look forward to going back in June with the families.

More from LA later this week. A lot of action going on as we color correct, sitting in a room for 8-hours a day, adjusting the film shot-by-shot. If you think I’m sick of this film now, wait until later this week.

Peace.

-ed

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