Converations with Demons is dead.

So I finally heard back from the Canada Council about the grant and it's not happening, so for anyone who was interested the mockumentary project I'd been planning (along with several others now as well), Conversations with Demons is now pretty much dead. It's too expensive a project for me to even entertain the thought of thinking I might be able to do it on my own - and even if I tried doing a little bit here and there, it's just not going to work and would be something I'd end up abandoning if it takes more than a year to do - and with no money it'd take about 4-5 years most likely.

I debating about crowdfunding, but given the hostility towards it and the amount of money needed, it's not even worth attempting. I'd need a whole crew of volunteers working a couple hours a day to promote it to even hope to come close to what I'd need.

So I just decided to move on. There were also several smaller projects tied to it that I'm pretty sure I'm giving up on as well since they all required an FX budget as well. If you follow the business on Facebook, for the last couple months I've been doing a daily "Random Demon Facts" which was going to be tied into the mockumentary and an accompanying book - I'm passing on that for the time being as well since it's an effort to come up with all this stuff to make daily posts and now there's not really much point to it, so I don't feel like wasting the energy on something that is reaching a smaller and smaller audience because Facebook seems to like to limit your posts more the more often you post. Dicks.

There were some more elaborate photo shoots I'd planned, requiring money, which are being abandoned for the moment as well. There was a lot of potential projects I was looking forward to that hinged on this grant - and while I knew not getting it was a pretty definite possibility, it's difficult not to want to think ahead and make plans on some crazy off chance it did happen.

So, I've got a couple photo shoots in the works that are a little more elaborate, however even they'll be delayed because of some commission work that fell through as well - it started off a good year and it's slowly already becoming a pretty shitty year of disappointment - BUT, it gives me time to torn towards the easier, less expensive - and probably slightly more fun projects I have in mind as well.

Case Files of Bureau 51 is an idea I had a couple years ago now for a really easy to shoot, no worries about video or sound quality and no continuity or commitment issue with actors either. So it's a definite number 1 on my list of potential projects this summer. It's basically COPS with demons and monsters and zombies and crap. Totally live action, no CG or post effects of any kind, all shot in more or less one improved take. It'll be a web series, each episode only a couple minutes, all self-contained working up to possible a final episode that ties it all together.

Ask Cthulhu will be part of my Project Cthulhu idea. I'm scaling down the whole Project Cthulhu idea to my simpler concept, where I create what I kind of described as a Buffy the Vampire Slayer version of him, which would just be Cthulhu in a business suit, not a full body suit - so I only have to create a head, hands and possibly feet, rather than the full body - which would be incredibly expensive.

The Ask Cthulhu part will be a weekly webisode, only a 30 seconds to a minute long, I don't know at this point, where "viewers" can write in to ask Cthulhu questions and advice. The best part of this is, and I don't want to give away too much, is that it can be filmed in advance to some degree and several episodes shot in a couple hours - so a few months worth can be done every so often and keep the whole thing going for some time - if there's any interest.

The downside of this is, it will require close to $1000 to do, so I'll have to find a way to raise that money in the next few months if I want to be able to do it in the fall. We'll see how that goes. At least it can be done bit by bit.

I'm still debating about my "Universal Monsters" project, the idea there was to take all the original male Universal Monsters and recreate them as if they'd been written for women - trying to keep the original descriptions, basic concepts and costumes as close to what would have been done back in the day. Most will be pretty easy, but the Gil Man (Gil Woman in this case) will be pretty expensive to pull off well.

There are a few other ideas I'm debating as well. I might take the down time to finish up a couple older movies I put on the shelf and abandoned awhile ago. For right now I'm looking to get back into Bimbo Zombie Killers: Moonshine of the Damned though, hoping to get that thing finally taken care of by early spring.

And that's it really. I was hoping to be able to attend a few of the bigger conventions it'd I'd received the grant as well, planning on doing shoots and whatnot in the areas them, but that's dead now too so I'm looking towards two smaller local cons that are happening this year. There something called, I think, HorrorFest over in Nova Scotia, although I can find any contact info about who runs it or how to get involved, the one email I found attached to it I didn't get a response from. And there's a Gothic Christmas Fair over in Halifax in November this year I'm looking forward to.