Congratulations!

First of all, thanks for watching (or trying to watch :-) ) and thanks for the comments. I have a tough time watching it because it's not nearly the movie it could have been if we'd had more money and, frankly, if I'd had more experience. So please don't think I'm looking for, or expecting, rave reviews.

Answers to some questions.

* It was shot on Super16, but due to budget restraints, we had to abandon our plan of getting a high definition transfer for the final. Instead, we were forced to use the mini DV dailies tapes. Now, that would have been fine except that, a) I didn't have them done in anamorphic, b) it was a lousy telecine job (and we didn't have it redone at the time because we didn't expect to use them for the final), and c) the telecine was done at 29i (which I could have put back down to 23.976 but by the time I realized that it was too late. The telecine for the pick-ups/reshoots was MUCH better, but for shots that had to cut in with shots from principal photography I had to blur them. A good example, if you have the DVD or recorded it yesterday, is the campfire scene. All of the close-ups of Helen explaining about the bones, and the two-shots of Brian and Lou (the blonde girl) were from the reshoot and were actually done a year after the other shots there.

That's why I'm very excited about HDV. Our rental for the Super16 was about $8500, whereas for less than that you can OWN an HDV camera with matte box, tripod, follow focus, etc. (Let alone the savings in film and lab work.) A friend of mine is in post right now on an HDV feature. It's definitely the way to go on low budget films.

* The girl with the, um, "external drive bays" (this is a family site!), is Juliana Dever. It's too bad she didn't get to show off her personality, because she's really smart and very funny. Not what you'd expect at all.

* Yes, the daytime shots of the CG version of the creature weren't good enough. I regret that. But the "dummy against the tree" wasn't a dummy-- _I_ was the dummy for not doing a better job on the CG stunt double in that shot.

And here's an anecdote: During principal photography we ran out of time and couldn't shoot the end scene in the Jeep, where they catch their breath and say "let's go home." The Jeep was a rental, and a year later when we needed it again we found out that the rental agency didn't have it any more. So we called around to other places. No one had a red open-top Jeep. So I had my Production Manager scour the classified ads, hoping someone would be selling one. We lucked out, and found one. So she called up the guy and asked if he'd rent it to us for half a day, for $100, and explained the situation. The guy laughed and said he was a 1st Assistant Director so he understood completely. So we were able to get the Jeep and get the scene done.

And by the way, the morning that we shot that scene a couple of people showed up and as it turns out they were there scouting the location to do a Bigfoot shoot! It was apparently going to be a segment on the show "I'm With Busey" and they inquired about renting our Bigfoot costume. But it never came about.

Oh, and the deal with Sci-Fi is non-exclusive, and they licensed it for 8 showings over the course of the year. One down! I can't discuss the price, but the film still hasn't broken even, so that should say something.

Nice... really cool.

I watched the "making of the face" scenes, that was really cool too.

What did you use for fake blood?

And I love the tag line "Some legends never die... They kill."

Great.

..so you used the video assist from the SR3, for the source of your dailies? I would have guessed 16mm for your source, but not DV, sourced from a video assist... I didn't think the image was bad at all..

..I thought the audio was a very strong point of the production..

..too bad it was sandwiched between a somewhat similar production & ECW(yuk!)...

tumbleweed, no, the video assist wasn't the source of the dailies. The film was telecined.

As for the film that preceded mine, it's funny that they showed that one (in its debut in any format-- the DVD comes out in September I think). I worked on that one last year at the request of the distributor. They wanted a more stylized look for the night shots with the creature. Vegas to the rescue!