Olalla, Dead But Dreaming, Barbazul and … Maleficarum! Oh.. and Martyr … and yes, Sirwiñakuy.

The month of September is gone. It was quite a month indeed. Dead But Dreaming, our new release, doing its rounds around the world, our other films are getting noticed, like Barbazul which was screened Saturday 28th at the Cinemateca with a Q&A and great audience response and it’s going to be at the PollyGrind Film Festival in Las Vegas; Maleficarum is breaking records and keeping itself ahead on the best seller position, Martyr was the subject of a conference on Semiotics at a major university and there’s going to be a workshop on the subject as well, Olalla is under production and looking really good, and Sirwiñakuy is the subject of discussions and new screenings at the Cinemateca.

The transformations we embarked on, in 2010, when we started the production of Barbazul and Maleficarum truly changed everything. The last three years have been so different for us. So full of surprising results. The featured article/interview of Amy at Fangoria is one of those unexpected events as well as her participation in the CineKink festival in three US cities, the amazing reviews of most of our films in The Beverly Hills Outlook, the surprising contact made by celebrated author C Dean Andersson who discovered us at a convention in Texas where Maleficarum was mentioned in glowing terms.

We owe a lot of this to Ralphus who by putting his cash into the production of Maleficarum gave us a huge push forward. It was inspiring, to say the least, encouraging as well, and those funds were the seeds for a new stage in our productions. Others have emulated Ralphus, helping finance Dead But Dreaming (D. Santorum) and Dead But Dreaming 2 (someone who will be credited in due time).

It feels good to have the kind of support that makes our films possible. It feels even better that the films are so well received.

C. Dean Andersson published a comment on Facebook:

“Working on a review. Thinking of descriptive phrases. If you’ve seen it, how about, ” Jac Avila’s DEAD BUT DREAMING does for Vampire Films what Coppola’s APOCALYPSE NOW did for War Movies”…transforms entertaining and traditionally horrific stories into beautiful works of epic art…i.e., DBD is not like any other Vampire Film I’ve ever seen…and I’ve seen bunches! And some of the grand and sweeping Bolivian landscape vistas took me back to my favorite Leone western, ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST.”

The positive comments on Dead But Dreaming keep coming and now we’re convinced that they will not stop reaching us for a long time, both published reviews and private comments. Many write to us that this film deserves a wider audience. We feel the same way. It takes a lot of time and work to reach out into the vast world of film lovers to find those that will follow us. That world is huge and we don’t have the financial means to advertise widely, so we count on word of mouth.. or, I should say, in the spreading of the news from person to person and mostly through the internet. That’s the basic way available to us, and it’s not a bad way. It’s actually an awesome way to reach millions, but, as I said, it is hard work.

One film that has some amazing reviews and comments and a future is Barbazul. Once, a long, long time ago, Jac met a Dutch distributor in Las Vegas who was proposing to distribute our Red Feline Productions to stores in Europe. At that meeting they were talking about the films and the distributor mentioned Red Feline on the Cross. Jac said, “…but that’s an old film“. The distributor replied “No, it is not. Not many people have seen it, so for everyone out there it is a New film“. Wise words. Films have staying power. There are many films from the 60s, that perhaps did not have a wide distribution and are just beginning to be seen. They are “new” as far as those people discovering them is concerned.

We envision such destiny for our new productions. We can tell that the word is spreading and so films like Maleficarum, Barbazul, Le Marquis, Sirwiñakuy are finding new audiences everyday. Just recently we noticed a surge in sales for Martyr. We’re not sure how it happens. It’s possible that there are places out there where one of our films is mentioned and suddenly many people buy that one film. The film they buy is a discovery, soon after they might buy the rest of our catalogue.

Dead But Dreaming is too fresh, so we haven’t seen anything unusual yet.

Barbazul is getting to a higher place with its participation at the PollyGrind Film Festival in Las Vegas this month. It’s a well known festival in the world of cult, horror, independent films. Amy got her interview at Fangoria as a direct result of her participation in the CineKink festival in New York. So she’s looking forward to what will come from PollyGrind .

So, Amy is preparing her bags to travel once again this year, but before going she began directing her new film, Olalla. This is her fourth film as a director, but she’s also the leading lady in the film. Shooting began two weeks ago and she decided to take a break until her return from the US. But what she accomplished so far looks awesome. It’s a different film from what she did before, while having enough GIMP and KINK to satisfy our hard core fans. Someone described the film, based on the fundraising clip, as a Macabre Comedy.

Amy launched her IndieGoGo campaign to raise some of the funds she needs for a fantastic BATS scene. Here’s the link. Her goal is to raise 10,000 USD to shoot a large scale scene of Olalla whipped, chained to a cross and burn in from of angry villagers.

There are some great perks for those who would like to contribute to the production of that scene. The plan is to shoot it in November. She explains it better in the pitch video below.

The money end of mainstream GIMP movies IS the critical, sensitive point. To continue making movies, the producers must recover the investment on each case and, if possible, make some money on top of it. There are needs to be met and besides, no one likes to loose money. The bigger the production the more people involved in it. People have to be paid, props have to be built, locations rented or gotten to. For instance, to produce that amazing scene in Olalla we have to travel vast distances to a great location, the great looking Hacienda with open fields around it, not to mention an old Church. Just to go location scouting costs a good amount of money.

Then we have to take all the crew, cast, equipment there, lodging and feeding all of them for many days. That’s expensive. And on top of it all the crew and cast have to be paid. They have families to feed, expenses to meet as well. It’s risky every time.

We never know how a film will do, really. We had no idea if Maleficarum or Dead But Dreaming were going to break even.

In actual real money, hard cash and soft cash, our films never really break even. However it’s the hard cash that we have to recover with every release. That’s how it works. For a larger film, larger than ours, it can be even harder. We’re talking about the difference between a 100,000 movie compared to a 1,000,000 movie. They are both, in fact low budget movies, but it’s more difficult to recover 1 million. Hollywood spends more than 100,000,000 in a movie. Our movies are less than 0.1% of that.

The good thing is that we know how to make our NO budget movies look really good. … Right? And Olalla is looking good.

YikYakker And speaking of pics: I know you really took a few for the team doing this scene, and want to express my appreciation for the effort you put in to produce top-notch GIMPage. Even the guy on the far right in the Napoleon-style hat seems to be averting his gaze. 😉 I’d be more like the young fellow standing next to him, taking in every bit of you…er, it.

Top Notch GIMPage is what we are working to produce, and with a flair for the artistic and the dramatic. The two productions in the works, Olalla and DBD 2 (provisional title) are exactly that. Top Notch GIMPage. I’m not at liberty to discuss the new films yet, partly because I don’t have the details, but what I can say is that from what I hear in the endless discussions, the scenes will be more complicated, more elaborate than what we did so far in Maleficarum and Dead But Dreaming.

However, GIMPage is just part of those films, even tough it is a big part, the stories are far more complex. Olalla has some amazing characters. It’s is a delight to see some of the rushes and how those characters develop. And we already know what the characters are in Dead But Dreaming and many of them will be back in the second part. But what awaits to some of them is truly grandiose.

One thing I can say is that our people are having a lot of fun making these movies.

Bill K. D. Santorum and Gimpers, I don’t consider the short quick but well done execution scenes in D.B.D. as torture. I’ll correct my post by saying the death scenes are terrific gimp scenes but just not the slow torture scenes I crave.

Well. Jac intentionally made the crucifixion of Aphrodisia (Mila) scene short. There were reasons for it. A lot of the funds went to the great scenes of Moira’s (Amy) whipping and execution. Lots of resources went to Nahara’s (Vero) sacrifice.. and then there’s Asar’s and Aphrodisia’s erotic scene. The crucifixion scene was an after thought. The film was edited and Jac decided he needed that scene, which was planned for the second part. A larger, more dramatic crucifixion scene needed a lot of screen time and that was not available anymore. Another reason was a dramatic one. A scene to match Amy’s intense flogging and execution was not considered. Dead But Dreaming already had its very dramatic, excellent GIMP scene.

The second part will have some long, very dramatic GIMP scenes … and the third part will have them as well. We don’t want to give everything away in one movie. There’s just too much in Jac’s sick head.

D. Santorum Getting back to production values, one of the most surprising things about Dead But Dreaming is simply the way it looks. (…) The shots being posted here day to day don’t fully convey this.
One thing that has always bothered me just a little about Amy and Jac’s prior efforts is the rather grainy picture quality. I can agree that this look has a certain charm of its own, and apparently it didn’t bother me so much that I was unwilling to pay them to make a scene for me. But still, the concern was there.
But all of this has changed with the new movie. Last night I watched Dead But Dreaming for about the fifth time (I know, I know….I’m kind of obsessed with it), and immediately afterward I watched a few scenes from both Malificarum and Barbazul. Doing this made it obvious to me just how much the picture quality has improved. It’s really quite a dramatic difference.
I remember a couple of years ago Amy saying something about their having purchased new equipment for shooting the new movie. This investment has paid off beautifully.

It’s been more than ten years since Jac began producing GIMP movies. The very first films, other than his famous documentary on Haiti and the Miniseries, were experimental performances. The very first were done with a VHS camera (the doc. was shot on 16mm and the mini series was shot with an analog 3/4 inch top of the line, at that time, Sony camera) Later, he began using the 3/4 inch camera but without professional lights. When Martyr was shot the equipment was upgraded to digital, so Crux Bride and Red Room were shot with that. Two HD small cameras were acquired and Agent X, Perils Of Jane and other films already had a better look. We used those cameras for Sirwiñakuy, which had a theatrical release. It means the look was good enough for a theatrical release.

Amy had some Mmni lights, very old ones, which were available to us for Barbazul, Maleficarum and Le Marquis. They burned out since then. Those movies also had the new top of the line HD camera, but we didn’t have enough lenses and lights.

We now have more lenses, Arri lights, kinos. So, things are going to look even better. Dead But Dreaming was the first to be produced with the new lights and lenses, but we did not have the new fancy SOUND equipment, which was used in the crucifixion scene. The dialogues in the 57 BC scenes in DBD were recorded with the new equipment and they are great. There’s also a spanking new DOLLY for tracking shots, plus GoPro camera for those hard to shoot scenes, like underwater.

Yes, we do invest in new equipment all the time to get a better, and better look and sound to our movies.

This is the way the SET looks like now, the smiling fellow is the director of cinematography who just loves his new gadgets.

Bill K. Ten years ago I would have bought and enjoyed Blakemore’s Punished type movies but once I saw Maleficarum and Dead But Dreaming and Red Feline’s Gimp type movies, I can say I no longer can enjoy any consensual non gimp type movies. Besides I am crazy for bats and I can’t wait for the next Amy bats movie, Olalla . Bill K.

That’s a very nice comment on our work. For one, we feel like we’re doing the right thing with our more complex, more engaging, more elaborate GIMP films, in the other hand these movies are setting some kind of bar which we have to surpass with every new production. That’s making things hard for ourselves, but it’s challenging and exciting.

Wonderful ideas keep flowing back and forth, Amy and Jac and not only those two are visionaries, eager to do more and more extraordinary epics with better means. Bringing those visions to reality is really hard work, and costly too. So, for those who think good things are coming from us, I ask you, politely, to visit Amy’s IndieGoGo campaign, share it with friends, and help her make that BATS scene the best ever. Not everyone can be as tremendously generous as Ralphus and D Santorum, but many can sink in less than the cost of a download to help make the scene. There are good perks for those who contribute.

The film is being produced, Amy just wants to make it look a lot, a lot better than her available means. You have the opportunity to be a part of what we plan to be our best GIMP scene yet with your small or big contribution. Isn’t that nice? And you also get super cool stuff!

We have a great catalogue now and you owe it to yourself to enjoy it. I do recommend Barbazul and Dead But Dreaming as the ones to get this weekend, if you haven’t done so, of course.

Last night the bunch revisited Alien, the old Riddley Scott movie. It was a great thing to do. I suggest you do that too and revisit our old Red Feline movies as well. I think I’m going to sit and watch Sirwiñakuy now.