Time flies

Time flies. So much is going on that it is difficult to keep track of it all. In 10 days Jac will be in the rain forest, shooting a documentary. JUSTINE will be totally in Amy’s hands and she will set the release date. June is going to be a month of total disconnect for Jac. July will be hectic for all of us and in August things will be returning back to “normal“. Between now and the 25th of this month some decisions will be made, important decisions, concerning the release of this highly anticipated film. Amy and I will be keeping you all posted.

In the meantime we have a PRE JUSTINE RELEASE SALE! Get our movies with a 30% discount if you buy two or more!

I think it is important to understand the ROOTS issue. In some universe we’re known for those amazing “fetish”, for lack of a better word, films like Red Feline on the Cross, Agent X and so on. In another universe we’re better known for works committed to causes like the ecology, human rights like Krik Krak, Outbreak, and so on. And yet, in another universe we’re becoming very well known for feature films that fall into genres such as Horror, Terror and so on. While in one Universe Jac is often compared to Maya Deren and Garcia Marquez, in another universe he is very unique and in that third universe he is compared to Jesus Franco and yes, Buñuel. But the actual roots are perhaps in that initial film that started it all. Krik Krak. We’re not distancing ourselves from the Red Feline stage in our general production output. We’re simply growing and taking that period with us to higher levels, with higher production values and great stories like … yes… Maleficarum.

During the Red Feline years we had weekly releases. Our output was not a lot more than now, perhaps even less. If I were to quantify the productions from the time Jac began his career, I can count almost 50 films of all kinds in a 35 year span, beginning with his student film until now. The Red Feline Years, as active as they were, did not produce more than 25 movies from 1997 to 2001. The second part of the Red Feline Years, with Amy, produced 12 films prior to our mainstream period in which we produced 10 big production budget films including JUSTINE.

Another issue is who to work with. The actresses in our team, like Bea or Mila have their own outlook on life and what they want to be doing with their time. If we were to ask them to do a custom video, they would first have to agree to do it and then they would have to be paid enough for their efforts. Their rates are high now. For feature films they get good rates, which I will not disclose here at this time, but they are high. To give you an idea, Carmen lived three years and attended university in Paris with her earnings from Red Feline on the Cross and other movies made during that period. Mila supports her family with her earnings from the films she made since 2010. They don’t look at a small payment as ideal. Profit sharing in our movies is more advantageous to them and right now they would be happy to make more movies like Dead But Dreaming or Pygmalion.

One issue that is critical is that of time and space. Locations are not easy to find and they cost money, and time is money, as they saying goes. There’s very little time to do all we have to do as it is. We do, however, raise funds to make those big movies like Olalla and Justine, with perks that may include a custom type of scene, like the whipping scene in Dead But Dreaming or the whipping scene in JUSTINE or the roasting scene in Maleficarum. The contributions to those scenes were a big step to get the rest of the money together to get those films done.

The intention with revamping the redfeline.com site is to offer more to our supporters. However, that too takes time, effort and money. Those are the reasons why we did not continue. No one had the time to work on the site on a continuous basis, updating it with enough frequency and so on. That is what we’re studying now. We have a lot of material to share, tons of stories, pictures, oh so many, many pictures, plans, and so on. For instance, let’s say we want to Maleficarum II, we could share highlights of the story as it is written, show pictures and videos of the casting, rehearsals, shooting of the movie and so on. And that would be just one part of the site. There’s going to a thought process first. We shall see what comes of it.

Back in the day, when we had the Red Feline site for members only, one of the sections was The Diary of Camille. By the time Jac and Carmen made Red Feline on the Cross and it was released to the world, the character of Camille took shape. All the work that Carmen and Jac did before the first Red Feline movie came out, became a true performance type of work. So, along with the Training of Camille stories and pictures, there are also videos, and the Via Crucis of Camille stories, pictures and videos, we published the recollections of Camille, her meeting with JJ and Margot, her process of becoming Red Feline, and so on. All of it illustrated with pictures from all those sessions, journeys, moments that Jac and Carmen captured visually as Camille became flesh. I can say that the final work of that period was Martyr Or The Death of St Eulalia, where Camille becomes the movie character. The Diary of Camille is like a documentary of the process Carmen went through as she created Camille.

In film, the creation of the project does not end with the shooting of the movie. The editing is the creation of the project, it is the putting together of the shots in a narrative that gives it meaning and yes, it takes longer, always, than the actual shooting. I think writing a script can be a lengthy process as well. Some people take a very long time to do it. Shooting the movie has its constrains. So, it cannot take longer than what the budget and the schedule provide. Sometimes a film can go a little over budget and it can go a few days beyond its schedule.

The post production has only one factor to be aware of, the deadline. In our case there’s no set deadline, only the need to release it in a timely manner. But there’s no urgency as such, so the editing takes its normal time, and by that I mean the time it actually needs. This week is critical. Jac has to decided if he’s happy with what he did, and Amy has to decide if she is happy with what he did. Once that process takes place, the rest is purely technical. Color correction, final sound mix, title, credits, processing of the movie itself, subtitles to at least four languages and building of the DVD. All technical work that takes a couple of weeks to complete. There’s a bit of creative work deciding the tone of the colors and the sound mix and the position of the title and credits. Nothing creative about the rest. We’re getting closer and closer to the release, that’s a fact.

The public whipping in Dead But Dreaming is based on a real event that happened during the revolutionary period in La Paz, where the story takes place. And it is the story of a woman who aided the rebels against the Spanish Crown. When she was discovered, she was beaten, raped, taken to the public square, she was then stripped naked, whipped and paraded in the town naked on top of a donkey, while being beaten too, and then she was hanged. That’s in history books in Bolivia. So, it was not tacked on in Dead But Dreaming. In fact, many of the events in the story, except, of course, the vampires, were taken from real historic events, and the characters, like Moira, were also based on real history characters. The general who orders the torture and death of Moira, is, in fact, Don Jose Manuel, who led the Spanish forces against the rebels. Eventually the rebels won, 20 years later. But during the period when the film takes place, most rebel leaders were killed and in nasty ways.

The main reason why people would be stripped naked before execution is to humiliate them. That is the case of Moira in Dead But Dreaming and that is the case of Justine in JUSTINE. Poor Justine suffers the cruel punishment for her many crimes, each deserving of their own punishment and each deserving the death penalty but, alas, she only has but one life

It doesn’t necessarily mean that nudity is a must in the case of a public whipping. In some cases it is even sexier if there isn’t total nudity. I think in the case of that famous whipping scene in Angelique and the Sultan, Angelique is not totally naked, but the scene is great, but short. For us, both cases work very well, even if we tend to throw in full nudity from time to time. Yes?