News
Storm in the Night
Today not only marks the birthday of Edgar Allan Poe but also of director and writer Huan Vu. And so we proudly present our second teaser trailer for “The Dreamlands”! Go have a look if you want to know what happened in the night before Roland awakens and opens that door …
In six weeks we will start our crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter. Stay in touch via Facebook, Twitter, Google+ or by subscribing to our newsletter!
Other Gods – Part 2
Almost a year has passed since we discussed the inspiring spirit of the independent film project “The UnderWater Realm”. Now another great example from Europe has emerged: “Kung Fury”! Don’t miss the trailer of this action comedy in the style of a 80’s action flick, it will blow your mind.
Currently “Kung Fury” has reached more than 460,000 USD, far more than its necessary budget of 200.000 USD. That’s absolutely impressive and a true inspiration to us. Could this be the brink of a new era of independent movies? Crowdfunding has been around for a longer time, but it has been unthinkable to finance bigger film projects by this way until “Iron Sky” showed up a couple of years ago and proved the opposite. Timo Vourensola’s sci-fi comedy about Nazis on the Moon managed to collect around 1.5 million USD by fans and then grew to a big theatrical release with a budget at around 9.5 million USD thanks to governmental subsidies and private investors.
Last year two other feature film projects managed to set new records: The Veronica Mars Movie and Zach Braff’s “Wish I Was Here” both surpassed their 2 million USD minimum target. There has been some controversy about it, since both projects were started by established people in the industry and thus weren’t truly independent in spirit. Some would even argue that crowdfunding culture could be destroyed if more and more film projects by the industry would draw attention away from smaller projects by emerging talents.
We don’t think this will happen. We firmly believe in crowdfunding as the best way to bring special film projects to life. Special and unusual ideas like “Kung Fury” will always prevail. Hollywood professionals may be jumping on the bandwagon, but big projects also help to introduce more people to this way of cultural participation and thus can’t be a bad thing. If you ask us, the future of independent filmmaking looks bright.
Unfortunately, we just don’t know if there really are enough H.P. Lovecraft fans out there to make our own dreams come true. We will find out soon!
Door Wide Open
We hope you have had a cozy holiday season and had a good time on New Year’s Eve. We’re wishing you all a Happy New Year!
Next up for our introductions are two of the most important memers of our crew: Director of Photography Martin Vincent Kolbert and Sound Designer Christian Späth. Traditionally both heads of department like to battle each other on set but both got along very well when we were shooting “Die Farbe”. Let’s hope we can bring both magicians together soon again!
Jan Roth
It’s time to introduce some of our key crew members! First up is Jan Roth, main partner in crime in the production of “Die Farbe”. He returned to “The Dreamlands” two months ago from his freelance work for the German animated feature film “The 7th Dwarf” that will be released next year in theaters.
We can’t show you what he is modelling, texturing and animating right now for “The Dreamlands”, but it ‘s going to be something really special! You will see it in March.
In the meantime you can read more about Jan here in the new crew section of our website. We will continue to introduce other crew members from time to time in the next two months.
Happy holidays to all!
Fthagn
Many thanks for the positive feedback we have received so far! We’re glad that so many enjoyed our first teaser trailer. Next up is Christmas time and so we thought we should show you the slightly revised video message we recorded for the H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival in Los Angeles at the end of September. Audience there could watch an early version of the teaser trailer. And since we had no website at that point, we thought we should explain a few things about this project and have some fun. Some of you have already asked us why we’re waiting so long, indicating they’re already convinced to support us. Here is the answer by co-producer Ephraim Wörner:
We won’t sit around daydreaming though: Work on the second and third teaser trailer has already begun. Our contributing illustrators (we call them ‘visionaries’) have started to sketch out design concepts. We are collecting ideas for interesting rewards that we can offer you in March. And we will shoot our campaign video in the next few weeks – which definitely will turn out better than this first experiment here.
Many thanks to Jody Lindke from California who gave us permission to use her lovely Cthulhu Claus in our video message. You can see her Cthulhu Claus Greeting Cards here on Kickstarter where her project was successfully funded a year ago. Be quick and follow this link if you would like to purchase some cards in time for this coming Christmas!
The Awakening
Here it is – our first teaser trailer for “The Dreamlands”!
We hope that you enjoy this glimpse that all but goes beyond the Wall of Sleep and will follow our further progress. Don’t forget to stay in touch via Facebook, Twitter, Google+ or by subscribing to our newsletter!
Weird Tales
On the occassion of launching our new website at www.the-dreamlands.com director Huan Vu has given Weird Tales Magazine an exclusive interview and a first sneak peek at our first teaser trailer:
Weird Tales: From the makers of “Die Farbe” – The Dreamlands
A great honour, since this is the very same magazine that launched the careers of great authors like Ray Bradbury, Robert E. Howard – and H.P. Lovecraft. Founded in 1923 and resurrected in 1988 its mission has remained till this day to publish brilliantly strange material that can’t be found elsewhere. See more at: weirdtalesmagazine.com
Visionary: Erik Kriek
Today we would like to introduce one of our ‘visionaries’: artists that are going to contribute to our film project with concept sketches and elaborate artworks.
Erik Kriek, a comic artist and illustrator from the Netherlands, is the first one, since his new graphic novel “From Beyond and Other Tales” has been released now in Germany and he will be on a signing tour in Bochum, Bonn, Frankfurt, Hannover and Berlin in the next few days.
You can see a preview of his adaptation of “The Outsider” if you follow this link. Unfortunately there is no English version planned at the moment, but we will keep you informed!
Lost in Time and Space
Well, we had no no luck in the last few weeks: First one of our brand-new hard disk drives decided to get a severe head crush. That wouldn’t have been a problem, since there is a backup drive with exactly the same data on it. At least we thought that. Unfortunately one folder wasn’t mirrored. Recovery attempts all failed. In the end we lost most of the making of material we shot during our recent additional shooting day in the studio. It’s a minor loss, but still very annoying.
Then another hard disk drive with rendered visual effects layers on it got lost in time and space AKA the German Mail Service. Since the sending VFX artist went into holidays afterwards, it took us almost three weeks to get it back and be able to send it out to the other artist again.
Apart from this we’re on good track – you will see some beautiful things in a few weeks!
Fear of the Unknown
There are really many crowdfunding platforms. What is yours? What will be ours?
This question is the reason why we are collecting a lot of information for a good decision.
Only one thing is certain : We are crowdfunding – because it is the best way to make this movie!
Therefore, we must dig ourselves through tons of raw data and hundreds of websites. We try to learn as much as possible about what others have experienced as supporters and creators of crowdfunding-campaigns to see what we need to avoid and which essential ideals we should pursue.
We already have smaller and larger ideas, of what we will offer as rewards. We would be delighted to hear from your own ideas about any reward you would like. Your idea could be the one bringing us closer to successfully financing this movie!
Mail us your thoughts and experiences.
Or just leave a comment.