The headline I never thought I’d see. Yup, at 1:15 AM Central time my movie Port Washington was finally finished. Officially the last things done were some brightness filter checks and the music for the “Kitten Scene”. Sorry about that “News Bulletin” page you had to slog through, but I felt very large type was required for this event.

Look for an official PW section coming soon, along with more information on the live and web premieres. Now I need some sleep.

Alright, all the music for Port Washington is now done. Just a few odds and ends to tighten up and the movie will be finished. Naturally they’ll be a big announcement on this site the day it occurs.

In the weeks leading up to the web release I’ll be bringing a special Port Washington section of this site online. It’ll include the links to the downloadable QuickTime versions of the movie, plus trailers, assorted info and an MP3 version of the soundtrack.

In other news…

PW has consumed almost all of my time for the last month, but with it drawing to a close I can begin work on other projects and continue others. Including:

1) A new low-budget horror movie! Yes, out of the frying pan and into the fire. This will be along the lines of “Lizard of Death” but be an emulation of a modern crappy direct-to-video movie. Think something you’d see on the Sci Fi channel, but with more blood, guts and guns. We’re also going to try and film it entirely in 1 weekend, which would be a far cry from the time spent on PW 😉 Probably will film in July. Should be fun, more updates as we progress.

2) Hey I might have found a good source of NOAC’s! (NES on a chips) Sounds promising, I hope to do a prototype within a month or two, and perhaps roll out larger numbers of them by summer. Stay tuned!

3) The Ghost Town documentary shoot has been moved back to August/September. There were weather concerns for a March shoot, and this gives us more prep time anyway. I’m doing both the ghost documentary and the horror movie with the guys from One Man Down Productions, the idea is that doing the quickie horror movie first will give us some warm-up time working together.

Work on the music has been going very well, right now it’s at about the 85% point. Because of this progress I’ve even had time to add incidental music through the movie, beyond the main sequences I originally had planned.

Thus I am putting a release date down now – Saturday April 1st, 2006. This is no April Fool’s joke, the movie will be done by then.

We’re still working on the details of the live premiere, but it will definitely be in central Wisconsin. Likely Madison or Richland Center, but also possible Wisconsin Dells. News will be posted as soon as we have it, and I’ll be updating this site a lot between now and then.

For those of you in cyber-space we’re also having a “Web Premiere” on the same date. Using a variety of hosts, I’ll offer free downloads of Port Washington in QuickTime format. Likely a 1 gig version, and a 540 meg iPod Video version. More details to come, so stick around!

In the meantime, check out the trailer!

With only a week to go until the actual movie’s release I thought it’d be fun to have the soundtrack downloadable. This is the custom score for the movie done by Shaun Buswell, John Bonk and myself. The track names shouldn’t spoil too much, so fear not.

Check it out! Port Washington Musical Score Download

I have begun working on finishing the Port Washington musical score myself, and besides some portable-related things I’m already committed to, nothing else gets higher priority. Not even food or watching Law & Order reruns.

After getting some musical equipment last week and being able to work on the score all weekend, I am quite sure, nay, POSITIVE I can have it all done and finish Port Washington in March. Probably around the middle of the month.

Once I have the music a little further along I’ll announce a release date. Stay tuned!

OK I know this may seem completely from left field but I’ve been wanting to do a ghost-related project for several years now. Yes, we’re still working on getting Port Washington done, this project will be filmed shortly thereafter. (Late March)

While the exact location won’t be revealed until we’re actually filming it (to avoid interference) here’s what I can tell you thus far:

1) Project is code-named “PC” It’s documentary style and structured in 3 parts. Getting the idea and going to the location, doing research on the location in nearby towns, and finally, spending a night at the location to record any data or anomalies we can get on tape.

2) Length of the show will be 1-2 hours, depending on how much footage we get. It is a one-shot thing, that is, not a weekly series. The idea is to sell it as a one-shot to any interested media outlet.

3) My principal role is as the cameraman and technical guy. I also came up with some of the ideas for the show’s structure.

4) It is being done by my friends from One Man Down Productions. We’re doing weekly podcasts regarding the status of the project, and will continue this right up until the shoot itself, including a podcast during the shoot. Click here for past and current podcasts regarding “PC”

In the coming weeks I’ll put up a page about this project on my site here as well. In it I will describe some of the custom equipment I’ll be building to assist with the shoot, the cameras we’ll be using, and other technical stuff.

Instead of just copying what other people [who do this sort of thing] have done, our approach is to think about why a ghost might appear on film, or why might a device record strange sounds, and try to use our estimates of that to modify our equipment and increase our chances. Granted, this requires us to make some assumptions about supernatural activity, but we’re basing those off the common occurrences and similarity between reported events.

And don’t worry, I’m still working on videogame related projects as well! However, this too is a project that interests me, and I hope to help make it interesting for others as well.