This is just a quick update about a few things on the website, first Maniac and Maniac The Revenge have both been digitally re-mastered from the original master tapes, the last edition were taking from a lousy u-Matic master and to say the image quality was questionable was a understatement, anybody who ordered the first edition on DVD will be sent a the two replacement disc in the next few weeks.
Our first 1080p HD film is just about compete, and we are about to start testing the Blu-Ray disc for compatibility, reading a few forums about the issue, it seems a lot of brand name players can’t play burned disc without encryption on the discs which is something we don’t have access to, so it seems that our first HD feature film may only come out on the DVD format.
A few weeks ago “Pop Hak” emailed us about a bootleg DVD from china called Death Cemetery which is a renamed copy of our film The Graveyard of Death which is infact just the workprint from disc two of the Limited Edition and not the full 96 minutes edition, so keep a eye out for that.
Nightmare of the Living Dead is just about finished too, a lot of video filtering has been done on the raw footage to improve visual quality of the film, just as with Zombie Ferox was our first test of this software, we hope to offer the best reconstruction of the film possible for the new DVD.
This week the new Tory-Lib Dem Government cut funds to the UK Film Council, set up in 2000 by the Labour Government as a non-departmental public body to develop and promote the film industry within the United Kingdom, films like Bend it Like Beckham, Gosford Park, Fish Tank or Sex Lives of the Potato Men, who will now invest? What is the state of the British Film Industry? Does the UK film industry have a future? How can we expect British Cinema to be able to compete and find new talents when the Tory-Lib Dem Government abolish a the only major player in the film industry in the UK?
Over the last ten year very few films were funded by the UK Film Council, only the elite of film producers and director had any access to funding from the UK Film Council, unless you were Mike Leigh, Danny Doyle the nepotism run deep within the UK film industry, it’s policies were mostly disastrous, staffed by mediocre slim-balls open in their contempt for the film makers who loved their jobs only for the inflated salaries, the organization was pompous, very lazy, slow and altogether partisan, and without critical insight or a commercial instinct, a lot of aspiring film makers will lose a livelihood that was quite frankly a struggle to begin with in this country, this news will encourage the already huge migration of anyone in the UK film industry to the United States, and seedy world of Los Angeles.
So will the British Film Institute undergo a shift in priorities in order to take the strain.
A total of 183 films are listed on IMDB but about 900 films were produced by the UK Film Council over the last ten years, with funds provided by UK National Lottery, out of the 900 films made only a few were Horror movies and one of them was the sequel 28 Weeks Later, investing in digital cinemas which has given Britain the most digital screens of any European country, As Variety reports, the UK Film Council has 75 staff, and roughly invested more than £160 million ($248 million) in Lottery funds over the past ten years, generating £700 million ($1 billion) at the box office worldwide.
Tim Bevan of the UK Film Council calls the move a “bad decision, People will rightly look back on today’s announcement and say it was a big mistake, driven by short-term thinking and political expediency, British film, which is one of the UK’s more successful growth industries, deserves better.
It is obvious the Tories are looking to take the UK back to the same level as the 1980′s under Margaret Thatcher making as many people as possible unemployed and also have no hope from oncoming onslaught of European migration, asylum seekers and illegal immigration plus moving jobs from the UK to India and the Far East, and tax increases in recoded levels, unlike the 1980′s we have no Coal Mining Unions striking over job losses to save the country.
The teaser trailer for The Prince of Darkness is open for viewing on the in-production page with a few images from the shoot, we hope to have the film completed before the end of the year, but who knows it may be 2011 before a final edit is complete.
An Iranian vampire return to England to take back his monarchy over the nation of Great Britain, but first he must kill off the last of the blood lines that kept him in-poisoned for the last 200 years.
We try to give the film a hammer horror feel, with lots of shadows and deep blacks with off colour whites, yes and before you ask the final edit will be in Black and White but without the film damage.
One reason I haven’t been updating the blog is that I just haven’t had the free time, I’ve been trying to keep up with comment moderation on the blog, and updates some stuff, that was about an hour of my life wasted with comment spam moderation.
With the website design looking a bit old now (we been using the same design since 2002) we are going to re-design most of the site, as many people may know from reading our forum pages i hate the web2.0 style, what is the point of making your pages look web2.0 if users can’t interact with the site, anyhow that was so 2005.
We hung out at some creepy cemetery all night and mildly desecrated some graves, with hardcore zombie bloodlust, or 2 litters of fake blood, as we where making our story movie, it became evident that one of our actors was going to need to be replaced for a few reasons, over the group discussion we found a replacement, i hope, But i don’t know how to deal with being around the one person who i replaced, because he will be around while shooting because he still wants to be part of the movie, It’s all really awkward, it’s not like we don’t like that guy.
I’m back after a bit of a prolonged absence due to personal issues, will be trying to make a bit more of an effort to regularly update here, so keep checking back to see what’s new, we are still casting for our next zombie movie DEFCON we had many CV’s from mandy.com to look through, so we will be email the lucky actors soon, we also have a new design for our .co.uk website which will go live soon, we are also updating parts of this website in the weeks to come with new content, photographs and videos, so please keep checking back.
We set up a twitter account last year or so, I can’t really remember why i set up the account in the first place, I never posted anything on the account, but I will be posting even I have time too, maybe I can find something to post every now and then, but if not I will try and updated on filming and post-production stuff.
Still working on the new digitalnasties co dot uk site, i hope to have it open by December this year, if i find the time that is, as me and bob are helping with a small action/drama film being make in Sunderland, so that also pushing back The Graveyard of Death Part II a few months and the DVD release Maniac & Maniac 2, also we had to shop the filming on my new Zombie movie DEFCON as i lost my job a few weeks ago and downturn in both the US and UK economy it was best to stop filming till the worst economic crisis in 60 years is over or i find funding from the National Lottery Film Fund but if i did that i would have to replace the zombies with 145th remake of pride and prejudice.
Digital Nasties Films is looking for a feature-length (90 minute) script to produce in late 2007-early 2008. We are interested in character-oriented scripts that take place in North East England, written by aspiring writers in the area.
Submission Guidelines The script should be “independent” in scope, tightly focused on modern-day characters in the North East area.
The script must be formatted according to industry standards and in a easily-printable format. We will accept PDF, Word, Screenwriter, and Final Draft files.
The script must be long enough for a 90-minute feature (roughly 100 pages).
The script should be properly and clearly copyrighted. Having WGA registration is a plus.
The script must include a cover letter and introduction, providing contact information for the writer and a brief (200-word) summary of the plot.
Please submit the script to info (at) digitalnasties (dot) com, with the title of the script in the Subject line.
