The next few months are going to see some big changes in regards to the podcasts we do here at Dead Lantern. Long story short, Round Table and Cold Case Cinema will be on indefinite hiatus and the Splattercast will be sort of directionless. And DeadTrax and Explodey Files will probably continue in their infrequently posted manner.

Why? Well, if you care, I’ve posted why after the jump. If you don’t care, then go watch Episode 2 of Shivers Down Your Spine!

Last year Dead Lantern expanded its “podcasting empire”. It was pretty much the focus of our site. I was a big part of that. At one point I was doing Explodey Files, Cold Case Cinema, DeadTrax, Round Table, and Splattercast on a weekly basis. That’s a lot of podcasting and a lot of time consumption.

The beginning of the end for me in terms of podcasting, I think, began when we finally decided to focus on our filmmaking stuff, specifically Shivers Down Your Spine. Last summer and fall, in the midst of traveling the convention circuit and prepping and shooting the Shivers shorts, I sort of dropped out as a host of Explodey Files. I just didn’t have the ability or time to keep watching X-Files episodes and to make the scheduled recording times. That was the first domino to fall. And, if I’m going to be honest, the template for myself in feeling “You know, I’m really just not that into this anymore”.

Last winter we decided to put Cold Case Cinema on hiatus for the holidays. We were about a month ahead in recorded shows so at the time we felt it would be perfect to take a break and recharge. I really enjoy Cold Case Cinema as a show. It’s probably the one podcast I am most disappointed with stopping. We set up a couple months of scheduled shows and then I realized “This feature length film is going to swallow all of my time” and Bryan is also busy with Myctophobia, finishing Bait, etc. and we all came to the decision that it would be better to not come back to it after the hiatus. Maybe in the future we’ll do some one off episodes, who knows.

The Round Table is always fun. Unlike the other podcasts that we do, RT was never designed to be a weekly show. It’s recorded over poker nights while playing Red Dead Redemption and generally lasts four to five hours making an insanely rough post production process. The beginning of the end for that show stems from Tony and I’s cancelling of Xbox Live. Yes, we all have PS3′s and I’ve been told there is a free poker game on that, but so far, none of us have really been “Guys, let’s get this set up!”. I imagine it’ll just fade away unless someone more ambitious than myself has the drive to bring everyone together. Still, you can look forward to at least one more in the coming weeks, as we do have one finished that we’ve yet to post.

As the dominos continued to fall (with a major one I’ll discuss later) and my podcast “duties” became more and more relaxed, I realized that it was FANTASTIC to have so much free time again. Podcasting had turned into a job for me and it became a thing where I said to myself “I’d rather have my free time than do podcasts and all the work that comes with it”. So I just unilaterally decided to not be a part of DeadTrax for awhile. This occurred in the past couple of weeks and, admittedly, was sort of snap decision. It does look like the other hosts of that show are planning to continue on at least on a semi-regular basis, so it looks like there will still be updates to Deadtrax. But for now anyways, I’m not going to be participating.

I should note that my absence from all of these podcasts has nothing to do with any behind the scenes fighting, or anger towards anyone else. There is no butthurt involved. It’s simply: “I just don’t feel like doing it anymore.”

And nothing exemplifies this feeling for me more than the Splattercast. As most of you know, for the past four years we’ve put together the Splatcademy Awards which is always a big involved process of podcasters, celebrities, editing, etc. Back in early Decemeber I had an epiphany. I really, really didn’t want to do the work to put the show together again. There were outside factors for this, of course. A possible job opening that would take up my time, and of course the feature length film that we are developing. But I’m not gonna lie, one aspect was that I simply didn’t care enough to have the drive to do it again. I didn’t want to do it. So, the big shindig was canceled in favor of a normal cast in which we present the awards ourselves. That realization led me to re-evaluate what my participation in the Splattercast as a whole would be going forward.

For the past six years, I’ve been the primary person that organizes the Splattercast. I’ve scheduled most of the shows, organized the topics/themes,  done most of the post production, and generally have been the person who does all the promotion and site blogging (another thing that I basically gave up doing last year; this has been coming for a while in all non-filmmaking aspects of DL on my end). I don’t mind that or resent anyone for not doing “as much” as me, and I certainly am not trying to make this sound dickish (though, knowing me, that’s probably how it comes across). I’m really just tired of the grind.

It basically just boils down to the fact that I don’t want to do the day-to-day activities of running podcasts anymore. So, after next week’s Andy Sidaris show (which we had pre-scheduled but kept getting pushed back due to the SuperHeidi thing), I am relinquishing my “responsibilities” for the Splattercast. This doesn’t mean I’ll stop being on the show. I like hanging out and chatting with Deejay, Steve, and Jeff and will continue to do so. But I’m no longer going to be programming or organizing what we do on that show, at least for the foreseeable future. Essentially, I’m going to be taking a backseat to podcasting in the same way that Jeff, Deejay and Steve do. I envy that. Just being able to show up, chat with friends for an hour or so, and then not think about DL at all for the next week. That’s basically what I want to do, and after six years, frankly, yeah, I deserve it.

Now what’s this mean going forward? Well, for the immediate future it means that you’ll hear a lot less of me on DL. The only weekly show I’ll be on will be the Splattercast and what form the show takes, and how involved I am, in the coming months is anybody’s guess. It’s entirely possible that an extended break from podcasting will get me recharged and you’ll start seeing all these shows again. But I’m gonna be honest, right now it really feels like the proactive-podcaster part of my life is kind of done. I guess it’s hard to describe to a listener how much work it actually takes to put out a podcast. We don’t do super produced things like other shows but just the watching of all the movies, the editing, and post production, and blogging it, and putting it in the feed, and promoting….all that adds up and is frankly, time consuming and not something I want to do anymore. So this is sort of a semi-retirement in a sense, I guess. But I’ll never say never.  I can certainly envision the occasional CCC or Round Table or DeadTrax popping up in the future with me on it. But it won’t be anything with any regularity anymore.

And just so we are all clear, my relinquishing of involvement and taking a backseat in these shows doesn’t mean they necessarily need to end. We have a lot of great hosts and contributors that make shows like CCC, Round Table, DeadTrax, etc. great. If they want to keep those things going, by all means, go for it! We’ll keep posting them in the feed.

But to end this on a positive note. Giving up on podcasting duties gives me way more time to focus on our film stuff, which, honestly, is more important. I’m looking forward to showing you all not only more Shivers episodes, but also getting our feature length slasher done. That’s the priority. I appreciate all of you who have shown support for me and the various podcasts over the years. I hope you will all continue to support all the other contributors to DL as the continue the tradition of quality podcasting. This isn’t the end of DL, it’s just a semi-end for me. We’ll see what the future holds.

The second episode of Shivers Down Your Spine is up, starring Uncle Randy of Drunken Zombie! Take a look and then read my comments on it after the jump.

Sleep Tight was the first SHIVERS installment that we filmed (these are airing out of production order) and the first thing we’d shot since the ill fated Isabelle prologue (destroyed by The Diva). We shot it over the course of single night in a hotel at the Days of the Dead convention in Indianapolis. This one was written by Tony (Professor Bleak) and is the first time we’ve ever shot something that was not written by me.  It was a neat experience and certainly different for me to be adapting someone else’s material. It was also the first thing we’ve ever shot that was designed to be comedic. That is, we tried to make it funny. Intentionally! Certainly something new for me!

I certainly am not embarrassed by Sleep Tight or anything, but I do think it is the weakest of the SHIVERS installments that we’ve done so far on the technical merits. We were literally shooting for the first time in months and to say we were rusty would be an understatement. Nothing was really prepared. We had a hell of a time with the elevator scenes (never, EVER, try to film shit on an elevator during a horror movie convention), the dialogue scenes took way longer than we ever expected, and the finale ended up having to be shot in my bedroom months later. It’s sort of a mess that I think turned out to be mediocre and could have been much better if we had had our shit together. But those are the kinds of things you deal with when you try to shoot something as fast as possible with zero preparation. Part of the reason I feel it is a bit of a misfire is because it’s technically not finished…

All of the SHIVERS episodes are planned out ahead of time to be linked to one another in various ways, some major and some minor. Sleep Tight takes place at a horror convention and is supposed to establish that visually. It doesn’t because we simply never had time to get the footage. Aside from missing things like inserts of the air conditioner and fixing of certain audio issues, it is also supposed to connect to our upcoming installment, Convention Girl. Initially, our friend Ali was supposed to come to Days of the Dead in Indianapolis, in which we’d shoot her interacting with Randy and Scott at the beginning of Sleep Tight. That would then establish to the viewers that these characters were indeed at the same hotel and dealing with weird stuff in separate areas of the building. Ali ended up not being able to go, so we had no way to connect the two. We did shoot a scene with two girls Scott wrangled last minute during the convention where they give the googly eyes to the girls but I ended up cutting it for various reasons. Ultimately, I do plan on getting the extra footage shot and re-editing it for the DVD release down the line, but for now, “it is what it is” as they say.

I do really like the story, though. As you’ll see in the coming installments written by Tony, his stuff has a much more humorous, black comedy tone to it. Something that I’m honestly not that familiar with as I rarely ever write with comedy in mind. I really loved the EC comic vibe to the story, which is what drew my interest to the short in the first place. The goal of Sleep Tight was to make it short, funny and goofy and I think it largely succeeds in that, if not for the reasons I expected. Maybe I’m just being way too picky on the technical aspects and the “what could have been” if we had planned it out ahead of time like we did Deadbolt. But hey, I’m the director and that’s how I look at this stuff.

I do want to mention the actors, Uncle Randy (of Drunken Zombie fame) and Overly Friendly Scott (I don’t even want to go into an explanation of that nickname). I think we told them the shoot would take a couple hours. It ended up taking about eight or nine. They were troopers throughout and I think they did a really good job of not only being funny, but having the chemistry of being friends in real life. Originally, the thing was written for Bryan of Drunken Zombie. He was supposed to play the character that Scott played. But Bryan is a pussy and was too scared to act in a 4 minute short with Randy, so he contacted Scott for us. Scott did a really fine job on short notice with no real idea of how much of a slow slog the shoot would end up being. I did cut out his ball sack for the web release, though (sorry ladies), which was left into the version that played at the Drunken Zombie Film Festival. Nobody ever mentioned it so I guess nobody noticed it in there. I’m not sure what that says about Scott, but I digress…

In the end, Sleep Tight is something I know we could make way better now. As SHIVERS goes on and we try new things and experiment with new techniques, there is bound to be some misfires here and there. For a five minute short shot in one night at a horror convention with no preparation, I think it comes off alright. I just wish I could have done more justice to Tony’s material because I do really like the story and feel I let it down in many ways. But that’s just me talking with my Director goggles on. Hopefully you watched it and got a few laughs. If so, then it’s a success on some level, at least.

Next month, the first SHIVERS installment not directed by me! We have another short EC-style story written by Tony, this one directed by Bryan of Drunken Zombie. Shot in the fine state of Illinois, this one deals with a man stopping by a farm to buy some fishing bait. It is, appropriately titled, BAIT. Check back next month to see it!

Thanks again for making the audition a big success!

DL is on Tumblr now.

Also, subscribe to our Youtube channel to get Episode 2 of Shivers Down Your Spine real soon.

Have you seen it yet?

So a girl named SuperHeidi who I think used to run a website called Pretty/Scary, and now writes for a site dedicated to women filmmakers called Planet Etheria, wrote an article criticizing my selections of the Splatcademy Awards as being too male oriented. Essentially, the implication is that I may have intentionally whitewashed women from the awards….or something? It’s kind of ridiculous as the gender of a director is meaningless. A good horror movie is a good horror movie. Who cares if you have a cock or have ovaries? Anyway, thought you guys might be interested in some negative press we got.

I posted a response to her article in the comments section but I’ll repost it after the jump for anyone interested. I would please ask that nobody get the wild hair up their ass to engage in any flame war on DeadLantern’s behalf. If you must comment, please be respectful.

Hi! I’m the one that compiled the nominee list for the Splatcademy Awards. I appreciate your concerns and maybe I can address a few of them here.

First, the only film you listed that I’ve seen is Don’t Look Back, which I think is good, but wasn’t released in the past year which is part of our requirement for nominees. I saw that about 2 years ago and so it wasn’t part of the nomination process for those reasons. So there’s that.

The other films you list I’ve honestly never even heard of. I’m always interested in female horror directors and we have done shows on the Splattercast in the past about the need for more female directors, including having female co-hosts on to discuss. Doing a quick cursory IMDB search of the films you’ve listed, I see that Stained is rated a 1.2/10 and Trippin’ is a 1.9/10. Not saying there isn’t anything worthwhile in these films, just that it seems plausible that they weren’t highly publicized, or critically acclaimed, for a reason. I hope you could understand that I might have missed them, all things considered. There was no nefarious intent to keep these films off a list. I just didn’t know about them. And honestly, I can’t see every single film that is released. In Their Sleep? Yeah, hadn’t even heard of it. I notice it’s on Netflix Instant and I’ll make sure I take a look at it soon and I will review it on a future Splattercast.

I agree with you that there should be more female directors in horror. In fact, some of my favorite horror films are Pet Sematary, which I’ve stated on the Splattercast is one of the most underrated horror films of the 80′s. American Psycho, which I’ve said is one of the ten best horror films of the past decade and I love Near Dark by Kathryn Bigelow, for example.

But, the truth of the matter is that genitalia does not matter. A good movie is a good movie. It is true that the horror genre is a male dominated genre. That’s not my fault. I don’t control who makes movies or who makes good movies. I simply comment on the movies that I think are deserving of the best of the year. Unfortunately, female directors represent a near nonexistent sample size in relation to horror in general. By definition, you are going to get less “good” films by women because, let’s face it, most horror movies directed by men suck ass. Hence my Top 10 worst list, that doesn’t have any women directors on it either. Dudes just make most of the movies. I’m not gonna apologize for that and I agree, I wish more women were making more horror films. I am pro that

Now, in regards to boobs. Fact: People like boobs. Even women. I will point out, that I set up and organized an entire episode of the Splattercast dedicated to raising awareness and money for Breast Cancer Awareness month. I encourage you to listen to Episode #153. Yes, it does have dudes who say we love boobs, but we also bring our friend Ali on and it’s done in the spirit of “Hey, we love women. We don’t want you to die.”

The fact of the matter is, a female horror director doesn’t by default “deserve” a place on a best of list any more than a male does. It just so happens that males make most of the movies. It sucks, but that’s the reality of the world we live in. It has to be a good movie. It’s not about the gender. If American Psycho, or Pet Semetary, Near Dark or even Ravenous were released this year, they’d be nominated! Unfortunately, they weren’t.

Good movies are good movies. I don’t care what someone’s genitalia is. Why are you not decrying the lack of African-American representation or Latino representation, also terribly under represented in the genre.

In the end, I appreciate your comments, I just think that you are way off base on our reasoning and the motive behind the awards. I understand your thesis that women need to be recognized for their contributions and I agree with you! At least this year I did not come across any that could be put on the list without giving them any sort of special treatment simply because they are women. I don’t believe in that. I believe every film should exist on its own merits and not be required to have extra gender baggage attached.

As an olive branch, I extend an offer to you to come on a future Splattercast and discuss this issue because I do think it is an important one. Perhaps then we can get a better understanding of each other instead of a troll war based on a lack of mutual understanding of our points of view.

And please, there are so many films that come out every year, if there are these overlooked female directed gems, send them our way! We’ll be more than happy to take a look at them and give them a fair shake.

I hope you accept our offer to come on the show and discuss female directors in horror and expose our audience to some of these films and with that, I think we can all agree, here’s hoping 2012 is a great year for women in horror!

Mat
DeadLantern.com
Co-host of the Splattercast

UPDATE: A RESPONSE TO HEIDI WHO RESPONDED TO JULIE

I don’t get the argument here? Like, If I see Stained and Chillerama, but think Chillerama is a better movie….you want a world in which I am forced to stick Stained on a “best of” ballot simply because a woman directed it?

Is this some sort of strange argument for female director affirmative action?

I mean, I honestly don’t get it. Wouldn’t a more productive use of your time simply have been to shoot us an e-mail saying “Hey, I think you overlooked some films here. Maybe we could get a special category this year and moving forward I’ll help direct you to some stuff that you guys might not be aware of for future award shows?” Doesn’t that help the progressive cause of getting female directors noticed more than attacking our dumb little awards show that now has more notice than if you hadn’t brought it up in this manner? Isn’t the job of a writer to get all the information they can before they write an attack editorial?

Our answer, if you had bothered to contact us, would have been “Absolutely, sounds great.” Instead, we see this rant implying that somehow we consciously avoid nominating female directors. That’s absurd. A couple years back we nominated Jennifer Lynch for Surveillance, as an example. Last year we honored Tiffany Shepis with a Lifetime Achievement Award, as we’ve done with Debbie Rochon. As you correctly pointed out, there IS a female director nominated this year, but you seem to disregard it completely because you personally didn’t like the movie. I’m sorry, but you don’t get to impose your will on what other people like and the decisions they make about their own things. That’s kind of totalitarian. I mean, as a counter example, if you made an awards show that nominated nothing but female directors, I’m not gonna get on a soapbox and impugn your character because of it. I mean, you don’t even know us, yet you make these absurd generalizations about our motives.

I get it. You want female directors spotlighted more. In fact, I’m sure there are plenty of cool films that the majority of horror fans just miss or don’t get to see for various systemic reasons within the industry that we should all work together to fix as best we can. I completely agree with you there. I would point out, though, that I don’t view horror cinema through this identity politics prism that you appear to view it through. I mean, I have a degree in Film Theory as well, I know exactly what you’re talking about and trying to get at. I happen to have a different opinion about it which I’d be more than happy to talk with you about some time.

The cold hard truth is that if Chillerama had been directed by four women, guess what, I’d still have nominated it. That’s just a fact. I will also point out, for the record, that we did not whole-heartedly endorse Chillerama. In fact, I wrote a scathing indictment of Tim Sullivan’s Werebear segment which I thought was an abomination for our website and on the Splattercast. But I felt the overall package, which struck a Troma-esque cord that I’m sure you can understand, was well deserving of its place. Again, you might disagree, but just because you think Trippin’ is awesome and deserves to be there, doesn’t mean I will.

In closing, I absolutely think you are off base with all of your comments and we absolutely extend the invitation to have you on the Splattercast. We’ll even allow you to program the films we watch and you can discuss any aspect of them that you’d like with us. That would be a good show and informative to our listeners because we are not opposed to having someone else have a different opinion on things.

As for the “Achievement in Boobs” category. What can I say? It’s crass. Got me there. But I mean, even here, is this simply a feminist “women as objects” thing you’re hung up with? If we had a category called “Achievement in Shirtless Muscled Abbed out Men”, do you have a problem with that as well? Or is your point simply that somebody should not be allowed to even entertain such a ridiculous option? I mean, I’d love to debate with you the nuances of nudity and the female form as its represented in horror imagery throughout history some time if that’s where you want to go with this. You can hit me with all the Laura Mulvey you can muster.

In closing, I guess I don’t know what you are trying to accomplish? What’s your endgame? If you felt bitter and slighted by our dumb awards that we admit on our show are simply fun and irrelevant in the grand scheme of things, well, we’ve offered you the chance to showcase these female directors and films on our show. It’s not like you won’t have a large audience and we’re not going to be disrespectful to your views. It’s true, we’ve got different worldviews on some of this stuff, but as our listeners can attest, even though we like blue humor, we are perfectly capable of having a civil, intellectual discussion about this topic with you.

But hey, that ball is in your court. You can take the offer or leave it, doesn’t matter to me. But what we won’t do is make apologies for selections that we enjoyed simply because some angry chick on the internet doesn’t like it. We didn’t see those films. Life goes on.

But as you said to me a couple years back when we offered you the chance to present on the Splatcademy Awards, “I’m excited and honored” that you think highly enough of our little site to bring this up as an issue. We’ll be sure to do an upcoming Splattercast about it with or without you. Hopefully with you.

Mat
DeadLantern.com
Co-host of the Splattercast

The time has finally come! The 5th Annual Splatcademy Award ballot is now Live!

Ballot will close on February 20th so you’ve got plenty of time to get some movie viewing in to make your informed decisions! Please feel free to spread the word and we’ll announce the winners on Splattercast #269, February 27th.

Get votin’!

Deadbolt, the first episode is posted on the Shivers DL Page. Subscribe to our Youtube channel to get episode 2 later this month!

No, I don’t think the world is going to end. So I’m not going to start this post with some lame Mayan joke.

2011 was a big year for Dead Lantern podcasting wise. Previous years focused on the blog/website and trying to keep new content posted on our site daily. We sort of stopped doing that this year. In fact, this two month leave from blogging on my end has been pretty great. It’s been nice not having this arbitrary “responsibility” and I’m not planning on returning to it anytime soon. The blog will still be updated with stuff from time to time but my focus for the site has shifted dramatically over the past few months. As I said earlier, 2011 was for podcasting. We brought a few new shows into the stable, expanded our scope podcasting wise, and generally focused all of our attention on that. Splattercast, Cold Case Cinema, DeadTrax, Round Table, etc., all those shows will continue in the next year and we thank all of you listeners for supporting them. But there might be a different feel/tone to them….

In a few months, we’ll have officially been podcasting for 6 years. Six. Years. In terms of the Splattercast, I feel we’ve pretty much said everything we’ve felt the need to say (to nobody in particular). We’ve all lamented the fact that it has become harder and harder for us to find things in the horror genre that interest us. Invariably, we always end up watching some junk movie that we all hate simply to have content for the sake of content. I can probably speak for Jeff, Steve, Deejay, and myself when I say that the enthusiasm we had for the Splattercast as a thing has definitely waned over the years. That is not to say that we don’t enjoy doing the show. Personally, I like it because it’s fun to chat with these guys. It’s fun to laugh. It’s fun to give each other shit. It’s fun to find some weird movie you never heard of. And honestly, you can’t put a price on spending time with your friends. Ultimately, that’s what podcasting is all about. It’s not about the “fans”. Or the number of downloads you get.  It’s not out of some bizarre slave notion of obligation/responsibility to the horror genre “community”. Strip all that hipster cred bullshit out of the equation and at its core it’s about spending time with your friends. It’s about the simple act of interacting with people you like.  The reason we keep doing the Splattercast each week isn’t because we care about the show itself (I mean, really, it’s another podcast in an ocean of horror podcasts),  it’s because we just look forward to hanging out each Monday night. Shootin’ the shit for an hour and a half in our otherwise busy lives. Quality time with good people. Spoiler: That is the secret behind every good podcast.  Not quality in terms of “I have to have the best audio, or best information, or best production”; not technical quality. Quality in terms of “These people are awesome and just talking to them is a worthwhile use of my time”. I’d like to think that’s why Splattercast has stuck around so long and garnered such a following. And until life throws us a curveball, we’ll continue to do it.

That being said, the coming year will see a drop off in “planned” shows. You’re gonna hear a lot more free form, random stuff  than in years past. We’ll always remain a horror podcast first and foremost but my expectation is that we’ll be shifting  into a more general movie discussion podcast. And really, can you blame us? 6 years of horror. There’s gotta be other stuff we can talk about! Later this month we’ll actually be covering the films of Andy Sidaris, for example. I’m looking forward to that more than I am talking about The Devil Inside.  Don’t be surprised if they get shorter, more generalized, and, possibly, less frequent. There are no solid plans in place for any major changes, just that I feel this is sorta what’s gonna happen in the next year. Because, you ask?

Well, our entire focus will be our films. It’s confirmed now that we will be shooting a feature length film beginning, hopefully, in April. That’ll take up most of the year. It’s gonna be badass and infinitely better than Outpost Doom. I’m excited to bring all of you along for the jounrey.  We’re also going to continue doing our Shivers Down Your Spine shorts. We’ve got a lot of really cool stuff that we’re excited to show you in the coming months. So if last year was the year of podcasting for DL, 2012 will be the year of DLPictures. And really, that’s what we should be focusing on.

Thanks again for all of you who continue to support our podcasts and our films. We appreciate it so much.

So on behalf of everyone at Dead Lantern, have a safe and happy New Year, everyone!