Garage Sale

Every year our community has a Garage Sale weekend around the middle of May. This is a perfect excuse to drive around town and stock up on ultra cheap Halloween costumes, props, masks, and accessories - and this year was no exception! While I didn't bring in as big of a haul as years past, I did score a couple of great costumes for two bucks. Brand new and still in the package (they look like they have never been worn), I found a scarecrow Ghost Face costume and a Headless Horseman costume that will definitely come in handy come October! My daughter even got into the spirit of things and spent some of her own money to buy dad some Halloween goodies. She picked up one of those motion sensor candy bowls with the electronic 'grabber' hand inside of it for fifty cents - so I'm thinking I might hack that apart and use the hand elsewhere in my haunt - maybe in the graveyard or stick it in the mouth of a jack-o-lantern. It's never too early to start thinking about Halloween!

Haunted Rocker

A groovy picture of my haunted rocker. This is one of those pics where you're not exactly sure what happened. I was snapping photographs of the rocking chair in action, but his one came out so strange that it fascinated me. What's going on here? Out of all the snapshots I took of the chair, I ended up liking this one the best!

The chair is basically a small rocker that I dirtied up a bit. A length of fishing line is attached from the top and runs to a small servo-motor that's attached to a cross tombstone that's staked into the ground. The motor runs continuously (as long as my blue outside spotlights are on) and at a very slow rate of speed, so that you almost have to look twice to see if the chair is really moving. It's a cool effect, achieved from hacking the motor out of those white, steel polar bear Christmas yard decoration thingies that I found at a garage sale (the nice lady let me just buy the motors, provided I cut out the motors myself with a hacksaw!)

Legion

Are we geeking out over this? Why yes we are! Our faux trailer for the imaginary slasher film 'GARAGE SALE' is the featured video over at Midnight Syndicate's LEGIONS OF THE NIGHT!

How cool is that?

http://www.midnightsyndicate.com/links.htm

GARAGE SALE

It's finally here! After four months of work, Drive-In of the Dead's first film (well, the fake trailer for it anyway...) is finally here! GARAGE SALE is its name, and it is our little tribute to all those great slashers from the 80's that we grew up with. It's with a tremendous sense of relief that I finally get to say it's finished, for this has been a troubled production to say the least. I started work on this back in February with the hope that Spring would be right around the corner. It didn't quite happen that way. Instead, we're only a couple of weeks removed from snow covering everything and the temperature is STILL dipping below freezing mid way through May!

Shot on my little hand-held camera, our faux trailer for GARAGE SALE was edited on Microsoft's crappy MovieMaker program (I don't recommend it). We have since upgraded to an Apple and will be making all of our future productions in Adobe Final Cut Pro. In the end, the basic features of the program somewhat benefited the look of our movie, since we were going for a dated, vintage look that was a throw-back to movies of the late 70's and early 80's. To help achieve this effect I used a red filter in many shots as well as an aging filter that put in film grain in post production.

But what really sells GARAGE SALE is the music. Set to the tune of 'Veiled Hunter' by the incomparable Midnight Syndicate, this song can be found on their album 'The 13th Hour.' We can't say enough about this band - and this trailer is just as much dedicated to them as it is to the slashers of our youth. We strongly encourage you to visit their website: www.midnightsyndicate.com to pick up your own copy of the album!

Well, mother nature aside, assembling the trailer for GARAGE SALE has been a great learning experience for me - and I tip my twisted psycho mask to all the filmmakers who are able to put together a full length feature film. It isn't easy! Anyway - I hope you enjoy watching GARAGE SALE as much as I enjoyed making it. It was made with a lot of respect and admiration for the horror genre and for Midnight Syndicate!

Stop on by...we're open for business!

http://www.driveinofthedead.com

Coming Soon