27/04/2024
Alright everybody, time to show you just how goddamn serious I am about getting Dead Format made.
The picture below is from The Video Dead, my first ever attempt to make a real short film. It was filmed on my VHS camcorder in 2001 for a Communication Technology final project my freshman year of high school. Outside of my immediate family, a handful of friends, and Mrs. Dorman's 3rd period Comm Tech class, NO ONE has ever seen this and for good reason. It is 4 minutes and 33 seconds of absolute personal embarrassment.
It was my first taste of what making a movie would be like: every single conceivable thing that could have gone wrong, went wrong. Most notably it raining the entire weekend I was supposed to shoot, and none of the zombie extras I had wrangled were available the to come the day we ended up shooting so I had to use my mom (pictured below in all her early Mike Lombardo FX attempt glory), my cousins, and my little brother and the friends he happened to have over that day.
It was edited on vhs on a linear analog editing dock, which those of you old enough to remember will feel the pain of this.
We are currently sitting at $21,352 on the IndieGoGo. If we make it to $23,000 by Sunday night, that's $1,648 in donations from now until then, I will upload The Video Dead to youtube for you all to "enjoy"
In an effort to make sure this post gets seen, I'm putting the campaign in below in the comments.
