ANNOUNCEMENT: Trailer Obscura

If you've been following the site as of late then you might have noticed the barrage of random movie trailers that have been flooding most of my updates here on The Lucid Nightmare. If you have no idea what the hell I'm talking about, then let me explain.

I've been recently hard at work compiling a collection of fake and real movie trailers made by myself and a core group of friends. The trailers are inspired by some of our in-production projects and from random ideas and concepts that pop into our demented little heads. The idea to make a compilation of trailers sprang to life after Grindhouse came out a few years ago and I've been mulling over bringing this idea to life ever since. Well I'm happy to say that we've got a few gems under our belt in the form of Musky!, Tis The Season To Be DEAD, The Book of Jacob Huxley, The Wanderer, Soulless, Corjo and Kill Kringle Kill. I've also been hard at work scripting a slew of trailers to come. 

I'm particularly looking forward to working on the killer Sasquatch film 'It Came From The Woods', the creepy prank calling 80's slasher film 'The Whisperer', a morbidly atmospheric zombie film called 'The Night of the Walking Corpses, the trippy giallo flick 'In the Eye of the Violet Prism', and the old school 50's creature feature 'Mad Ants'. We've got a lot of work in the pipeline and you'll be hearing and seeing more about these trailers as the months go by, but the main reason for my announcement is that I finally came up with a name for the compilation. Trailer Obscura.

I thought it would be appropriate to go with a title that is as ambiguous, obscure, and as random as the trailers that will take up its runtime. It's going to be a strange collection of trailers so I wanted to capture that essence some way in the title and hopefully Trailer Obscura does it justice. Well that's it for now and stay tuned for my next update on this tremendous undertaking of trailer movie goodness.

MUSKY! Trailer

Well, it's finished! For anyone who's in the dark on what the MUSKY! trailer is all about, well it's basically an inside joke that went way further then it was initially supposed too. A handful of years ago, my friends and I came up with a running joke about a killer musky that attacks boaters and swimmers on Canadohta Lake in Pennsylvania where we frequently hang out throughout the year during random get-togethers. One of us said we should make a short movie trailer using that concept and basically five years later we got off our collective asses and finally filmed the damn thing.

We tried to make it into a 70's / 80's grindhouse type flick with a heavy emphasis on ridiculousness and in the end I think we matched the look, feel, and sound of that era. Well, without further ado, here is the grindhouse infused musky exploitation flick....... MUSKY!

WHAT THE HELL HAVE I BEEN DOING: Projects

It's been a while since I last put up a review, but that doesn't mean that I've been sitting on my ass. On the contrary. I've been rather busy with a number of projects that I have in the works. For those that are wondering, I've got a quick rundown and some examples of what has been distracting me from my blog duties here at The Lucid Nightmare. 

First off, I've been hard at work on one of my yearly projects called Cottage Chaos. It's basically a once a year gathering at my cottage on Canadohta Lake, where my friends and I just let loose and raise hell. We've been doing it for the past 7 years and there doesn't seem to be an end in sight. Anyways, every year I put together a DVD of our antics and it's become a sort of demented home video of what that year's get-together was like. I've even gone as far as to create intricate full motion menus on the DVD and it seems like each year they get a little more complicated.

This year I decided to make a video game theme for the menus, with individual characters for each person that attends. Each menu screen would be a different level and it would go through various moments that occurred throughout the 7 years of Chaos. I based all of the designs for the characters and levels off of the kick ass NES game River City Ransom and used found 8-bit remixes from various known songs that I've used throughout the years for the actual feature video that goes on the DVD's. Here's a full selection of the menus that I completed just last week, so take a gander if you're game.

If you actually made it through all of those videos, then bless your heart, but if you're a glutton for punishment then I've got some more stuff you can check out.

I've been hard at work on making a sort of grindhouse 70's/80's horror trailer. We had the idea to make one years ago and finally got our shit together and filmed the handful of random scenes that we needed in order to put it together. The movie is about a killer musky with a taste for human blood, that terrorizes the sleepy town of Canadohta Lake. We made it in a camp style that sort of fit for the time period that we were going for. I wanted to make it a sort of comedic trailer, but also keep it in the same dark tone that much of the films of that era contained. Here are a few screen shots from the actual trailer.

An iconic shot of my silhouetted hand rising from the lake along with the main title.

Doc hangs out at the edge of the dock, waiting for the Musky to strike.

I cling for dear life, as the Musky takes a bite out of my ass. Ouch!

A stylized shot that I messed around with. Turned out pretty good.

My dramatic scene in front of the fire. What a drama queen.

Every horror movie needs a good fog scene.

We party down in this groovy shot.

Pat and I play some damn fine looking older ladies.

The horror... the HORROR! Grandma!

My character desperately tries to get ahold of the sheriff.

What a perfect day to go fishing for this little amish boy. Or is it?

Me with my shit eating grin.

A spooky shot of Doc getting ready to go fishing.

Another one of those trippy title screens.

You'll scream in terror at..... MUSKY!

One of my favorite scenes from the trailer.

Here's me playing the trust game with myself.

My pornographer character meets his bloody end.

God this scream makes me laugh every time.

MUSKY!

I've also been composing the original soundtrack for the trailer and have basically finished it as of last weekend. There's still one more track I'd like to add in there and possibly a few more sound effects to add to the creep factor, but all in all it's complete. I'll be posting the full trailer in a few days so stay tuned for that.

So there you have it. That's what the hell I've been doing. I'll be posting a new review tonight on the amazing halloween horror flick, Trick 'r Treat, so keep a look out for that one. Hope you enjoyed a look into some of the projects I have going on.