I have a booth again this year, although this time I think it’s just so I can get into the convention hall early. We’re not really selling anything this year, more doing some shameless self promotion and trying to network with people slightly more influential than ourselves.

Personally, I really wish I had a new film to promote. This is my second year to host a booth and not have something brand spanking new, other than our Podcast. Hopefully next year will be different. I always find it weird when hundreds of people run up to me to see what the new film is. I’m not a famous filmmaker by any means, but the amount of people who enjoy my work can be a little intimidating at times.

I’ll never forget the first Fangoria Weekend of Horrors I went to a few years ago and this guy came running up to me screaming, “Dude, dude, dude, you’re David Quitmeyer!”, and I took two steps back and looked at him. I didn’t know if he was going to hug me or shoot me. Thank God all I got was a handshake and a new friend rather than a chest full of lead pellets.

While I detest the seas of people, especially the greedy bastards who grab handfuls of SWAG, I do enjoy the panels, seeing the creative personalities I admire and occasionally brushing shoulders with a celebrity. I don’t know what it is about Comic-Con, but I never want it to end and I never want to leave the convention center at night. I like wondering around the halls, observing all of the other people crashed out on benches and thumbing through their event guides.

I will have to say, since I’m not selling anything, this is the one year I’m not racing at the last minute to print out fliers or edit a trailer. After coming to Comic-Con for 7 years, four of them as a vendor, I have to say I am finally learning the ropes.

If you find your way to Comic-Con, please stop by the Steel Web Studios Booth at #H-07 and say “Hi”. It’s always nice to know somebody else is reading this other than the demons in my head.

After a few injections of local anesthetic he made an approximately one inch incision in my arm, all the way through the skin and down into the fat layer where he carved out the lipoma. Then he stitched me back up with three sutures. The whole procedure took about 30 minutes from the time he injected me to the time I was headed out the door.

It has been about 24 hours since I had the procedure. The wound is periodically sore, kind of feels like somebody punched in arm really, really hard. Other than that it only hurts if you poke the wound directly.

Part of me was worried, as you never know what you are going to find when you start cutting something out of somebody, but luckily for me every thing went OK. I really shouldn’t be typing this, as it makes the arm a little sore, but fuck it. I’ll take it easy tonight. But tomorrow, I have some more writing to do

In the late Summer/Fall of 2008, I was again getting ready to film, when the location I wanted to film at was sold as the owner entered bankruptcy.  The set pieces were all liquidated and again I was left with a great fucking script and no place to film it that was within my means.

So, now, I write a new number at the end of my checks and turn a page on my calendar.  All the while I my imagination has been flooded with visions that are crawling over each other in an attempt to get out of my brain.

Finally, as I begin to take control over my creations again, although they constantly try to control me, I can find a path through this darkness to the light of a projector up ahead.  Along the path there are neck deep pools of blood and the stench of sweat and rotting meat, but somewhere in this rank mess I find comfort in knowing that I am coming home again.

I will begin filming a new comedy science-fiction film by the spring.  When the actual film will be ready will be any body’s guess right now, but it will be ready by the end of this year.  I have a few horror projects I am dying to put to paper and film, but I am unsure of when they will be birthed out.

Hopefully I will be able to focus on one thing for a while and get it completed.  My biggest challenge is always keeping my mind focused on one project, because it is constantly racing with ideas for ten others at a time.  It sucks having an imagination, but it is a curse to be stuck with all of these ideas in your head and no place to express them.  Maybe I can declare insanity and spend my final years locked up in an asylum.  Mmmm, I can taste the Phenobarbital-laced pudding already sliding down the back of my throat.

Damn it. That just gave me another idea for a story.

Fuck.

PS – if you are actually reading this, please feel free to drop me a line sometime.

Steel Web Studios had a good year at the Con, despite the fact several vendors told us their sales were down by as much as 80%.  We have a much different mentality about attending Comic-Con than most.  Rather than trying to make a ridiculous profit, we aim to connect with our fans and make new fans, so it is my main philosophy to sell items at a price anybody can afford, we started our $5.00 DVD program two years ago and it has been a hit!  For $5.00 you can buy one of our DVDs, get it autographed and add it to our collection.  This is a great deal for any fan as our autographs have sold for as high as $45.00 on eBay. On Sunday, we did the unthinkable and sold our DVDs for $1.00 each – yeah, it was a fucking crazy idea, but it worked – and we sold out of all the stock we took to Con.

On a personal level, I was ale to attend a few panels and walk the floor in my Dr. Phobia costume.  I had a ton of pictures taken of me and now I’m starting to see them show up on blog, photo streams and even news sites.  Personally I hate having my photo taken, but in costume, I don’t mind.  It’s just more branding for the company – and by the looks on most people’s faces it’s a rather frightening imprint.

Fans wanted to know if we had anything new to sell and sadly the answer was no.  The fires in October set us back quite a bit and it has been harder to recover than usual. The spike in gas prices and living expenses hasn’t helped much either.  Despite the downside, the energy of the crowd and positive feedback from fans has left me very optimistic about going foreword. It is my personal goal to have two new DVDs ready for Con next year -now it’s time to deliver.

I’m having some mixed reviews about the whole experience. Luckily the positives outweigh the negatives, but the negatives were huge and psychologically damaging.

Let’s start with the negatives… Everything was looking cool heading up to the convention, we put in our order for a table early, picked a cool spot, and we thought everythign was cool. Four days before the show we get an email from Creation Entertainment, who run organize the show, that they had previously been mistaken on the type of seller permit we needed for the show – and that we had to get a new type of permit or we couldn’t sell anything. Four days before the show? Since when have you known any major city to just – poof – issue a permit of any kind. We were terrified that we had spent all this money to get ready for this convention and at the last minute we had to get a new permit. WTF? So, Kristen and I sprinted into action, handling the paperwork, faxing it in, calling the City of Los Angeles… it was a pretty fucking stressful situation around here for a few days before the show. On Thursday, Los Angeles finally issued our permit and we heard that there had been a large number of others sprinting to get their permits issued also.

The other cluster fuck about this show was in part due to Creation Entertainment and GES, the union that runs setting up the convention hall. Creation Entertainment issues each vendor two wristbands – but GES only issues you one table and one chair. Additional chairs are $97 per day, per chair. Again, WTF? On top of that, even though electricity was included in every other vendor event I have attended, they wanted another $105 to set up our electricity? Fuck them. We didn’t pay it.

On to the positive about the show… our Hotel was nice, just right up the block from the Convention Center. We had a nice large room that was close to the elevators – this was especially good because we gound just hop into the elevator, go down a few floors and get off at the restaraunt and bar area.

The show went well over all. I personally don’t think. besides all the hype, that there were alot of customers at the show. Now, this could have been because it was in a larger venue and much more spread out, but we had a booth in a good place and I didn’t see that much foot traffic. It will be interesting to see how many fans showed up and how many vendors bailed because of the screw up over the permits and fees.

We had the lovely Caroline Pierce at our booth for the entire weekend and even Dr. Phobia made a few appearances as well. It was pretty funny because this was a horror convention, yet there were a number of people who were absolutely terrified of Dr. Phobia.

When it was all over we had seen old fans and made some new ones. We had seen old friends and made some new ones and we had made some good networking connections in the horror community. If anything, this little convention lets us practice for Comic-Con which is a little less than 3 months away. Whoo Hoo!

As I had more time to sit and think about the story I passed it around to a few people for review. One of my friends has some ideas to add and the project pretty much exploded from there. We are still hashing out the script at this moment, but since I had already done a lot of preproduction on the film in its short form, the project is on the launch pad waiting for its tanks to get filled. Most of the cast and crew are placed; we just have a few more roles to fill once the story if flushed out some more.

The goal for now is to start filming around Mid April. I will be releasing a press release later in the month. We will have a teaser ready for the Los Angeles Fangoria Week of Horrors in late April. We hill have the film wrapped by the time Comic-Con rolls around in July.

Stay Tuned… our website is going to get busy again

Our biggest and most ambitous project is very top secret right now, but I have to mumble about it here at least. We are going to produce a weekly video podcast starting in April that has nothing to do with horror what-so-ever. The main focus of this podcast is comedy and satire. I’m not sure if the project will bear the “Steel Web Studios” logo or not.

In other worlds, I am also working on a screenplay with RAMCO Productions for a western tentatively entitled “Crackwood”. Most of this has been in development for a while now, but things are finally starting to get transferred to paper and hopefully to film.

I have gone ahead and made the decision to postpone the filming of Redress until a later date. The area we were going to film in was burned up pretty good in the fires. While the actual road we were going to use is unscathed, there is a ton of charred forest around it. One gust of wind and ash goes everywhere. The script is written, so now once the location heals a little more we will go back and film the movie.

I am going to continue developing Ghost Lights and I am going to start on the script very soon. At the same time, I will finish the script for Bedbugs from Hell. I have been talking with several producers in regards to Bedbugs, but I know it will be a while before we start filming this one.

It’s kind of funny because the essentials are several hard drives of data, our pro camera and a change of underwear. We are keeping in touch with people by email and phone.

Once these fires are over and life returns to its new normal, we’ll take a look at scheduling projects again.

It was a strange day because we arrived early and were kind of rushed into the screening room. Later on we noticed people walking around with “Filmmaker” badges. I was little peeved I was never offered a name badge.

The upset feeling growing in my gut was soon relieved by the fact that people started approaching me and complimenting my on my film Mr. Buttons, which had screened earlier in the day at the festival. Despite the fact I didn’t have a badge, people still knew it was my film. How the hell did that happen? Oh, maybe by the fact I brought the doll from the film with me

Throughout the day I also kept hearing buzz that my film was going to win an award. I blew the talk off as hype and tried not to get excited about it. The festival came and went and that night at the awards ceremony they awarded me Best Horror Film in the Open Division for Mr. Buttons.

Everybody around me was excited. I took the stage and rambled off a few words that were filled with appreciation but also laced with a little of my own cocky attitude. I know the film is good, I have a ton of reviews saying the film is good. Festivals all over are picking up the film and people from Comic-Con are still asking me when they can buy their own version of the doll. Now the film has earned me my first award as a filmmaker.

I am taking this victory with a grain of salt. Yes, the award looks good on my filmmaker resume, but I’m trying not to let it go to my head. My family and friends keep telling me “You Won! You Won!”, but I find it hard to smile about it.

I know that deep down inside I can make a good film, and that if somebody actually gives me some money to make a film, I can concentrate more on directing rather than sound quality, lens flare and the hot light wedged between my legs while I’m laying on the ground balancing a camera on a stack of books for that perfect shot… I’m keeping my fingers crossed and wondering who else I need to prove myself to so I can get a real movie made