A Fateful Day

So, today was the day! I took The Creature from Lake Michigan over to a duplication house (Super Digital) to have DVD's burned from my master!

If I mark the anniversary of the film as the day we began shooting, then it only took 21 years and 9 days to finish. If I mark the anniversary of the film from the day we wrapped principle photography, then I finished it more than a month shy of 21 years. Either way, it was kind of a while and it felt very strange to finally hand the film over to someone else.

I've got to say that I'm a little nervous. This was really a film where anything that could go wrong did go wrong, so I'm kind of holding my breath to see what might go wrong with the duplication process. I checked every aspect of the DVD master that I could check to make sure it was perfect and ready for duplication. Here's hoping I didn't miss anything.

Worries aside, the completed DVD features the film and a series of extras, including:
Deleted and Extended Scenes
Photo Gallery
Trailers
A Commentary Track

I really don't have any idea who might listen to a commentary track, but I figured that the film took so long to put together, I probably shouldn't let it out without some kind of comment on what happened.

In other news, I've located more of the cast of the film! I found Greg, who played the director. Russell, the actor who plays the cop, found me and turned me on to the location of Gabriel, the actor who plays mobster thug #1. Then, I finally located the name of mobster thug #2, which I've been missing for 21 years. Actually, I had some help from two of my ex-business partners in Nocturnal Pictures--Jennifer Hofmann and Michael Browne, who were both instrumental in figuring out that Keith played mobster thug #2.

Of course, I'm still trying to locate a huge group of people. My leads on Emile Levisetti, the lead, have dried up. I'm unable to find anything substantial on Donna Shreve, the female lead, and I haven't got the faintest clue what happened to Ellie Cahill, who played the starlet Bambi Twinkle. At least with Donna, I can find some credits on IMDB and prove that she really did exist. But Ellie has vanished without a trace, as if she was never there.

Oh well. I have between 14 and 18 business days until the DVD's come back from the dupe house, so maybe I'll still find them!

Chapters, Paperwork and Missing Persons

Last night I created still images to be the chapter markers for the DVD. It was a little tedious to do, but one of the last remaining steps in getting the DVD finished. Now all I have left to do is finish the commentary track, author the final DVD and then burn the thing for the duplication guys.

Wow, I guess that's still quite a bit. A few more days, but getting closer.

I was going through some boxes of Creature stuff in the basement and came across a bunch of miscellaneous notes. It's fun to read back through all this stuff and see what I was thinking at the time.

There were two notes that were particularly fun. One was a journal entry from the one-year-anniversary of the start of shooting and the other was our first report to the film's investors, in which we noted that the film was more than a year behind schedule and had gone over budget by... $10.64

I'll post some excerpts tomorrow.

My hunt for actors and crew members continues. There are a couple of folks who are proving devilishly difficult to find. I wouldn't mind so much except that there are a few tantalizing clues to their locations scattered about the vast Internet, but all of them seem to be dead ends. Maybe I will start printing their pictures on milk cartons.