2012: The Year in Review

 2012 was a great year for us-  we launched our website, became an LLC, met some great people and produced many exciting projects. With the Mayans wrong and 2013 arriving tomorrow, we thought it would be a good time to take a look back at 2012 and all of the experiences we're grateful for.

Our first shoot of 2012 was Fred Grant's Metroid fan trailer. The trailer is still in post-production- visual effects, especially on unpaid fan projects, take a tremendous amount of time- but it will finally make its long-awaited premiere in the new year. Until then, check out these screenshots from the near-final cut of the trailer:

2012 was probably most defined by our collaborations with The Collective Project, Inc. While we had previously adapted one of their plays into our 2011 short film Mario and Luigi, our trailers for their summer play The Red Herring were our first time working directly with many of the main Collective members, and they were easily some of our most fun shoots of the year.

The Collective also co-produced our John Carpenter and Italian zombie inspired 48 hour film Making the Cut, and without them we never would have been able to pull off the movie at the quality level we did, especially given the tight turnaround. While we didn't win any awards, we're all still tremendously proud of how the movie turned out. You can definitely look forward to seeing more MonsterBuster/Collective collaborations in 2013!

We created three mock commercials and a PSA for the Collective's "7 Months to Live" party back in May, and these were notable because they introduced us to three new MonsterBuster members. Kevin Hicks and Katelyn Brammer, both fellow Georgia State University alum like most of MonsterBuster, directed two of the Apocalypse Apparel commercials and have since gone on to do other projects for us (more on that later) and have become valuable members of the team. Tricia Gaulesky acted in Kevin's Deep Cut V-Neck commercial, and she now works behind-the-scenes as our chief creature creator. You'll be able to see her work in our upcoming feature Invasion of the Undead.

Scene from "Tilt", the pilot episode we co-produced for Horror Hotel.

Horror Hotel started out as our first web series, but it ultimately became its own separate entity. Still, we were honored to shoot the pilot episode "Tilt" back in August and we look forward to watching the series as it continues to grow. The producers have already gathered some exciting filmmaking talent like Supremacy Films to take part in the first season, so be sure to check out the official Horror Hotel website and 'like' their Facebook page for more info on this innovative new web series.

Finally, we shot two new short films in the last quarter of 2012. Katelyn Brammer's Harmony is something new for MonsterBuster- a purely dramatic film with no monsters or fantasy elements.  Okay, okay, so it does feature a mock video game based on Making the Cut and a significant appearance by a Haunt of Fear comic book, but it is nevertheless a huge departure from our previous works and we can't wait for you to see it. Kevin Hicks's Bath Salt Cannibal, on the other hand, is squarely a MonsterBuster film. A comedic tale of what happens when you try to mix your own drugs at home, Bath Salt Cannibal features eyeball eating, puppets, Dylan Schettina, phone sex, and the first appearance by our official mascot The Boogeyman since 2009's Jake and Julie Vs. The Boogeyman! It's going to be awesome, and we can't wait to see what Kevin follows it up with. We also acquired his previous short Friday Night Blood Ritual, and it will premiere along with Bath Salt Cannibal and Harmony on our YouTube channel in early 2013.

Making the Cut: The Video Game as it appears in Harmony

Dylan Schettina!

Speaking of our YouTube channel, we just uploaded our final video of 2012: Jay Holloway's Werebum! This is an entirely different Grindhouse-style cut than the version that premiered at the MonsterBuster Film Festival back in 2011. Jay has promised to write a blog discussing the real-life horrors of making this homage to the films of Frank Hennenlotter later this week.

What will 2013 bring for MonsterBuster? An Invasion of course! We're starting the year off with a bang as our Indiegogo campaign for Invasion of the Undead kicks off tomorrow. To say we're all excited about this is an understatement, and we hope you join us on this adventure... rest assured it will be an adventure!

Prepare for the Invasion!

As always, thank you for reading!