Invasion of the Undead: Frequently Asked Questions

While we're on a short hiatus from shooting Invasion (we pick up again June 12th) we thought it would be a good time to answer some questions we're regularly asked regarding the movie and MonsterBuster in general. Here goes:


When will Invasion be released?

We're aiming for Fall or Winter 2013; Halloween would be ideal for obvious reasons but it's extremely unlikely given that we're still going to be shooting scenes and FX pick-ups all the way through August. Beyond that there's a lot of post-production work that needs to be done before the movie will be audience-ready, and with everyone in MonsterBuster working day jobs on top of their duties on Invasion it's tough to pinpoint an exact date. We'll definitely update this blog and our Facebook page with news on the movie as we move forward.


How do you plan to release it?

The current plan is to submit to festivals and coincide an online release (both streaming and as a Blu-ray/DVD combo pack) with our largest festival premiere so that as soon as people hear about the movie they're able to watch it. We're fully planning to self-distribute; our budget (approx. $17,000) is low enough that we feel we have a decent chance of making our money back if we release it ourselves instead of relying on (and potentially getting screwed by) a distributor. If we don't get into any festivals we'll likely submit review copies to different film and horror websites to hopefully generate some buzz. We're also planning to rent some local independent theaters and non-traditional event space to host screenings and Invasion-themed parties.


Are you really donating the profits from Invasion to charity?

Yup! If you read our Indiegogo campaign description you'll know that we plan to donate 10% of our gross profits to Children's Healthcare of Atlanta. We're also planning to donate another percentage to a charity that's directly affecting one of our main cast members; we'll make a formal announcement once we iron out all of the details. As to why we're doing this, it's just our way to give back to the community that supported us; Invasion was crowd-funded through Indiegogo, and while the majority of the budget ultimately came from an outside investor we literally would not be making this movie without each and every one of our Indiegogo supporters. Besides, we're in this to make movies, not money, and if Invasion is a big enough success to justify a sequel we should still have more than enough profit left over to gear up for production on a follow-up even after donating to charity.


What are you shooting on?

We're shooting Invasion with the Blackmagic Cinema Camera; we're primarily shooting ProRes instead of RAW to minimize file storage (on our ultra-low budget hard drives are kind of a big deal). We may also shoot some scenes with a 5D Mark III once the RAW hack by Magic Lantern is fully stable; we're shooting a lengthy flashback scene in August and the full-frame sensor of the 5D may be a nice, subtle way to give this sequence a different look from the rest of the film.

The Boogeyman loves the Blackmagic Camera!

Just how many monsters are in Invasion?

Now for the fun questions! The different creatures that infest Allison's mansion are Belle, a slimy undead Scarlet O'Hara with a stop motion creature head (you can see a test of her in our main Indiegogo video); the Sons of Z'athax, Blind Dead-inspired skeletal wizards that are the foot soldiers for the invasion and come in two varieties, regular and über; voodoo zombies, traditional Haitian zombies led by 'Big Z' that are obligated to serve the Hillstead family until Allison breaks the curse on them;  Guy Smiley, our Big Bad; the Mummy, a snazzily-dressed Egyptian sorcerer first seen in Allison's webisode; and finally Z'athax, a gigantic cobra-like demon that serves as the movie's 'last boss'.

All of our creatures will be created practically, either through make-up or stop motion animation. While we have a few CG environments (mainly the exterior of Allison's mansion since we couldn't find an old Southern plantation-style home on our budget) we have no CG creatures!


'Last boss'? What's with all of the video game references?

8-bit Desmond, Jake and Allison, as created by Fred Grant. Can you tell Fred loves Mega Man?

Narratively Desmond is an avid gamer who enjoys beating insanely difficult retro video games the likes of which would make the Angry Video Game Nerd cringe, but beyond that Invasion takes a lot of visual cues from video games, most notably in in its fight scenes, which are modeled after the epic boss battles in adventure and role-playing games like Zelda, Final Fantasy and Ys. We here at MonsterBuster Entertainment love video games; don't forget we made Mario and Luigi and Metroid prior to Invasion. We're even planning to include an original 8-bit style game based on the movie as part of its Blu-ray/DVD combo pack.

Ever play The Uninvited? So have we.

Speaking of Metroid, whatever happened to that? And what about the other MonsterBuster shorts?

If you regularly read this blog you know that we have a lot of projects in the works; hey, we love making movies, and an unfortunate side effect of that is that it makes us a bit over ambitious at times. Our only project currently in production is Invasion, but here's a quick update on the rest of the movies we have on deck:

Metroid - Fred Grant's fan trailer is complete and on YouTube, but we haven't uploaded it to our own channel or featured it on our website because he was primarily using it to promote the Indiegogo campaign for his upcoming feature Dekiru and we didn't want to risk being associated with another Indiegogo campaign so shortly after finishing our own. We're planning to upload it our channel once Fred gets a free moment away from Dekiru to write a blog entry detailing its production.

Katelyn Brammer's Harmony and Bath Salt Cannibal - Both of these shorts are completed and are currently being shopped around to different festivals. We'll post them online as soon as we can without interfering with any possible festival acceptance.

Jay Holloway's Werehooker - We teased this follow-up to Werebum on our Facebook page in January; it's almost complete barring a few audio changes. We haven't decided yet whether to submit it to festivals or simply post it online (it's really just a three minute mock trailer as opposed to a full length project) but we'll make an announcement both here and on Facebook when the time comes.

The Werehooker!

Desmond's webisode for Invasion - Yup, this is still happening. The current plan is to release it in July alongside the first trailer for Invasion.

Super Mario and Luigi and The Statement of Randolph Carter - We still plan to make both of these shorts, but they're currently not on the schedule for this year.


Finally, what about those trading cards I keep seeing on Facebook?

It's just something we're making for fun; most of us grew up collecting the Marvel Universe and other similar trading cards, and this is our homage to them. If you like them though, let us know! We may print a small number of sets to help promote Invasion if the interest is high enough. Regardless we're certainly planning to release more cards on Facebook throughout the summer; the slate of characters were planning to include are Mario, Luigi, Jerry and Peach from Mario and Luigi; Belle, Mary, Ashley, Mr. Dunsmore, Big Z, the Sons of Z'athax and Z'athax from Invasion; May, Christie and the Man from Crowscare; the Werebum from Werebum; some as-of-yet undecided characters from Bath Salt Cannibal; and the Werehooker, Werepimp and Mary from Werehooker. We may also include Detective Steel and Vesper Kind from The Red Herring to celebrate the first anniversary of the play's release.

There's plenty more of these on Facebook.

As always, thank you for reading and for your continued support!