Invasion Update July 2014

by Torey Haas

There's been a lot of progress in the two months since our last update, but this post is necessarily going to be a short one... hey, these things take time to write and I have to get back to working on Invasion! While we're not in the homestretch just yet, we are getting close. Invasion has 75 scenes, and we've completed color correction and visual effects on 48 of these, leaving 27 more to go. That may sound like we still have a lot more to do, and while that's certainly true it's actually not as much as it seems since several of these scenes are literally just one shot long (remember the CGI mansion in our last update? It's still a work in progress and it constitutes several establishing shots that are each designated unique scenes in the script).

Jake's severed head is consistently one of my favorite effects.

Several of our major FX and creature set pieces remain to be completed as well... if you saw our teaser trailer on Bloody-Disgusting or Dread Central (more on that in a bit), you may be wondering where the promised 'stop motion creatures' and 'sword fights' are; well, those scenes require the most amount of work, and they are consequently going to be among the last things we finish.

The final look for the voodoo zombies in Allison's basement.

A few other quick updates:

- The Invasion video game is coming along nicely; we posted a new gameplay teaser to Facebook, and our designer is currently in the process of creating the final artwork and graphics. They're going to be much more somber and Castlevania-like than the graphics in the teaser, which are almost entirely placeholder.

The game's art style will be more akin to this once it's finished.

- We are in the early stages of planning our (extremely limited!) theatrical release and are currently deciding which cities we'd like to screen in. Atlanta is obviously going to host our premiere, but if you're reading this and you'd like to see Invasion on the big screen near you by all means send me an email! I may be able to make something happen. We're self-distributing Invasion and we're thus limited to independent theaters that offer rentals, and realistically we're only going to book a handful at the absolute best. However, even with that in mind if you want to see Invasion on the big screen I certainly want you to as well, so definitely contact me!

- Nothing has changed with the plans for Desmond's webisode; we're still planning to release it closer to the film's premiere to help spread the word.

- We have a few more interviews to shoot for our Behind the Scenes Documentary; if you're a cast or crew member and you're reading this I haven't forgotten about you! I've been completely focused on finishing the movie, and I haven't even watched the cut of the documentary that Jay's been assembling. The documentary will be released on the Invasion Blu Ray/DVD, which won't be until a bit further down the line (probably not until 2015).

On a closing note, I want to sincerely thank Bloody-Disgusting, Dread Central, Horror News Network, My Zombie Culture, and Almas Oscuras for sharing our official poster back in June. It was extremely gratifying to see this movie that has been in my head since 2002 finally start to get out there. It was also a really interesting process to send out press releases for the first time... we're learning indie film marketing as we go here, and eventually I'm going to write a blog entry about my experiences marketing Invasion since I think other indie filmmakers may find it useful.

That's it for now! Stay tuned to this blog and our Facebook page for more updates... I'm planning to finally get some pics of our stop motion monsters posted in August. Thank you for reading as always, and now it's back to After Effects...