Great news! The documentary American Grindhouse (for which I provided some animated “film burn” titles) will be premiering next month at South by Southwest in Austin, TX!

Dates have been confirmed for:
Saturday, March 13th at 9 pm
Tuesday, March 16th at 10 pm

It’s terrific documentary about the history of exploitation film in America. Great interviews and tons of clips — featuring interviews with master filmmakers Joe Dante, Larry Cohen, John Landis, Herschell Gordon Lewis, William Lustig, Ted V. Mikels, Fred Olen Ray, Lewis Teague and more.

ALSO, the movie will be playing at the Boston Underground Film Festival the week of March 25 – April 1.

Congrats to director Elijah Drenner and crew!

Here is the official SXSW Greenband Preview. Warning, includes some sexiness…

I am a man of many projects, a spinner of many plates, a weaver of many websites. In addition to my work at Animatus Studio, I work with writer/director John Vincent on developing his horror feature scripts.

Today, we launched new Philrose Productions website, online at philrosefilms.com . I’ve been eager to leave behind the old Flash navigation for a while now, plus I wanted to incorporate the news blog into the main site. You may notice the design uses a similar sliding menu as the one here on Mad Dog Movies — both templates are based on ones designed by Wayne Connor.

This redesign goes hand in hand with the reveal of our new Mind Rip trailer. What’s Mind Rip? It’s an ode to drive-in horror — with a mad scientist, monsters, and zombies. We’ve produced the trailer as a proof of concept, with the idea of shooting a complete feature down the road.

Find out more about Mind Rip here

Mind Rip Trailer from Mike Boas on Vimeo.

I just watched American Grindhouse, the all-inclusive documentary about the history of exploitation films in America. It’s a great doc, shining a light on the entire spectrum of fringe movies, from the earliest days of cinema to today.

My interest in the subject matter led me to become an “internet friend” of director Elijah Drenner a few years ago when he was working on the special edition of Jack Hill’s Spider Baby. He reached out to ask me to do some animated titles many months ago, and I jumped at the opportunity. I did “film burn” effects from scratch in After Effects, communicating with Elijah and editor Andrew Goldenberg (aka Goldentusk) entirely through email and Facebook. Who says social media is just a fad?

Yeah, it’s cool to see my name credited along side the likes of John Landis, Joe Dante, Jack Hill, Larry Cohen, H.G. Lewsis, and Fred Williamson. The movie has some great interviews with film scholars Eddie Muller, Kim Morgan, and Eric Schaefer (whose “Bold! Daring! Shocking! True!” sits within arm’s reach on my bookshelf right now). A nice surprise was discovering that the narrator is Rochester’s own Robert Forster!

American Grindhouse is making the rounds to “festivals first followed by TV, DVD, etc” according to Elijah.

In the meantime, check out the website at http://americangrindhouse.com

Connect with A.G. on Facebook here.

Some stills of my titles are online here.

Some of my film burn animation can be viewed here.

How do you market a remake to fans of the original and new, younger audiences? By letting Pamela Voorhees tell the story of what happened to her son.

I have to say, the trailer does a good job of summing up the franchise for the uninitiated and fans alike.

Friday The 13th in HD

I’m looking forward to this, partly because there have always been gaps in the F13 continuity. This is a good opportunity to remedy that.

In the last few years, several unique documentaries have come to my attention. This could be the beginning of a new trend: behind-the-scenes examinations of existing movies produced without studio involvement. These are feature length docs, similar to what you’d see packaged with a “special edition” DVD, but done without distribution set up ahead of time. Does this mean there’s a whole subset of documentary filmmakers inspired by the likes of Laurent Bouzereau?

What these projects have in common is their grass-roots marketing. The filmmakers have gone out to fan conventions to promote while still in production. They show scenes, get feedback, and even arrange to interview specific actors at these events.

Here are the movies that have sparked my interest:

The Shark is Still Working
This doc about Jaws has been in the works for years. There was already a wealth of material available about the Spielberg’s movie, including The Jaws Log and an admirable doc on the current special edition. That didn’t stop these filmmakers from talking to everyone who ever touched Jaws or was inspired by it. I’m afraid the final product is going to take a week to watch!

http://www.sharkisstillworking.com/

Beware the Moon: Remembering ‘An American Werewolf in London’
John Landis’ American Werewolf in London is one of my favorite films, so I can’t wait to see this doc by Britain’s “Tall Paul” Davis. He’s had screenings at a few horror cons in the USA, and the response has been stellar.

http://www.myspace.com/kesslerboy

Indy Fans and the Quest for Fortune and Glory
This one I just discovered, and it looks like the focus is more on Indiana Jones fans than the films’ production. There are plenty of fans (and hot models, apparently) in costume on the project’s MySpace page.

http://myspace.com/indyfans