Live Action Comic Books by JohnJG

– March 1, 2012

I am rendering the final files for Storm Tempest: Prisoner in the Present now and it should be available for sale at some point either tonight or early tomorrow… assuming all goes well. I thought I’d contribute a few thoughts for the blog while I’m nervously starring at the progress bar and hoping that the machine doesn’t crash.

Our goal has always been to create “live action comic books”.  The basic question is this: Is it possible to take the limited budget and time that we typically invest to produce a monthly or bimonthly comic book, and instead create and release an independent film using similar (or less) expenditures of time and cash? Making big budget (or even “low” budget) films is not our goal. Making entertaining live action comic books in the AC tradition is what we are really trying to pull off here.

We obviously can’t make a full-scale summer blockbuster. We can’t even make your typical “low budget” SyFy channel movie (The abysmal “Mansquito” had an estimated budget of five million dollars). We don’t have five thousand, let alone five million. But the good news is… we don’t need it. What we really need is a small but loyal audience of movie “subscribers” that will stick with us so that we can make the next “issue”. If you are currently helping to support our films… THANK YOU! All we want to do is keep going… keep making more (and hopefully better) movies. That’s how AC makes comic books month after month, so we set out to make films guided by that same philosophy.

(That said, if someone reading this article would like to invest five million to make a Femforce movie for the SyFy channel, please feel free to drop me an email.)

For inspiration we often turn to the past. We know we can’t make Raiders of the Lost Ark… but can we use today’s consumer technology to make a chapter of something like Nyoka the Jungle Girl… and do it for even less than they probably spent back in the 1940′s?

As it turns out… maybe we can!

When we make Stormy Tempest we often discuss Barbarella and the old Space Patrol TV series. Bill dreams of making his version of an Outer Limits episode. Some of the names we throw around on set should tell you a little about who influences us and what we are trying to accomplish. Names like Roger Corman, Mario Bava, William Whitney, Fred Olen Ray, Russ Meyer, Ed Wood, Sam Raimi… all directors and producers infamous for doing a lot with very little.

Our other obvious goal is to breath cinematic life into the Femforce and other AC characters. The films should be sexy in the “good girl art” tradition. They should have excitement. They should have character. They should be retro. They should have enough depth to go from horror to comedy to adventure to romance to science fiction and back again. They should not be “one thing”… they should be “many things” and dabble in many different genres. They should have enough flexibility to incorporate the suggestions and feedback that we receive from our fans. They should be a creative playground that allows us to tell any type of story that we are in the mood to tell… just like the Femforce series and the AC universe itself.

I’m excited to hear what people think about this next Stormy release. We begin to explore the character of Stormy Tempest like never before and witness her reactions when she finds herself out of her element. We give Nicola Rae some room to breath a little life and personality and range into Stormy Tempest. She delivers a complex performance and looks great doing it.

Hey! Gotta go! Rendering is done! No crashes! We have a movie!

Later,
JohnJG