Category Archives: cheerleaders must die

ohmanohmanohman – WE ONLY HAVE SIX DAYS LEFT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Crap in a hat, people, I’m near panic right now as we get closer and closer to our deadline on Kickstarter.

Perhaps you have already seen the official update from the page, it looks like this:

THE HEAT IS ON!!!!
We have only SIX DAYS LEFT and I’d be lying if I said we aren’t feeling the pressure.
It’s there and we’re feeling it.
To our current backers: you are wonderful and generous and we cannot thank you enough.
To everyone else: We REALLY need you right now!
We happily accept any monetary support you can provide and, if we can be so bold, please pop out this link to everyone you know!
We have new videos coming out today and we’ll be posting updates the rest of the week to let you know where we’re at. Here’s today:
Countdown – 6 days
We are 13% Funded
Let’s get that last 87%!!
Curtis

So, yeah, kinda’ “beg-y” but here’s where i’m really at:

DEAR GOD! pkleaseohpleaseohpleasegivememoney! I NEED SO MUCH MONEY!!!!!!!!!!!!1111!!11!1!!!!!11!!!!!!!!1!!!!

Somehow I don’t think that “reads” as well.

The pressure is definitely getting to me here on Monday morning and if you follow me on Twitter get ready for a ridiculous amount of  tweeting all about Cheerleaders and the Kickstarter campaign. Rene has already started and proven her love for me over and over again by annoying the crap out of her followers, friends and family – it’s working!

New “Make-Up with the Wolf” later today. If you like it please drop a buck or two in the Kickstarter fund. Every little bit helps!

See you tomorrow!

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Filed under cheerleaders must die, Enter the Wolf, fund raising, kickstarter, rene, Wiggy VonSchtick, wiggy webs

Ten Days.

Forgive me readers for I have failed. It has been 10 11 days since my last post.

It’s not that I don’t want to post. I have guilt.

It’s easy to say, “I’m busy” or “I just keep running out of time” but the real reason is all about priorities and the fact that, even though I say that this blog is one, it usually isn’t. Even the Wiggy blog, which is essential to the updating of the Wiggy website, doesn’t carry the kind of weight that I feel like it should. Conflicting brain things going on here.

So where are my priorities? They are all on the things that I am doing to make money. I hope you’re all aware of the Kickstarter campaign that we’re running for The Cheerleaders Must Die – if you’re not then go check the links. That has been surprisingly time consuming. Zeke and I were talking about it the other day on the phone that it is legitimate “work” to maintain and produce more content for that outlet. Hell, the Kickstarter update blog is the only blog that I have managed to keep up with on a regular basis! And there is also the shooting of the documentary which is going VERY well. And there’s the WiggyWebs stuff – like this:

And a cool video of Frankie playing in our fountain:

I also made this cool robot drawing for my buddy Dean. I can’t tell you why he’s collecting pictures of robots, but it’s cool!

So, yeah, all bitching aside I am planning on posting more and not making excuses, even if these last few blogs seem like they are nothing but excuses. That’s about it for today, hopefully I’ll…

See you tomorrow!

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Filed under 3 minutes with curtis and dean, cheerleaders must die, kickstarter, rambling, robots, shameless self promotion, Story Time with Ray, Wiggy VonSchtick, wiggy webs

Kickstarter is my reason for waking up right now.

We have been busy.

Really busy.

“Don’t have time to put away laundry or buy groceries” busy.

This blog and everything not related directly to project financing has suffered.

Except the dog, the dog is good. Cat’s kind of an asshole though.

Anyway, here’s a new video for new rewards for the campaign and a copy of the update for those of you who haven’t seen it!

Don’t let it be said that we as filmmakers don’t have, what investors call, skin in the game. So far we have released what might be considered pretty “normal” rewards – but today we launch something all new, and all different: Win A Date With Gordy and Make-Up Lessons From The Wolf!
Yes, that’s right, personal time with myself (and probably my wife so I’m not accosted) and Myke in exchange for your support. These are special types of rewards and have a few extra rules:
1) Please don’t be crazy. Passionate is fine, being a fan is great or even just a student who wants some face time is cool – but if you end up being bat-shit crazy we reserve the right to make you leave.
2) These are limited to a MAXIMUM of 5 backers each. We don’t have a lot of time and are more than happy to make time for our contributors, but we need to set a limit.
3) While you will receive all the other “typical” rewards should you pledge for one or the other the only way to get both is to pledge $501 or more, other wise pledge the amount for either of us. Hell if you want to pledge more, but don’t want to cross the $500 threshold, just message us which you would like, we’ll make a note.
Thank you so much and don’t forget to tell a friend! You can copy/paste this link: http://kck.st/qZtHxk
See you soon,
Curtis

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Filed under cheerleaders must die, fund raising, kickstarter, projects, Wiggy VonSchtick

OK, When I said that the shameless plugs were going away I totally meant in September.

So, yes, I want to return this blog to the writing exercise that it was intended to be, but I also REALLY want to make this movie! So when it’s appropriate, like Mondays when we do our really big updates, I’m going to shamelessly plug the CRAP out of it!

With that in mind we have two new rewards available at our Kickstarter page! They are autographed photos of yours truly and one of our stars Shirly Brener! The pictures look like this:

Shirly’s might change, but we’re going with this right now. If you are a Sabrina fan or just like pictures of attractive women these might be just what you’re looking for!

See you tomorrow!

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Filed under cheerleaders must die, fund raising, kickstarter, new projects, sabrina, shameless self promotion, Wiggy VonSchtick

New Vids, Kickstarter, ShmimCast & Noticing a Slowdown

Hello friends, followers, lurkers and stalkers! August 2nd marks the day that I publicly state that I’m going to get back to daily posting. For what it’s worth.

This is mostly selfish. I’ve noticed that since my blogging has gotten lackadaisical I have had a significant dropoff in readers. That’s no good! I like you guys! I look forward to your comments, messages and Tweets so I clearly need to maintain my side of the deal better. I also want to let you know that not ALL my posting will be Shameless Self Promotion and Plugs. There will still be SOME, but I’ll be getting back to what this blog was developed for – writing practice.

But let’s get the plugs and stuff out of the way.

New Story Time with Ray! He’s writin’ poems!

The Kickstarter Campaign! We are making The Cheerleaders Must Die! and we need your help.

The Cheerleaders Must Die! Official Fan Page. Like it!

OK, there we go. Next up!

I have been learning, against my will, how to code websites. It’s like math class in junior high all over again. Except harder.

The coding itself isn’t too bad, it’s logical and as long as you pay attention it’s hard to make any real mistakes, but navigating the different control panels between different companies – especially those where the HELP CHAT IS NOT WORKING – is frustrating, aggravating and, especially for me, momentum killing. So far, as long as I can find the section I need to work on, I’ve been doing alright. I’ve had a great deal of help from friends Scott Sanford, computer genius, and Amy Dallen, a cy-curious genius (get it? CY-curious?! like CYBER-curious?!?! I KILL me!) without who I would be treading the computer equivalent of water. Still stuck on a couple key things – my CurtisAndersen.com email still isn’t redirecting correctly (sorry if you’ve tried to send mail there) and our main domain for TCMD! isn’t resolving – but they are getting worked on as I write this.

I should let you know that I’ve been away from this blog for a while. I’ve lost my writing momentum and this is stream of consciousnesses writing to try and get back on track. Not sure that it’s working.

Have you listened to my latest episode of The Shmimcast? It’s gotten some very positive reviews and I think it’s not too bad. totally worth a listen!

I surrender. Here’s a picture of me with a muppet:

See you tomorrow!

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Filed under cheerleaders must die, Improv Shmimprov, new media, new projects, news, rambling, Story Time with Ray, video, wiggy webs

There’s So Much Going On!

I’ve been to ComiCon, we’ve had the Wiggy Webs shows coming out, we started a new Kickstarter campaign for The Cheerleaders Must Die!, new websites are being built, new social networking is happening and I have to repair my email address and the tracking on the WVS blog.

It’s been a busy week.

All technical things aside, even though they have taken/are taking a lot of time, the creative things and the progress on different projects are really feeling good! I’ll take you through bit by bit.

  1. ComiCon – this is my first ComiCon since 1997! At that show I got strep throat, ate Greek food for the first time, bought a Green Lantern t-shirt and power ring. It was fun, crowded and very geeky. With the exception of almost dying from the strep it was a good time. This year was all about business and supporting my buddy Zeke and the short film he did with our good friends over at The Price. Not much has changed from when I was last there, and based on what I was told this is the first year where it felt like it was about comic books again, it was still fun, crowded and very geeky – but we were also able to do some real movie business! There are pictures on my Fan Page.
  2. To get it out of the way, I screwed up the path to my @curtisandersen.com email addresses. My bad. I’m fixing it, but just in case you can also reach me at curtis@wiggyvonschtick.com
  3. The Cheerleaders Must Die! – This movie is getting made! Just, not yet. We have started a Kickstarter campaign to help pay for some of the materials we need to get the financing that will get this movie made! Please check it out here and even if you can’t donate we hope you’ll send it to your friends because crowd source financing works best when you have a large crowd! Also by this tim next week we’ll have some fun new official news about the movie – keep your eyes on the Wiggy website for details!
  4. WiggyWebs – To wrap us up today I want to make sure you know about this week’s Wiggy Web’s shows! New “Story Time with Ray” and “3 Minutes with Curtis & Dean!” We’ve also started pre-production on some new bits and bobs for August!

So that’s about all for updates!  See you tomorrow!

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Filed under cheerleaders must die, geek, new media, new projects, videos, Wiggy VonSchtick, wiggy webs

Experiments in Story Telling

There’s a lot going on in my life right now, so much that it is hard to catch my breath and see exactly what is going on.  It reminds me of a Lionel Richie interview when he talked about all the things that were going on in the 80’s.  He said he didn’t really get to enjoy what he was doing because he was always spending his time either getting to an event to perform or running from a place he just performed at.  The last six months or so have felt like that for me too, although I haven’t been singing “Dancing on the Ceiling” to crowds of tens of thousands of people.  It’s wake up, rush, probably shoot, rush, teach, rush, sit, sleep. Not the most glamorous schedule in the world.  Better than digging a ditch, but not glamorous.

Today we caught a break, though.  Our interview for the documentary went very well and ended a few minutes early and I got some bonus “sit” time.  I thought about what we’ve actually been doing and it occurred to me that, as much as I keep complaining that I’m not exercising my creativity, I’ve actually been experimenting with a few different ways of story telling and some of it might turn out pretty cool!

For the doc we’ve got three very different looks that we’re combining together:

  • An HD Cam for the glossy operating room, doctor’s office interviews.
  • A high caliber standard def cam to capture the natural look of our interview subjects.
  • A Flip HD Cam for the “P.O.V.” shots from Rene and I.

And even though it feels like this is all getting tossed together by the seat of our pants I really think this doc is coming together.

The Wiggy Webs stuff, even though it is woefully stuck in edit hell, has me really excited!  With the commentary pieces, satire and straight up schtick it’s the most exciting outlet that we haven’t taken full advantage of yet.  I’m re-affirming my efforts to get that stuff up – seeing as how I’m four months behind.  I’m ashamed of myself.

Cheerleaders Must Die! – A long time back & forth between turn around and production, but still Zeke is making great script alterations and there’s a wave of support growing under it and that’s awesome.

And, on the geek front, our D&D game is evolving for the better.  My buddy Dean was added to the group about a year ago and since then he has challenged some of my ideas about how to play.  I now feel like we are just building a fantasy story and I’m planning my participation to help contribute to that.  I don’t feel like I can explain that very well here, but the important detail is that even this game is a version of storytelling and it is getting better as I work.

They say work breeds more work and I’m noticing it even if it isn’t directly involved in the kind of work that pays me I’m still getting paid in satisfaction.

Brain is turning to toothpaste so I’ll…

See you tomorrow!

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Filed under cheerleaders must die, documentary, dungeons and dragons, making movies, Wiggy VonSchtick, wiggy webs

Creativity and Time

I can safely call myself a producer now. For a long time I believe I was an actor who was producing, but now my time is definitely spent more in a producer role than as an actor. There are pros and cons to this, most I don’t really want to go into right now, but the biggest change that I’ve noticed, especially the last couple days, is that I don’t have the time to solve the creative problems that have been popping up.

I guess “problems” is the wrong word, they’re more like “issues.”  Things with CMD!, the documentary, the other development projects and Wiggy Webs are really starting to push forward, but as things ramp up the time that I feel comfortable dedicating to the creative side keeps shrinking.  There’s just too much business to do.  I find myself excited when I have to go to the store because it means I don’t have to review another invoice or re-do a budget.  Don’t get me wrong, people pray for my problems but I miss the days of sitting in front of this computer and just making up stories whether good or bad.

I think that, once a few of the current projects get far enough along I’ll be able to dedicate myself to the creative more, but in the mean time I’ll be negotiating with myself about when I’m going to pull out a CMD! re-write and review a new script or two.

These are such first world problems.  I suddenly feel very guilty even writing about it.

See you tomorrow!  Warts and all!

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Filed under business, cheerleaders must die, doctor who, projects, Wiggy VonSchtick, wiggy webs