Filmmaker's Blog
Share the Fissure production experience through our blog.
72 posts
Fissure is now available on Amazon Prime
We’re excited to announce that Fissure can now be watched on Amazon Prime. Update: Fissure is now available on Amazon. You can also watch it on YouTube or Apple…
Paranormal Activity – Learning how to budget your indie film
The new, micro budget horror film, Paranormal Activity continues to rake in the cash, with this weekend pushing it above $60 million at the box office. That’s…
Using Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, YouTube to market your film
With our movie, Fissure, we utilized a variety of online services and tools to market our film. Below is a list of the things we tried, along with what worked…
Using internet to marketing and promote your indie film
When we launched our film this summer, we used both traditional marketing methods (press releases, radio, news, interviews, screenings, etc.) and…
The New Age of Distribution
Regarding distribution, everything has changed and continues to change. The entertainment landscape is vastly different than it was was just a few years ago…
Fissure.TV Webisodes start June 15th
We are making incredible progress in getting the webisodes ready to launch for our June 15th start date. Very exciting! In the mean time, check out some of our…
Fissure co-star, Crystal Mantecon, wraps “Tree of Life” with Brad Pitt and Sean Penn
Fissure co-star, Crystal Mantecon, recently finished up work on a new film by Terrence Malick called “Tree of Life“. Crystal plays opposite of Brad Pitt and…
Indie Film Distribution Offers and Deals
In my last post, I shared four steps you can take to improve your chances for successful distribution for your indie feature film. In this post, I want to talk…
Increase your Chances for Successful Indie Film Distribution
Now that we are coming the close of our movie project, I want to take a few minutes to share some of the learnings along the way, because there are many! To…
Trailer Addict
The new, revised Fissure trailer is now online at Trailer Addict. And, it allows you to embed the trailer in your own website or blog. If you do post it…
Foreign Distribution has started
We are proud to announce that Fissure’s foreign distribution has started. We signed an agreement this month with Uwe Boll. Boll will be managing all of our…
Redemptive Storyteller Award
We were notified last week that Fissure has won the “Redemptive Storyteller Award” in the Professional Category at the Redemptive Film Festival in Virginia…
Fissure voted “Best Locally Made Film”
In this week’s issues of the Fort Worth Weekly, Fissure was voted Best Locally Made Film in 2008. Here’s what they had to say: Filmed in Dallas and the…
Fissure on Beyond Hollywood
Fissure received a relatively positive movie review at Beyond Hollywood. The reviewer writes: Even with its relatively few shortcomings, Fissure is still worth…
Ron Livingston and Rosemarie DeWitt
This was at the closing banquet of AFI Dallas on Sunday morning. The place was as packed as a casino. I had the opportunity to meet Ron Livingston and…
AFI Interview with Russ Pond
Here are a couple more interviews from AFI Dallas: Also, you can watch James Macdonald’s interview from AFI Dallas:
Fissure on Good Morning Texas with Gary Cogill
On Thursday, April 3rd, Fissure was featured on Good Morning Texas with Russ Pond, producer and director, along with Crystal Mantecon. For those of you who…
AFI Daily News features Fissure
Russ Pond’s FISSURE Keeps Audiences Guessing by Jennah Durant Engineering and business marketing are not typically a director’s forte–unless you’re Russ Pond…
The State of the State: Filmmaking in Texas
For you filmmakers in Texas, I’ll be speaking on a panel Monday at 5:30 about filmmaking in Texas. I’ll be joined by Garry Brown, Producer of Prison Break and…
Fissure in Dallas Morning News as AFI gets rolling
Last night was the opening festivities for AFI Dallas. We had a lot of fun. My wife and I attended the opening screening of Helen Hunt’s film along with James…
Getting ready for AFI Dallas Film Festival
It’s Thursday morning, and I’m sitting in my favorite coffee shop getting ready for the AFI Dallas Film Festival. We have a slew of events planned. It’s a bit…
AFI starts next week. Get your tickets soon!
The AFI Film Festival starts next week. Fissure will be screening in Dallas on two nights during the festival: Friday, March 28th at 5:00 pm at the Angelika…
Dallas Morning News Article
As we draw closer to AFI Dallas, we’re starting to get more press. Fissure was mentioned in a Dallas Morning News Article this week: Dallas Morning News By…
Fissure makes the cover of Downtown Business News
Fissure is being featured on this week’s cover of the Dallas’ Downtown Business News. They are promoting the upcoming AFI Dallas Film Festival. Inside the…
Fissure accepted into AFI Dallas and FirstGlance Hollywood Film Festivals
We are very excited to announce that Fissure has been officially accepted into two, upcoming film festivals: AFI Dallas and FirstGlance Hollywood. AFI Dallas…
Fissure Movie Review
We received another movie review this week from Matt Mungle of Mungles on Movies. Matt writes: Webster’s defines “fissure” as: The process of splitting or…
Movie Studio Busyness
Today kicks off a very busy weekend for our project! We have a lot going on, but it’s going to be a blast! My wife and I are headed to CBS Studios in Burbank…
Independent Film Distribution
The more I learn about film distribution, the deeper the rabbit hole goes (to quote The Matrix). It’s amazingly complex and diverse. It’s never as simple as…
Movie Projects and Offers
We’re about a week away from finishing out 2007, and what a year it has been! Current Project We kicked off the production on January 15th of 2007, and here we…
Independent film reviews and distribution
I wanted to take a few moments to talk a bit more about distribution. It’s interesting talking to different people about this part of the moviemaking business…
Film Distribution
Now that the movie is finished (mostly), we’re ready to enter into the distribution phase of this project. (I say “mostly” because we have one final day of…
Cast and Crew Screening in Dallas
We are having a private screening at the Inwood Theater in Dallas on Thursday, November 15th. You can register online by using the following link: The movie…
New Trailer, New Poster, New Headshots
Things are busy! And it’s good. As we put the final touches on the movie (music and sound), I was hoping things would slow down a bit. Quite the…
Haunting Melody – Movie score
My sound guys in LA have been working hard on the score and sound. I’ve really enjoyed laying down the various music tracks, sound tracks, and effects tracks…
2008 Film Festival Circuit
Now that Fissure is coming to a close, it’s time to hit the film festival circuit. Typically, Sundance is the one key film festival to kick off the festival…
On the Lot. Twice.
I’m writing this while sitting in the Burbank airport. Today was a very interesting day. But, before we get to that, let me share what happened last month…
Digital Goosebumps
I’m so impressed with how the coloring is coming along. It’s really amazing! You can so easily change the entire feel of a scene with color. Let me show you…
Color grading in Final Cut Pro
Today, we start coloring. I’m looking forward to seeing how our colorist, Omar, will take our existing footage and create the movie’s tone and feel. Below are…
Road Trip
What an exciting time for this project! We’re making great progress and achieving very exciting milestones! Last week, we officially locked the edit. And what…
Locking the edit this week
We are now within a week of locking the edit. So, what does that mean “lock the edit”? The post production process up to this point has been all about editing…
Rough Edit is Done!
This week, I finished the rough edit. And wow, I can sleep better now. I feel like I’m finally on the other side of the mountain, and it’s all downhill from…
Feature Film Editing in Final Cut Studio
It’s been awhile since I’ve updated my blog. Other than editing, not much else is happening. I’m spending my days buried in Final Cut Pro. I’ve got about 70…
Finishing out the rough edit
After two busy weeks of dedicated editing, I’ve got a good, solid 20 minutes laid down. And, I’m really pleased with everything about it. The performances are…
The Inconspicuous Art of Editing
When you think of art, your mind typically wanders to a painting, a sculpture, a poem, or a song. Sometimes, you’ll even consider a building, a dress, a…
Trailer or Teaser – Marketing your movie
If you haven’t had a chance yet, check out the Teaser/Trailer: View the Teaser Trailer So, is it a Teaser or Trailer? Well, I’m calling it a Teaser for a…
Premonition
Last night, my wife and I went to see Premonition, the new Sandra Bullock movie. The description reads, “A housewife is shocked when her husband dies in a car…
Nesting
I can only describe what I’m experiencing now as “nesting”. I don’t know how else to describe it. Let me explain. As we finished our shoot about a week ago, I…
It’s a wrap! (Kind of)
We have wrapped our production! Kind of. We still have half a day shooting left for the Police Chief Hudson scenes, but most of the key photography has been…
Week 2 is done!
We’re on the backside of the mountain, working our way down. It sure feels good to have 2 weeks of our 3-week production behind us. Plus, we’re ahead of…
Week 1 is done!
For those of you who’ve been waiting for the next update, I’m sorry. I had good intentions of sending out daily updates. But honestly, after day 2, I was…
Day 2: Outdoor Shots
It’s the close of Day 2, and I’m still loving my job! We had a great day, today. It was long and cold, but very productive. We shot all outdoors with some…
Day 1: Action!
It was a great Day 1! The weather forced us to change our shooting schedule a bit, but not in a bad way. We still moved along at a good, quick pace. We covered…
Three weeks of labor
Cameras role at 8am tomorrow morning, and do you know what I’m thinking about? I think about a woman sitting in her hostpital room about to give birth. She’s…
Working with the Screen Actor’s Guild (SAG)
As we draw closer to our shoot date, our dealings with SAG have been very good. I’ve heard horror stories, but our rep in Florida has been very helpful and has…
Choosing between right and right
Earlier in the blog, I talked about a million decisions you have to make as producer/director. I was wrong–it’s about 4 million. And the choices are not easy…
Production Week
I’m sitting at my desk here at our production office. It’s our first week in the offices, and now it’s Friday. I sat down here Monday morning thinking to…
C2E (Cast and Crew Expectations)
As we start this production, it’s important to me that everyone be on the same page–not just from a production point of view, but from a personal and…
Top Three Priorities
As pre-production draws near, I’ve got three things to focus on: 1. Casting 2. Locations 3. The Story 1. Casting Casting can be key to a successful film, and…
Production & Fresh Powder
As I write this, I’m currently staying in a cabin in Pagosa Springs, Colorado. My family and I make the snow trek once every year, and this year is no…
Welcome Eric Whitney! (Production Design)
Eric Whitney joins our team for Production Design. Eric comes with 22 feature films under his belt. We look forward to drawing from his experience and…
Welcome Jennifer Wyatt Beasley! (UPM)
We’d like to welcome Jennifer Wyatt Beasley. Jennifer comes on board as our UPM, Unit Production Manager. She brings with her lots of feature film experience…
Just moviemaking
As the year comes to close, I was hoping to spend December focusing in on the details so that we can kick things into high gear come January 1. But, it’s hard…
The Market
I have just returned for AFM, the American Film Market. It was quite an experience! It was located in Santa Monica, California. AFM is where movie buyers and…
A million decisions
As producer and director of this feature film, I estimate that I’ll have to make about a million decisions. And, I don’t think it’s an exaggeration. It’s…
Building the team
It’s amazing how a movie production works! It’s literally a small company, and I’m the CEO, CFO, CMO, (all other O’s), and General Manager. And with this small…
Name Talent
Of all the filmmakers I meet in this journey, there is one piece of advice that repeats like a broken record: “land a name talent for the lead.” The only…
Investors
After development, we were ready to start production. But, you can’t really produce anything without any money. So, our next step was to raise the money. There…
Moving into Development
Now that we had a story, it was time to start developing it. First, we optioned the script from Nick Turner for one year. That simply means we paid for the…
Finding the story
After we decided to make a movie, we had to get a story. It was May of 2006. I always wanted to write my own story. I love storytelling, and when I write, I…
Three kids lost in the woods
Spring of 2006 arrves, and we’re trying to decide what kind of movie to make. That’s where we started–three kids lost in the woods. Thankfully, we didn’t go…
How did it all start?
In October of 2005, I decided to resign from my cushy, corporate job and pursue my dreams of producing. It was a scary but exciting step. And, today (a year…
We’re making a movie!
And, we want to share that experience with you as well. So, join us on our journey as we step into the world of movie production. Our goal is to blog as much…