Oh brother, buy my project!
An edition about pitching, declaiming and one-location action
WELCOME TO A NEW EDITION OF MY NEWSLETTER
Here I am again! It’s July but I have things to do before thinking about a holiday break! I just finished a graphic novel project with my dear friend Mike Oeming and surely, before the summer break, I will have finished my other project with Frank Barbiere and Ricky Mammone. I have been mentioned them in a lot on interviews because I began both books in 2019, before the pandemic, and they were affected by the crisis in the editorial world of the first months, change of publisher included. Finally I am going to close those doors. I am happy but also relieved, and excited about the new projects which will come later. I must confess I like working fast, trying to capture the energy of the moment. I hate when a project prolongs for years (I am not speaking about comic-book series, this is another pacing and approach, I am talking about self-contained graphic novels). They are very different books with radically different visual approaches and will be announced very soon and will be published in 2023.
MEDIA PROJECTS UPDATE
My Left Hand of the Devil covered by Irish mediums:
http://www.iftn.ie/news/?act1=record&aid=73&rid=4294482&tpl=archnews
https://www.scannain.com/irish/abroad/left-hand-of-the-devil-naff-project-market/
And my two movie/TV projects covered by the good friends of Comicon, who always have been very supportive with my work:
https://www.comicon.com/2022/06/27/two-new-film-and-tv-projects-from-victor-santos-announced/
By the way, I involuntarily created some confusion with the “Left hand project”, because I mentioned it as “The Left Hand of Devil”. The working title of this project when I was plotting it was “Left Hand of Devil”… Well, the final and correct title and the title that appears in the movie script drafts I am reading right now is “Left Hand of the Devil”. Fixed? Not sure yet…
CONECTA
I attended the Conecta Festival, with producers Anthony Ayllene from Born Wild and Alberto Rull from Vertice360 in the search of investors and distribution for the Motorway TV show project and I made my first pitch.
The experience was very interesting, telling your story aloud. I have written tons of pitches and purposes for editors, but defending your idea in front of an audience is very different. Anthony and Alberto spoke about the financial opportunities, the budget… But telling the story was my job. I was the creator, so… I must defend why this story is worth funding. I never had problems speaking to an audience: I have attended interviews, made an improvised presentation of the Polar movie in a crowded theatre, I have given some classes… But I have always been in the position of advantage. The people who attended wanted to be there. I wasn’t asking for something. The festival provided us a couch, and she told me a lot of good advice about eloquence, where I needed to stare and focus. It’s more like acting but without acting. I had watched some pitches, especially in animation, where the speakers are basically acting (and sometimes over-acting), making sounds and singing melodies… You can see a lot of examples in the bonus content of animation blu rays. In Spain it’s not so exaggerated, but you need to make emphasis on the important concepts.
So I think I returned from this festival with more knowledge about how to “sell” a project and learning was my main goal when I got into this audiovisual crazy world… I didn’t screw it up, so not bad for the first time.
MORE
My MOON EATERS graphic novel is printing! So, my beloved backers, the day is near! Again, endless thanks for your support. This book is something like my dreamed action movie made into reality and I hope you will enjoy it.
TRAPPED
And speaking about action movies, I have a special love for action movies with a one single location since I watched John Carpenter’s Assault on Precint 13 a lot of years ago. Many B-movies use this story resource because (easy to deduce) it’s really cheap but at the same time the concept gives a simplicity and purity to the action scenes, they often become minimalistic and almost abstract pieces about people fighting for their life in the middle of nothing. I tried to do my own addition to the sub-genre in Moon Eaters. Here is a little selection of movies of this kind. I don't think I need to recommend The Raid because it’s super-popular. I want to discover you really cheap hidden gems. Some of them maybe are not the best movies ever made, but sometimes you only want to rest, forget your daily struggles, drink a beer and having good 90 minutes of pure action:
-Free Fire. An abandoned warehouse, the 70s, an exchange of weapons goes wrong, a lot of gangsters and smugglers decide to solve their differences with those guns.
-Close Range. My beloved Scott Adkins protects his family’s farm from the Cartel thugs in the way he knows best.
-Interceptor, with Elsa Pataky, about a fall-from-grace marine defending a missile-interceptor base built on a sea platform from terrorists with a funny idea about patriotism.
-Everly, with Salma Hayek. She plays a yakuza’s girlfriend who tries to survive a Christmas night in her apartment fighting against hordes of gangsters, killer prostitutes and bondage-lovers psychos. All sounds perfect.
-Smoking Aces 2: Assassin’s ball. Direct-to-video (now video-on-demand) sequel of John Carnahan’s wonderful action-crime film. Due to budget reasons the set of this movie is a little jazz club with a bunker in its basement. It seems a cheaper version of the Casino showdown of the previous film, and it is… But it’s also a crazier, pulpy and over-the-top remake too.
-The Courier, with Olga Kurylenko. This is basically an action movie set in a parking lot, with a biker Olga kicking asses against Gary Oldman’s thugs, who seems to have filmed all his scenes in a weekend (a very usual practice in these low-budget productions).
And that’s all! I never mention it, but if you have any question, proposal, etc for this newsletter, you have the comments section or you can write to my contact mail: victorsantoscontact@gmail.com.
Take care and see you in a couple of weeks with a new episode of Ginger revenges!
Victor
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Great stuff as always!