Slowly But Surely

So, after many months of kicking and screaming I finally release what was supposed to be the "Halloween episode" in late January of 2010.

Now once Halloween passes the holiday season surely becomes another distraction, not to mention a scheduling nightmare with other people who work on this web series for free.
I can't stress about that, it's quite understandable. But still, sometimes I do wish I had the kind of budget (since I have none) where I can tell the entire cast to take off 2 weeks from work so we could film non-stop for that particular period of time. I would be able to knock out all of season 1 in no time.

But in the end episode 5 (which we began shooting back in August) was finally uploaded to the main site at www.deadroad.net for those of you who are living under a rock (haha)
And I must say, this seems to be the most popular episode so far. Give `em a small splash of blood and they respond with great excitement, it seems. Just wait to see what's next.

Anyway, since then I was lucky enough to have Dead Road reviewed by a few websites, all who have given the series nothing but positive praises (usually a 4 out of 5 rating) great news.

Still the lack of an audience is very noticeable at least to me being the creator of this series.
Between all the social networking and the very small efforts made by friends and family to get the word out (apparently they must think it advertises itself) it's kinda frustrating. I'm not expecting huge numbers, but at least more than what I'm seeing. The traffic is slow.

Not exactly sure what else I can do to get the word out. I mean people just want instant gratification, but if you utter the words "help us get the word out" they lose all sense of community, whether they are Myspace/Facebook friends... Or followers of the ever-useless Twitter. And these days e-mails are just not being read it appears.
I understand that these are hard times and people are busy, but I don't think I'm asking for too much. Anyway...

I guess my friends and family like to hear I'm doing "well" as long as they have nothing to do with it. I still have friends who have not seen any of the episodes. Or people who ask me on social networks where could they find the link... What?

In other news, between you and me, I'm really starting to hate episode 1. I think it's terrible and I do plan to do a quick re-edit to cut out some of the painful dialog that still makes me twitch when I hear it. I feel like I'm rambling right now...

Anyway, throughout the making of all 5 episodes so far I still have the same usual audio problems (which is starting to improve) and the lack of extras... It's like no one truly cares...
I mean, they make it to the zombie walks all over the tri-state area so you would think that being in an actual series would be something any of these people would be interested in.

I've also tried going to these zombie walks to gather extra stock footage, perhaps to be used for future episodes... But I can tell you that idea is one big FAIL. For the most part all the participants at these zombie walks are way too giddy and happy to give you any usable footage. Then you have the zombie that's smoking a cigarette, the zombie that's just walking around not in character. And the zombies that just talk among themselves. But whatever, that's not really important. Just another experiments in this on-going real life saga.

Anyway, other than the never-ending task of trying to schedule film shoots with an impossible cast (due to their jobs of course, I care a lot about every single one of them) I remain stuck at the same problem with never having enough zombie extras...

However another huge problem that has surfaced is the big location for the big shootout I planned for episode 10. Which would be shot in Pennsylvania. The owner of the place has recently been involved in some legal problems and completely cut us off. God Damn!
This will be a very difficult location to replicate, but I will definitely find a substitute. I have to.

It's exhausting work, which I will never stop since I love it so much... But between every day stress at home, stress due to the economy, stress due to delusions of grandeur and other self inflicted obstacles I'm moving forward.

I'll admit my thoughts are becoming blurred as time passes and keeping a grip on things is becoming difficult, but I refuse to become another cliche' if you know what I mean... I will remain and always aspire to be known as an artist at the end of the day.

Onward to episode 6!!!