After a busy summer with friends and family, it seems that I am down with the sickness once again. That means five days of quarantine, and no excuse not to write a new Artificial Ink Drop, so there you go. Feast your eyes.
Nice to see it.
Oh, thanks. I needed to slow down for a sec. Now it’s back to the busy.
On the film festival front, NO MEAN FEET played the Cobb International Film Festival in Marietta, Georgia on August 4th, located outside Atlanta at the historic Strand Theatre. My brother Joe Kendrick represented the film.
Perhaps more notably, NO MEAN FEET also screened at the Sidewalk Film Fest in Birmingham, Alabama on August 22nd, with an encore screening the 23rd, as part of the Alabama Spotlight Night. Joe and I grew up in the Birmingham suburb of Homewood, so we were eligible to be included in what was a career goal of mine, having a short in my hometown film fest.
I was unable to watch the Alabama Spotlight Night since I was in Savannah, Georgia for a wedding, but I attended the festival over the weekend of August 26th to 28th, where I ran around the festival, networked and PR, watched several documentaries and genre shorts, and generally protected the peace with Amanda Khorramabadi, a documentary journalist with the film PULLED OVER/PULLED UNDER in the Life & Liberty shorts block.
All along the Watchtower Database world, we shared a trailer for the epic storyline finale BATMAN & HARLEY QUINN: WILL IT CANON? Watch it below!
I traveled to Astoria, Oregon in October 2021 to shoot this project at an old Masonic lodge. I played a cosmic entity obsessed with animated continuity, Dr. ManHatTed, who acts as a judge, jury, and executioner. And as I keep saying across social media, perhaps this role of Dr. ManHatTed is the Hamlet of our generation. Catch the premiere on the Watchtower Database YouTube channel on Sunday, September 18th with an 11 hour commentary livestream the following Sunday, September 25th. I’m probably gonna hop on closer to the middle/end when my character is more relevant. Lastly, even more exciting things are coming soon that I can’t even mention yet.
Don’t tease us like that.
Mystery! Intrigue!
My next short, a sci-fi comedy titled 4SIGHT, is now picture-locked! That is a huge step, linking the film from beginning to end, and now only requires titles and graphics, VFX design, color correction, sound mixing, and an original soundtrack. It’s a fairly lengthy laundry list, but it’s a good spot to be in because the finish line is closer. Many thanks to my editor and collaborator on the project, Rome Widenhouse, who also just edited his first feature film (with an exciting premiere in the works, too soon to share).
I’m also designing what I think will be a unique poster for the 4SIGHT film. I just need to set a photoshoot with actress Alisha Hawthorne. Also, a shout out to Lauren Rivas if she’s reading this newsletter like she mentioned she does, which is something that I love to hear. I appreciate the recent ADR session where we rerecorded minor 4SIGHT dialogue that had busy street background noise. The process is just minor adjustments like that now.
I wouldn’t have time to read your newsletter.
You…but…aren’t you…you wouldn’t?
In another news, the STEWARDS OF SKY ISLAND environmental docu-series on climate change in Roan Mountain has completed post-production on its first two episodes, each 23 minutes in length. My brother Joe joined the project to mix the audio, and smooth out the edit overall. I continue to assist producer Caleb Owolabi in securing distribution for potential network broadcast, as well as grant funds for additional episode production.
Owolabi and I spent three months, most of May through July, developing and pitching other unscripted shows that feature notable people like COOKING WITH OFRI with original recipes from Ofri Hirsch for the non-kitchen savvy, and ACROSS THE TABLE from Ambassador Sujay who worked as an emissary for religious freedom in the Clinton and Obama admins. I identified about 70 potential platforms for distribution for each of the projects, and helped Owolabi pitch the shows for development funds.
I’ve nearly completed writing the treatment document for a feature film screenwriting gig. I mentioned this project back in drop #5 as one of two feature film scripts. I was paid to write the first 15 pages a few months ago. Now, I’ve written the treatment doc as a pitch to complete the rest of the script, bringing it somewhere close to 120 pages. After the 10 page version of the treatment was composed, I copied it and cut it down to a more digestible 4 pager, and once again as a 4 paragraph version. Now I need to meet with the client again, and see how he wants to adjust the story.
Will that get in the way of comics projects?
Comics are my most comfortable place; talking nerdy wherever I am provided the panel or platform. Below, someone caught me talking with BATMAN/TMNT ADVENTURES writer Matt Manning (hiding behind the wall of action figures) at Comic Envy’s Free Comic Book Day event in May.
Per the title of Drop #8, and a crime to not be featured earlier in the layout spread, Lumo Station LLC recently published the TALES FROM THE LOST DOMINION #1 comic book. I’ve mentioned the Kickstarter campaign before in this newsletter, but the issue is now available to purchase by the general public. This comic book began as a #0 prequel chapter for the LOST DOMINION main series, which introduces all the characters from this vast sci-if western universe, some only for a page or two, but the story instead spun into conception as the first issue of its own anthology book.
Adam Mullen wrote the script, Mike Lombardo and Marcelo Millicay drew the interior artwork and inks, and I edited the book, and provided the word balloon lettering. Always a lot of fun to work in comics, especially in the lettering layout when the words and artwork are finally bridged together. Two more issues of TALES FROM THE LOST DOMINION are in active production, as well as chapter 7 from the main LOST DOMINION series. Read issue #1 on Amazon, or order directly from GlobalComix. Don’t do it for me, do it for the writer Adam Mullen! He and Noor just had a baby!
Congratulations! What is their name?
They could have pulled a name from a character in the comic, like Tiala, Ziv, or Zat Tabow. Red-88 has a nice ring to it as well, don’t you think?
The Watchtower Database hasn’t published a new issue of the LEGACIES OF THE DCAU webcomic in a few months, but EST Comics recently covered the series in multi-part reviews. It’s always nice to hear when readers appreciate the love and care that went into creating the comic from the start. We hope to keep dropping more chapters whenever it’s possible.
Video game streams continue on the Watchtower Database YouTube channel, but I go online sporadically, whenever I find the time, usually on a weekday afternoon, once a week, with about 30 regular viewers. Over the last 2 months, I’ve slowly played through BATMAN: VENGEANCE which is a 2003 game from the PS2 based on THE NEW BATMAN ADVENTURES animated series. These streams are always archived on our associated channel The Podtower which houses podcasts and long-form related content as to not upset the almighty algorithm for the primary channel.
I’ve been speaking in my Twitter DMs with writer Michael Julius who is compiling quotes for a book about the nature of DC Comics’ cosmology. He asked for my thoughts regarding the cosmic hierarchy referenced in LEGACIES, and now inspired me to reread certain comics in what morphed into a heady essay about the nature of vibrational frequencies and music influencing living story in comic book narratives, a fictional world sculpted by hundreds of different writers and artists over 80 years of consecutive, uninterrupted publishing with consistent continuity. Heavy stuff.
Tell me what to watch and hear now.
Okay, but try to sound more eager if you can.
I must recommend VIVARIUM, a 2019 film directed by Lorcan Finnegan that has remained in my thoughts as I’ve shared its strangeness with other people. Jesse Eisenberg and Imogen Poots star as a couple trapped in a toothpaste green, cookie cutter suburbia, and forced to raise a strange kid who ages rapidly, screams at the top of its lungs, imitates a dog woof, and may be an inter-dimensional monster. I’m not totally sure; it’s a thinker with plenty of room for interpretation. The whole watch is a trip if you are in the mood for an original sci-fi thriller, available to watch on Amazon Prime.
In the realm of music, I’ve had “Music has the Right to Children” by Boards of Canada on the mind. I will listen to the album from start to finish while I write, drive, hang out at the beach, whatever. Boards of Canada released the record in 1998, which I see as an experimental psychedelic rock ballad, one of the best listens for something chill and calm in the background; not too abstract that it’s annoying, but not too catchy to be distracting.
The world is a weird place right now. Take care of yourselves, and rest as much as you can, so you can show up when and where it is important to be.
I’ll be back with another drop when I have a significant amount or time-sensitive things to share. We don’t run on a schedule here, at least not yet.