Category: Ghosts With Shit Jobs

  • Haunted by Ghosts With Shit Jobs

    Ten years ago we released a strange little lo-fi sci-fi feature called Ghosts With Shit Jobs.  

    In the future, jobs still suck — but in whole new ways. By 2040 the economy has flipped and North Americans are a cheap labor pool for wealthy eastern markets. (Trailer here.) 

    For those in Toronto we’re doing a small in person screening at the community-powered Eyesore Cinema (Fri. Nov. 11th, 8pm, $5 cash at the door) followed by a q&a chat with some directors and actors, hosted by Mike Wood of They Might Be Movies. If you’re out of town or not into enclosed spaces there will simultaneously be a watchalong where you can chime in with comments and such! After the watchalong it’ll live on YouTube for anyone to watch for free with English, French, and Spanish subtitles. Update: Watch it for free via http://ghostswithshitjobs.com.

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  • GHOSTS in Indie Sci-Fi Bundle

    otherworlds
    I first heard about Vodo a few years back when they were using BitTorrent as a form of alternative distribution for science fiction shorts and web series — something we did as well with our 2007 effort Infest Wisely. Currently they’re trying out a pay-what-you-want model, and they approached us to include Ghosts With Shit Jobs in their indie sci-fi Otherworlds bundle. They’ve brought together a great bunch of sci-fi shorts, experimental videogames (Tale of Tales) and speculative graphic novels (Cory Doctorow), and we get a bit of money whether you pay-what-you-want for the main tier or “unlock” our movie on the second tier. (I guess we’ll have to update our profit-reporting post after this!) Incidentally, this is the first time you can buy a DRM-free digital version of our movie since the Kickstarter.

    The Otherworlds bundle is available for the next two weeks.

  • Ghosts With Shit Jobs: The Final Numbers

    Factory_Interior-Press-Kit.resized

    We started making Ghosts With Shit Jobs in 2009, released it in 2012 and screened it in 25 cities thanks to a Kickstarter campaign through 2012-13. We’ve learned a ton and recently applied what we know now to a proof-of-concept trailer for a new project — it’s called Haphead, and features the infinitely stretching electronics factory pictured above. And bunny-ninja fights.

    But before we move on we thought we’d talk frankly about the numbers behind our lo-fi sci-fi feature.

    We attracted attention to the project by being up front about our original $4000 production costs, and now we want to do a final accounting in the hope that it’s useful and/or interesting to other indie filmmakers. There’s a certain amount of pressure to not talk about this stuff when it’s not super-impressive — that somehow it hurts our credibility — but we think it’s useful to show people what very minor success looks like.

    Ghosts With Shit Jobs cost $20,180.97 to create and promote and earned a gross of $39,317.18 $40,917.18 $51,675.12 $52,252.74 (as of Aug 2022 — mostly from iTunes sales). (more…)

  • Our BIFF Experience

    At a time of year when everyone’s talking TIFF, we thought we’d talk BIFF. For us, getting into the Beijing International Film Festival was a bigger deal, what with Ghosts With Shit Jobs being about a future where China’s the first world and North America’s the third world.

    Co-director Tate Young interviewed BIFF-goers earlier this year on what they thought about the premise of our flick, and got lots of great city shots to boot, in this 6.5 minute mini-doc.

    It’s now four years since we began this project and it’s been quite a trip — literally and figuratively. Since its London, England premiere last year we’ve toured with the movie to nearly 20 cities across the world. Figured it merits its own commemorative tour t-shirt, which you can buy at cost for the next week (mens | ladies). It’s got all the cities on the back!

    As an aside, you should enjoy TIFF while it lasts — it ends in 2019 after cultural funding disappears completely. BIFF buys all the red carpets at an auction afterwards.

  • Why Q&A’s are Eff’n A

    Anthony's answer does weird things to Sean and Jim's postures.

    Heading to the west coast this Friday for the San Francisco Indie Film Fest screenings (as well as doing a reading and then a talk at UCLA). At this point we’ve attended almost a dozen screenings of Ghosts, from Seoul, Korea to Poznan, Poland, and the Q&As are — pretty fun. Really fun, actually.  I’ll tell you why I found that surprising, below.

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  • GHOSTS Plays Cloud City: iTunes, Amazon, Xbox & PS3

    Put your trillion dollar coins away! Ghosts With Shit Jobs is available to rent for as little as $4.99. Our lo-fi sci-fi mockumentary about the slums of Toronto in 2040 is now in wide digital release at the links below.

    To help support this we’re offering to do 20 videochat Q&As between now and when the Debt Ceiling falls in. To enter, sign up over here and plan a GHOSTS screening party of five or more people in January and February. Then, if you’re one of the lucky 20, one of our lo-fi faces will be beamed via sci-fi into your very home!

    iTunes / Amazon (US only) / Xbox / PSN / Vudu

    Trailer / First 20 minutes

    For people looking for DRM-free options, we recommend buying the DVD and then ripping it.

    (And sure, Cloud City is a bit of an ethically dubious place. But it’s not like Lando would sell us out or anything, that dude is solid!)

  • Ann Arbor, Ottawa, Austin, and Tucson GHOSTS Appearances

    In the next month I’ll be visiting a bunch of cities to do Q&As after the screenings of Ghosts With Shit Jobs. If you know folks in these cities, it would be great if you spread the word!

    Ann Arbor (Sept. 9, Workantile)
    Ottawa (Sept. 14 [with Q&A], Sept 15 & 16, Mayfair Theatre)
    Austin (Sept 19, Alamo Drafthouse Lake Creek)
    Tucson (Sept 27, Arizona Underground Film Fest)

    Note that the Austin one will only happen if 30 tickets are reserved in the next 4 days as we’re using Tugg to gauge interest. (UPDATE: Austin is Go!) We can do it in other towns in the US too, so if you’re interested in bringing GHOSTS to your town in November, just fill out this form and we can start to try and make it happen! If you’re not in the US, just email us directly.

  • The Lo-fi Sci-fi Salons

    I’m involved with the new Lo-fi Sci-fi 48 Hour Film Challenge that’s happening at the end of August. In my role as Creative Director I’ve programmed four Lo-fi Sci-fi Salons in the run-up to the Challenge.

    Each Salon will be hosted by a different local filmmaker who will be showing some inspiring fantastical shorts and then sharing some tips from their experience making science fiction movies. There’ll be lots of time before and after to meet & drink with other lo-fi sci-fi enthusiasts.

    • July 30: I will be chatting with Louis Savy, Programmer for SCI-FI-LONDON, over Skype. S-F-L is a big inspiration, and we’ll be watching some of the best shorts from its long-running 48 hr Film Challenge.
    • Aug. 6: Matthew Nayman (“Blind Spot“) will be talking quick and dirty visual effects
    • Aug. 13: David Fernandes (“Re-Wire“) will be sharing tips on props and sets on the cheap
    • Aug. 20: the folks behind the upcoming feature A Brand New You

    They’re happening Mondays at 7pm at the Monarch (12 Clinton St., Toronto). They’re free and open to the public — you don’t have to be signed up for the Challenge.

    But you totally should! It’s a great way to collaborate with new people, try something too weird and experimental for a feature, and get something small and achievable in the can. Hot tip: if you check out the first Salon you’ll get a sense of what it’s about and still have time to get the Early Bird rate ($50/team til Aug 1st).

  • Toronto GHOSTS Screening Pix, Boston’s Up Next

    Only now recovered from the Toronto Ghosts With Shit Jobs screening last week — we sold out the theatre and got a really nice response from people. Thanks to all the folks who came!

    We showed trailers prior to the screening for our pals at Iron Sky, ByoLogic, Manborg and Rasputin’s Bastards, and afterwards Sean announced the Lo-fi Sci-fi 48hr Film Challenge and I showed off a brand-new GHOSTS USB Bracelet.

    We’re excited about our next screening and Q&A: Saturday July 14th at 8pm at MIT in Boston. It’s a free screening and open to the public, and I’m doing a bunch of other game related stuff while I’m in town.

  • Best Feature Award and Spacing Tie-In


    It’s been a wild week! Our Kickstarter ended up raising $20,000 (quadruple what we asked for!) and we got the Best Feature award from the awesome Sci-Fi-London fest. The Grid also just posted a great article on the movie with a bunch of tips from me on low budget filmmaking — the writer really got the spirit of the thing, with phrases like “happiness is the only real currency exchanged on an all-volunteer set.”

    Next week of course we have our North American premiere in Toronto. (We’re 2/3s full at this point, so you might want to pre-order tickets.) But the day before that is the party for the new issue of Spacing — the Disaster issue. Spacing is one of my favourite magazines both to read and to write for, and I’m delighted to reveal that I wrote a Ghosts With Shit Jobs-inspired spread in this issue — it’s a tour given by Anton Karrento of Toronto in 2040. Plus, the Karrento Brothers are going to be at the magazine launch party, combing the area for spider silk caches in the nooks and crannies of the Evergreen Brick Works. Spacing parties are always fun and the location’s amazing — come on out!

    The little article below was a sidebar that didn’t end up in the spread, but I thought I’d post it here as an early taste. (more…)

  • Syncing Selling and Sincerity

    I’m not crazy about Blu-ray, so I started to think of alternative ways to deliver the 1080p version of the movie and came across these usb bracelets. When I started to think about what else you could put on it, I realized there was a connection to one of the ideas in the movie: that in 2025 the Cloud was repossessed. I like the idea that people can also use it to store their own locally owned data, as insurance against that day. Or even if nothing happens, for a time when you make the choice to get off the Cloud (or the grid) and find out that something you clicked I Agree to years ago limits that choice.

    You can buy it here. (Sorry, only DVDs left now.) More thoughts below. (more…)

  • Full House for GHOSTS World Premiere

    I was lucky enough to attend the world premiere of our movie, Ghosts With Shit Jobs, with a sold out crowd in London’s Piccadilly Circus last night. More pics after the jump.

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