Category: Movies

  • 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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  • Our Users Aren’t Psychopaths

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    Ever wonder how the Hilton and the Marriott families feel about Air B&B?

    What would happen if the heir to a hotel chain empire gets fed up and decides to rebrand the sharing economy… as the scaring economy?

    Take two minutes to find out in THE INTERNET WANTS, our webseries concept trailer. This is a new project I’m hoping to make with Postopian Pictures, the guys I made Haphead with. Whether it gets the green-light depends on views, so please share if you like it!

    There’s a longer synopsis of what it’s about below.

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  • Haphead Watchalong and Online Q&A

    It’s a great time to start watching Haphead, the cyberpunk webseries I wrote/created — we’ve got half the first season online now! Plus, we’re doing a watchalong of the first season this Sunday afternoon — an online collective viewing of the full 72 minutes of season one for people who have (or are willing to) chipped in a couple bucks. Plus a Twitter Q&A at the end! Details below.

    Those Bittorrent-lovin’ disruptive culture types VODO are selling the full HD version for download or stream for $4.99 (or make an offer). You can also get the download or stream for the same price on VHX at over here.

    Trailer here. We’re getting some pretty sweet responses like this one from Hugo-award winning author Peter Watts:

    Haphead is way better than it has any right to be. Little gems of technosocial extrapolation glitter throughout Munroe’s screenplay: upscale malls with perky automated security systems, apologetically refusing entry to consumers with “mixed-income backgrounds”; insurance companies with their own paramilitary SWAT teams to go after false claimants. The plot itself— at first glance a straightforward lefty bit of capitalist-bashing— takes turns you might not expect… Star Elysia White is a real find; whether Max is mourning or raging, pondering some mystery or cracking wise, her performance is spot-on throughout.

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  • Haphead’s Premiere a Week Today!

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    We’re putting the finishing touches on the first season of Haphead, an 8 episode webseries I wrote and created, and we’re going to watch all 70 minutes at the Royal Theatre a week today. It’s the whole deal — q&a with cast/crew, afterparty for everyone, and the theatre is a beautiful venue — they’re even licensed for the occasion. Our last Royal screening sold out, so we recommend ordering tickets online to avoid disappointment.

    If you’re not in Toronto, you’ll want to subscribe via the service of your choice at haphead.com as the first episode is going online immediately after the screening.

    Haphead is the story of a girl who’s literally empowered by videogames.

    Ten years from now, a new haptic peripheral makes videogames so immersive that people learn skills just by playing. Maxine makes less than minimum wage at the factory where they make them, so she decides to become an unofficial beta tester by stealing one for herself. At home, her favorite rabbit-ninja game gets a whole lot more punishing, with the haptic feedback loop beating lethal skills into her muscle memory. Which is good: she needs to level up quick once her employer discovers her on-the-job theft.

    Luckily, she’s not alone. There are other hapheads out there, with a variety of game-trained abilities. But while some of them are kindreds, one of them brings death….

    It’s pretty incredible seeing these projects come together, each successive iteration getting closer and closer to what we imagined. And as the poster above declares, this is not a No Media Kings production — it’s an entirely new and exciting thing. We’ll be announcing more about that at the screening!

  • Society fears us, as it always fears the New.

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    We’re Kickstarting post-production for Haphead, my cyberpunk web series about a girl who’s literally empowered by videogames. Consider backing it and get some rewards like parkour lessons and producer credits!

    Running a Kickstarter is a lot of work, but it’s work we need to do anyway — spreading the word about our new project. As always, we’re trying to balance the hype with a good deal of content.

    First, the Kickstarter video starts with a teaser using the brand new footage we shot in the summer. Then we created a new reward with our talented artists, a calendar of post-apocalyptic pin-ups called Fallen Toronto.

    Yesterday we posted a gallery of amazing production stills like the one above. Today we released a recruitment ad voiced by a local radio personality, “Fearless” Fred Kennedy from Edge 102.1. I’m really happy with it — it’s a parody of the “Get into the Game Industry!” ads that aim to profit from people’s dreams of getting to work in their favourite medium. Listen to it here.

  • All Aboard the Haphead Train!

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    About a month ago we got the word that Haphead, our near-future videogame subculture webseries, received funding. It’s a lot of the same folks I’ve been making lo-fi sci-fi no-budget films with since 2007 — except this time we’re getting paid a living wage for it! Pretty wild. Having a budget also means we can consider renting locations (like the train car above!) as well as accelerate the process — we’ll be releasing the first 45-60min (AKA “Season 1”) in January, instead of the 3 year odyssey that Ghosts With Shit Jobs was. I also won’t be wearing as many hats (just three: executive producer/creator/writer) but I know from the awesome proof-of-concept trailer our team produced with minimal interference from me that it’s in very, very good hands.

    If you want to jump on the Haphead train before our mid-August shooting begins, this is what we’re still looking for!

    • a large abandoned warehouse or factory we can rent for a day (something like this pic)
    • people with physical talents: parkour, martial arts, circus skills, skateboarding/scootering, breakdancing
    • adult background actors (AKA extras) of different ages/ethnicities (no experience needed)
    • small camper / magic van / Winnebago
    • a house with a little character
    • onset medic

    If you have a lead on any of the above, please drop our producer Anthony a line at anthony@lofiscifi.com and he can give you more details.

  • GHOSTS in Indie Sci-Fi Bundle

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    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

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    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…)

  • Haphead, a neo-noir webseries

    Ten years from now, videogames are so immersive that teenagers learn lethal skills just by playing. They’re called hapheads.

    The folks I made Ghosts With Shit Jobs with made this trailer I adapted from a book-length story I’m working on. Don’t know if we can honestly call what we do lo-fi sci-fi anymore — with fight scenes and full-on special effects, it’s way more in the mold of traditional action sci-fi. I’m thinking what’ll set it apart is the characterization of the father & daughter (my emotional entry into the story, thinking about my relationship with my daughter in 10 years) and the subcultural mileau that’ll emerge. This trailer a proof-of-concept thing meant to rally the interest we need to get it made — so if you’d like to see it, share it.

  • Just Ella

    I’ve been getting together with folks I made Ghosts With Shit Jobs with to make a trailer for our next project, Haphead — starts shooting on Sunday, get in touch if you’d like to help out. We’re going to be working with the same actress who starred in “Just Ella” — a short I wrote/directed for the Lo-fi Sci-fi 48 Hour Film Challenge. It screened at Toronto After Dark (my favourite Toronto film fest) a few months back, and now you can watch it here.

    “Just Ella” posits a future overrun by gibbering monstrosities. Ella takes refuge in a “the Ossington Safehouse, a collectively-run space dedicated to human sovereignty.” But despite doing the assigned tasks on the chore list, the Safehouse isn’t safe — the terrors outside are nothing compared to those within.

    Contains perhaps the first cinematic example of autocomplete used for a dramatic reveal.

    Credits here.

  • Aspirational Science Fiction

    I remixed a 60 Minutes puff piece with one of the founders of Twitter so that it tells a story of open source bravery and genuine disruption. It’s part of my Postopias series. How it came to be and why I made it is below the jump.

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  • 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.