Los Angeles based actor, Jeff Dylan Graham has graciously accepted the role of 'Boy' in the Moderngrumble trailer! Veteran of numerous films and director of the upcoming Psychosomatika, Jeff got his acting start in the Jennifer Lopez film Selena and never looked back. Having worked with a who's who of underground horror actors and directors, Jeff brings to Moderngrumble a great deal of experience and enthusiasm for the script as well as a willingness to undergo the physical transformation necessary to realize the character of Boy.

This is a major decision for Moderngrumble as deciding on just what Boy should look like was a long journey that is detailed previously here. Our next step in preparing Jeff for the role will be getting Marcus Koch to do a cast of his head and shoulders so that we can begin prepping for the bird hatching scene and then getting Jeff to an optometrist to have his eyes measured so we can purchase some quality contacts. The rest will be in the hands of our star!

Please help me in welcoming Jeff to the production. 2012 is the year of Moderngrumble!

IMDB

Lotushead Productions is proud to announce that Mitchell Crisp has joined the project as our Production Designer. Fresh off working on Arkansas native Jeff Nichol’s latest ‘Take Shelter’ and upcoming ‘Mud,’ Mitchell has the experience to help realize Moderngrumble’s unique blend of Southern Gothic, Manson-chic and seventies styled occult psychedelia. With over 20 years professional experience on everything from Law & Order to some of the best short films to come out of Arkansas in the last ten years, Mitchell is a major addition to Moderngrumble’s visual aesthetic helping to complete the core of our visual team. She is also a painter of some note. Her mother and grandmother's work hang in national Museums, while her own work shows nationally, but sells primarily into private collections in New York and Los Angeles. Her paintings have appeared in script specific roles on NBC's "Law and Order" and on the sets of many films. She paints to support her filmmaking obsession, in which she is known as "Mitchell Patterson." Combined with the talents of our DP, Joriah Goad, and FX master Marcus Koch we can be sure that the trailer and subsequent feature will look fantastic. Please help me in welcoming her aboard the production!

IMDB

Pillow

The Orderly

  I've been keeping this under my hat for awhile now and am extremely excited to finally announce that Marcus Koch has joined the production as our Special Effects Artist. Marcus has over ten years of experience in the film industry, cutting his teeth on Troma's Citizen Toxie before moving on to highly anticipated films such as The Theater Bizarre and Psychic Experiment as well as underground horror festival faves such as Herschell Gordon Lewis's Uh-Oh Show (just picked up for distribution by Shriek Show), Sweatshop, Ghost Lake, Imago, Sinners and Saints, Bloody, Bloody Bible Camp and several others. Currently he’s working on Christmas with the Dead, produced by the genre icon Joe R. Lansdale (Bubba Ho-Tep) and based on one of Lansdale’s fantastically twisted stories.  Marcus is also a director, having helmed the film 100 Tears of which Cult Flicks opined; “100 Tears’ true brilliance shines through in the quite believable and disgusting special effects and make up.” and more recently Fell which is now making the festival circuit. Between Marcus’ effects work and Joriah’s eye for composition and lighting, Moderngrumble has established two of the most important cornerstones of its visual style and I must say I couldn’t be more pleased with the direction we’re heading in. 

As usual it has been some time since we had any announcements worthy of celebration around here but that's about to change. Please help me in welcoming the very talented filmmaker Joriah Goad to the MODERNGRUMBLE production as our Director of Photography! Joriah is based out of Seattle, WA and is an amazing Cinematographer, Editor and Director in his own right so his addition to the crew is exciting news and goes a long way in assuring MODERNGRUMBLE will have the visual style needed to bring Boy and Sunshine Farms  to life! Check out some of Joriah's short films on vimeo;

Father/Mother

The Bends of Formation

Smoke

And check out Joriah's web series here: Botswana USA

Below you will find an all white version of the Boy mask for our main character as well as a new mask for Boy's first Zombie victim. This will be the zombie seen on the MODERNGRUMBLE stickers and on page 6 of the graphic novel and will be used for the initial TEASER TRAILER and not the final film. Let us know what you think!

With the main design for Boy sculpted, molded and cast we're focusing on paint and make up design for the latex appliances/masks. Below you'll find several pics of the mold for Boy and the first look we're trying with the final mask. You'll notice that we have cast the mask in Black Slush Latex RD 407, the same used for the Batman Mask in Batman Begins and are working from a black base color instead of flesh colored or white. This black base is a final choice but the make up attributed afterward is still a work in progress as you can see.

               perhaps a little too Fulci but I like it, what do you think?

So it's been decided that we'll be shooting the initial ten minute teaser on this baby:

The Sony HDV-Z1U. Not a bad Hi-Def camera at all and yes I know I've been talking about shooting this on 16 mm but after much debate and research we've decided to go digital and while this initial ten minutes will be shot on the Z1U we're actually planning to shoot the actual film on . . . . . The RED ONE!!!!! 

And really the price on a good RED ONE package is not that bad in comparison to going the film route with buying film, lab fees and a DI so that's that. The decision has been made, the die cast and damnit I'm not going to budge.

A list of some of the films shot on the RED ONE;

AntiChrist

Valhalla Rising

District 9

The Lovely Bones

The Informant

Che

The Girlfriend Experience

Gamer

Green Zone

Knowing

Angels and Demons

 I Spit on Your Grave (2010 Remake)

 and the list keeps growing although I have to say the images in AntiChrist are some of my favorites shot on this monster camera and seem to be the best example thus far of what can be done with it.

We've spent the last week sculpting our major character designs for the film and are currently making molds and pouring latex. Below are a few photos snapped of the various stages of the sculpture for our main character, Boy. More photos will follow of other designs as well as the casting process and final masks/appliances. Stay tuned!

 Those of you who have visited the site recently may have noticed the replacement of T-Rex's Cosmic Dancer with an acoustic cover. A damn perfect one at that. The praise for this should fall at the feet of the lovely Jenna Gibbon and her brother D.J. who have re-interpreted that glam classic to my specifications with scary accuracy. While the prospect of acquiring the publishing rights for the song may prove too costly in the long run, it's not going to be a fight I give up on easily. If you've followed the graphic novel you may have noticed that there is very little dialogue. Add to that the score will be as important to the film as the images and that there will only be one actual song on the soundtrack (this one) then you have an idea how important I feel the song and it's intrepretation to be to the film. Here we have a rough acoustic version with a very Jarboe-esque vocal cover that hopefully we can get some keys and/or drums laid down with in the final studio polish. For now enjoy it for what it is and check out Jenna's other work here