A Darkened Bliss Discussion Episode Summary

Corey Allen  00:00

Alright, it’s been a while you’re about to do this.

Bill Cornelius  00:02

No, not at all. I forgot

Corey Allen  00:11

Hi, I’m Corey. I’m Bill and together

Bill Cornelius  00:14

that this is what I say we host the info focus podcast. I remembered I remembered that part. Yeah, barely.

Corey Allen  00:21

We do host the infocus podcast and we’re back.

Bill Cornelius  00:24

We are back.

Corey Allen  00:25

Fall Break. Yeah, little fall break action.

Bill Cornelius  00:28

Since we’re not in school anymore and we don’t get a true fall break we we assign ourselves one as adults.

Corey Allen  00:34

It’s very important to prioritize.

Bill Cornelius  00:37

Yes.

Corey Allen  00:38

What what? Have you done anything fun on our fall break?

Bill Cornelius  00:41

I’ve done some things. Yeah. You know, I’ve gotten into some stuff. How about you?

Corey Allen  00:45

Yeah. Same. worked on a couple of music videos.

Bill Cornelius  00:49

Excellent.

Corey Allen  00:50

Bought. Everybody keeps calling it a grip truck. I’m not calling it a grip truck is I’m not trying to be a grip.

Bill Cornelius  00:56

Well, that’s I mean, that’s the only kind of truck there is. Production ban.

Corey Allen  01:00

Ah, yes. Yeah, to camera van lighting, a little bit of everything. And it’ll truly be

Bill Cornelius  01:05

a production van. When you have teamsters driving it. It’s true, only then. It’s true.

Corey Allen  01:12

But yeah, mostly a couple of really cool music video projects, pre production on a couple more. That Kindle wild video,

Bill Cornelius  01:21

I think, which is amazing.

Corey Allen  01:22

Thank you. Yeah.

Bill Cornelius  01:23

Thank you love that video.

Corey Allen  01:24

I think I’m one of our last Friday episodes. I may have talked a little bit about some of the pre production of that one. It turned out really well. Thanks. A lot. A lot of really interesting lighting setups. It was fun.

Bill Cornelius  01:37

Yeah. Had that that fun. 80s Happy innocent times. kind of vibe to it. It was good. Yeah.

Corey Allen  01:45

Yeah. Was a lot of fun. And we’re, we’re gonna do another one for Kindle here in a couple of weeks. So it should be good. Awesome. Somewhere. Like a little pop up chapel. Outdoors. Book of Life inspired kind of vibe.

02:01

Nice. Yeah. We’ll be looking for that. Thanks.

Bill Cornelius  02:06

You’ve got you’ve got a high bar now after that first one. You got to do better than that one.

Corey Allen  02:12

That’s hard to do. That’s the plan. always improving. And you had the cool mirror shot from Neon Demon. Yeah, which was fantastic. We built we built that in my garage. Built a whole apparatus for it. Yeah, we actually still have those mirrors. I think for this music video. We’re shooting this coming weekend. I think we may reuse them for different artists, but I think we’re gonna we may end up shattering them completely, you know, covering the floor. And just really, really moody vibe. We’ll see. That’s cool. I like it. Otherwise, they’re heading for the dumpster unless you needing the giant mirrors for a project.

Bill Cornelius  02:52

I can’t say I do at the moment. I did write a short called Alien mirror, which was a mirror in it. So I mean, I don’t know we could repurpose at least one of them. Yeah. Okay.

Corey Allen  03:03

So you’ve been writing on your fall break?

Bill Cornelius  03:05

Yes. I have written I would say I’ve been writing all through COVID quite honest. Yeah. I think I’ve written roughly seven short films. We’re talking like two to three pages apiece. Yeah.

Corey Allen  03:19

We need to shoot those.

Bill Cornelius  03:20

I know. Yeah. I’ve been trying to, I have a tendency to get really ambitious men in my mind, creatively. And so I’ll just like, shoot for the moon when I’m writing this two page script. And I’m like, wait a second. Do we want to make this? Without like, a million dollar budget for three minutes short?

Corey Allen  03:39

Like, man, this is a really good couple of pages. But it feels like

Bill Cornelius  03:43

10 grand? Yeah, yeah, we’re not gonna do that. Trying to keep it slim. Yeah. Slim and cool. And high quality.

Corey Allen  03:51

All right. Anything else you’ve been working on? Well,

Bill Cornelius  03:54

speaking of short films, yeah. There is one in pre production right now. We we’ve mentioned it before, a few times on the show. My vampire film, a darkened bliss. If you’ve if you’re a longtime listener of the infocus podcast, you will have gotten a really early few real real early preview of that in the form of me mentioning it a few times. But yeah, we’re full on doing a crowdfunding campaign for it right now that we’re in the midst of

Corey Allen  04:26

as gonna say it’s, it’s not it’s not just in pre production where like, heavy in Oh, it’s crowdfunding right now. Like, let’s get it I would

Bill Cornelius  04:34

say development and we’re probably in development stage at this point. And you know, we we’ve had some amazing donors that have hooked us up

Corey Allen  04:44

and wait before you go any further, www.adarkenedbliss.com Correct. To learn more,

Bill Cornelius  04:51

yes, not not, not just darken, bliss, calm, a darkened bliss, calm.

04:58

I said that right. Yes. Okay,

Bill Cornelius  05:00

I’m just making sure other people don’t mess it up because I thought about that the other day I was like, Oh man, people could just be like, cuz I just off off the cuff of refer to it as Dr. Willis. But it’s got an A and

Corey Allen  05:12

a very important www.adarkenedbliss.com Oh yeah. Can Learn more. Yeah. But and let’s learn more right now.

Bill Cornelius  05:22

Yeah. So this is a short that I wrote in an attempt to create a proof of concept for a feature. Now this feature has been simmering as an idea for I think, since I was 21 is when I first got the concept. So it’s, it’s come about in a number of different ways over the years that it was like it was, should it be a novel, I tried to write it as a novel at one point. I tried to write it as an animated short at one point that I actually promoted on MySpace. That’s how long ago it was. Oh, my. I I’ve done this whole time. I’ve done so much concept art to the various iterations of the story. But

Corey Allen  06:08

you have so much concept art. Oh, my god. That was one of the perks for a backer on Indiegogo. Yeah. Is like a really nice coffee table book. Right?

Bill Cornelius  06:21

Yes. And it would say, you know, storyboards, concept art, art that is actually going to be used in the creation of the film. And this early stuff that I’m speaking of some of this real early concept art, that was when I was still sort of working this idea out, you know, in my 20s, just, there’s so much content, it’s gonna be a great little art, but I want one, you know, like, I want to, I want my own copy. Yeah. Not just loose drawings everywhere.

Corey Allen  06:52

Yeah. What other perks are there on the crowdfunding campaign? other

Bill Cornelius  06:59

perks are, we’ve got one called face in the crowd. There’s at least three performance scenes in the film, because it is about Nashville, and it is about musicians. And it is about vampires. Most importantly, what a great combination. Right, exactly. Hence, the acoustic guitar with blood on it that the image that represents this film, yeah, because the whole idea there was, what better single image to represent the marriage of Nashville, and vampires than a bloody guitar. I mean, I think you nailed simple. Oh, thank you, man. Appreciate it.

Corey Allen  07:35

Alright, so a face and a crowd

Bill Cornelius  07:36

face in the crowd. And that is being an extra and one of these performance scenes because we obviously need to populate the venue that the characters are playing at. So your face in that crowd? It could be you.

Corey Allen  07:50

Yeah, so you might not know the answer to this. But let me ask because I’m sure somebody is curious. Yeah. What is this, like? A featured extra like? Like, I have a little spotlight on my face? Or like, I’ll get a couple extra seconds as the camera goes by? Have you put any thought to that?

Bill Cornelius  08:07

No. And I would say the featured extra thing, because those particular scenes are set up to introduce one of the particular main characters that is in the crowd creeping and being ominous. And so there will be a lot of focus on Him, obviously, in the crowd, but because he’s in the crowd, we’re gonna see the faces of the folks in there. Yeah. So you know, if you go for the face in the crowd Park, there’s a chance that you’ll get to be one of the folks that gets to surround our lead. One of our leads that’s in the crowd there.

Corey Allen  08:44

Perfect. All right, what else?

Bill Cornelius  08:47

So we also have, you know, the the perks that you might expect for a film like a digital copy. We also have a signed Blu Ray copy on another tear, fancy, fancy, fancy, signed posters, little mini posters, the script, you can get a copy of the script signed by the casting crew. And we’ve got some perks such as a table read. So we’ve talked about it before on the show, but a table read, you know, is when you get the cast together before you shoot, have everybody sit around and read through the script, talk it out. It’s it’s almost like a rehearsal sort of thing.

Corey Allen  09:27

Almost. So some perks available for those that maybe are more interested in, like the production side. Yeah,

Bill Cornelius  09:35

yeah. And so because of COVID and because people are all over the place. We’ll have a zoom option for that. Yeah, let’s say because we’re this is all going to be in Nashville. So let’s say you’re out in Arizona or something. You can come in on Zoom and join us for the table read. And we have a perk we’re also behind the scenes related us. Just meeting with you too. The answer your questions personally about the production. It’s almost like a production meeting. But you can be a fly on the wall with us. Yeah, the producers

Corey Allen  10:10

good opportunity to ask questions about all the inner workings of everything that goes on some decision making, like how you come to creative decisions and yeah, just pre production stuff in

Bill Cornelius  10:22

general, which is pretty cool. Yeah. And then like we mentioned, the, the, the art book, we also have a digital treasure chest as we’re calling it, which is kind of the full digital package, the film, the original music, there’s going to be original music in this that has been recorded. We’re gonna we’re gonna talk about that. We’re gonna get into that. And just some concept art there too. few bits and pieces storyboards, that sort of thing.

Corey Allen  10:49

Yeah. And then the digital treasure chest. I think it’d be really cool. Like, yeah, get a digital copy of the movie. digital downloads of all the original songs behind the scenes content. Yeah. Basically the bonus features of a DVD.

Bill Cornelius  11:05

Yeah, just all virtually. And all of these these tier donations include a social media shout out. One of them at one tear us you get the special thanks in the credits. And if you love us a lot, and you really believe in this film, we offer executive producer credit. Yeah. And we’ve already had one person hooked that up.

Corey Allen  11:28

Yeah. Shout out to Phillip Cordell. Yeah. Hi, Fi productions.

Bill Cornelius  11:31

Thank you so much, Philip. So if you want to be in on executive producer, there’s still time there is time. There’s plenty of time. Yeah. Actually, there’s not plenty of time. We’re running out of time.

Corey Allen  11:41

As of today. We’re recording today on November 14, there 20 days remaining. Yes. And we are here this episode tomorrow, there will be

Bill Cornelius  11:52

19 days. Yeah. So and we we are not as close to our goal as we’d like to be. So time is of the essence. We’ve got a great film to bring to you. We’re going to employ local crew, which is a big thing. Especially, you know, as COVID as shut gigs down. We’re gonna have a safe set where we’re gonna hire people and bring on some locals so people can work again. That’s a big important thing. And that’s honestly one of the primary uses for the funds that we are raising is so we can hire the crew we need and bring on all these local, talented people and assemble the A team. He has film.

Corey Allen  12:39

Yeah. Alright, so if you would like to make a donation and funds to help make this movie happen, we would greatly appreciate it. You can learn more, and the link will take you directly to the Indiegogo campaign. www.adarkenedbliss.com Correct. Yeah. Now let’s talk a little bit about some of the pre production work that’s gone on. That he talked about some of the original music. Yes, that’s available. I have a copy of that queued up. We can give a little sample here. Yeah. But before we do, or maybe I’ll hit play and we could just talk over it as it kind of gets into it. Yeah, there’s obviously a little history a little backstory with this

Bill Cornelius  13:21

song. Do you want to talk about its origin before after we could even talk a little

Corey Allen  13:26

bit about it. So it’s okay. It is a cover song it is that we got the rights to have covered from an artist that you and I worked with a few years ago Transylvania stud? Yeah. Andrew Godfrey, amazing musician. Yes, he does a ton of really good work and actually just moved back to Nashville. Oh, really? Yeah. And another and has is working on some new stuff. That’ll be cool.

Bill Cornelius  13:51

And he is is metal like post grunge? Yeah.

Corey Allen  13:55

Doom rock, Doom rock. It’s really it’s actually really good music. Yes. All that

Bill Cornelius  14:02

it’s great. It’s titled or yeah,

Corey Allen  14:05

how we’re approaching it.

Bill Cornelius  14:06

And so he did a song called in over your head, which we did the music video for you directed I was DP. That’s the one we shot in the prison, which I think we’ve mentioned on the show before how to shoot it was Yeah, and how loud drums are in a prison cell. Yeah. So so we took that song and I went to a local producer engineer in town. And basically was like, Can you turn this hard metal song into a pop song? And not just any pop song?

Let’s be clear. I’m looking for a specific type of pop like a moodier right Halsey ask, like, you know, indeed, darker type of pop. And I think I gave him a few song choices from Transylvania study and and over your head was the one where he was like cyclists absolutely can be made into a pop song. Yeah. And so what you’re hearing right now? Yeah, the results of that

Corey Allen  15:17

and this is a producer local here in town.

Bill Cornelius  15:19

Yeah. His name’s James. Okay. And he did some great work

Corey Allen  15:39

I would say, based on the, like, the source materials. Wow. Yeah, that to

Bill Cornelius  15:45

which I think we should listen to as well just see, you know how incredible it is that he may

Corey Allen  15:53

I can, I can get that back and pull that up. And we can hear that. But I think like the inspiration like the mood board, like the the what you had in mind that you sent me, that’s actually really impressive that he could take the original song and get it so close to what you had in mind.

Bill Cornelius  16:11

That’s the thing. When he first sent it to me, I was in my car and I was like, I have to listen to this right now. And I pulled over to listen to it. And I almost wept. I was like, this is exactly what I want. Which, you know, as a creative that doesn’t often happen where you get exactly what your vision is.

But he was really good about following you know, the, the, what I call the moods and tones, which is what I sent him was like as what you were saying a sample of, you know, this this type of sound I’m looking for because what what we’re doing in this film, you know, you hear vampires you’re like, and you hear musicians and you think of stuff like Queen of the Damned and like, industrial metal and you know, typical Gothic vampire stuff. Yeah, we’re not doing that here.

We’re changing the game a little bit. We’re making it we’re making our vampire lead more unassuming, just a pop singer, just a younger girl that’s moved to Nashville to make it big, which we see so many of those. Yeah, playing the venues playing the bars and clubs on an unassuming you’d see her in line at Starbucks, right? Like, regular person and sings pop music. And I found just in thinking about it and conceptualizing this that the juxtaposition of pop music, and like blood and horror and vampire type stuff is really disturbing. There’s like a disturbing because you’re expecting a different feel from the music and then add in Nashville. Yes. And then add in Nashville and then you get visuals that don’t quite gel with what you’re thinking you feel from the music

Corey Allen  17:50

fair. How many off right from Yeah,

Bill Cornelius  17:52

so that is exactly the route that we went and the music is spot on.

Corey Allen  17:59

Yeah, so we have Transylvania studs original track here queued up. Yeah, so just play a quick little sample here.

Bill Cornelius  18:07

It is very different. So you can already tell right off the bat. And of course James like next to this What is it have like a two minute intro of just dirty guitar.

Corey Allen  18:22

It’s not quite that long, but like it

Bill Cornelius  18:24

really builds it builds up

Corey Allen  18:25

quite a bit. Just some good heavy drums and

Bill Cornelius  18:29

yeah, and he he increased the tempo a little bit because the original songs got a very measured tempo to it. Yeah. Also, it went from male vocalists to female vocalist and the cover.

Corey Allen  18:45

And like worked really well. Yeah.

Bill Cornelius  18:52

So our lead, like I mentioned is is a girl singer. The song was made to be what she is actually singing in the film. Hence the female vote. Yeah. So this is Andrew Godfrey. Yes.

Corey Allen  19:12

He has such a like a good grungy feel. Yeah, like definitely audio slave and spy. Oh,

Bill Cornelius  19:19

yeah. It’s definitely got the early 90s Seattle vibe to it.

Corey Allen  19:27

Yeah, so like, really, really good interpretation of his song into what you like really wanted and needed for your for your film.

Bill Cornelius  19:38

Yeah, kind of astonishing, actually. Like it’s pretty impressive. Yeah. But that was pulled from that.

Corey Allen  19:43

So if you’ve seen the crowdfunding video, the backing track for that is a stripped down version of the song as well,

Bill Cornelius  19:53

right? That’s correct. Yeah. And there will be another there’ll be at least one more song in the film. I have yet to get to that I wanted to do one, just to see what could be done. And I’m incredibly impressed. So James will have my business at least one more time. Nice, real excited about the music. Because the thing is with a film where music is such a big concentration, I mean, hell, there’s live performance scenes in the film, you don’t want to go skimping on the music, you don’t want to cut corners. So you want to make sure that it’s in line with the vision and it’s not some cheesy, whatever that your nephew made or something, you know, like, I wanted to make absolutely sure that I could get good quality music. And I

Corey Allen  20:44

like that, like the actual production of the songs that she will be performing. Like they weren’t an afterthought. No. In fact, it probably the most completed thing other than like storyboards and the script itself, from a what would actually make it onto screen like that is the final master. Yeah, of that song. Yeah, like ready to go.

Bill Cornelius  21:11

And so if you do the face in the crowd perk, you will be there on set when we play that song dozens of times. So be prepared to sing along. Yes. Sing along, you know the words. Yeah, you’re supposed to know the words. That’s your that’s your first bit of direction folks that are going to be extra. Now the word know the words. Yeah, you definitely will by the end of the shoot.

Corey Allen  21:35

Nice. So from pre production standpoint as well, like storyboards. Is that like, 90%? There? 100%. There.

Bill Cornelius  21:44

It’s about 90%. Yeah, storyboards I’ve mentioned on the show before are very important to me. I like to draw. But I also like to have that visual outline visible visual representation of what’s going to happen. Yeah. And Corey, I have tapped you for Director photography on this film. You did.

Corey Allen  22:05

I did write your surprise. I’m very excited.

Bill Cornelius  22:09

Originally, you were producer, you’re still producer but also defeated. And so I want those storyboards to help you as well, as my DP, thank you as a guide, you know, just like this. So you can flip through these pages or scroll through or whatever it is, and know exactly what shots we’re doing. Yeah. Think about the lighting beforehand, because you’ve got the shot and the opposition. We’re

Corey Allen  22:32

definitely gonna diagram it all.

Bill Cornelius  22:36

Oh, yeah. We should. Yeah. Yeah. It’s gonna be great and very technical. I’m also putting together a color swatch thing for each scene that I’m going to send your way at some no boy. So we know exactly what sorts of tones and while we’re going five we want Yeah,

Corey Allen  22:55

so for, hopefully on the spot here. Yeah. And I can edit this out if I need to. Hopefully, I won’t have to. But for the listeners of the podcast, could we get like, maybe just a screenshot of some storyboards to share? Just include a link? Oh, show notes? Absolutely. A little a little teaser, a little hidden. Yeah, jam, a little nugget.

Bill Cornelius  23:17

And if you’re if you’re even more up on my posts, which, unless you’re probably me, you’re not. I’ve shared the story boards on Instagram before and just not told anybody what, that’s what, like months ago. Alright, so you do some digging. Alright.

Corey Allen  23:37

So but check the show notes. I’ll I’ll get at least one page. Yeah. From bill and we’ll get it posted up somewhere private.

23:45

Absolutely. That’s cool. All right. A sneak peek.

Corey Allen  23:49

All right. Anything else fun that’s been going on from pre production standpoint. We started scouting locations or maybe got a couple spots in my

Bill Cornelius  23:58

I’ve been thinking about some locations. I know we briefly actually talked about the place we’ve been recording this podcast and gnomes. Studios. Yeah. As a potential spot.

Corey Allen  24:11

Yeah. That would definitely could fit the vibe pretty easily in a couple of those scenes.

Bill Cornelius  24:17

But there’s a really great and I do believe we talked about this in one of our films, go Friday’s the evey like the vacation. Yeah, website, or app or dad’s website. I don’t think it’s an app. It’s a website, just a website. But they, you know, they’ve they’ve gotten really big and very prominent in the last year or two. And they’re constantly emailing me locations. And I gotta be honest, like, I’m looking at him. I’m looking at everyone, I’m thinking about this film, I’m like, oh, maybe it’s something a hidden gem we know about that fits my vision. So yeah, that’s gonna be a fun part. You know what we should also talk about the guitar shoot.

Corey Allen  24:55

Oh, yeah, we booked that studio through

Bill Cornelius  25:00

Yeah, speaking of evey, that’s a hashtag not sponsored but if you would like it if you’d like to we’re not against it reach out.

Corey Allen  25:06

Yeah, that was fun. We did. We had a donor guitar. Yes. A quart of theatrical blood.

Bill Cornelius  25:13

Yes.

Corey Allen  25:14

And yeah, that was a good time.

Bill Cornelius  25:17

Yeah. And I’m gonna be sharing some behind the scenes stuff from that. Shoot. I’ve been withholding some stuff. I didn’t even know you had that. Oh, yeah, I got I got some things and it’s it’s really incredible to see because it looks if you’ve seen it. And if you go to www.adarkenedbliss.com you will immediately see what we’re talking about. It’s this bloody guitar. That’s representing the film. And we shot that against a black backdrop. We just had the guitar propped up and we we ran blood down it. Yeah. Stage of not real blood stage blood. Yeah. I didn’t sacrifice for for my film. But we shot on anamorphic ‘s and looked really nice.

Corey Allen  26:03

Yeah, that was fun. We did just a couple of Aperture lights and other crazy. Yeah. And the Gemini on on a jib. In do a lot of that with a macro. Student. We some of the close up stuff. Yeah. And then the nice big wide with the little anamorphic flare? Yes.

Bill Cornelius  26:23

Which I know Atlas was really excited about the anamorphic shot because they shared it on Instagram.

Corey Allen  26:29

And they’re really supportive lens company that they’re they love to support filmmakers that use their stuff.

Bill Cornelius  26:36

Yeah. Which is cool. And we will be using their stuff on this film.

Corey Allen  26:40

That’s right. Atlas. Yeah. FYI, Atlas,

Bill Cornelius  26:43

we got some great stuff coming. Some juicy lens flare coming your way.

Corey Allen  26:48

Shot on red. Yeah. Shot on Atlas, we’ll probably use the Gemini and the Komodo. Like It’d be my guess.

Bill Cornelius  26:58

You’re hearing it live. We’re actually talking about what we’re going to use for gear. Once we get this funded, but we need your help,

Corey Allen  27:07

and we definitely would love your support. Yes. Even if it’s just like the the minimum like you could do $1 And get no perks if you want it.

Bill Cornelius  27:18

And we’ll be very happy with your donation. Absolutely.

Corey Allen  27:21

What’s the minimum donation that gets you a copy of the movie?

Bill Cornelius  27:26

$10 I believe early bird so that’s only a limited quantity. Yeah.

Corey Allen  27:31

So you got $10 to spare. Yeah, we would love to put it to use.

Bill Cornelius  27:36

And if you want to just help fund a local production, indie filmmakers bringing together talented people around town locally, this is your opportunity.

Corey Allen  27:46

Do it www.adarkenedbliss.com

Bill Cornelius  27:50

get at it. Get it and we will love you. And we will shout you out. And maybe you’ll be in the crowd if you decide to pick that perk. Yeah, that’d be cool. Yeah. All right. It’s

Corey Allen  28:03

been fun. It’s been great catching up. Yeah. We are officially back. Yes. So this hopefully you’ll hear us this Monday. And then we have Luke dye. Who’s a good editor friend of the show?

Bill Cornelius  28:19

Yes. Who I know some of you have been patiently waiting for the loop die up. He’s got a lot of fans out there that have been DMing me about when his episodes coming out. So it will be very soon. So

Corey Allen  28:32

Luke should be our next episode here just in a couple of weeks. And then we’ll have Friday episodes back in the hopper. So we’re excited to be back. Yes. A lot of great filmmakers on the agenda coming up over the next couple of months. So look forward to those. Absolutely. Bill, any other last minute requests?

Bill Cornelius  28:52

I don’t think so. Just support local filmmaking. Help us get this film off the ground www.adarkenedbliss.com. There it is case, in case you missed it the other dozen times. We’ve mentioned it on

Corey Allen  29:06

that’s what I was looking for. All right. Make sure you check us out on Instagram at infocus pod or online at infocus podcast.com. And if you liked what you heard today, go ahead and subscribe. If you’re on Apple podcast, please leave us a rating. It would help us out a ton it would. And until next time, feed your

Bill Cornelius  29:25

crew. We’ll be feeding ours on a darkened bliss.

Corey Allen  29:29

Yeah

A sneak preview of the storyboards…