There are people out there making great indie films and working on horror projects. There are people out there with a passion for film and a knack for the macabre. There are slews of writers, directors, actors, editors, and sound engineers; endless lists of assistants, crew and thespians that apply their craft daily to the medium they love. They all do a great job of it, too. Then you get the absolute nutters like Mike Lombardo.
Lombardo was working in a pizza shop when he created one of the best indie Christmas horrors I have ever seen. I’m Dreaming of a White Doomsday was a heartwrenching, twisting tail that–while admittedly peculiar–had me on the edge of my seat from start to finish. I also managed to get hold of and watch a few of his earlier films, of which I distinctly remember Long Pig and The Stall. Since his capturing of my imagination, I have followed his journey collecting all sorts of horror memorabilia as he tries to recreate the heyday of the VHS video store in his bedroom. It seemed like the man had set himself several life goals and was steadily checking them off of his bucket list. He later released a book–a horror anthology entitled
I was wrong. I was very happily wrong.
A sudden Indigogo announcement sent friends, family, and fellow horror fundies rushing to fund Lomabaro’s second feature film: Dead Format. Naturally, this had to involve retro horror, VHS tapes, and Lombardo’s signature sense of humour. Here is an excerpt from the Indogogo campaign:
Set in the early 2000s, on the brink of the collapse of the video rental industry, Dead Format is the story of an obsessed collector desperately clinging to the past with his vast movie archive while grieving the death of his father. When he finds a mysterious tape at his local VHS rental store, he discovers that sometimes nostalgia comes at a terrible price.
Based on the fan-favorite short story of the same name from Lombardo’s collection Please Don’t Tap on the Glass and Other Tales of The Melancholy & Grotesque, the film is one of the most personal projects Mike has tackled to date. When his dad passed away several years ago, he wrote the original short story as a way of coping with the loss. The film also incorporates Mike’s childhood memories of the video store, as well as his passion for collecting movies.
Clearly a personal and poignant production, we reached out to Lombardo to see if he wished to go into further detail about the upcoming project and he happily obliged. Below is the interview. Thanks for reading and as always, stay sordid. I’m going to let Lombardo have the last word this time around.
You know I adored I’m Dreaming of a White Doomsday. I felt that you had set out to achieve a lifelong dream by making that film and were now simply happy completing your ever-growing horror memorabilia collection. When did you decide that you wanted back in that creative chair and why this film in particular?
::Takes a big breath::
Making I’m Dreaming of a White Doomsday was absolutely a lifelong dream. I had wanted to make my own feature length horror film since I was literally a child, I just had no idea it would end up being an ultra bleak post apocalyptic Christmas movie, haha.
We made White Doomsday for $10,000 (which is less money than they spend on coffee in a week on a studio movie) on weekends, and it took 4 years to complete. Factor in then an additional 2 years for the festival circuit and the eventual DVD/Blu-ray release promotion, and it is no exaggeration when I say making that film was the most difficult thing I have ever attempted in my life.
After half a decade of White Doomsday, I was pretty burnt out. I ended up running two film festivals and judging for another 3 or 4 of them before I finally tapped out and decided to take a break. I decided that I needed to get my normal life in some kind of order and get a big people job and maybe a credit score.
I got into retail management and became a soulless corporate husk for 4 years. The pay was great, but I hated my life. I curbed my melancholy by finishing off my big box horror PC game collection since I now had the money to do so, but I was still pretty miserable. All the while my close friends, family, girlfriend and creative collaborators were telling me I needed to get back into it and make something new.
I am very thankful I have so many creative people that I admire in my life, and they persisted in yelling at me to make something, so eventually I released my first short story collection, Please Don’t Tap on The Glass and Other Tales of the Melancholy & Grotesque. The book was a collection of ultra raw and personal short stories I had written over the past decade including the original short story, I’m Dreaming of a White Doomsday. The book sold really well and ended up getting an ultra expensive limited edition hardcover release through Thunderstorm Books with an introduction by my favorite author, Edward Lee. That was enough to break through my rampant imposter syndrome and caused the old itch to start up again.
Dead Format was the first story in the book and very quickly became the fan favorite. I had a LOT of people asking if I would ever turn it into a film, and here we are.
Why crowdfunding? Do you feel like you are a big enough name in the indie community to be assured of that funding?
I am not fool enough to think of myself as a name of any size in any community. What I do think is that I have proved that I can make some cool stuff with very little money, and that I have an awesome team with me on this film all of whom have a lot under our belts, so I think people trust us to deliver.
This movie is ten times the size of I’m Dreaming of a White Doomsday, and there is no way I can personally fund it like I have for all my other projects. I really want to shoot this one the right way and while I love guerilla filmmaking, I want to level up with this one. The only way to do that is by raising the money through crowdfunding. This is me swinging for the fences bigtime and I hope to see everyone out there in the stands.
We are shooting for $60,000 which is a terrifyingly large amount of money to raise, but as of me writing these answers, we are just under 50% funded on the campaign in 9 days, over $11,000 of which were in the first 24 hours. I am floored by the support the project has gotten, and it has been a very emotional couple weeks for me.
Are we going to expect more of the same dark, depressing atmosphere from before, or are we in for something completely different?
It’s going to be a heavy film, yes, but while it has the melancholy and depression of White Doomsday, there are some glimpses of humor too. And it plays with some traditional horror tropes and takes the piss out of them which is going to be fun. I think it’s kind of shooting right down the middle between the old Reel Splatter shorts and White Doomsday.
Well, the crowdfunding seems to be going well so far; you are a fair bit passed the halfway mark. What was your inspiration for Dead Format?
Dead Format is an ultra-personal story that I wrote while I was dealing with the loss of my father and several friends. I started thinking about the merciless onslaught of time and how nostalgia can be such a blessing and a curse. I was looking back and mourning the loss of not just loved ones but of my carefree childhood days roaming the aisles of the video store when my biggest problem in life was whether to rent Blood Diner or Graveyard Shift.
It’s a story that encompasses everything I want to say as a filmmaker and a person at this point in my life. It’s about loss and grief and friendship and nostalgia. Thematically it ties into some of the things I was exploring in White Doomsday about the magic and innocence of childhood and how the world erodes that magic and as an adult how you would give anything to go back even just for a minute.
Who do you feel, apart from yourself, has really helped to make this dream a reality?
Oh man, there are so many people who supported me and helped guide me back onto the path. I know its cliche to say that I don’t want to list them because I’d inevitably forget too many people, but it’s true. I’d have to say at the moment, the biggest people would have to be my producers, Samantha Kolesnik, Nathan Ludwig, and of course Brian Keene. This project literally wouldn’t be happening if not for their help.
I also need to specifically mention Paul Hunt and Julie Kauffman, the directors of The Brilliant Terror, a documentary about grassroots horror filmmaking I was one of the stars of. That film being released and being able to travel around representing it at film festivals as far out as Cine Underground in Milan. The audience and critical response to that documentary and the constant encouragement of Julie and Paul was another reason I crawled back into the filmmaking world.
That’s of course not to take anything away from the armies of awesome people who I had the pleasure of working with on my own films and their projects over the years, they played a massive role as well, and I am forever indebted to all of them for their love and support over the years.
Will you move ahead even if you do not reach the full budget? And vice versa, what are your plans if you surpass your fundraising goals and what do you intend to do with the extra cash? Are there the usual “Stretch goals” people have come to expect?
This film IS happening come hell or high water. I have already invested a couple thousand dollars of my own money to start getting pre-production started so we could make the props and build the things we needed to set up the little mock video store set we have in the IndieGoGo campaign video we shot. I’ve been saving every penny we made from White Doomsday sales and all of that money is going right into Dead Format.
Since the response has been so incredible from the community, I feel pretty good about the chances of fully funding the campaign, but if for some reason we fall short, we will be doing private fundraising events to make up the budget if need be.
As for overfunding, such a thing doesn’t exist, haha. 60K is the bare minimum we need to shoot the film, and that’s if everything goes perfectly. The thing too that I don’t think many people realize about crowdfunding, is that a very large chunk of the final earnings is taken by fees from IndieGoGo and Kickstarter, taxes, and not to mention the cost of making and shipping all the actual perks. At the end of the day, we are pretty much saying goodbye to about 20% of that money right out of the gate.
I’m hoping we raise more than our initial goal as that will give us more shooting days which is the most important thing there is, as it ensures we have the time and freedom to make sure everything is exactly (or as close as we can make it) the way we want it.
As for stretch goals, we have a few ideas, but nothing concrete yet. I don’t want to say too much, but the one thing I’m very much hoping we can do is exclusive Video Castle slipcases for all the blu rays. I want to make them look like the yellow rental cases from the store with blood spattered on them.
I’m trying to not to get too excited about the possibility because we still have so far to go, but if you folks out there want them, we need everyone to keep donating to and sharing the campaign. That’s the only way we’re going to make it to the finish line and hopefully blow past that initial goal so we can do more fun stuff!
I’d like to wrap up my long winded rambling with a giant heartfelt thank you to everyone who has donated, shared, and supported Dead Format so far. I have been brought to tears numerous times in the last 9 days by the generosity and love of so many people and I cannot find words good enough to express the gratitude I feel. Instead, I will just sign off by saying I love you and remember to always keep it reel.
I’ll see you at Video Castle,
-Mike Lombardo
https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/dead-format#/
