Comic-Con 2008 - Gone in a Flash! (0)

Posted on 28 July, 2008 in News Blurbs

Well, another Comic-Con is over and now I can look forward to next year.  This year felt like a different kind of crowd at Con, with attendance at an all time high I think there were some ruder individuals in the crowd.

Steel Web Studios had a good year at the Con, despite the fact several vendors told us their sales were down by as much as 80%.  We have a much different mentality about attending Comic-Con than most.  Rather than trying to make a ridiculous profit, we aim to connect with our fans and make new fans, so it is my main philosophy to sell items at a price anybody can afford, we started our $5.00 DVD program two years ago and it has been a hit!  For $5.00 you can buy one of our DVDs, get it autographed and add it to our collection.  This is a great deal for any fan as our autographs have sold for as high as $45.00 on eBay. On Sunday, we did the unthinkable and sold our DVDs for $1.00 each - yeah, it was a fucking crazy idea, but it worked - and we sold out of all the stock we took to Con.

On a personal level, I was ale to attend a few panels and walk the floor in my Dr. Phobia costume.  I had a ton of pictures taken of me and now I’m starting to see them show up on blog, photo streams and even news sites.  Personally I hate having my photo taken, but in costume, I don’t mind.  It’s just more branding for the company - and by the looks on most people’s faces it’s a rather frightening imprint.

Fans wanted to know if we had anything new to sell and sadly the answer was no.  The fires in October set us back quite a bit and it has been harder to recover than usual. The spike in gas prices and living expenses hasn’t helped much either.  Despite the downside, the energy of the crowd and positive feedback from fans has left me very optimistic about going foreword. It is my personal goal to have two new DVDs ready for Con next year -now it’s time to deliver.

 

Tags: Comic-Con, Conventions

Fangoria 2008 (0)

Posted on 28 April, 2008 in News Blurbs

Well, we have returned from the Fangoria Weekend of Horrors in Los Angeles. This was our second year exhibiting at the show and the first year it was held at the LA Convention center.

I’m having some mixed reviews about the whole experience. Luckily the positives outweigh the negatives, but the negatives were huge and psychologically damaging.

Let’s start with the negatives… Everything was looking cool heading up to the convention, we put in our order for a table early, picked a cool spot, and we thought everythign was cool. Four days before the show we get an email from Creation Entertainment, who run organize the show, that they had previously been mistaken on the type of seller permit we needed for the show - and that we had to get a new type of permit or we couldn’t sell anything. Four days before the show? Since when have you known any major city to just - poof - issue a permit of any kind. We were terrified that we had spent all this money to get ready for this convention and at the last minute we had to get a new permit. WTF? So, Kristen and I sprinted into action, handling the paperwork, faxing it in, calling the City of Los Angeles… it was a pretty fucking stressful situation around here for a few days before the show. On Thursday, Los Angeles finally issued our permit and we heard that there had been a large number of others sprinting to get their permits issued also.

The other cluster fuck about this show was in part due to Creation Entertainment and GES, the union that runs setting up the convention hall. Creation Entertainment issues each vendor two wristbands - but GES only issues you one table and one chair. Additional chairs are $97 per day, per chair. Again, WTF? On top of that, even though electricity was included in every other vendor event I have attended, they wanted another $105 to set up our electricity? Fuck them. We didn’t pay it.

On to the positive about the show… our Hotel was nice, just right up the block from the Convention Center. We had a nice large room that was close to the elevators - this was especially good because we gound just hop into the elevator, go down a few floors and get off at the restaraunt and bar area.

The show went well over all. I personally don’t think. besides all the hype, that there were alot of customers at the show. Now, this could have been because it was in a larger venue and much more spread out, but we had a booth in a good place and I didn’t see that much foot traffic. It will be interesting to see how many fans showed up and how many vendors bailed because of the screw up over the permits and fees.

We had the lovely Caroline Pierce at our booth for the entire weekend and even Dr. Phobia made a few appearances as well. It was pretty funny because this was a horror convention, yet there were a number of people who were absolutely terrified of Dr. Phobia.

When it was all over we had seen old fans and made some new ones. We had seen old friends and made some new ones and we had made some good networking connections in the horror community. If anything, this little convention lets us practice for Comic-Con which is a little less than 3 months away. Whoo Hoo!

Tags: Conventions

Comic-Con 2007 (0)

Posted on 30 July, 2007 in News Blurbs

I just wanted to thank everybody for coming down to see us at Comic-Con this year. The first year you have a booth at the Con, you always have to wonder, “Should I have spent all that fucking money on this?” After this year, our second year, when I was still wondering if I should have spent the money, it was incredibly rewarding to have people running up to us and asking where the new DVD was. That feeling was incredible.

If it were not for my fans, these films would not go very far… but thanks to my fans these films have gone much farther than I ever thought they would have. All I can say is thank you, and if you want to see more films from me, please just keep being terrific fans. Tell your friends about the movies, show the movies to your friends, but most of all, please encourage them to buy their own copy. I’m a small indie film producer. Money I should be putting into my daughter’s college fund and my 401K - but I make movies instead. I can’t keep making movies you love if I don’t earn money back to at least make the next one.

Thank you all for your support and I am happy to say we have already reserved our table for next year’s Comic-Con and we will have a table at the 2008 Los Angeles Weekend of Horrors also. I’ll see you there!

Tags: Comic-Con, Conventions

Comic-Con 2006 (0)

Posted on 24 July, 2006 in News Blurbs

Comic-Con was a fucking blast this year. We had a ton of fun hosting our first dealer table there. I was personally amazed at how many people recognized our film and gave us a lot of compliments about it. The other thing that astonished me was the fact people would buy a copy of Slaughter Disc and then come back the next day and rave about how much they enjoyed it. Of course people always want to know about the next film I’m working on. Some get a little depressed when I tell them I’m not going to rush out and make a sequel right away but most everybody respects that.

My next project is called Mr. Buttons and it’s going to be a short film about a mysterious little clown doll. I hope to get it filmed this fall and we’ll include it on the Tales from the Carnal Morgue DVD in 2007.

Thanks for your support, but now I’ve got to get back to work

Tags: Comic-Con, Conventions