No State of the Wall as of yet, but it’ll come soon. Instead, I figure I should give a general update on things. All behind the cut.

So I don’t know if anyone has noticed, but there’s no October trailer for this year. It’s definitely a bummer for me since I always love putting them together, but simply put… this fall has kicked my ass more than any other before it.

It’s Longbox of the Damned’s 10th anniversary. As such, I had plans and ideas to make it really special and those plans are coming to fruition… but they’re not entirely done yet. And it’s going to be hard to put them together, but it’s necessary because a 10th anniversary doesn’t come along so often and I want to celebrate it. Longbox was an idea I had back in 2012 because I loved Cinemassacre’s Monster Madness, where James Rolfe looked at a horror movie per day the entire month of October. I got a bit of my fix for doing videos like it with the “A Quick Look At” series, which mostly focused on the bizarre original Amityville Horror series (there are 30+ Amityville movies now – not all made by the same company, obviously, and it’s something we’ll definitely get into on Late Night Double Feature eventually), but Longbox was my way of getting to do horror content daily with my own spin – the horror host aesthetic, the makeup, the voice… it’s come a long way. I still want to do the movie for it, but the plans kept getting shoved by the wayside (especially after COVID hit).

But the point is, writing this year was rough – partially it’s because I had so many longer videos during the summer that it made me fall behind on AT4W, and I’ve noticed that I have this problem that it’s hard for me to work on other projects if I’ve got one that’s really dominating my thoughts – it keeps from doing other stuff, too – conversations I need to have, doing side work on other stuff. Sure, if I have no choice in the matter, like I’m waiting on a cameo or something, it’s easier because I know it’s not on me, but if it’s, say, editing that needs to get done, it’s hard for me to get to work on other stuff. And thus writing Longbox kept getting pushed back and it was harder and harder for me to work on it – I still love doing it, but I just wasn’t motivated when I had other stuff on my mind. Finally Viga stepped in and helped me with a schedule that motivated me, but it was still rough going. I didn’t finish Longbox scripting until the 25th, and I couldn’t film for a few more days because I needed to get a few other things done first (like the scripts for the last two AT4Ws of September – both filmed, editing both at the same time, should be out soon since they’re shorter than the three I did before).

So when did I finally film Longbox? I finished two hours ago. And the first one may be the longest episode of Longbox to date… soooo yeah I don’t know if patrons will receive the video early, and for that I’m equally sorry. I’ve just run out of time.

This is in addition to the Halloween storyline for AT4W that I’m doing, which is scripted but not filmed yet since it involves other people and I need to accommodate their schedules. It’s going to be a great one, in my opinion (unrelated to the Contest, with effects still being done by the Game Show Reviewer, who has his own personal life stuff going on). Good news is it won’t be SUPER effects heavy, so it should still come out in October… though how many AT4W episodes there are in October is… a bit up in the air right now.

The plan was to cover The Ring volumes 3 and 4, then Ju-On: Video Side (AKA one of the Grudge mangas) since Ju-On is so closely tied to the Ring and we had an extra episode of the month, anyway. But this was also contingent on me being done with September AT4W sooner than this, so I don’t know if that plan is still going to happen, so we might end up cutting the Ju-On episode. I don’t want to, since I’ve cut so many episodes already and I’d like to keep the anniversary Clone Saga review free of the three-episode storyline (by the by, we’re doing the miniseries “Funeral For an Octopus” to follow-up on Doctor Octopus’ “””Death””” from last year), but that’s what it may come to. Plus I’ve signed on to do a project in the middle of October unrelated to AT4W because it sounds like it’ll be fun and it’ll pay really well, so I need to get a lot of content done before then.

Speaking of cutting episodes… we’re not doing Secret Origins Month this year. This is probably disappointing for a lot of people, especially since I’ve already declared we’re not doing it next year so I can devote the month to Doctor Who’s 60th anniversary, but this HAS to happen for two simple reasons:
1. I need a break. I need some time off so I can ACTUALLY CATCH UP. History of Power Rangers Month in April was supposed to do that, but instead I ended up being late with those because a convention AND Event Comics Month ended up leaking into it, so the four HOPR I WANTED to do got cut down to two and I still ended up off schedule AGAIN.
2. I’m going to be out of town for the first two weeks of November – two weddings AND a convention during that time period (the con hasn’t made the announcement yet AFAIK, so no saying what it is just yet). The last couple of years have proven that I’m no longer capable of rushing the episodes to completion before a trip like I used to (growing old sucks, kids), so I know it’s best to just take the time off.

Rather than once again make Secret Origins Month be condensed to just two weeks AGAIN, I’m just calling it a wash this year and will instead devote that remaining time to HOPR. I haven’t decided yet if I’m restoring Ninja Storm and Dino Thunder, or JUST Ninja Storm and then doing Dino Fury (whose final episodes dropped today), but I’ll have an official decision on that when I get around to doing the State of the Wall post. Or maybe cutting a Christmas episode from December and doing all three in a row (doubtful, but on the other hand December ad revenue is tempting).

But yeah, you can see now why I’ve been a bit quiet as of late and why things are still a bit uneven. I’m not burnt out – far from it. But I think in the coming year I’ll be making some modifications to the Patreon requests, because it tends to be these longer episodes that REALLY screw up the schedule. At first I was okay with longer ones if I’m already familiar with them… but I may decide on top of that that I’ll need additional funds to justify the added expense of it for episodes like that if they’re going to keep me from releasing videos otherwise. We’ll see.

Otherwise, have a happy Halloween everyone. Spooky things are coming and they’re going to be great.