Vancouver based band The Darkest of the Hillside Thickets are lending their Lovecraftian sound to Casting Call of Cthulhu. The track “Some Things Man Was Not Meant to Know” will be featured in the film’s finale. We are big fans of TDOTHT’s music and feel it will be the perfect note to end CCOC on. The Thickets were happy to help out and proliferate the work of HPL. We are especially happy ‘cause we weren’t sure if “Slow Ride” was going to work.
Cover your weak flesh and celebrate the short film you haven’t even seen with a sharp new shirt designed by Spacecadet Design and produced by Uptown Hustle Apparel. These nifty all-cotton T’s in various colours and styles may actually help attract evil. Each shirt bears the ancient symbol or “logo” from the film poster created by Spacecadet using non-euclidean geometrical shapes, which draw viewers in unknowingly.Buy now, quantities are unlimited. 
“What’s a Cthulhu?” they ask. Rather than scoff at their ignorance we provide here some handy little links that will help the insolent navigate through the grand world of HP Lovecraft and offer them a terrifying glimpse of what is to come.You’ve been warned.
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Last week some sinister specter from inside our crew leaked a secret still frame from within the walls of the editing room. The clip in question features the character Frank Clawstrum in what appears to be an advertisement for a product. Word of product placement in CCOC spread across the web like Nutella on toast and soon our primeval production was awash in rich, creamy controversy. What in the name of Colonel Sander’s are people thinking? What marketer of sound mind would dare associate themselves with the madness we intend to unleash? We here at Casting Call of Cthulhu wish to make it Crystal Light clear that we would never defame the name of HPL or dilute our message by allowing an advertiser to influence our artistry in any way, shape, or misshapen form. We are as authentic and true to our roots as Levi’s Original 501 Jeans.
With a rough edit complete and a scant-few pick-ups remaining we inch closer and closer to finishing our monsterpiece. But as we move forward I fear something will be left behind. The shoot day played host to many uncredible occurrences but of all the apparitions we captured on film none were so spellbinding as the phenomena know only as ‘Lazarus.’ The artist from up North, Oliphant, took time out from his busy schedule of painting and starring into the woods to visit the big smoke and play his part in our film. Laz had laid his artistic hand to two of our prosthetics and during the process he studied the script. Eager to exorcise his acting demons Laz offered himself up as the human sacrifice to CGI. The cast and crew were charmed by the mysterious Mr. Ioannou so we thought it only appropriate that we share the scene with everyone before his cues and quirks were tracked and transformed into something otherworldly. So here for the first and last time is the scene once spoken only of in secret.
The Casting Call of Cthulhu is cursed to have so many talented and evil individuals disassociated with our doomed offering. And it is time again to scrawl yet another name in the Productionomicon. It is our great displeasure to welcome Alter Ego. This Toronto-based post-production facility have already coloured and transferred our tainted stock and added a level of artistry our inbred-minds could have never anticipated. The film look is professional – if only we had a script to match. Alter Ego will continue their contribution with their Flame Artists removing the unsightly seams, strings, and foul-ups, basically the bits that bind us to reality, and adding our titles, glows, shapes in shadows, and another head to an actor’s body. This is no line of work for any God-fearing soul – brace yourselves.
Many are the secrets the darkness conceals and in darkness dwells the editor; lurking in shadow, behind the scenes, out of the audience’s sightline. The supreme irony being that editing is often the most important part of the process. The editor has ultimate control over how we see a scene and can often alter the fate of a film entirely. We have placed this ultimate power in the hands of Geoff Ashenhurst and the fine folks at Stealing Time. Geoff is a consummate professional with idealistic values and unreasonable goals making him a perfect fit for the project. Coincidently he is also the leader of his local Cult of Cthulhu, so he’s got that going for him.
We starred at the seemingly innocuous block of upholstery foam, cautiously silent, growing more ill at ease with every passing minute. For we knew that just beneath the soft exterior lay a horror so terrible it dare not be acknowledged, as if acceptance of it would challenge our already teetering sanity. Nevertheless, the terror was about to be freed from its plush prison for without it we could not film our tome of terror thus inducing an apocalyptic shockwave across our known universe. In our party was the producer Jessica, co-writer/actor Matt, and my partner Amanda. The team stood steady, blades poised, waiting on my instruction.
“So how do we do this?” asked Jess.
“Take a piece of foam and remove anything that doesn’t look like a claw,” I replied.
Earlier we had eaten a sacrificial feast of raw fish and rice downed with copious quantities of Dutch vodka. We hoped this meal would please That Which Lies Below and that the spirits would dull our conscious minds, that we may relinquish control so the old ones may enter our bodies and guide our hands. Failing that, at least we’d be totally loaded and filled with false-confidence. Here’s where we netted out.
We contacted all our contacts, friends called friends who called acquaintances, we made offerings of desecrated flesh to those that dwell beyond the stars, yet our cries went unanswered. Oh well, you know what they say, “stare into the void and the void stares back.” Desperate to film, we scoured the internet looking for a small, vulnerable, company to impose upon. This also proved fruitless, but in the process we came across the uncommonly kind people at North Fur FX & Mascots. They suggested that with some upholstery foam and latex we could fashion our own crude creations which would be as equally effective at invoking both fear and laughter as an effort on the part of a professional practicing on the plane of prostheitics. Jason from the company made it sound ridiculously simple like any blabbering idiot could do it. So we figured heck, we’re blabbering idiots, let’s give it a shot. Thanks Jason.
Throughout preproduction we have encountered countless curious souls who are prepared to dash their reputations against the rocks of risen R’lyeh in a futile attempt to break through the calm waters of sanity and embrace the madness of what lies below the surface, to catch even a momentary glimpse of what may be impossible. Yet, for all the eager followers who join our cult of the creative endeavor we still can’t find someone to help us make prosthetics. Surely such subject matter should attract an endless amount of artists engaged in the transformation of the flesh. After all, thanks to 4 Stroke, the creature now exists as a 3D model - for I have seen it with my own eyes! But props, something seemingly simple, has the entire production trapped in nether world. Perhaps the following illustrations, traced directly from Webster’s Necronomicon, were too confounding for puny prop-building minds to comprehend.
Or maybe they’re all just really busy and don’t want to work for free.
