Making Movies

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Martin Hash
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Joined: Wed Jan 20, 2010 2:02 pm

Making Movies

Post by Martin Hash » Tue Apr 18, 2023 8:58 am

Korean Telepresence Movie Poster.jpg
Telepresence Movie

“Toy Story,” the movie, came out in 1995; I know because I was making my first feature-length movie that year, “Telepresence.” At the time, that was a new word because the Internet was just starting out. The majority of the movie was live action with 18 minutes of CG, computer graphics, done with my software. Also, at the time, that was a big thing because it was all done on Intel 486 microprocessors and 400 meg of hard disk storage was hugely expensive. I wrote the movie with director, Ray Di Carlo, but he changed it so much after that, only the name, characters and key scenes were left over from my script. We did get a distributor but the movie never sold in the U.S.; it did in German, Korea, Japan and a handful of other countries, losing just about all the money I put into it. However, we did go to the Cannes Film Festival and learned a lot about the movie business.

The Tin Woodman of Oz Movie Poster.jpg
The Tin Woodman of Oz Movie

A decade later, I got the movie bug again; this time it was all animated using my software: “The Tin Woodman of Oz.” What made it unique was that it was animated by my customers of my, another first, and probably only time that’s been done. I wrote the screenplay, modifying the order of the book for continuity. I also wrote 9 original songs for the movie and 6 of them got incorporated into it. It was initially directed by Robert Taylor, semi-famous in animation, but he ended up quitting and I never replaced him. Me and my brother, Marshall, who did some of the animation, took it to Cannes, and we had a great time. We put DVDs of the movie into every box of software we sold, so it had good distribution but it never got into theaters. It was break-even given the whole experience.

The Scarecrow of Oz Movie Poster.jpg
The Scarecrow of Oz Movie

The year after that, I wrote the screenplay for another Oz movie, “The Scarecrow of Oz;” I was the voice of the Scarecrow. I wrote 6 songs for it but none got into the movie because my friend, Holmes Bryant, produced it, and he didn’t like songs in children’s movies? It was shown at several film festivals. Soon thereafter, my wife and I traveled the world for 10 years, and I got out of the movie business. Almost… I did write a third Oz screenplay, “The Marvelous Land of Oz,” that I intend to make when A.I. animation gets good enough. I haven’t lost the urge to make movies, and there’s still room in my movie shrine.

Moviemaking Shrine.jpg
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