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GODKILLER: WALK AMONG US

DEMO REEL

This is a sizzle reel for my first "illustrated film" Godkiller: Walk Among Us. We designed this style prior to the rise (and fall) of motion comics... unlike motion comics this is intended more as a blend of cinema & comics, a new format of sequential art & experimental animation. It got a great response and we're working on the sequel now. (I wrote & directed it, Muckcracker illustrated it.) If you're in North America, you can watch the whole thing on Hulu or Netflix (I'm working on getting it free on YouTube for people outside NA).

PREVIEW SCENE

This was the first preview scene we released for Godkiller, featuring voice performances by Lance Henriksen (Aliens) and Danielle Harris (Halloween movies).

TOMMY & DR. WEST SCENE

This is a longer Godkiller sequence from the beginning of Walk Among Us. You'll notice how low-fi this is in terms of animation, even lower-fi than a normal motion comic. Besides the fact that Godkiller predated most motion comics, there's a reason why we styled it this way: we were looking to experiment with a marriage of cinema & sequential art (as opposed to motion comics' hybrid of comics & cartoons). We opted to limit the amount of animation and instead rest on the illustrations so you can really absorb them. Instead of driving the pace by animating the visuals, we drive the pace with the audio by building it out like a radio play. The storytelling should work just as well with your eyes closed, but of course then you'd miss out on Muckcracker's magnificent visuals.

Ben Templesmith's BLACK SKY (teaser)

This is a teaser for a project I'm collaborating on with Ben Templesmith. It's a pretty awesome world & story he created. We both got sidetracked from this, but I'm hoping we can get back on it soon.

Atari Teenage Riot RAGE (video)

This is a music video I directed for the band Atari Teenage Riot. It combines footage from the 1999 WTO Protests in Seattle, the 2000 World Bank Protests in Washington DC, and the 2000 May Day Protests in Berlin. All the color footage is from protests inside the US, only the b&w stuff is Berlin.

LOCKE & KEY (motion comic test clip)

A company hired me to direct a Locke & Key motion comic. The project ultimately didn't happen (yet), but I think the demo clip we did came out pretty cool looking. It's a great series, I'd love to work on it in some way.

OCCUPY COMICS (Kickstarter video)

Back when I first heard about Occupy Wall Street, I wanted to help but I felt really disconnected because I live in LA now. However, it occurred to me that NY Comic Con was coming up and it could be a good place to spread the word about OWS, since Occupy was getting very little news coverage at the time and NYCC would be welcoming over 100,000 people who seem to care about justice & heroism. So I reached out to a bunch of my comics friends and we decided to do a little comics zine about Occupy that we'd spread at NYCC, but in between that moment and NYCC the pepper sprayings started and spreading the word about Occupy was no longer needed. So we decided instead to put together a project that would do two things: 1. raise money to support the Occupiers, 2. create an art-based time capsule of Occupy and its message. We designed a graphic novel anthology funded on Kickstarter with all money raised being donated to the Occupiers. It started small, but kinda blew up with an amazing roster of over 50 comics pros including 30 Days of Night's Steve Niles & Ben Templesmith, The Walking Dead's Charlie Adlard, Dresden Dolls' Amanda Palmer, activist-artist Molly Crabapple, Maus' Art Spiegelman, and even V For Vendetta creators Alan Moore & David Lloyd reuniting on a project for the first time since V. And supposedly we're the project that inspired Frank Miller's epic anti-Occupy meltdown. Here's the video I made for the Kickstarter (which raised nearly 3x its funding goal) and set the whole thing in motion.

CTRL+ALT+COMPETE: INVENT THE FUTURE

FELICIA DAY: The Guild, Geek & Sundry

So last year I got hired to produce a documentary for Microsoft called CTRL+ALT+COMPETE. They wanted something cool about how tech entrepreneurs are badasses working their asses off to solve problems & make rad shit. It was a fun project, Microsoft was weird easy to deal with, & I got to interview over 50 pretty amazing people. I was just one producer of many who worked on the documentary, so I don't feel a huge sense of personal ownership over it, but Microsoft dug my interviews and let me post the unedited raw footage online as a podcast series called Invent The Future (the original title I'd suggested for the documentary). Here you can watch my interview with Felicia Day (creator of The Guild, founder of Geek & Sundry YouTube channel). She's pretty awesome.

NOLAN BUSHNELL: Atari, Pong, Chuck E. Cheese

The second interview in my Invent The Future podcast series is Nolan Bushnell... just the founder of Atari, driving creative force behind Pong, and founder/CEO of Chuck E. Cheese.

SLUMBER PARTY SLAUGHTERHOUSE: THE GAME

Back in 2008 I was taking a class on video game design/development at Santa Monica College and my final project was the design for an interactive horror movie/game called Slumber Party Slaughterhouse. Shortly after I finished the class, I got a call from my distributor saying the deadline for Halloween DVDs was coming up and did we have anything for Halloween. Being a cult/horror movie company & not having something for Halloween was a major oversight, so I blurted out that we had an interactive horror DVD called Slumber Party Slaughterhouse: The Game. That gave me less than 3 months before the DVD had to actually be on shelves in stores, and about 6 weeks to produce it. So I designed it in a way where each death scene could be shot by a different director with a different cast, and I assembled the whole Halo-8 team to each direct a scene and treat it like a showcase for the Halo-8 filmmakers & actors. The result was a real jam-session, party of a weirdo-flick that got a great response and even played theatrically as an interactive midnight movie that mixed Rocky Horror-style audience participation with pub trivia. I wound up directing two scenes in one day and the entire wraparound sequence in one night... it was a fun return to my guerrilla filmmaking days. Joanna Angel's scene is the best one in the movie, but I directed a really batshit one that's like a bad acid trip version of the sadistic fratboy prank (urban legend?) known as Rodeo. Enjoy.

THREAT

When I was 20 years old and living out of a backpack in NYC's Lower East Side I had the idea to make a 16mm movie about straightedge punk rock kids & underground hip hop kids accidentally starting a riot in downtown NYC (hey, it was the 90s!). It wound up being an effort that consumed a decade of my life and the lives of about 20 core teammates and almost 200 weekend warriors, all knucklehead kids in their late teens and early 20s. I was the oldest person on set and man I didn't know anything. And this is back in the day before digital video, we shot this damn thing on 16mm film (we got leftover film from local TV shoots and I got free cameras by cleaning up after classes at a co-op film school). The damn thing almost kinda makes sense, plus it toured the US & Europe and launched my indie film studio. It was pretty experimental... the days are shot in black & white, the nights are shot in color, and it breaks into animation throughout (see, I was transmedia before it was cool).

THREAT Trailer

THREAT Opening Sequence

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Matt Pizzolo
Artist | Professional | Film & Animation

United States

I make stuff: comics, films, transmedia experiments. I'm a "professional" as in I make my living doing this stuff, but I mean jeez it's weird to call me a pro... if anything I'm professionally batshit.

I wrote & created the Godkiller comic book & illustrated film with the ridiculously talented

Muckcracker & I are currently working on the next Godkiller, called Tomorrow's Ashes.

I'm also working on a related comic & ill-film called The Long Knives with the super awesome

And I'm directing a Hack/Slash illustrated film with the mega rad

I run indie film studio Halo-8 (who brought you everything from Adam Wingard's Pop Skull to James Farr's Xombie: Dead On Arrival).

Am now co-founding the comics company Black Mask Studios with Steve Niles (30 Days of Night) & Brett Gurewitz (Bad Religion, Epitaph Records).

If you want more, Wired just profiled me as World's Most Wired Comics Creator (ridiculous honor which I most certainly do not deserve, but at least you get to see me playing pinball in sunglasses). [link]

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