Guerrilla Productions presents
The Testament of Tom Jacoby
The Testament of Tom Jacoby is a creepy adventure into a place of deepest darkness -- the human mind. What happens when six men are trapped beneath a mountain in a massive cave-in? What happens when one by one they start dropping, inexplicably destroyed by a monster that walks among them in the impenetrable dark?
The Testament of Tom Jacoby is produced in a unique fashion, presented as a series of stills, in a sort of freakish memory-recall.
The Testament of Tom Jacoby is now available on our new DVD: The Cosmic Horror Fun-Pak, which contains this and many other short movies by Guerrilla Productions, most of which are not available anywhere else and as a bonus item in our feature film The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath.
Cast
Crew
Production Diary
11-01-2006: The Testament of Tom Jacoby is accepted by the Blue November Micro Film Fest in Tulsa, Oklahoma! Hooray!- 07-24-2005: The Testament of Tom Jacoby is scheduled for our next DVD: The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath.
- 01-01-2005: The Testament of Tom Jacoby is now available on our new DVD: The Cosmic Horror Fun-Pak.
03-16-2004: "Edward Martin III mines our fear of the dark in this haunting, stylized short that unfolds like a nightmare." says David Walker of the Willamette Week. The Testament of Tom Jacoby is chosen as a selection for the Longbaugh Film Festival.
03-01-2004: Yay, visit The Testament of Tom Jacoby on the Internet Movie Database. Comment! Vote! Discuss!- 10-13-2003: I receive word that The Testament of Tom Jacoby has been awarded a Judge's Honorable Mention by the Salem Amateur Horror Film Festival. Yay!
04-27-2002: In another stunning achievement for World Culture, The Testament of Tom Jacoby is featured at the Gore-O-Rama-A-Go-Go Film Festival hosted by Nexus 6 Films here in Portland April 27 2002 at Dante's Lounge (which, by the way, is a great name for a lounge!). The movie received the certification of "Bad and Wrong -- Bad and Wrong!" by a panel of distinguished judges including the one and only Joe Bob Briggs, who referred to The Testament of Tom Jacoby as "Ken Burns does horror". Yay! Joe Bob reviews the Gore-O-Rama-A-Go-Go!
01-01-2002: The Testament of Tom Jacoby is shown as part of "A Taste of Lovecraft" film festival in Canada. The movie lineup is cleverly formatted to be a menu (Taste of Lovecraft...) and Testament is the soup. The program reads "A warm dark broth that simply pulls you in and keeps you there. Forever." Mmmm, yummy in my tummy!
10-19-2001: The Testament of Tom Jacoby premieres at The H. P. Lovecraft Film Festival. Yay!
10-01-2001: A little poster I worked up to hand out at the upcoming Lovecraft Film Festival. I like it. Simple, clean.- 08-07-2001: Oy! After two straight days of cramming at the computer, I finished pretty much the first cut of the movie. Clocking in at 07:20, it's downright creepy.
- 07-09-2001: Printed out a paper catalog of all images (7 disks worth!) so we can match 'em up with the storyboards. Oy, does that color printer eat cartridges!
- 07-02-2001: Tried out some test filters on the images. Looks like we'll get a good sketch effect, but still have the characters recognizeable. I'm pretty happy.
- 06-12-2001: Last bit of shooting! Katrina and I took lots of shots that required no actors. First, lots of rock shots at a quarry-like place out in Tualatin (you don't wanna' die in Tualatin, trust me). Then home for more shots of flashlights, lanterns, etc. Most fun! I feel the absurd need to point out that the quarry-like place in which we shot these shots has long since disappeared under a major shopping mall development. Whenever I drive by there, I get a weird chill and think "Oh, if only you knew what happened under all that...".
- 06-09-2001: Second day of shooting! This was a short day. We gathered at the car, did half a dozen shots and then were done. Andy decided it was early enough to go flying and the rest of us took in an early lunch at Pho Hung, a local Vietnamese restaurant. Later that evening, Katrina and I went out to Vernonia and shot the shack images. There was a great shack out on property owned by friends. Shortly after we shot there, the shack collapsed. I swear.
- 05-26-2001: First day of shooting! It went very well. The first few pictures took some time and then after we got moving, we went through all the ones we wanted to complete. It was fun to go tramping out into the nearby woods and having a little kid ask his grandmother where we were going. She told him "They're going to play a game or something." Katrina prepared a huge and terrifically delicious lasagne and everybody seemed to enjoy getting into their various costumes. Very fun and boy, did we burn through CDs for that Mavica. I can't imagine what a mess this would have been if we had tried to shoot this using some other media. There are still many more pictures to shoot. We have about a dozen or so to shoot at the car (next shoot on June 9) and a few to shoot at a shack later that evening, and the rest are shots we'll be picking up in the next few days. How exciting to finally have all the elements together!
- 05-22-2001: Okay, we've set up shooting dates now, so this time we're gonna do it. Yay! I hope, at least. I'm hoping enough actors of any stripe'll show up.
10-30-2000: Here's a nice picture of the Pierce-Arrow we'll be using for the production:- 10-18-2000:
Received a snapshot of a location that might just work out perfect for the outside of the mine. Nice!
- 10-15-2000: Checked out a new location and shot some test images out in Oregon City. Made first pass through storyboards. Started planning material acquisition.
- 10-14-2000: Not having the best of luck setting up a multitrack studio for recording audio. Had to build our own cables (what a world, what a world). Feh.
- 10-10-2000: Decided to shoot digitally, so acquired a nice Sony Mavica MVC-CD1000. Tests show that it can shoot in light levels as low as 0.13 lux, which is way darker than we're expecting to shoot.
- 06-20-2000: First listened to KC Wiley's rough cut of the music. Wow! It's so damn desolate, haunting, most undeniably perfect! Download a 1.2M sample MP3!
- 06-18-2000: Started storyboarding.
- 04-12-2000: Recorded the second voiceovers. Much improved quality because we recorded in a real studio. A bit tricky, though, because every once in a while the air conditioner would kick on and we would get a hum. Didn't discover that until I started editing the audio.
- 01-11-2000: Recorded the initial voiceovers and significantly revised the script.
- 11-09-1999: Thanks to lots of friends, we now have a list of potential locations. Checked out one -- an unfinished basement -- but it would only be good for one of the shots. Had fun anyway.
- 11-06-1999: Checked out the tunnel at Cornelius Pass, but it's not right for this production -- too finished. Besides, it would just be our luck to get everything set up and then have a train go through. That would be awkward because then we would have to reveal our Secret Powers.
- 11-05-1999: We may have access to an early model Pierce-Arrow -- perfect for making this the period piece I've wanted!
- 10-22-1999: Finished a working version of the script. Prepared first draft of website.
- 10-21-1999: Andy suggests a location out by Cornelius Pass. We schedule a time to go scout it out.
- 10-12-1999: Finished early draft of script, more like prosey notes.
