When the award announcement at MOTELx began my thoughts were "hope the short that wins is one of the ones I haven't see so I can see it or it's from a director I've met in these sessions", then they said my name.
The months that followed I spent my free time sending BitB to every animation and fantastic/horror film fest I could find online. I'm usually a pretty much stay at home kind of guy and over night I started going to film fests, meeting people, having dinner with writers, meeting directors for coffee, giving rides to actors. Amidst all this I started working with the guys at Pixel Bunker on the BitB DVD, but having a full time job and family, I would do this about one afternoon per month. I would go to PixelBunker sit next to Nuno and sometimes Pedro and we'd spent about 4/5 hours talking movies and fine tuning the DVD. Each time I would drop by I would have something else to add from a new film fest so adjustments had to be made.
By the time I stopped bringing stuff in and they closed the DVD it was no longer a popular format. Blu-ray had replaced DVDs, but not really, digital download was the new king in town and all physical formats were dying.
Who would buy a DVD with a 7 minute short film anyway? I wouldn't, so why would anyone else?
But the job was done, the disc had a lot of extras: other shorts I made after BitB, making of stills and audio commentaries, interviews that I asked the film fests to use, screenings of the short at film fests with the audience reaction, and few more things they were cool enough to fit in there. I kept the master safe and sound as a token of that life changing time in my life that was all because of those 7 minutes of animation, now immortalized in that disc.
So this Christmas I decided to give that disc to everyone that wants it, free of charge, in the pay-what-you-want system. If you like the short, if it entertained you, if you laughed, if you were scared, if you enjoyed it in any way, you can donate whatever amount you wish and that money will be used to finance my upcoming 2016 animations. If you didn't like like or just don't want to donate, no problem, the DVD is yours all the same, it's the time of giving and I'm giving you something that means a lot to me. The donations are made using the "donate" button from Paypall on the side bar.
"Bats in the Belfry" is an animated dark comedy/western with a robber trying to get money bags from some people that are spending the night at an old Spanish Mission deep in the dusty Old West planes. Then, things go wrong. Westerns are usually during the day, with the cowboy riding to the sunset, BitB begins after dusk, and dawn is too far for any hope of a sunrise ex-machina.
I made an ISO image of the disc, uploaded it and it's now available for download, right here on this blog. You will need the link, that is here on the blog, and then an encryption key that will be in a YouTube video I'll soon upload.
The file is 2.7Gb, so it will take a while to download depending on your connection, it's a DVD PAL, but because it's in ISO format you can watch it directly from your computer following these instructions http://www.wikihow.com/Open-ISO-Files or you can burn it into you very own BiTB DVD with any software for that purpose (I recommend https://www.ashampoo.com/en/usd/pin/7110/burning-software/burning-studio-free but to each their own).
I hope you enjoy the short and all the extras on the disc. Send it to your friends and family, share the links to download the file, to the encryption key video, do whatever you want with it, it's yours. It was made by horror and animation fans, for you to enjoy.
A huge thank you to everyone that made this DVD possible, your names are in the disc :)
Happy Holidays, have fun and make someone happy.
Enjoy!
