Hi, folks! It's been a while. And just what have we been up to? Well, finishing LIBERATOR of course! And yes, it IS taking forever. Mostly this is due to visual effects work. But we should be done with all the VFX by the end of January and then we begin sound mix and scoring. Please know that we are taking the time to get it right. And once we have this puppy done, at long last we will send out those rewards! (We have not forgotten you guys.)

Now for some other great news. Lou Ferrigno is appearing on "Celebrity Apprentice" this coming season. In addition, he just signed to voice The Hulk in the "The Avengers." This is a double-blast of amazing news for Lou, but also for us, because it means 2012 is going to be the year of LOU. And LIBERATOR will be in an excellent position to take advantage of all that publicity. To that end, we've brought aboard a publicist who brings with him amazing connections. We hope to have news as to our world premiere (which should indeed make a splash) within a few months.

Last but not least, our new website should be ready to launch Feb 1. We'll have a ton of media up there, including a new trailer, art, behind the scenes and more!

So thanks everyone for hanging in. If you haven't yet, please visit our facebook page and "like" us there (www.facebook.com/liberatormovie.) Let the Liberation commence.

Jim Cirile

Executive Producer

Greetings, fellow Liberators! I bring you good tidings and even better news. Thanks to all of your help, we completed our reshoot/pick-up shots last weekend. And Director Aaron Pope and I couldn't be happier. See, we had to make a lot of concessions for time and money the first time out. With the rockin' new stuff we were able to add to the mix, this thing has now gone nuclear. 

So now instead of Lou Ferrigno wiping out a handful of guards, he takes on dozens. Instead of him simply escaping from a holding area, steel blast doors slam down all around him, locking him in a gas chamber. We've added new stunts and special effects and greatly amped up the "you won't like him when he's angry" factor. Best of all, we were really able to bring it with the flying sequences. We hired Branam Enterprises, leader in flying effects for over 35 years, to make the Liberator soar. Amazingly, this was the first time Lou Ferrigno had ever flown, and he was delighted.

Below is a short behind the scenes video compilation from our reshoot. Hope you enjoy it! Also below please find some new images I think you guys will dig -- Lou's first flight (in socks!) and the radiant Tara Cardinal ("Gaia") showing Lou how it's done -- check out the look on his face. Also below is an early poster concept (photo by Russell Griffin) and a real treat -- a magazine cover we unearthed from 1993, depicting Liberator and Volt in their heyday. Of course, this was before the Panagua Incident. RIP, Volt.

Now, back to finishing the movie. Every day feels like Christmas, because Aaron and I wake up every morning to a shiny new VFX shot under the tree, courtesy of VFX Producer Christian Spencer and VFX artist extraordinaire Mario Pulver. It's all coming together nicely. Can't wait to hear Tim Wynn's music!

Coming soon - our new website (in the meantime please 'like' us on facebook: facebook.com/liberatormovie) and much much more!

By the way, for all of you waiting on imdb credit, imdb's policy is they do not post short films until that film has screened at a recognized festival. Therefore as soon as we have our first festival screening, we'll be up on imdb.

Thanks again, everyone, for your support. The Liberation has only just begun!

Jim Cirile

Executive Producer, LIBERATOR

Greetings, fellow Liberators!

As many of you know, we offered a special reward for a lucky three of you who pledged $26 or more -- a chance to be in the movie. Well, we have quasi-locked down the dates of our reshoot/pickup shots weekend:

September 10+11, 2011

Saturday the 10th will be our pickup shots at Central City Studio in downtown LA, and Sunday will be our flying shots day on a green screen stage. The 3 raffle winners will appear in fatigues as Greyclaw military contractors in the film, and you will have your asses handed to you in creative ways -- such as, Lou Ferrigno hurls a fire extinguisher at you and then shoots it in mid-air, blowing you to bits. Fun!

51 of you donated the $26 or more to qualify, but of course there can be only three. We used random.org's random number generator to select our three Greyclaws (and five back-ups.) So without further ado, here are our winners:

Joshua Stone, Sherry Lloyd, Jason Genser

Congrats, guys! Please contact us ASAP and let us know if you will be free that Saturday from 8 AM to 8 PM to appear in our movie. There's no pay, but there will be food, such as it is.

Now here are our five back-ups. In the event any of our top three cannot make it, we will go down the list of back-ups in this order:

Bryan Foerster, Emma Rush, Stephen Vale, Edwin Quinones, Robert Troch

So if you guys could drop us a line regarding your availability as well, that would be great.

As for the rest of the rewards, well, it'll be a while until the movie is finished, but certain rewards (like the chunk of street) we should be able to get out in the next 4-6 weeks. We'll keep you posted right here as it all progresses.

Thanks again, everyone!

Jim C.

Well, that was something, huh? Boy, it looked pretty grim there as we approached the end of the fund-raising period, but an amazing outpouring of love from you guys put us over the top with minutes to spare. Wow! Thanks again to all y'all for supporting our vision and helping return the icons we love to the screen.

Plus a BIG hat-tip to Erika, who many of you have gotten to know and love from our Twitter and Facebook pages, who is not only a sweetheart and a go-getter but the best damn social media consultant there is (if any of you want to hire her, write me!) Crowdfunding is so hard because you really are trying to convince strangers to invest in your project; and heck, we all have a lot of other priorities, plus the economy kind of sucks now as you all may have noticed. But Erika is the real deal -- she genuinely cares about people, and that so comes across even on Twitter. That was crucial to really showing folks that yeah, we really are cool guys, earnest, and passionate fans of the medium -- fellow nerds, geeks, indie film buffs -- and that we will not squander your hard-earned dough! So thanks again, E! Superlative job :)

So here's what happens now. First of all, Kickstarter makes you wait two weeks before you can request a withdrawal. This is apparently so they can earn an extra two weeks of interest on your money. But that's fine. In the meantime, we are planning our big reshoot/pickup shot weekend which will hopefully take place in September (pending Lou's availability, which we're waiting to hear back on.) We have a couple of big special effects shots we're delighted we're going to be able to get now, as well as some really exciting flying work and additional ass-kicking. So all you guys who contributed over $26, we will let you know ASAP who we have randomly selected as Greyclaw guards as well as when and where we will shoot, so hopefully you guys can make plans to be there!

We're also building a new, proper website (as opposed to the wix.com one we have now, which is a placeholder.) Kyle McCormick, who was also a PA on the film, is putting together a kick-butt new site for us now. As soon as that's done, we'll also launch a proper thank you page with all of you guys on it. 

I know a bunch of you have e-mailed and are waiting on a response, and I apologize -- it's been crazy here with contest deadlines and online seminars and assignments and so forth, but i will personally get back to you guys ASAP. 

So just because we've hit our goal, don't think we're done here with the updates or anything. As far as I'm concerned, all of you guys are our team. Every one of you. This is all of our project now. Man, that is so cool!

Cheers!

Jim C.