Ongoing "Locked Out" Sequel Project - "Theodicy"
While this project has gone though multiple tentative working titles, it is currently being called "Theodicy" as of November 2024.
Promotional concept art created in October 2023. Characters from left to right: Kuro, Walter Hatman, Felix Holdo, Barbara Fisher, Ivanna Hotdog
Inspired by films such as The Wizard of Oz, Gravity, Mad Max: Fury Road, the Theodicy project is a sci-fi action/adventure storyline currently in development that serves as a sequel to the 2021 short film Locked Out. The project is being created with live-action footage, digital 2D and 3D animation, stop-motion animation, puppets, and practical models.
Set in 1970, five years following the events of Locked Out, Walter Hatman, an Ohio Highway Patrol Officer trying to find a new life after serving in Vietnam, is forced back into service to prevent the onset of a multiverse civil war. With the threat of annihilation looming, order breaks down and conflict ripples across the multiverse as special units, rogue entities, freedom fighters, and double agents fight to survive in the new age of technology and reality.
Set in 1970, five years following the events of Locked Out, Walter Hatman, an Ohio Highway Patrol Officer trying to find a new life after serving in Vietnam, is forced back into service to prevent the onset of a multiverse civil war. With the threat of annihilation looming, order breaks down and conflict ripples across the multiverse as special units, rogue entities, freedom fighters, and double agents fight to survive in the new age of technology and reality.
How This Project Started
Locked Out is a found footage/ analog horror short film I created in a narrative film course when studying at the University of Tampa.
The short film is told through the recovered footage of a live television show called "Theodicy Theater," (a play on words merging The Odyssey and the concept of theodicy,) an anthology science fiction show that was performed and broadcasted from Station 9; a television and radio broadcast station in the northeast Appalachian mountains of Pennsylvania. However, within minutes, the entire television station and it's employees vanished off the face of the Earth.
The short film is told through the recovered footage of a live television show called "Theodicy Theater," (a play on words merging The Odyssey and the concept of theodicy,) an anthology science fiction show that was performed and broadcasted from Station 9; a television and radio broadcast station in the northeast Appalachian mountains of Pennsylvania. However, within minutes, the entire television station and it's employees vanished off the face of the Earth.
Festivals
Following the completion of Locked Out, the short would go on to win the "Best of the Fest" award at the University of Tampa's Black Box Film Festival in Spring 2022, showcased at the Gasparilla International Film Festival in March 2023, and nominated for Best Student Film at the 2023 Fear Fame Film Festival.
Sequel Development
Characters from left to right: Kuro, President Richard Nixon, Henry Kissinger, Felix Holdo, Alexander Haig, The Unknown, Walter Hatman, Mother Slay, Vineyard Isador, Opal Hoolahan
Initial principal photography lasted from September through November 2023, primarily filmed at the University of Tampa's Virtual Production studio.
Development had been put on hold for much of 2024 as I looked into other creative avenues, saved up production funding, and started my media production company, Feel Like 100, LLC.
Promotional concept art for the Locked Out sequel "multiverse" project.
Behind-the-scenes image of the University of Tampa Virtual Production Studio being set up with an Unreal Engine environment.
Environment Development
Crisis Catalog anthology series
The "Crisis Catalog" is an anthology webseries featuring both historical footage and original media depicting non-historical, fictious people, places, and events that can take place anywhere before or after the main "Victims of the Multiverse" story. Named after the original project's title "Crisis Across the Multiverse," the series was initially developed as a way to help spread awareness of the project's creation, develop and use digital assets, and practice/experience with different animation, editing, and VFX.
Hat Man sighting in the Backrooms
NEDLA # 3844U - 39G95
Footage of Entity 4DA74: Hatman aka The Hat Man
Recorded During Operation Over Kilroy,
June 23, 19##.
Footage of Entity 4DA74: Hatman aka The Hat Man
Recorded During Operation Over Kilroy,
June 23, 19##.
Footage of the Device, Circa 1966
NEDLA # 73952H - T839E
Two angles of a Frame Device being tested in an unknown location.
Source of the footage remains unknown.
Two angles of a Frame Device being tested in an unknown location.
Source of the footage remains unknown.
Pool Room Footage Interference
NEDLA # 10924K-25QYA
Footage of a newly discovered Pool Room contaminated by old signals from persons and origin unknown, possibly decades-old.
Recorded during Expedition Altan Zero, circa July 1992.
Footage of a newly discovered Pool Room contaminated by old signals from persons and origin unknown, possibly decades-old.
Recorded during Expedition Altan Zero, circa July 1992.
Backrooms Encounter
NEDLA #78296C-10FPA
Found footage of teams Charlie and Delta following an ambush of unidentified combatants and other entities.
March 30, 19##.
Found footage of teams Charlie and Delta following an ambush of unidentified combatants and other entities.
March 30, 19##.
Projection mapping project created for a class at the University of Tampa featuring Unreal Engine models of President Richard Nixon and his National Security Advisor, Henry Kissinger, planning their course of action for mass bombings of Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos.
Following my own realization that the laptop I had been using from the start of this project, a MSI z16 Creator, was slowing down and unable to render at the capacity it had been able to prior, I created this short video as a way for myself to point to the time period where production had drastically halted until I had the means to upgrade and possibly begin again.
