The Rose Nominated Best Music Video Of 2010

Adding a significant amount of extra icing onto our sappy story cupcake, our Sarah Slean video for The Rose has been nominated for a Leo Award in the Best Music Video category - the fourth nomination in as many years. The Leo Awards, in the words of Wikipedia, are...

...the awards program for the British Columbia film and television industry, celebrating excellence in artistic achievement. Held each May or June, the Leo Awards honour nominees and winners in 13 program categories and up to 19 craft categories. The Leo Awards Red Carpet continues to be the largest red carpet event in Western Canada attracting the glitterati of the BC film and television industry, including stars and celebrities from US-based productions.

The awards will be handed out at The Fairmont Hotel on Saturday, June 11th. If you have not seen the video, you can view it below or get the whole story by clicking here.

FortyFPS Designs Cannes Ad, Guest Directing American Mary

American Mary is soon to be off to the South Of France with co-producer Evan Tylor and IndustryWorks Pictures, traveling to this year's 64th annual Cannes Film Festival. Our teaser poster will be paired with a newly designed, full-sized 8.5" x 11" trade-ad featuring the delightful Katharine Isabelle. The ad is a mash-up of images torn from iconic American magazines. Click the preview image below to view the print.

If you would like to have the poster for yourself or help promote the film, I have uploaded the original full-sized file so you can download and print the poster from home at full press quality. Semi-Gloss if it is handy.

Also, as announced by the film's co-director Sylvia Soska on Facebook, I will be guest directing a key 9 minute sequence in American Mary, the specific details of which are being kept under wraps by request. The Twins have mentioned in recent interviews that after American Mary, they will permanently transition away from acting in their films into working exclusively behind the scenes. Whatever assumptions that could be made connecting these two unrelated statements are probably true.

Official American Mary Teaser Poster Design Released

27" x 41" featuring Paula Lindberg as Ruby RealGirl. Concept & design by CJ Wallis, FortyFPS Productions. Click the preview image above for various different sizes and resolutions.

CJ Wallis: "Canada's Best Kept Secret Weapon"

Theron Neel has always been a loyal supporter of Dead Hooker In A Trunk. We featured a quote from his review for the online promotional trailer called "Mayhem."

Theron, who currently writes for Fangirltastic one of the largest horror websites online (formerly "Pretty Scary,"), sent me an e-mail about doing an interview with me. The resulting article was so unexpectedly glowing that a few messages similar to the one below were passed along to us in various ways. An excerpt:

Some people are just so talented that it really isn't fair. CJ Wallis is one of those people. You probably haven't heard of him, but Wallis is an enormously gifted director, actor, cinematographer, producer, editor, writer and musician...Totally not fair.

I first became of aware of Wallis when I saw Jen and Sylvia Soska's Dead Hooker in a Trunk. As the character called Goody Two-Shoes, Wallis has a starring role in the Twisted Twins' exploitation sensation, but he also shot and edited the flick, composed the score and worked on the effects team. It could be said that while the Soska sisters built the Dead Hooker car, Wallis was clearly the motor that made it run as well as it does.

You can check out the entire article here and sincere thanks to Theron for the wonderful gesture.  Join FortyFPS on Facebook and Twitter and subscribe to our YouTube channel.

Kint Terrors In A Trunk

Knit-Terrors are unique, custom made dolls made my artist Laurie Pizzi. Laurie has created a set of characters for the actors of Dead Hooker In A Trunk which will be made available on her site shortly. If your tastes aren't so obscure, she also does several horror terrors including Pinhead, Jason, Freddy and Jigsaw.

Noisography Reviews Elective Single

Recently named one of the Top 30 music websites across Canada by the CBC, Noisography has posted a review of "The Stitch-Up Of Bloody Mary," the first single and video from Elective, our musical side project with Kayleigh Goldsworthy. The review was written by Mr. Dan Nightgale

Video/Single Review: Elective - "The Stitch-Up Of Bloody Mary" 

The music sounds like a lot of Ableton Live loops piled on top of each other but the quality is good and the drum (bongo?) sounds are deep if a little repetitive. 

The vocals go high above most of the instrumentation and is clear and pleasing, and sometimes I start to worry that she's going to run out of breath with the run on sentence lyrics. A few layers move in and out on top of the drums with gentle chimes and a sliding bopping bassline.

The repeating chorus straddles the line between cliché and nostalgic but the vocal quality is very appealing and the layering makes for an emotionally moving and sweeping musical landscape. It's the peak of the relatively short song, followed by a 15 second denouement and a sudden halt to the drum landscape and it's over. 

The video is pretty straight forward: artsy dancing girl. There's lots of nice cinematography and it's high quality and well shot. If you hadn't seen the new Radiohead video it would be a little easier to dismiss this as lacking in substance, but if it's good enough for Thom Yorke, it's good enough for CJ Wallis (who did it about a month earlier, just for the record).

You can check out the recently published webpage for the Elective/Bloody Mary video on our website by clicking here which has a little bit about the concept behind the editing and some production things.

Dead Hooker In A Trunk Gets UK DVD Release

We initially found out via Steve Hills Twitter account that Bounty Films, who also recently attained the rights for the second installment of The Human Centipede, has made a deal with our sales agent and will be releasing Dead Hooker In A Trunk in the UK on May 23rd.

Pre-sales of the DVD have already found their way onto Amazon and are available for just under 10 pounds. I have created and recorded a decent amount of DVD extras from what footage/etc was available and those items will be delivered to our agents and onto the eventual buyers. These exclusive features currently include, but aren't limited to, the following:

Dead Hooker In A Trunk - DVD Extras

"Rebels Without A Budget" >> A 15 minute featurette following the making of Dead Hooker In A Trunk which is a mash-up of alternate footage, B-Roll and candid moments throughout the production showing aspects of the process of making a no-budget independent film.

Director Commentary Track / Featuring Jen & Sylvia Soska, Recorded February 2011. The twins discuss various aspects of the film and it's creation set to screen specific moments.

Post-Production Commentary Track / Featuring CJ Wallis, Recorded February 2011. This track will discuss some of the tricks and methods used along the way to side-step the time and budget limitations during production and post.

A Discussion With Carlos Gallardo Shot in Carlos' apartment in Los Angeles shortly after completing his scenes, the Twins and Carlos discuss El Mariachi and the history and war stories of low-budget filmmaking.

Deleted Scenes

It is my understanding that whoever purchases the rights for each separate region's release has the ability to package the film however they wish, so I cannot say what will make it on what disc and where but when we know, we will pass it along.

Elective - The Stitch-Up Of Bloody Mary

Elective - "The Stitch-Up Of Bloody Mary"
Edited, Photographed & Directed by CJ Wallis, @fortyfps
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Find more information on this project and others at our official website, fortyfps.com
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Elective Music Video Coming Soon

In the middle of a recent week-long editing adventure in Toronto on another director's first short film, I commissioned the usual suspects at Major St Productions to assist me in making a music video for "The Stitch-Up Of Bloody Mary" by Elective, which is my musical project with Kayleigh Goldsworthy

Despite a month long illness that included something completely limiting the use of her left ear, Lucy Rupert (who last worked with us here) toughed through over 45 minutes of continuous performance as we had to execute, set-up and light two completely different looks and set dressing and pack down production in under 2 hours.

Robert Walsh was on camera and lighting with myself and Jeffrey Zablotny operating other cameras from other angles to triple the amount of footage captured in the limited amount of takes. Elli Weisbaum, who has produced a few of my previous efforts, came out to maintain order and help operate the multiple lighting dimmers and cues with gaffer Todd Thompson. Make-Up artist Nicole Stredder politely rearranged my very male attempts to describe the eye make-up design I was hoping for on Lucy and this video would not in any way be what it is/was without the selfless efforts of these six individuals.

The plan is to release the video on Valentine's Day, Monday, February 14th.