12/27/2017
Hello all!
Haile Lee here - First and foremost, on behalf of the Thousand Pound/ Epic Rival teams I would like to sincerely thank everyone who have supported our work over the years. Through our fan films, commercial projects and even original works like Clandestine -- we’ve grown substantially as filmmakers and performing artists, all thanks to the boost you guys continuously gave us early on in our careers.
I want to deeply apologize for being social media absent throughout our transitional times and before the new year gets here, I would like to address a few things so we can all move towards 2018 in a positive light. No, we are not dead -- far from it.
First, the dark horse
Clandestine
How we (Chris and myself) personally handled the Clandestine project wasn’t fair to everyone, especially those who supported our vision and just wanted us to see us do our “thing” on a bigger scale. The main condition I want to everyone to understand is that we were NOT the sole owners of Clandestine. In the beginning this seemed like the best option, to team with a very supportive advertising agency to spread the word about our new creative baby and help us get into doors where even millions of views on Youtube didn’t completely matter. Early on we found that creatively and business-wise, all parties were pulling in different directions, which is understandable now but at the time, I must say we were naive about the whole process. What was also frustrating to realize was that we wrapped our fans up into this demoralizing process as well, and I had NO answers. We couldn’t make more content, we couldn’t pivot because of ownership issues, and we couldn’t prove ourselves to the few that were interested in taking the project to the next step.
Lastly, one of the biggest failures of Clandestine was, to be honest -- was that we were waaaay too ambitious. Even with the money donated and some of the support we received, our idea and dream was too big for the budget we had. It came down to us being new and excited about everything but in hindsight -- if we took what we had and only decided to make one polished and professional pilot piece instead of stretching it into two episodes with several background story shorts -- it would have made the difference.
Now -- with all that “post-mortem” out of the way, let’s talk about new life.
We are now the sole owners of the rights for Clandestine. I repeat because this changes everything, we own Clandestine once again. Now that this is done we will pivot and revamp the project, reflecting all of our personal growths, and hopefully begin the long journey to deliver the Clandestine that everyone has wanted since the beginning. No matter how long it takes, I’m sure Chris is in the same state of mind in saying that we personally won’t give up on making this project. I physically can’t, especially seeing how many of you threw in your support while even now sending us passion filled messages of encouragement and criticisms on wanting to see it come to life. We will make good on these investments given to us early on while keeping in mind versions of the desired deliverables everyone wants as the Clandestine project, lore, and story changes. Just -- bare with me as I figure out the next steps...
The Future
Just because we hit a hiccup with Clandestine doesn’t mean we’ve been sitting around doing nothing. The majority of our group has continued to either work in the industry (meaning you’ve probably seen Thousand Pound / Epic Rival work in a few of your favorite blockbusters) or continued to work with each other on full Indie projects. Yes, that also means we have a new project that is finishing up post production shortly and we’ll be ready to announce that very soon. Some great things are on the horizon and I appreciate everyone being as patient as they’ve been. We will be more active on our social media platforms starting in 2018, and I am personally willing to field any questions you all have about Clandestine and our future. We will update everyone on where to reach us individually (if interested) soon.
To sum up
1.) Clandestine is with us again and back at the beginning stages --
2.) We have a lot of new projects coming just around the corner, with one just about ready for release
3.) 2018 you all will hear a lot more from us. We promise to be more communicative now that we have a solid plan of action that took us a few years to sort out.
Happy Holidays Everyone -- and thanks again. Please enjoy as much food, family and gaming as humanly possible!
