31 Days of DEATH WALKS THE STREETS – Day 12: There were plenty of weird occurrences when it came to the development of the DWTS project, and while they may have appeared strange from an outsider’s perspective (we drew the ire of some other independent filmmakers along the way), from my seat it was even more overwhelmingly bizarre. How about getting nominated for awards based on a movie that hadn’t even been shot yet? It happened… twice. While I’ll discuss the second instance shortly, how did DEATH WALKS THE STREETS get nominated for an EMMY Award? One word: MySpace.
As the world of social networking was evolving, taking with it the marketing of filmmaking, MySpace – then the undisputed King of social networks – was leading the charge, splintering their network into divisions like MySpace Film. Novice filmmakers ourselves, Ben and I made a decision early-on to document our journey as much as possible, and one way we did that was through video podcasts – a relatively new thing at the time. We shot them in a documentary style, with them first premiering on The Horror Channel (later Dread Central) before moving them to MySpace. DWTS became one of the earliest projects highlighted on the homepage of MySpace Film, with the podcasts amassing hundreds of thousands of views (sadly, they’ve disappeared due to MySpace’s platform changes, and the original files are MIA), and eventually becoming acclaimed.
In 2007, MySpace partnered with The National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences for a new, five-category component of their Broadband Emmy Awards (part of the Daytime Emmys) – “MyEmmy.” Here’s what MySpace said about it at the time…
“Amazing content is flourishing on the web and enabling submissions through MySpace makes a world of sense. This unique collaboration gives users an accessible platform to recognize the best creative content out there. We’re inviting all creators of premium broadband content to use the Emmy® profile to submit their work for consideration for this highly coveted honor.”
– Shawn Gold, SVP of Marketing and Content for MySpace –
In the “News & Documentary: Arts, Lifestyle & Culture for Broadband” category, guess who ended up on top? Yep, “The Making of DEATH WALKS THE STREETS: Bringing Death to the World”, with a 9-minute episode entitled “The Screenwriters, The Producer & The Script.”
All signs were pointing to us having one Hell of a movie on our hands, but that’s definitely not what happened…
About “31 Days of Death Walks the Streets”:
DEATH WALKS THE STREETS (DWTS) is a genre-bending transmedia entertainment property created by James Zahn in 2004… long before becoming “The Rock Father.” In celebration of it’s 10th Anniversary and the Halloween Season, 31 DAYS OF DEATH WALKS THE STREETS is a spin-off of the annual “31 Days of Halloween” feature, presenting an inside look at some materials from the comic book series and the intended DWTS film series.
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Stay tuned…
