Movies You Made: “Tentacle 8”

March is Movies You Made month at Go Into The Story where we feature the work of some independent filmmakers.

Today: Tentacle 8.

Production notes from writer-director John Chi:

TENTACLE 8 is going to be released on DVD in March, with VOD/Digital to follow in April on most digital platforms (hopefully). It’s a espionage/conspiracy drama involving the NSA and the intelligence community, not unlike what’s going on with Edward Snowden. We’re a small film, and we’re thrilled to have a distributor, but there’s very little in terms of marketing/promotions, so we could really use the GITS community’s help in getting the word out.

producers: john chi, casey poh, alex mccullough
writer/director: john chi
director of photography: danny grunes
production designer: lavinia decastro
editor: kevin lipnos
costume designer: christine nguyen
original music/composer: max blomgren

Full cast and crew on IMDB here.

Here is the trailer for the feature leanth film Tentacle 8:

I asked each of the filmmakers in this month’s series to answer this question: What inspired you about this particular story to make it a movie? Here is John’s answer:

Why did I make this movie?

At the time I started to write TENTACLE 8, the United States had invaded Iraq and Afghanistan, stories were leaking every other day about human rights abuses in secret military bases around the world, and the global economy was melting down. I had also just become a father to a baby boy, so it was hard not to be consumed with the world he would grow up in, and what my responsibilities were.

Despite having scripts written that were more suitable for a low budget independent, I made the decision to write a movie set in and around these major conflicts, hoping to make some sense of it all, and offer some unique perspective in an interesting way. At the core, the film would become a summation of everything I believed in and cared about.

I tried to impassion our producers, our crew, and our cast, with a greater sense of belief and purpose, that we needed to make this film, despite all the complications of making a global espionage film on a microbudget. I’m very proud to say that TENTACLE 8 is the product of that collective belief in our ambitions and in one another. Which in many ways, is what I hoped to achieve from the very beginning.

The movie’s website here.

Facebook page here.

Drop by Comments to give some feedback on Tentacle 8.

Tomorrow: Another Movie You Made.