A Magical Hammer Productions Update ~ Why Making Movies Is Hard!

What is up, surfers of the web? Michael here, with some updates of what has been happening with Magical Hammer. To be frank, this year has not been easy, but we are still alive chugging along with some movies brewing. In good news, The Guard Room is finished, and we have just started it’s a journey in the film festival circuit. Depending on how it is received, we are planning to have hit streaming sometime next year.  Production is also resuming on Stuffed Death, coming back from a hiatus that we will hopefully wrap up this year.

Here I am capturing a moment for The Guard Room!

I sometimes wonder if I should have called us Development Hell Productions, because each film we have done bring a grandaunt of challenges. Sophie and the Serial Killers had the challenge of replacing the lead actors, Scorned Waifu had a actress become pregnant during production and The Guard Room suffered from sound recording technical failure during one of our longest shoot days. Stuffed Death, our lasted movie in production is no different. During production an actress broke her arm causing the production to go on hiatus for a couple of months. Then she ended up in Jury Duty which caused us to post pone again. Thankfully though, her final scenes are scheduled and if goes well we’ll be able to put this movie in the can.

These challenges remind me that making movies is hard. (Any type of art is hard to make really). When you are not dealing with these psychical in person challenges, you are also dealing with the mental block of perfectionism. During the final stages of The Guard Room, I would watch the movie everyday and see what I could improve. Making small tweaks here and there. Eventually at one point, you have to say it’s good enough and let go. Even as you continue to improve you continue to strive for more. It's a never-ending race. It can be hard to keep in mind that it's about the journey and not the destination. We are making movies to have fun, and I do my best to remind myself of that.

Here I am reviewing the script making sure we get the needed shots.

In terms of writing, I am currently working on two new scripts. I currently have three scripts already completed in the backlog, so we have no shortage of ideas. One of the new ones I am working on it a lot of fun, and if all goes well, I hope we can kickstart it off the ground in 2026. It is weird to think I may already be working on our 5th movie soon. The journey to this point has not been easy, but has come with personal growth and self-discovery.

Making movies is definitely hard, specially the "creating" bit of it. But when you see the finished film after spending so much time on it, it makes you feel a sort of relief and excitement that you've actually done a movie. Not many people can say that. Specially if it's a challenging one and you managed to finish it and it looks and sounds pretty great! It may not be perfect but it’s out there.  I think it's funny that the "creating" bit is so hard since it's also the fun bit of filmmaking at the same time.