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And today we’ve got a bit of burlesque! Peek into the boudoir of Femme Ghost who is having a conversation with someone on the telephone. Who could it be? We may never know.

We’re thrilled to have Fleur the Tease, also known as Lore Poudrier, in Gothtober this year. We think it’s nice to have some spice other than just pumpkin for the Halloween season. Lore is a writer and a queer arts performer, and they are also what is known as a Death Doula.

A death doula is a person who assists in the dying process, much like a midwife or doula does with the birthing process. It is often a community based role, aiming to help families cope with death through recognizing it as a natural and important part of life.

Lore has been serving as a Death Doula in the Los Angeles LGBTQIA+ and Polyamourous communities. They have taken up a specialization in paperwork for legal protections, planning legacy projects and rituals, and helping chosen families plan memorial services and gatherings that mark the anniversary of a death. 

Lore has a TikTok account that randomly goes viral on occasion, where they are trying to get the younger generation to normalize talking about death and dying and empower them to make plans.

Citizens band UNITE! What ever happened to LARGE MARGE? Do you know who we’re talkin’ about? The Headless Horsepower talk show is here to walk us through it… or float through it… they are ghosts, I don’t see any feet on the hosts!

We’re not sure who Megan Hobza knew in order to get permission to be in the studio with real ghosts for this incredible dialogue, but somehow it happened, and the camera captured them perfectly, hats and all. The spirits are alive and well on the CB.

This is a VERY SPECIAL and rare interview with one of the supernatural world’s most FAMOUS truckers, it’s quite the exposé, Gothtober is privileged to get the scoop from Bubba! We’ve all heard the story, we all saw the film. Is it just a pack of lies? Who is the monster REALLY?

If you’re driving at night, and you see a little dude by the side of the road in a grey suit who is smiling a little too keenly at you… just KEEP DRIVING!!! And then take yourself to the nearest coffee shop, order a cup o’ joe, tip your server generously, and tell ’em Large Marge sent ya!

Both of the people who run Gothtober, myself (JP) and Cristin have degrees from CalArts in Experimental Animation. We are VERY AWARE of the glaring, ridiculous enormous chasm of “not including women” in film, and how many great contributions through filmmaking history have gone unnoticed or completely ignored. Today we’re thrilled to share with you Emily’s piece, and below are her words describing her exciting journey discovering and then shining light on some incredible overlooked talent in the film industry.

Em, take it away!

HOW IT ALL STARTED
In January 2020 I started a masters program in film studies so that I could apply for more online teaching opportunities. (There were so many available, and little did I know that within months, everyone will be teaching online! Oops!)

In my first class, which was on documentary film, I realized how few women directors there were/are. I had recently watched (and backed on Kickstarter) a documentary by a director named Pamela Green called Be Natural: The Untold Story of Alice Guy-Blaché, so I did my documentary class presentation on Green’s documentary. (It was all very meta! Haha!)

My next class the following semester was on Classic Hollywood Cinema. Having studied Guy-Blaché, I began to look for other female directors during the early days of film and realized that many of them were not prominently displayed in our textbook, so I did my presentation on women directing in early Hollywood.

This continued on during all of my classes, even when non-film specific: Painting Sculpture, Literature, Third Cinema, Cult Films, etc. Each time I made sure to educate my classmates on women from history who had created things that were just as interesting as the work of the men covered in the books and films we studied.

THE ORIGIN OF A PASSION PROJECT
By the time I got to my Capstone project I had decided to write a book on women directors throughout the history of film and from around the world and call it Mothers of Cinema. (I have written 5 of the 15 chapters so far.) So when it came time for Gothtober, I immediately thought of the women in Hollywood who work behind the scenes in the horror/thriller genre. … and then later thought of a way to work the truck stop theme into my vision: Easter eggs!

Squishing 13 women into 3 minutes was tough. There is so much more to say about each of them, and it was fun searching for their history. Alice Guy-Blaché herself did not make the cut for this short, but she and Kathryn Bigelow are already chapters in my Mothers of Cinema book (along with Julie Dash, Marilou Diaz-Abaya, and Lana & Lilly Wachowski). Lois Weber, Ida Lupino, and Lotte Reiniger are all on the short list for possible spots among the remaining 10 chapters. I enjoyed making 13 Women so much that I am considering doing individual videos for the 13, plus additional videos for the women in consideration for my book… after I create the 12 Women of Christmas, of course.

HOW IT WAS MADE
The cartoon versions of the women and myself were created in an iPhone app called Voilà. Since my cartoon version of myself needed to speak, I actually took numerous pictures of myself to get the various mouth shapes so that I could place them into Adobe Character Animator. It was my first time creating a puppet in Character Animator, and I plan to keep improving mouth movement in future videos. So I recorded myself in Character Animator for the intro and outro and then placed those video clips along with the stills of the women into Adobe Premiere.

The cloak, pumpkins, knife, Christmas tree, backgrounds, etc. were a combination of photos, fonts, and artwork in Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Fresco (iPad & Pencil), and effects in Adobe Premiere. Working in Voilà on the iPhone and in Fresco on the iPad made for easy Adobe Cloud and AirDrop transfers to the Mac programs. I used the lowest end/smallest 2021 M1 MacBook Pro, and the only time I got bogged down in the limited 8GB of RAM was when I had too many video clips open in Google Chrome and Safari. Once those tabs were closed, computer lag cleared up. 
Sound effects and music were royalty free from around the web.

The real foundation for beauty that lasts is a youthfully supple skin. That’s why Aunt Lyla follows a very thorough face regiment every single day. She only uses the finest soaps and creams, bringing her a resplendent, decadent lather to her visage.

Her unwavering active beauty care makes sure Auntie Lyla stays lovely to look at all the time, in any company. I mean we’re pretty sure that’s what’s happening… right?

Visit Gothtober.com and check out DAY 5 to see today’s adventure that takes place in sunny Palm Springs, the Golf Capital of the World.

Just WHO are Ozzy and Billy and what is in store for them? Visit DAY 4 on www.gothtober.com to find out, this is one wonderful weird short to start your week, from a crafty dynamic duo.

Dressed for Space are long-time friends John Booher and Shannon Dedman. They met on OKCupid way back in 2004 and have had possibly gallons of coffee and/or whiskey together since then. 

John (camera, audio, effects, editing, direction, “Billy”) is an experimental musician who has many, many things with knobs and dials and levers and cables and pedals and strings and blinky lights. During work hours he saves children using databases and math. He makes a perfect rare steak.
For this Gothtober piece, John wanted to use the creative opportunity to learn how to use the free DaVinci Resolve editing and effects software and kinda knocked it out of the park.

Shannon (sets, puppets, puppeteer, opinions, “Ol’ Man Ozzy”) is also known to Gothtober as Lady Mellocreme Fairchild III. She/they are a retired (emphasis on “tired”) prop master and set decorator now blissfully working in the 9-5 world.
Shannon is a ProjectQ volunteer, sometime puppet maker, new cat mum (Hi LuLu!), baker, and (mostly) nice person who is having an awful lot of trouble talking herself up at this moment in her life.

Well if it isn’t Saturday, the PERFECT day to peruse tattoo art for your next body decor option. Rosie has been doing lots of stick and poke tattooing over the last year, and if you don’t know what that is, I shall elaborate.

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Stick-and-poke tattoos are a form of non-electric tattooing—that is to say, there’s no tattoo machine used. Instead, ink is applied to the skin by hand by attaching a needle to a rod-like contraption, much like a pencil and thread (professionals use a tattoo-grade needle) to create an analog tattoo machine.

Once the needle is secure, the design is created by dipping it into ink and then poking it into the skin dot by dot. he single needle and ink process dates back as far as ancient Egypt as mummies were found to have intricate tattoos on their arms, shoulders, and abdomen.

Thus, today for Gothtober Day 3 we have a BUNCH of wonderful seasonal selections of Halloween flash art from Rosie, who is a stick and poke enthusiast extraordinaire. Peruse them and perhaps consider decorating your epidermis with one or two of them today!