White Zombie advertisement (Hobbs, NM 1940). Was used for the inside spread of the “La Sexorcisto” CD booklet. Photographer: Russell Lee

Listen here to our first episode as we take a look at Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge...

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The Genesis of a Thumbnail

We're getting very close to putting out our very first episode of Boys and Ghouls.  I went to Guitar Center and picked up a Yeti USB microphone and a red sheet set from Target.  Kat came over and we had a photo shoot where I wore a halloween mask and skeleton gloves.  I mostly did Scooby-Doo monster-style creeping poses while she did scream queen reactions.  An old room mate had attached some halogen lights to the rafters of my apartment, part of a set-up for an at-home green screen, and left them up there when he moved out.  I just tacked up the red sheet I got at Target, plugged in the lights, and used a regular Coolpix digital camera for what turned out to be a pretty good shoot.

I figure that since our podcast's thumbnail will be literally the size of a thumbnail, a Pulp Fiction shade of red might catch a web-browser's eye.  When it came to giving the picture text, I didn't have Photoshop.  So, I went to a d.i.y. de-motivational poster site and got some good, simple results.

Kat and I recorded about an hour and half of us just talking about Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge.  I've edited it down to about 45 minutes.  Doing this, I removed our pauses, and stammers, and when we would gather our thoughts with a lengthy, "uhhhhhh."  We ended the podcast with the sign off, "Beware the moon" and a closing clip of Bela Lugosi in Glen or Glenda telling the audience to "Beware, take care... beware."

After editing, I recorded a pre-podcast greeting to tell folks what to expect and to follow us on Facebook.  I looped some bubbling and zapping sounds from Youtube and created a mad scientist lab to go under my minute-long greeting.

Since then, as our Friday the 13th drop-date approaches, I've been trying to increase Boys and Ghoul's online presence.  Right now we've got a Facebook fan page that has reached the thirty members that it takes to get the extra bells and whistles.  For anyone still on Myspace, I created a Boys and Ghouls Myspace page too.  And, you can find us on Tumblr where, right now, our only follower is Kat.

Then, a friend introduced me to Pintrest.  Its set-up of user's interest boards, where they showcase images from all over the web, has helped me find lots of folks (mostly female) who are into horror movies.  Then, when I "repin" one of their postings over to my own page, they get a notification that "Boys and Ghouls Podcast" has repined one of their items.  Today, after a week of searching out horror fans, trying to generate interest about my unreleased podcast, I found that a horror fan in Florida actually found out about us through Pinterest then followed a link and "liked" our Facebook page.

So, that was pretty encouraging.

One more day till Friday the 13th, then I'll have an actual product to promote.