"'Black Abyss...' A Successful Project!" by Martin Groff

Somewhat late this month due to many other busy projects, for July 2012, or editorial is written by Martin Groff, who discusses the newest Philip Krieg film, “Black Abyss,” which was released this past Friday.

I am very pleased with the production, post-production and release of “Black Abyss,” the biggest and in my opinion best Philip Krieg film yet!

There were indeed a few scares as production tried to get off the ground. With so many actors, different locations and a long script, it was very difficult to make this film work. However, in the end, it was enjoyable and worthwhile.

The first scene we filmed in mid-May was the scene “I’m Coming with You,” featuring Miss Torri and Agent 07 at MI7 headquarters. We filmed that scene and some interviews that day during a Memorial Day picnic, and that was all. We also did some preliminary green screen and the Ernhert/Less phone conference scene in early June with Charlotte Ferris and Peter Groff. At that point I hoped the bulk of production might get off to an early start in May or June, but the dates never materialized or kept being pushed back. We did, however, have a July 8^th filming date set in stone with Sarah and Matt Sensinger and Sara Eliason, but Philip and Charlotte’s work and vacation schedules blocked out a lot of June for our second production date. Peter and my vacation schedule (thankfully our work schedules were flexible) blocked most of late July, so we knew if we were going to get this done by our July 20^th release date, it was all or nothing the first week of July. We ended up tacking production day 2 right after production day 1, making a marathon of production from early in the morning to late at night July 8^th and 9^th.

Sunday morning of July 9^th we met at the Sensingers’ house and started filming by 9:30 AM, finishing the first half of production by 10:30 that night. The next morning we were up at 6:00 to get to my house, where we met up with Charlotte Ferris to continue production starting at again around 9:30 AM. We were done by 8:00 that night, but had very few breaks, rushing from a college library to an iron bridge to some desolate streets where we could film our car chase.

Also on the 9^th we tacked on some other productions, including a few scenes for a new GK Productions crime drama that has not been officially announced, “The AMP Variety Show,” and “The Charlotte Ferris Show.” The day before saw us filming Pennypacker scenes for inclusion in future films, since Sarah Sensinger is withdrawing from large involvement in future productions but wanted to continue to support the films.

It was a really great experience working on “Black Abyss,” and editing went overall very well. I estimate roughly that we spent about 20-25 hours on production and 40-50 hours on post-production (with several more hours on pre-production) for our 55 minute project. The time was well spent, and though we realize our finished product is far from perfect, we are proud of it and hope you enjoyed it, because we certainly enjoyed making it!

-Martin Groff, Chief Executive of AMP Corporation