I guess I shouldn’t be surprised — we’ve actually managed several comic conventions in recent years, which I thought would never happen… so why not a superhero movie?

I actually feel a bit guilty about this — I’d been hearing some folks talk about this “Alike in Dignity” short film project and always assumed it was being filmed in California or New York. But nope, it’s being filmed locally right here in Lubbock. Why didn’t I ever catch on to this? I have no idea. Just completely spaced it for months and months. Egg on my face? Yeah, that’s me — pretty much totally dropped the ball on this one.

Basically, here’s the situation: Daniel W. Ballard is a film student living in Lubbock but taking classes out of San Francisco — good ol’ online coursework means you can take classes anywhere as long as you’ve got a good Internet connection. He and a friend named Tim Kuhn wrote a script for a movie, and a guy named Daniel P. Ballard (no relation to Daniel W.) is going to direct it.

The full title is “Alike in Dignity: A Super Love Story,” and it’s about a guy and a girl in love — but the guy and all his family are superheroes, and the girl and all her family are supervillains. Thanksgiving with the in-laws gets interesting when everyone wants to shoot you with plasma blasts and laser beams, ya know?

You can read William Kerns’ article about the movie here. And Daniel W. Ballard put together a site and video to help fundraise for the movie here — they’ve met their fundraising goal, but any additional money will just help make the movie (and Ballard’s other thesis projects) that much better.

If you want to get an idea of what the movie will look like — without fancy costumes or special effects — you can watch a sample here. Looks pretty good for a bunch of people yelling “PCHOW! PEWW! PSHH!” while running around in their underwear — just imagine how good it’ll look with real costumes and effects…

Hopefully, that makes up a little bit for not helping to do any promotion of it before…  :/