J'ai récemment retrouvé un vieux manuscrit que j'avais écrit il y a 12 ans. Il est meilleur que dans mes souvenirs et j'aimerais y apporter quelques retouches. Malheureusement, je n'ai plus le fichier d'origine ; le seul document dont je dispose est un PDF constitué uniquement d'images (impossible de sélectionner le texte). Connaissez-vous un outil ou un logiciel capable de convertir des images en texte? Parce que je n'ai pas envie de retaper 100 pages moi-même lol.

My buddy and I run a small production company in Quebec called From Outer Space Films, and we just released our short horror film The Wanderer on YouTube.

It follows Thomas, whose quiet night is interrupted when an old friend shows up at his door seeking refuge from a storm... only for him to realize that whatever she’s running from may have followed her.

This was the first “proper” short we made together after film school, entirely self-funded, and I thought I’d share a couple of things we learned from making it... including one mistake we definitely wouldn’t repeat.

Keep your first film simple

In Quebec, we’re fortunate to have access to quite a bit of public film funding. The catch is that, to become eligible for a lot of it, you first need to prove yourself by making work independently and, ideally, getting that work into recognized festivals.

So that became our goal: make the best short we could actually afford to make ourselves.

We deliberately kept the concept extremely contained: two actors, one location. I’d highly recommend imposing similar limitations if you’re making one of your first shorts. Instead of stretching a small budget across a ton of locations, characters and production days, we could put what little money and time we had into the things that would actually end up on screen.

Those limitations actually helped us find the story, too. We’ve always loved creepypastas and urban legends, and one of the things we find so effective about the best stories in that genre is how little they actually need. They’re often incredibly short and simple - sometimes just a strange encounter or a single unsettling idea - and yet they can be genuinely scary.

That became a good model for what we were trying to do. Rather than thinking of two actors and one location as something we had to write around, we started thinking about what kind of scary story could actually benefit from being that simple. Eventually, that led us to The Wanderer.

And then we made a dumb distribution mistake

The funny part is that The Wanderer is actually pretty old at this point. It premiered at the Fantasia International Film Festival back in 2022 and went on to have a pretty decent two-year festival run.

Then… we basically let it die on a hard drive. We moved on to other, bigger projects and, for whatever reason, never really prioritized putting the film online.

We finally released it on YouTube recently, and in less than 10 days it has already gotten around 6,000 views. The reels, clips and posts we made around it have also accumulated tens of thousands of views and hundreds of likes across social media. Obviously those aren't astronomical numbers, but compared with a film literally sitting unseen on a hard drive, it's been a pretty eye-opening reminder of how much life a short can still have after festivals.

So if I could give one piece of advice to filmmakers going through the festival circuit now: have your online release strategy ready before your festival run ends. Don't do what we did and wait several years because you feel like the film has already had its moment. Festivals and an online audience serve very different purposes, and finishing one doesn't mean you should neglect the other.

Anyway, we’re really happy that The Wanderer is finally out in the world where people can actually watch it. Hope you enjoy it!

EDIT: You can find the film on Letterboxd by the way! Right over here: https://letterboxd.com/film/the-wanderer-2022/

Je suis à la recherche d'un trope assez précis et j'espère que ce sub pourra m'aider. Je cherche des histoires où un personnage va volontairement solliciter une expérience afin de susciter une vision - consulter un oracle, faire une séance avec un médium, participer à un rituel - et où cela déclenche un rêve, une transe ou un épisode d'inconscience.

Je ne parle pas de « rêves prophétiques qui arrivent comme ça, de nulle part ». Ce qui m'intéresse vraiment, c'est toute la séquence : l'induction, la vision ou le rêve en lui-même, puis la phase de réveil. La désorientation, le moment où le personnage recolle les morceaux de ce qui vient de se passer, et la façon dont il gère les conséquences ou le sens de ce qu'il a vu par la suite.

Le genre n'a pas trop d'importance. Fantasy, littérature générale, horreur, peu importe. Toutes vos recommandations sont les bienvenues!

I'm hunting for a pretty specific trope and hoping this sub can help. I'm looking for stories where a character seeks out some kind of vision-inducing experience - consulting an oracle, sitting with a medium, taking part in a ritual - and it triggers a dream, trance, or unconscious episode.

Not talking about "prophetic dreams out of nowhere". What I'm really after is the whole arc: the induction, the vision/dream itself, and then the waking up part. The disorientation, piecing together what just happened, and dealing with the consequences or meaning of what they saw afterward.

Genre doesn't matter much. Fantasy, literary fiction, horror, whatever. Any recommendations welcome!

I'm hunting for a pretty specific trope and hoping this sub can help. I'm looking for stories where a character seeks out some kind of vision-inducing experience - consulting an oracle, sitting with a medium, taking part in a ritual - and it triggers a dream, trance, or unconscious episode.

Not talking about "prophetic dreams out of nowhere". What I'm really after is the whole arc: the induction, the vision/dream itself, and then the waking up part. The disorientation, piecing together what just happened, and dealing with the consequences or meaning of what they saw afterward.

Genre doesn't matter much. Fantasy, literary fiction, horror, whatever. Any recommendations welcome!

Salut tout le monde!

​Je cherche des recommandations de romans d'aventure ou de fantastique basés sur un concept bien précis : un siège, mais à échelle humaine.

​Plutôt qu'une grande bataille épique avec des murailles et une armée de monstres, j'ai envie de lire une histoire où une simple maison se retrouve sous l'assaut d'une menace. Je cherche ce genre d'intrigue où un groupe de personnes (petit ou nombreux) doit s'y réfugier en urgence, se barricader, gérer la tension à l'intérieur, organiser la défense et résister coûte que coûte. Ça peut être historique, comme un groupe de chevalier qui se barricade dans un manoir, ou contemporain, comme une famille qui voit sa maison prise d'assaut.

​J'adore ce sentiment de huis clos sous haute tension où un lieu du quotidien devient une forteresse de fortune.

​Si vous avez des titres qui exploitent bien ce trope en tête, je suis preneur. Merci d'avance pour vos idées!

Je suis à la recherche de livres d'action, d'aventure ou de fantastique, dans lequel il y a un chien dans les personnages principaux. Encore mieux si celui-ci joue les héros et sauve la mise!

It can be memorable cutscenes, in-game events, whatever. What are your favorite moments in the Dishonored franchise?

I'm looking for fiction recommendations where one of the characters is spectacularly, chronically clumsy. Think characters who are always bumping into doorframes, knocking over priceless vases, dropping whatever they are holding, or causing minor disasters just by walking into a room. Open to any genre. Thanks in advance!

I'm currently working on a pretty unusual project. It's a cosmic horror transmedia experience, which features a 20 minutes live action short film and an interactive epilogue (a video game basically). Since my project fits into two categories I was wondering if it was possible to have two or do I need to choose one. If I have to choose, I'm a bit annoyed because whatever I will end up going with I fear it will undersell what I'm doing. Any suggestions?