The Etch Cast team launches a brand-new recurring series: Bad Ideas Only — where the worst movie pitches imaginable get a shot at redemption. Fever-dream concepts, cursed Notes App entries, and cinematic chaos all collide as Morgan Galen King, Will Battersby, April Merl, Belle Del Sesto, and Lacey Gilleran attempt the impossible: making bad ideas… actually good.
It’s unhinged.It’s creative madness.It’s filmmaking at its most unfiltered.
Press play and descend into the chaos.
Author Paul Tremblay (A Head Full of Ghosts, Horror Movie, Another) joins Philip Gelatt to talk horror tropes, ambiguity, and why the uncanny is essential to fear. A sharp and entertaining craft conversation — plus a hilarious horror movie recommendation disaster.
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Every film begins with an idea — the flicker before the fire. In this first From Script to Screen installment, Philip Gelatt and Morgan Galen King sit down with director and producer Will Battersby to talk about how stories are born, shaped, and sometimes haunted. They explore where ideas come from, how tone and theme guide early choices, and what separates a concept from a story worth chasing.
It’s a candid look at the creative process — the chaos, the questions, and the strange persistence of ideas that refuse to die.
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Philip Gelatt and Morgan Galen King, joined by Etch team member Belle Del Sesto, descend into the world of horror video games. They explore why fear feels different when you’re holding the controller, games that scarred them, and why we keep going back for more. Plus: What Lurks in Our Queue.
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Welcome back to the shadows.
In Episode 4 of ETCH CAST, it’s just Philip Gelatt and Morgan Galen King — two friends, two filmmakers, and one long conversation about the strange, exhausting, and occasionally transcendent act of animating dark fantasy.
This time, Morgan moves from co-host to guest as we trace the decade-long creation of The Spine of Night, unpack the beauty and brutality of rotoscoping, and explore how animation gives horror and fantasy a shared, living language.
In this episode:
The stubborn road to The Spine of Night — and what kept it alive.
Why every hand-drawn frame is a little spell.
How horror and fantasy feed each other when done right.
The toll and joy of living inside a world you’re still drawing.
Plus… a little Rob Zombie.
We close, as always, with What Lurks in Our Queue — the films, books, and oddities inspiring us to keep our own queues strange and overflowing.
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Editing is where horror takes shape. In this episode of ETCH CAST, hosts Philip Gelatt and Morgan Galen King sit down with Etch editor April Merl to explore how editing creates rhythm, tension, and atmosphere.
They discuss April’s path into editing, the unique challenges of cutting horror, and why silence and pacing can sometimes be more powerful than screams.
Plus, in our recurring segment What Lurks in Our Queue, we share what we’ve been watching and reading lately — recommendations to keep your own queue eerie and overflowing.
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The Etch team pulls back the curtain on the making of FIRST WORD ON HORROR — from lighting interviews like paintings to turning each author’s story into its own cinematic world. We talk doors that became portals, the challenges of filming Laird Barron, Paul Tremblay, Mariana Enríquez, Elizabeth Hand, and Stephen Graham Jones, and why sometimes a “podcast” has to become a documentary.
Hosted by Philip Gelatt (Love, Death & Robots), Will Battersby (Etch Productions), and Morgan Galen King (The Spine of Night).
If you enjoy the show, leave us a review, follow @etchfilm across social, and subscribe to our Substack at etchstudio.substack.com to watch the full video version and support independent filmmaking.
Stay curious. Stay weird. The shadows are listening.
Meet the minds behind Etch Productions: Philip Gelatt (writer/director, Love, Death & Robots), Will Battersby (producer, President of Production at Etch), and Morgan Galen King (co-director of The Spine of Night). In our premiere, we share the films and books that scarred or inspired us, debate why genre is more toolkit than cage, and confess to childhood obsessions ranging from Gremlins and Stephen King to Maximum Overdrive and even Police Academy 3.
If you enjoyed the episode, leave a review, drop us a comment, and follow us on social media @etchfilm. Subscribe to our Substack at etchstudio.substack.com for more and to help support independent film. The weirder the world, the better the story — help us keep telling them.