Announcing Our New TV Show: Commercial Kings with Rhett and Link

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Catch our new show this summer on the fabulous “always on, slightly off” IFC. Commercial Kings with YouTube sensations Rhett and Link begins airing June 24th. Rhett and Link have hoped to do this show for a long time. After teaming up with Reveille (the studio behind The Office and The Biggest Loser) they sold … Read more

Cleveland Here We Come!

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If you’ve been around the blog, you know how proud I am of my Cleveland roots. Well, April 1, 2, and 3 of this very year, we’ll be living a life-long dream: playing one of our movies at The Cleveland International Film Festival. CIFF (as it’s called by the cool kids) is one of Cleveland’s … Read more

Dying to do Letterman Sweeps Doc Category at Cinequest

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We’re so proud to tell you that our feature-length documentary Dying to do Letterman won both the jury prize for Best Documentary Feature and the Audience Award at the Cinequest Film Festival. Here are some video highlights from one of the greatest weekends of our lives:

THANK YOU: Dying to do Letterman Press Reviews and Audience Response

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One thing you simply cannot control about the projects you produce, direct, edit…no matter how hard you try…is audience reaction, or press response. We’re fortunate that thus far, on our film Dying to do Letterman, we’ve had very positive reviews on both…and we’d like to say THANK YOU Yes, we know we’ve blitzed you with … Read more

That First Review of Your Movie

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If you’ve ever put something creative into the world, you know what it feels like to wait for a verdict. There’s dread. Nasuea. Lots of pacing… That was us waiting to get our first review of our movie. To make matters worse… Our film Dying to do Letterman, which just premiered at Cinequest, was accepted … Read more

Sold out Premiere. Standing Ovation. Dying to do Letterman.

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photo by studiomix The greatest feeling a filmmaker can have? For us, it may have been the moment we had to give our seats away because the screening completely sold out. Well, until 80 minutes later when we received a standing ovation at the world premiere of our film, Dying to do Letterman. Or, 30 … Read more

How to Hijack a Film Festival

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Okay, well, maybe “hijack” is a bit harsh…we’d never want to take anything away from the other great filmmakers we’re playing along side. But, in an attempt to stand out amongst the other 173 films playing at the Cinequest Film Festival, we’ve made an elaborate plan involving hospital scrubs, flyers, interactive buttons, and lots of … Read more

Michael Rooker Now Online

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You all know how we love our good pal and acting god Michael Rooker. Well, he’s online all over the place, and here’s a little video we put together so you can find him real easy. Props to Linda Webster at IJL Designs for making Michael’s new website.

Cut Notes for Final Cut Pro Rocks Post Production

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I still remember the day Nate Orloff, our assistant editor, came in with his iPad. It was geek-out-at-first-sight. Everyone in the office was excited, myself included. I am a geek, after all, and the iPad was truly Geek-a-licious.

Nate and I even put together a short video showing how to write a screenplay on an iPad using Pages and a screenwriting template we made (this was before there was a plethora of screenwriting apps on the App Store).

When Nate told me his idea for an iPad app called Cut Notes, I was jazzed. It’s only appropriate that Nate found Jon Chappell of Digital Rebellion the same way I found Nate, via Twitter. They partnered up last fall and a few weeks ago, released version v1.0 of Cut Notes for iPad.

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Jon Chappell and Nate Orloff found time to answer a few of my questions about the app and the process making it:

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Amanda Lin Costa on a Tight Deadlne

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Amanda Lin Costa, filmmaker, Her Letters photo credit Emon Hassan

In part one of our interview with Amanda, she talked about the (difficult!) process of adapting a short story into a short film. The catch…this story has “zero dialogue AND psychological and emotional deterioration as it’s main plot points.” Good read. Check it out.

We ended by discussing how she was shooting the film on the Canon 5D Mark II, one of the leading models in the new rage to shoot video on cameras traditionally meant to shoot stills.

The benefit to doing so is getting some amazing images that have a very cinematic feel, and shallow depth of focus. Her cinematographer Emon Hassan was able to deliver some spectacular results. Check out these two “top secret” still frames from “Her Letters.”

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