Film Festival!

Just received word that "monster,me" has been accepted to the Ann Arbor Film Festival! The notice said it is scheduled to play at the Michigan Theater on Sunday, March 24th. I'll post more details as I receive them.

And earlier this week at the UICA, the movie won the audience vote at the Open Projector Night series. So, many thanks to everyone who was there for the support! And thanks to the UICA for supporting local film makers!

The monster premiered,…

Many thanks to everyone that came out (approximately 160) for the opening this past Friday!  Your support and encouragement was greatly appreciated! And you made the Q&A after the film a lot of fun, especially with all the questions from the kids. It was incredibly satisfying to see the film spark so much interest with them!

The UICA theatre as the audience filtered in. (Photo: Leigh Moore) 

I also want to thank Ryan Burkholder of Organisum and Ryan Dittmer, Brandon Belote, Nick Hartman and Taylor Greenfield of the UICA for all their assistance in the weeks running up the event. And thanks again to Angie and Angie for showing their film with ours. The audience really enjoyed it.

From the Q&A (Photo: Betsy Klingensmith)

Lastly, thanks to One Trick Pony for accommodating everyone that turned out for the "afterparty." 

We all had a blast.

Monster,me + one

Very pleased to announce that the Oct 26th premiere of "monster,me" is now a  double feature!  The animated short "Cuckoo for Two" by Angie Hauch & Angie Tidball has joined the bill.

"Cuckoo" was Angie & Angie's collaborative thesis project while at Kendall College of Art and Design and has enjoyed a run in the festival circuit over the last year. It's shown at both the Chicago International Children's Film Festival 2011 and the Waterfront FIlm Festival 2012.

Both Angela's are professional animators/motion designers now: one in Chicago at Woodlawn Avenue Productions and the other in Grand Rapids at Story Telling Pictures. So very glad to have them involved with this event! I hope you'll enjoy their work as much as I have. 

See you on the 26th!

Monster,me Premiere!

I can now officially announce the first ever exhibition of "monster,me!" 

It will take place in the theater of the Urban Institute of Contemporary Arts in downtown Grand Rapids on October 26th. Showtime will be 7PM and the admission is FREE!

If you're not familiar with the UICA, or if you're just looking for parking suggestions, here's a link to their website with directions and parking options.

Here's a link to the online invitation. If you have any questions, please use the contact button near the bottom of the invite.

I'm currently talking with a few animators about making the event a 'double feature' or possibly a triple or quadruple.  Once those possibilities have been ironed out, I'll post the details here.

Hope to see you on the 26th!

And it's done!

I've been waiting a very long time to be able to say that. And it does feel a little surreal to say it,… but it really is finished.

Mike Dollar wrapped up mixing the sound this past Monday.  I put my final touches on the animation Thursday.  Now the final render with audio is in the hands of Ryan Burkholder of Grand Rapids based Organisum. Ryan will be overseeing the compression and formatting needed to prepare it for theater projection. 

A million thanks to Dollar for introducing me to Ryan after I had told him how difficult it was to navigate the complexities involved with compressing a 55Gb movie without losing the image quality (that's right,… I said 55 Gig! Not 55 megabytes, but 55 gigabytes)   

How Ryan keeps track of all the complex ins-and-outs of codecs, avi's, BetaSp, HDcam, H264's and a gagillion other terms that make my head spin, is beyond me! But I'm so glad that he can and even happier to have him helping us get these issues ironed out.  

While Ryan is working his magic on the movie, I'll be ironing out the details for something I hope to formally announce in a post later this week.  (stay tuned,..)

In the meantime, I can announce the official monster,me website is up and running. Many many thanks to Lisa Price for all her work in putting it together! 

You can find it here.

Let there be music!

Quite a bit has happened since I last posted.

The film is now edited into a roughcut with a 9 minute runtime. The sound tracks have been handed over to Mike Dollar who will be performing all the sound editing, remastering and audio wizardry. Mike's an interesting guy with a widely varied background that ranges from psychologist to musician to sound engineer to civil war buff. He came highly recommended from a voice actor friend of mine, John Guertin.

And lastly, but definitely not leastly is the arrival of a score composer to help bring this project to life!  

Last week, Mojave Bird (the stage name of Grace Peters, a Portland based singer/songwriter/musician) joined the small monster,me team. Grace was the keyboardist in the southern California bands "Fairview" and "Kiev" before moving to Portland and creating her solo project "Mojave Bird." Her music has an ethereal and, at times, hypnotic quality to it.  It also has the feel that I've been imagining all along, which I can only think to describe as "hopeful melancholy." Please follow the link above and check out the sample songs on her website. I think you'll see what I'm trying to describe.

( Grace Peters )

It was an odd and unexpected set of circumstances and synergy that brought Grace onboard.  I had approached the recording artist Petracovich, who I've been a longtime fan of, to see if she would be interested in composing a score for monster,me. She was interested, but she was also 8 months pregnant, which made our timing less than ideal. So when she decided she'd be unable to work on the film, she suggested that I talk to her sister who is also a "very talented" musician.  

I listened to the song samples that Jessica (Petracovich) directed me to. Turned out that Grace's music, like Jessica's, had all the qualities I was looking for in a soundtrack for the film. A few emails and phone calls later and Mojave Bird became the composer for monster,me.

Grace has already written/recorded the theme that opens with the first few scenes of the movie and I can't wait to hear where she is going to take this.  Beautiful work.

So, many thanks to Mike Dollar for taking on the role of sound-man for the movie. And many thanks to Petracovich (who I hope to have the opportunity to work with someday on another project) for suggesting Mojave Bird for this film, and many many thanks to Grace for lending her talents to the soundtrack!  I couldn't be happier to have her on board.

( In Grace's Portland studio )

Almost fullsize,...

 Since the full resolution version of the film is larger than can be displayed on my widescreen  monitor,  this is a screen grab of it at roughly 85%. (hoping that I can post an image this large,... I guess if you are reading this, the site at least allowed me to upload it. Not sure that it will display at the full 85% though. The actual film is over 2000 pixels wide.)