A teaser pic of Grace starring in UFO's latest film built specifically for Project Twenty1 this year. Playback will without a doubt be online after the competition screenings during the first weekend in October this year in Philadelphia.
Have and share some good thoughts for us all who are competing. There are 35 teams this year! Congrats Matt, Stephanie and the whole P21 team. So damn cool.
The following music video was created for Moby Gratis, starring the always excellent talents of Grace Anne Rowan and Shane Hagedorn.
Moby - Ooh Yeah
Written, directed and shot by yours truly and I most certainly can't thank Deep End Films enough for the edit. Thanks, Ben!
We have two wonderful flavors to choose from online:
Myspace Milky Way
(in another window because Blogger and Myspace don't play nice with one another apparently.)
...OR...
Youtube Blocky Blacks
But by all means check out the websites of those noted below that helped make this edition of Team with No Name's DWIFF Challenge 2008 entry an instant cult classic in the Michigan Microcinema scene.
Big Lot Anti-Stars
Deep End Films
Grace Anne Rowan
Sandstorm FX & Productions
Twain Girl Independent Films
And, as always, BIG THANKS for dropping by the site today. All of the emails, phone calls and offers of support and encourgement have been very much appreciated.
Detroit Windsor International Film Festival debuts this year in Motown and they had an interesting challenge. Make a film in 48 hours, not with one element, or even two, but SIX different elements: A genre, two locations, a person, a prop and a line of dialog.
At a certain point, one has to wonder if they shouldn't just hand the filmmaker a script and say, "See you all the day after tomorrow."
Mark A. France of Sandstorm FX & Productions posted a MySpace blog that sums up our adventures pretty well making The Aftermath.
Team with No Name's original spin for genre landed us on "horror," which
was just not appealing to me considering the terrifying film experience earlier this month. So we opted to spin again and landed on "You choose" so after suggesting "horror" for irony's sake, we pow-wowed and chose "Action Adventure."
And was there ever action. Not only in front of the camera but also
behind it. We too were caught up in the nasty weather (hailed on hard
not once, but twice,) nearly attacked by an itinerant crack whore in downtown proper, nearly wrecked in a wicked traffic snarl on 696, and Mark showed us what true horror was all about. 
But what an adventure. We're all looking forward to coming together
again at the screenings this Sunday and enjoying everyone's work up on
the big screen. Of course, Mark blogs about the desire to win something
for our efforts but the fact is we all - the filmmakers of DWIFF
Challenge 2008 - have already earned the best reward of all and just did
what we all set out to do: make a film in 48 hours. Congratulations, filmmakers! We did it!
See you all soon!
Bodyrock from moby on Vimeo.
This video is a perfect representation of very much what it's like to make a film with all the best of intentions and then executing it with the worst of reasons.
Yeah, so this last one known as I Witness for the moment was not just hard, but for me anyhow, the single hardest thing I've ever "accomplished" in my life. (Not the movie - a movie is just a movie - but making a movie is not that simple...)
And all for what? (Rhetorical question here, folks. Your mileage will vary.)
It's been like surviving a crash landing in the Andes only to realize, as the plane's captain, you're going to have to eat your dead passengers in order to eek out enough strength to march out of the wilderness in order to save the rest of them.
Maybe.
And as one marches along that jungle path lost as all get out they realize how really fucking stupid it is to be here in the first place because filmmaking's basic first steps are based on the plan one makes in pre-production (aka flight plan if one will) and had I taken my own arrogance and ego out of the equation with enough time to check the weather and the map again - instead of taking it for granted that I somehow "got this shit down cold" - I might've, just might've, avoided hitting that big fucking mountain right smack in the middle of my path.
Look, every filmmaker challenging themselves to become better at this craft discovers that there are indeed no shortcuts to "getting 'er done and done well." I get that.
There are better ways to qualify and validate methods of approach in every aspect of our lives. I get that too.
Usability methodology of good, fast, cheap: pick two at the expense of the other? (AND oh, how one will pay. And pay. And pay. And pay.) Keen. I can dig it.
But all of these are far and away not the only "best ways" to do it and once one confuses mixing and matching them as a filmmaker - or even as a standard issue human being - then never the three shall pass infallibly. Feelings get hurt, friendships get sacrificed and maybe, just maybe, if one is so blessed with it, one gains wisdom as a result once they too are through with the struggle.
Fucking jungle vines, biting insects and, say, is that a ravine up ahead? Oh my!
And now I know - and really understand this time around to boot - because the jury's is still out on the wisdom payoff obviously. It's going to take some time for me to reflect upon all of this latter with enough personal head space allowed (earned?) to care about myself as something more than being a "filmmaker at any and all costs."
All for what again? (Still rhetorical...)
Because I can tell you all definitively that there is a cost.
And never "find yourself" lost.
