Cartoon Cool: January 2006

Cartoon Cool

Tuesday, January 31, 2006

Today marked the first meeting of the new year for the Dickinson State University Filmmakers Club. When preparing for this meeting, I was rather excited. Josh Nichols (President) and I (Vice President) had prepared for about two weeks for this meeting. This was the meeting we were going to reveal our new sitcom, code named Roomies. However, the day of the meeting I received several e-mail messages from our regular members saying they could not attend. With seven of our regulars not attending, I thought all hope was lost to launch this new project successfully.Entering the meeting, Josh and I both knew there would be a very small attendance. We pretty much expected the two of us and Brandon Pelling to sit around the conference table discussing the sitcom. To our surprise though, seven new people showed up to the meeting. So we basically doubled our membership. Not only that, the new members were pretty willing to participate and discussion on the sitcom went very well. Three of the new members joined the writing staff for the sitcom and a few of them were even interested in auditioning for some parts. In the end, the meeting was a success and the future of Roomies looks bright.If everything stays on track, Roomies will premiere this March on the local campus channel. A DVD release is also on the horizon.

¶ 6:47 PM //

Yesterday I sat down and watched the 2004 I.M. Independent movie, The 99.9% Action Movie: The Movie. I watched it because I was capturing the video to store on an external hard drive. It's funny how long two years actually is when it comes to my films and cartoons. Back in 2004, my friend Justin Huber and I created this movie. And at the time, we thought it was really good. It's 77 minutes long and a sci-fi/comedy. The movie mainly focuses on two rivals and their mis-adventures through time. The plot itself actually wasn't bad, but everything else was.First of all, there was no script. Yes, the movie was 77 minutes long, and yet there was no script. The entire movie was adlibbed. This caused the movie to feel sloppy. Another thing is Justin and I would usually act in a scene at the same time with no one manning the camera. This made some scenes look really bad. Justin and I starred in it and never bothered to audition anyone for the two main roles. We didn't have a set filming schedule; we just went out and filmed when we felt like it. Of course the movie had no budget. I used a Super Soaker for my laser gun for crying out loud! Yet, as we made this movie, we thought it was great. Why? Because it was the best thing we had done to date.So why do I bring this up? It's just amazing to me. Now here we are, 2006, and we are preparing for a new video project. I'm talking about our new sitcom, Roomies. Roomies will have scripts for all the episodes, auditions for the main roles, assigned crew positions (such as cinematographers), planned locations, and even a budget. In less than two years, I.M. Independent has gone from making movies for the hell of it, to taking on projects from a professional point of view. But it's still as fun as it's always been, it's just now the quality of our works has improved exponentially. For a while I've been ashamed to show The 99.9% Action Movie: The Movie to people. Because when I look at it now, I really hate it. But, I don't think I should take on that kind of attitude anymore. From now on I'm going to try to appreciate my past works a little more. Because if it wasn't for my past works, I wouldn't have any future works to look forward to. So, with this, I may start posting our old movies online for download, starting with The 99.9% Action Movie: The Movie. So what will the I.M. Independent crew be accomplishing two years from now? For that matter, how will my cartoons look and feel two years from now? I guess we'll have to wait a couple years to see!For more information on The 99.9% Action Movie: The Movie, click here. And for more information on Roomies, stay tuned, more will be coming soon!

¶ 6:44 PM //

Test

¶ 6:41 PM //