I did this movie last year. We shot at Aldworth Manor in late September and October. It was a gorgeous location and such a great time with a great team. I’m very grateful to have had this experience and I’m REALLY excited for you all to see it!
I am currently on location in Harrisville, New Hampshire at Aldworth Manor shooting the new indie horror movie Squirrel. It’s been a lot of fun and you’re going to see a lot of it if you’re following me on social media.
Autumn is my favorite time of year and October is one of my favorite months. Rene and I got married in October, we LOVE Halloween, the weather is my preferred type with clouds and rain and chill, it’s our cup of tea. It’s really hard to be all the way across the country away from her and Frankie. They seem to be having a good time back in Portland and Frankie is super-cute in his outfits to keep him warm, as you can can see in these pictures:
This slideshow requires JavaScript.
But it’s still hard. So I’ve been keeping myself busy in my downtime.
In the interest of Halloween, I’m telling spooky stories here at the manor. The first one you can see here:
I’ll be doing more all month and these stories are TRUE! Also, the manor house is apparently haunted so I’m going to be going through it with some of the cast and crew later this month to see if we can “catch” anything. Here’s a preview of that from Friday the 13th:
Of course, it wouldn’t be Halloween if I didn’t post Bloody Mary again – it’s a tradition:
And since we won’t be able to do LIVE Discussions for a while, here’s one that i think is still incredibly relevant on being a journeyman actor:
Oh, and I forgot to mention that we have COOL NEW MERCH NOW! You can see that HERE.
You can currently order these cool designs:
Of course, our patrons have first crack at all new material and at the higher levels of patronage you get discounts on your order! You can check that out HERE.
Please like, subscribe, click the links, share, follow – you know, do all the good social media stuff! We’ll see you soon!
We have been hard at work on all of our new stuff and while we’re are still working on things like sketches:
And things like Rene’s music parodies:
The thing that seems to be taking off is our series of LIVE Discussions. These are weekly (Sundays at 11am Pacific Time) and recorded live on our YouTube Channel. We have a topic of discussion (usually arts or creativity related) and I assemble a panel of friends, co-workers, and contemporaries to talk about it for at least 20 mins (although lately we’ve been going longer). Once a month we do a Feature Discussion with a bigger panel. Feature Discussions last for at least an hour and I do a follow-up video of just the highlights after the fact. Below is a playlist of all the discussions so far:
Please check these out, feel free to click on any of the advertising (wink).
Rene and I have some big plans for the future, especially as we continue building our own content. We can do a lot on our own, but we could use some additional financial support to help raise the bar on our activities. Everything we’ve done thus far has been done on a shoestring where we beg, borrow and steal what we need to get a project done. This has worked pretty well, like with The Chili and Bloody Mary:
But with a little bit more money we can do a lot more!
Please consider joining our Patreon page. We’ve set-up some good starter rewards and I’m very pleased to announce that I got some of our art proofs back this morning for the merch that we will be releasing (actual release date TBD, but it’s coming!!!).
If Patreon isn’t an option, please don’t be afraid to click on the advertising links you see here and on the channel. I try to make sure that all of the ads presented are appropriate for the page and they should be set-up so that the items shown are things you, as the reader/watcher, would be interested in.
Thank you all for your support! We have seen the page jump in activity since we started – and we’re doing very well for only being about 4 weeks into this new effort! We’re really looking forward to what’s next!
If you are a creative, this video will sounds very familiar – but it’s a universal message. Lord knows I’ve been down this road a few times. Determination, persistence and touch of naivete is usually enough to win the day – it’s just the “day” in question usually lasts for years.
It’s Day 249 and we are still on location shooting East of Jesus in Oregon. I always have high hopes about my abilities to post and generally “social media” when I do things like this. In my head I know I only have one job to focus on and so naturally that means that I’ll have all kinds of extra time to be able to commit to maintaining everything else that I like to do like this site, my Twitter feed, and my Facebook page, but that’s never how it turns out. Regardless of what may be perpetuated by conventional wisdom it takes a lot of work to make a film at any level. It’s a lot of hard work in a very short amount of time. You are dominated by factors that you cannot control, like the weather and unexpected technical problems, and even in the best case scenarios getting it done right means being focused and and dedicated. Distractions like this site, my Twitter feed, and my Facebook page all start to feel pretty small when you have a whole set of people relying on the ability to be on set, memorized, and good. I’m not very good at doing both jobs. Rene really has a better handle on that. Sometimes I think I should just make her the Andersen Family documentarian and photographer. We still have some shooting to do, but we got an unexpected day off today due to rain so I forced myself to catch up on all my stuff – hence this post.
Below are some select images from the shoot and an exclusive video of Rene from the beautiful Oregon Coast when we hiked up the side of the sand hill. Enjoy! And if you like these then you can see even more over at my Facebook page.
The wife had a good idea for a video this year about California’s lack of significant seasonal change. She wrote a great blog about it HERE but if you just want to see the video you can see it below:
And last year I did a short for Fun Size Horror based on a short story I wrote called Bloody Mary. Since it’s the right time of year you can see that below:
It is the bane of the modern entertainment industry.
It has completely changed the paradigm of the music industry and altered the business of television and film distribution in ways that have yet to be realized.
For many consumers, media piracy is thought of as a new thing. Something that the industry has to cope with in a world full of modern marvels that allow for quick duplication and distribution. But that isn’t actually true. Piracy is something that is as old as the entertainment industry and CineFix has done a great job explaining it in their latest Film School’D video.
Another lesson from this video? Edison really was a prick. An industrious prick, but a prick.
How do you feel about piracy? what do you think the industry can do to combat it? Let me know in the comments.
Many people who visit this blog have entertainment career ambitions, like being an actor or a filmmaker. While I’m happy to offer advice and tell stories about my misadventures, there’s also a lot of history of this business that’s worth knowing. For some that means going to film school and getting a classroom education. However, most creatives in the entertainment industry don’t go or never finish college so what do they do?
They turn to the internet.
The YouTube channel Cinefix has a great series called:
The entertainment industry is changing faster now than it ever has before. The last decade has seen an exponential change in how audiences consume content, where content is created, how content can be monetized, and what that means for the people who create all of this content. I see this from the perspective of the “working class” trenches: no development fund, need to maintain employment, still keeping up a hustle. For people like me (and there are a LOT of us) we have seen this change in a very real way for a long time and, as much as I hate to admit it, haven’t been as proactive as we probably should have been to be on the front of that wave.
Instead the younger set, those without the idea of “this is how things work” found their place. YouTubers are doing very well for themselves and Hollywood is taking notice, ready to monetize on their popularity. Fan films get national attention and have their own festival circuit. The biggest name in horror for the last seven years has been Paranormal Activity – a series that started with a movie made for about $11,000 in a dude’s house with After Effects.
For those with vision and a camera the future is open and ready…
…that being said, the old model is far from dead.
A lot of talk happened the Monday after the Golden Globes when Netflix and Amazon both walked away with coveted trophies about how the nature of television is changing and that the very business is already inexorably changed. And it is, but not completely. Not yet.
Here are two articles that, for me, were kind of the yin and yang of the future of the business, at least for the next few years especially in the context of wide public distribution, like television.
They are finally able to be released publicly! The shorts we made for Fun Size Horror are now available for public view.
“Bloody Mary” was a fun bit of filmmaking made under surprise conditions. Originally we had a different crew, location and equipment – but then there was some bad luck behind the scenes. Thanks to some help from Fun Size founder Zeke Pinheiro we were able to shoot and get this in on time.
Give it a look and then watch it a bunch more and tell a friend. More next week!
This, this, all the this!
If you are a creative, this video will sounds very familiar – but it’s a universal message. Lord knows I’ve been down this road a few times. Determination, persistence and touch of naivete is usually enough to win the day – it’s just the “day” in question usually lasts for years.
Share this:
Like this:
Leave a Comment
Filed under actor 101, actor stuff, art, artist, behind the scenes, commentary, doing new things, education, fail, failure, filmmaking, friends, fund raising, general, getting fit, getting started, happiness, how-to, inspiration, jobs, learning experience, making movies, productivity, projects, REVOLUTION, social commentary, video, videos, YouTube