If I were to give this week a name, I'd probably call it the outreach week. On Monday, I reached out to Luis Blanco and Michael Uman from Interspectacular, a motion graphics and animation studio based in New York City with clients like VH1, Volvo, Virgin, Comedy Central, amongst others. I met Luis and Michael at AI-AP's Big Talk last Thursday and am excited to host them at the Film Annex Studios after Thanksgiving. If you're an animator reading this, check them out for sure and watch some of their latest work.
I also contacted Joanna Milter, the Deputy Photo Editor of the NYTimes to request an interview with her. Milter is one of the producers of the NYTimes Touch of Evil video series directed by Alex Prager. At Film Annex, we often talk about online film distribution and where it's going, and it's interesting for me to see online video's integration into traditional news platforms like the Times. To get Milter's opinion on this would be valuable.
On Tuesday, our editors put out Sandy on Coney Island, a Film Annex produced short documentary narrated by a Coney Island resident. I blogged about this video earlier in the week and reached out to several journalists. I also sent out an announcement to filmmakers who'd like to submit their Sandy footage to Film Annex for the completion of a bigger project about the Hurricane. We already received a few submissions and looking forward to receiving more.
One of the highlight's of the week was the phone conference Francesco and I had with Steven Steiner and Hodei Sultan from United States Institute of Peace. I had been in contact with Steve for a few months regarding our Afghan Development Initiative, and it was exciting to finally talk to him over the phone and go over our project in depth. USIP does eye-opening research about female empowerment in developing countries, and having their support would definitely bring the Afghan Development Project to the next level. More details on this to come...
On Thursday, I followed up with Matthew Modine and his team about Modine's short film Jesus Was a Commie, which I want to promote and showcase on Film Annex. In addition to promotion, I want to introduce to them Film Annex's film financing model in case they have other projects they're working on. And which filmmaker doesn't? Speaking of new projects, I came across a great theater company called The New Group this week. The company is putting out three new plays this week, one of which is directed by and starring Ethan Hawke. It occurred to me that theater actors and directors need as much promotion as filmmakers, if not more, so I contacted the PR coordinator of the company to explore the possibilities.
Lastly, but not least(ly) - can I say that? - I worked on the video interview we did with animation filmmaker Charles Pieper who visited us last week! I think it's one of the best interview videos we've done, because Pieper has amazing energy, and we included some awesome clips from his stop motion animations as well as his drawings. So stay tuned for the final video. It should be out tonight or Monday the latest!
Till next week,
Eren
Illustration of David Lynch by Charles Pieper
