Great Success! (in my best Borat voice). This year, Gorilla is presenting the Addy’s event by creating the awards reel, an animated showcase of winning print, online, and film/video work. Last night, all of our hard work paid off when Gorilla proudly presented the Awards reel. Creating the reel was a long road marked by no sleep, communist factory worker employment hours, reoccurring states of delirium, and and even less sleep. But it was worth it. And the work presented was fascinated. For the naysayers in West Michigan, creative ideas exist and can compete with the nation’s best.

It’s been an intense couple weeks, and a big reason has been fulfilling our commitment to sponsor the 2010 Addy Awards. Gorilla personally took home four Addy Awards to add to the collection. Even more important though, due to the sponsorship, we had a lot of great exposure throughout the night. For this, a special thanks goes out to Todd Chatman, who really worked hard to help make the Awards Reel the best it could be. Also, huge props to our new friends at VisualHero for some remarkable graphics and design work.

The work has been tireless (literally) as the last couple nights have been sleepless, barring an occasional office couch nap. But the end is in sight. Today the presentation will be delivered for technical review, and then tomorrow night the fun begins.

In the end, who can say what future film making fun will derive from the night’s success but rest assured that it was a great experience for Gorilla. Check out the intro to the Awards Reel we made for last night’s presentation.

The 2010 Addy Awards will be held in downtown GR at The Intersection, with the fun kicking off at 6:00 p.m. Hope we see you there!

Also, if we fall asleep during the awards reel don’t bother to wake us up. We’re gonna need the rest. We’ve seen it about ten thousand times at this point, anyway.

Gorilla is building an iPhone Application! The process is nearly finished, and there was a bit of a learning curve, but the App will be available for free on iTunes and will be used primarily for marketing. Of course, for all you Gorilla fans out there, make sure you grab a copy in passionate support of Grand Rapids Film Production companies!

The App is scheduled to be released at the end of February.

Eric Johnson and Eric Machiela have left the snowy Michigan confines of the Gorilla offices for the warmth of Los Angeles. For a couple of days anyway. They are attending an educational seminar on film financing in Santa Monica with Evan Koons. In speaking to one of the Eric’s last night, they told me “Everything is going good so far, we just raised 4.3 million in the matter of an evening.” Okay, so that’s a lie. The conference is actually designed to help you understand the process of events that need to take place to finance a film.

Gorilla is currently looking to fund their feature film Camp Manna. While the conference isn’t a meal ticket by any means, it will provide a deeper knowledge of how to raise investment capital — and once raised, how to properly manage the investor and his capital. Enjoy the snow, suckers.

With this week’s nominations, Oscar season is officially upon us. Not sure if you saw the telecast of the Oscar Nominations or not but it’s worth watching if you’ve never seen it. And you only need to view one of these ceremonies once because it’s the same every year. Before the telecast, Oscar and his buddies call up two people: an attractive, not going to be nominated this year actress (in this case Anne Hathaway) and an older, “who the heck is this guy” Academy President (in this case Tom Sherak). They smile at hundreds of journalists, blink at their flashing cameras, and read off nominations in an every-other format. Now, they don’t go through all the nominations. And thank goodness! Do the interested parties really care about best achievements in sound mixing? I’ll answer for everyone except our good friends at Sound Post USA…no, we don’t, but we do care that they highlight the big ones (best actor/actress, screenplay, director, best picture, etc).

This year saw some happy nominees! Like Jeremy Renner for Best Actor in “The Hurt Locker” and Gabourey Sidibe for Best Actress in “Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire” (if there was a worst title nominee this would win). It was good to see Carey Mulligan get nominated for “An Education” and Nick Hornby for the adapted screenplay. And I was on pins and needles to see if “Miracle Fish” would get nominated for Best Live Action Short Film! It did!

But regarding the best picture nominations, you may or may not know, faithful reader, that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences decided to expand their viewership base by nominating ten (10) films this year. The thought with this was that they would be able to appease box-office darlings and the audiences who went and saw them. It’s in this format that we were hoping to see the nominations of films like “The Hangover” or “Star Trek” — but they were not to be found! And though nice to see a couple of smaller films given a nod (i.e. “A Serious Man” and “An Education”), it was a bit knee shaking to see “The Blind Side” and “District 9” included on the list of Best Picture nominees. We’re not trying to be haters. One of Gorilla’s finest looking employees (you can guess at who that may be) saw “The Blind Side” and enjoyed it for what it was. But Best Picture? If you do watch the Oscar Noms video, pay special attention to the reaction when they announce “The Blind Side” as a best picture nomination. People love the “little movie” that could. And say what you want about “District 9” but it is not as impressive a movie as “Star Trek.” It’s just not. This is not debatable. Eric Johnson and Caleb Slain have threatened to boycott when they heard that one of the years best films and performances was admittedly snubbed (Sam Rockwell in Moon), but I’m sure they’ll show up just to boo.

Winning an Oscar is considered by many to be the highest glory in film, animation and video production. And as it is, Michigan film production companies are not often invited to the soiree — so what do we do? We create our own high-fiving good time! So, to celebrate, Gorilla Pictures is throwing an Oscar Party at their Grand Rapids offices on the night of its broadcast, Sunday March 7! It’s a bring your own beverage sort of thing, and you are encouraged toshow up at least 15 minutes before hosts Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin take stage, because we will all be competing by guessing and filling out empty ballots. Whoever compiles the most correct guesses is the winner! So brush up on your Short Film Animation knowledge, ladies and gentleman, because that one point could be all the difference between you going home with a Door Prize or going home with a sad face. More will be posted about the Gorilla Oscar Party soon!

http://oscar.go.com/