In May of 2010, Gorilla Pictures took a trip to Philadelphia, PA with a few of our friends from Amway. The goal? To document the work of Amway’s Positive Sprouts initiative, part of their One by One Campaign for Children. There we filmed the creation of an inner city garden, purposed to teach children about sustainable food sources and healthy living. The resulting effort was pretty cool. Philadelphia’s Amway community showed up in a big way and worked with the Frankfort Boy’s and Girl’s club to literally create the garden in a day.

The video we created to document this event has been accepted into Boston College’s, Center for Corporate Citizenship Film Festival. While our work was only a small part of what Amway is doing through their One by One campaign, we’re excited to have contributed and wish them lots of luck in the film festival.

If you would like to see the video and cast a vote to help it win, simply follow this link and scroll down until you find the entry labeled “Amway.” You can’t miss it.

For more info check out Amway’s blog: blogs.amway.com

Today is a big day. It’s the opening day of “Big Momma’s House: Like Father, Like Son”, the third film in the Martin Lawrence-helmed series. And as of 2:38 PM, Friday Feb 18, the film is currently rated at 0% on the Tomatometer at Rotten Tomatoes … which might be a bit generous. Let’s go to the reviews.

Cruel: “Agonisingly slow and laughter-free.” Charlotte O’Sullivan — This is London

Crueler: “The movie is at least 20 minutes too long. Actually, it’s 107 minutes too long.” Roz Laws — Birmingham Post

Cruelest: “The world’s least funny comedian returns in this lazily written, pointless and painfully laugh-free threequel … that should be avoided at all costs.” Matthew Turner – ViewLondon

Brutal. But this got us to thinking about other films like it. Films that use the “Hey, look at me! I didn’t even try to come up with something new!” big, red font for their titling. So, in honor of the opening day of “Big Momma’s House: Like Father, Like Son”, we present to you several more marketing schemes that give good proof to this equation: Red Font + Comedy = Terrible.

I never thought I’d be sitting on an office floor using a pair of scissors to hack at an innocent teddy bear while a stuffed duck looked on with black beady eyes, awaiting its own sad fate. I comforted myself with the knowledge that the hides of these fluffy friends were going to a noble cause. These plush pals will soon find themselves as wardrobe pieces for tribe members in the trailer for New Saxons.  I, the new Gorilla intern, Meredith Laden never imagined I would be completing such a task, but would I trade it for the mundane office work that many interns find themselves saddled with? Absolutely not.

As a photojournalism student, I’ve had a few internships in the newspaper business, which were awesome learning experiences, but in this, my final semester of college, I knew something else was in order. After I graduate I hope to find myself across the globe somewhere as a photographer/videographer/writer of some sort for a missons organization. With that goal in mind, I set out to find an internship to sharpen my skills in video production.  Long story short I met a young man named Caleb Slain in a lovely coffee shop called The Bitter End. He told me about Gorilla Pictures and got me in contact with Aaron Smith and the rest is proverbial history.

I already feel like this internship will be an awesome growing experience for me. Not only in knowledge of video production, but in creativity. The Gorilla office is a relaxed and creative environment – very different from the newsrooms I’ve worked in before. There’s much more of a communal feeling and a lot more fun in the air. The Gorilla gang has been so gracious to me in my first few weeks here- giving me Final Cut tutorials, letting me play with the Canon 7D, and getting me in the swing of things.  As mentioned earlier, these first few weeks of Gorilla interning have been filled with running around town with Naomi gathering wardrobe pieces for New Saxons, getting acquainted with everything here in the office, and planning out projects for me to start working on in the future. So here I am, a part of the Gorilla crew, ready to soak up the knowledge, expertise, and artistry of the folks here.