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 Enters The Addy’s This Year

I am typically the voice on the other end of the line telling you that everything is going to be fine, despite only getting five shots on the first day of production. I am the one who tells you, while smiling, that the production schedule you have laid out is impossible. At Gorilla, I produce films. However, once in a while, I get to do something different; something that feels like an arts and crafts project. I glue things and burn things and put things in plastic bags. Every once in a while (once a year to be exact), it falls to me, Aaron B. Smith, to get our production work ready for the Addy awards.

This is our second year of submitting work to the Addy’s, but it was a bit different. I had a helper — one Alexa Hook, an illustrious and industrious senior at Calvin College who is currently interning for us. We offered her the internship right away because we had a feeling she would be a good fit at Gorilla. (I also needed immediate help with the madness that is submitting work to the Addy awards.)

We entered thirteen (13) different pieces into the Addy competition this year, a substantial upgrade from the mere three (3) projects we submitted last year. Alexa and I started work on getting our entries ready on a Tuesday afternoon. We did not finish getting them ready until 1 pm, the following Thursday which was the day they were due. Why so long, you ask? Because it is a process. Figuring out which category each project falls under is a spooky hybrid akin to shooting craps and interpreting Ulysses by James Joyce. Also, you need to make two DVD copies of each project. We live in the age of the internet and here we are, still making physical copies of things and still physically moving them from one place to another. These are the kinds of things we usually e-mail, upload, or FTP to our clients. But, I digress.

We completed our task and managed to drop off all the entries in time, despite the snowy roads that had caused Alexa to crash her car the previous day. Upon returning to the office Alexa and I exchanged a feeble hi-five. I stumbled into my office and took a thirty minute cat nap while listening to Zoe Keating. This marked the end of another year of entering the Addy Awards. It’s a bit strange to consider that all the months of work of this Grand Rapids based production company, Gorilla Pictures, can be simmered down to thirteen (13) submissions to the Addy’s. What a year.

Amongst the cold, wintery weather that Grand Rapids is best known for, Gorilla Pictures continues its run at world domination. West Michigan film production tends to slow down in these blustery, frost bitten months but our company of fellows is staying busy. Eric Johnson has (finally) begun post-production on “All We Have”, a music video we shot back in the early days of September. (Remember the fall? We had sun then!) The musician is Erin Austin and we produced a video for her great, upcoming album OK Sweetheart. NOTE TO READER: The video on the website is not Gorilla’s work – but you can audibly sample her delightful tones, digest them, and find nourishment. We will be posting our music video to the Gorilla website in the upcoming weeks!

In other news, Eric Machiela continues to learn about the wonder of story and strives for his 10,000 hours (thank you, Malcolm Gladwell) of writing and reading, whilst listening – and then tearing up – to Bruce Springsteen sing about “all things America”. Aaron Smith toils away his hours by getting Gorilla ready for this year’s ADDY Awards, taking place in Grand Rapids. Our production company won a handful of ADDY awards last year (which we’ve neatly framed, I might point out) and our hope is to walk away with two handfuls of awards this year. We need them; our walls are bare. And finally, Scott Brookens creativity has begun spinning around a new, exciting concept, which all of Gorilla will be developing this spring. More on that in the upcoming months.

Also, I want to mention “The Lost & Found Shop”, an upcoming short film written and to be directed by Caleb Alexander Slain. (Three names always does sound more professional, doesn’t it?) Gorilla is serving as the production company and will be facilitating with RED Cameras, ARRI Master Primes, and our understanding of production know-how. We will be filming in and around Grand Rapids, Michigan starting mid-January. It needs to be done by February 1 for entry into the Doorpost Film Festival so post-production will be done in tasteful haste. I believe the West Michigan film community — nay, the world’s film community is in for a treat.

And lastly, we hope you’re getting out to the theater and checking out some films this Holiday Season. We recommend “The Twilight Saga: New Moon.” It will affirm your belief in cinema. (Just in case you can’t sense the sarcasm, I’ll let you know that was a joke. The movie is horrible and deserves to be banned from any country not run by a dictator. Sorry, Zimbabwe.)