The New Year is Nipping on the Heels of Michigan Production Companies
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.)
