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.

If you are hip to the indie movie scene, then you may have heard of a little film that was theatrically released this past summer, THE STONING OF SORAYA M. It was produced by Santa Monica-based Mpower Pictures and stars Shohreh Aghdashloo (you know I had to Google that spelling) and Jim Caviezel. It’s definitely not one for the kiddies but is a powerful movie with important themes, focusing around oppression in Iran and women’s rights (or lack of rights). It’s based on a true story.

We were asked to cut a teaser of sorts for Mpower, which they used as a vehicle for submitting to film festivals and distributors. I like to think that we did something halfway effective because THE STONING became an official selection at the Toronto Film Festival in 2008 and won an Audience Choice Award, runner-up to some joke of a film called “Slumdog Millionaire.” (Whatever happened to that thing?!) See our teaser below and then visit the website here: www.thestoning.com