The star of our show

Production update

Hi everyone! We just wanted to provide an update on what’s being going on with the project since we closed funding in May. As we said, we intend to shoot five films over the summer so that we can launch in the fall. As of today, we’ve shot four of the five films, with three shot just this week! We shot Clara and the Trolls in June and July, and this week we shot The Boy and the Tengu, The Tale of Two Brothers and Stinky (click those links to see previews of each of the films on our YouTube channel). Clara and the Trolls is now edited and narrated, and our composer is about 75% done with the music. Next up, we have to edit and narrate the three films we shot this week, which will be a lot of work.

We want to thank the amazing people who helped us shoot all these films – not least all our child actors and narrators. Jennie Brown, our producer, has done amazing work over the past couple of months organizing everything, recruiting other crew members and generally keeping us all moving forward. We could not have done any of this without her. For our Clara and the Trolls shoot, we had help from Babetta and Cameron Kelly, two family members, and also from Leah McBride, who was our ‘baby wrangler’ – a crucial role when you’re shooting with kids. Katie Hill directed our Two Brothers shoot, while Casey Wilson and Spencer Scanlon took the lead on photography and lighting respectively. Kevin Kelly directed our Tengu shoot and David Stauffer led photography, while the moms of our Japanese kids helped us translate lines and directions during the shoot. Gina Thompson handled props and Brynn Zimmer tackled wardrobe for both of these shoots and did an amazing job. Fred and Ranleigh Johnson rigged up some very special effects for a crucial scene in the Two Brothers film. Kate Clarke and Aya Watanabe were fantastic wranglers and assistants on the Tengu shoot. Khaliel Kelly made food for both the Tengu and Two Brothers shoot. All these amazing people worked for free just because they believe in our project. Dallin Blankenship helped make amazing sets and costumes for our Tengu shoot. Continue Reading

f4ce4a8aa0f711e19e4a12313813ffc0_7

First day of shooting for Clara and the Trolls

The first film we’re going to be shooting is Clara and the Trolls, although we’ll probably start with one of the other films when we launch in the Fall. We’re doing two main shooting days for this film, and we had the first one yesterday, which went great. We thought you might like to see some pictures from our day of shooting. You can also follow along on Instagram if you’d like to see more like this over the coming months as we shoot the rest of the films (we’ll also post them on our Facebook page from time to time).

First, we got our little house all set up and ready to go:

Then we got two of our little stars all kitted out in their costumes:

Then we started shooting:

Every now and then we took a break on these great chairs our ‘baby wrangler’ brought with her:

And, of course, the owl is back, and bigger than ever!