From Left to Right: Courtney Cunniff, Cassandra Ketrick, Rebecca Eskreis, Maddie Perry

Noodling! The short USC thesis film I produced over a year ago won its first awards this weekend at the Trail Dance Film Festival!

You really never know if you are going to win these awards. We were up against some talented folks, including a must-see short called After School Special by Neil LeBute.

We were nominated for two awards, and we were lucky enough to go home with two awards. For Best Short Drama and Best Actor/Actress in a Short. Maddie Perry, our lead actress, took home the best actor award. We were so excited for her! She definitely deserved it and it was a nice way to honor her hard work. She is truly a talented actress, and only 17 years old!

Rebecca and Maddie photobombed by festival director, Anthony Foreman.

I LOVE film festivals. They are the best way to get re-inspired and make new friends. We met all kinds of awesome and people and I reconnected with some I met last year. Glass City Films, based out of Chicago, come to Trail Dance every year with a new feature to screen. Not only that, they are award winners. Not only that, they are REALLY awesome people. This year John Klein brought along Cole Simon, an actor turned director. With John and Cole at our side, let’s just say…we had fun.

It was also my boyfriend’s first time to a film fest and he even said it, it’s inspiring. He’s one of the most talented people I know (see!), and Trail Dance even surprised him! I’m tellin’ ya…this is the film fest to go to.

Filmmaker's Brunch= mimosas and cowboys. From Left to Right: Cassandra Ketrick, David Bizzaro, John Klein, and Cole Simon.

I don’t have enough good things to say about this film fest. It’s in a town you’ve never heard of (even if you are from Oklahoma). Duncan, Oklahoma. Duncan prides itself on its Chisholm Trail history. The film festival is run by the most thoughtful, passionate, down-to-earth people you’ve ever met. I LOVE IT. It’s one of the few film fests where I’ve met people I care to keep in touch with and actually have friendships after the fact. It’s really this film fest that makes that happen.

We are looking forward to working with Cole and Simon from Glass City Films in the future! Trail Dance, you made that happen.

As an open group, we accept nominations from the masses, but I knew that finding someone to run for a role as big as chair would require some recruiting. There were very few people on the list. I took into account personalities, availability, humility, and location. I was very nervous that at the end of the day no one would want to step up and take over. Then what?

Excited doesn’t really describe how I felt when Adam Beatty contacted me about my email regarding the election. He was a perfect match. I have known Adam since the conception of CAN. He is actually the man that named the group. It was his suggestion, The Cinematic Artists of Norman, that gave this baby a name. He is a talented, outgoing, local filmmaker who really has a knack for connecting with people both on and off screen. He was perfect! In an uncontested race, Adam was elected the new chair of the Cinematic Artists of Norman on Sunday, Jan. 15. In addition to Adam, we also have two new awesome CAN Executive members, Craig Nelson (Special Initiatives Chair) and Sara Brown (Co-Chair). 2012 is definitely going to rock for CAN!

It’s a great feeling to know that something you started is still alive and well. It’s the greatest feeling to know it is in good hands.

Please consider being involved in this amazing group. A collaborative group of filmmakers is hard to come by. Throw in talent to boot, and what are you waiting for? Learn something, teach others, grow, connect, and be amazed at what we can accomplish as filmmakers in Oklahoma!

@CAofNorman

CAN Website

CAN Facebook Fan Page 

My first encounter with Six Sigma was via one of the best shows on TV, 30 Rock. Then I found out that it was an actual REAL thing. A co-worker of mine is a Green Belt in Six Sigma, and I was instantly intrigued. Belts? Like martial arts? Yup. OK. Count me in.

Recently I had the pleasure of taking the Six Sigma Fundamentals class at the University of Oklahoma sans Jack Donaghy. This certification is offered under the College of Engineering, Dr. B.M. Pulat teaches the 5 day course over 3 weekends.

If you couldn’t tell already, I’m the complete opposite of an engineer. Numbers make me nervous. Numbers intimidate me. My worse subjects were always math, and…math. It was never a strong suite. I took one (count ‘em) ONE math course in my entire college career. And that was more than fine with me. But I was about to embark on Six Sigma training, and I knew there was math…lots of it. I was nervous.

To my surprise the math was very basic. Plug in the numbers, add, subtract, divide…square root. Using my (borrowed) TI-83 Plus made me feel like a real math whiz. For the first time in my life I was calculating things that made sense to me. We applied all of our calculations to real life situations, which made so much more sense to me.

Some may say Six Sigma is only for factories and assembly lines. While this is most definitely true, it is not the total truth. Lean/Six Sigma can be applied to any kind of process. Just think about your daily activities and how you waste time and energy. If you did things a little differently you could probably get rid of that waste. Lean helps you figure out where the waste is, Six Sigma helps you analyze and collect data to see if your new process is any better. And ultimately, this method of thinking is all about the customer.

I am starting to use my fundamentals class to make my current job more efficient. I love it!

So my next step is to complete my Green Belt Certification. Wish me luck! Hi-Yaw! (I had to do it)

1. 1 in 3 has a talented sound mixer/editor and we went to Philadelphia with 1 in 3 for the Urban Suburban Film Festival.

2. Noodling is almost complete! We had some ADR sessions this summer with the talented RK-1 Productions and music is all composed by Jeremy Bullock and mixed by Amy Reynolds.

Attending the Urban Suburban Film Festival was fun for numerous reasons. I had never ventured (in a car) that north before. Three of us packed up my Nissan Versa with clothes and snacks and hit the road for the 24 hour drive. We drove straight there, taking sleeping shifts to keep the energy up. It was pretty intense but we were determined to not spend any extra money on hotels. Success! (albeit a sleepy one)

The other element to this trip was the reunion of Lagueria, me, and our film professor, Heidi Mau. Heidi taught our film classes over 5 years ago. This class the very same class that I met Lagueria for the first time. A few years later we would reconnect because of my work at the Women’s Resource Center domestic violence shelter, and 1 in 3 was born. It felt very appropriate that we were now taking the film to a Philly film festival (where she now lives) and meeting up with the professor who not only taught us what we know, but is part of the reason we were able to successful make 1 in 3. It was just great seeing her again and being able to reconnect with someone who had made such a grande impression on us.

And the film festival itself was a delight to attend. The director of the festival, George Blackmon, is the most friendly person and really believes in indie filmmakers and showcasing diversity in the arts. His hospitality ranged from recommending the cheapest/best breakfast buffet at the Hilton down the street, to having a never ending supply of Tastykakes on hand. Overall, Philly was a blast! Tiring, but totally worth it. The drive alone was the most beautiful scenery on the way back. Listening to Tina Fey’s book, Bossy Pants, helped too

Currently 1 in 3 is undergoing sound mixing/editing by local audio master, Royce Sharp. We are big fans of his work and when he had an opening in his schedule (which never happens) we snatched him up!

The short USC thesis film that I produced last summer is close to completion! This was the summer of sound, and it’s almost ready for the film festival circuit. We are also working on reworking the title of the film and finishing touches will take place after we hold our test screening on Saturday, Sept. 24 at 6pm in Pauls Valley. We hope to get valuable feedback on the film before we send it out. This is also our toughest audience Pauls Valley is where the film takes place, and where we shot it. We hope they’re proud!

Here is the trailer that Rebecca cut together this summer.

I love a good challenge. And when it comes to filmmaking, I love them even more. Working through and figuring out a problem is one of the funnest things…that is, once you have a solution.

A few weeks ago a CAN (Cinematic Artists of Norman) team I organized for the 48 Hour Film Project gathered our creativity, equipment, and patience to make a movie.

So with our genre (horror), prop (stool), and line of dialogue (Now, that’s a problem) all in hand, we were ready to make the best 7 minutes-or-less short!

Before the 48 Hour weekend, our team met twice to discuss the process and team details. Based on crew preferences that people gave me, I delegated crew roles to the the ten team members. This worked out very nicely for this to be handled before the actual shooting weekend. At the end of the day, we had a total of 12 people including our actors.

I handled the continuity and script supervisor roles, as well as the team leader. My goal for the weekend was to be more hands-off. I am the type of person who likes to step in and do things on my own. Especially if I see someone struggling, I always pick up the slack. Not this time, though. My goal was to let others figure it out for themselves and offer limited guidance. And, as predicted, it all went great! We were behind schedule, but not too badly. Nothing crazy happened that put us behind. And to top it off, I felt less stressed about the entire thing. I was able to sit back and let people do their jobs, and trust that they could do them (this is hard for organizing nuts like myself). I also didn’t feel any fear of failure. I thought, if we are  going to fail, at least we will learn a great lesson from it all. I think we all learned great lessons AND we didn’t fail! So here’s the final successful film! We find out in a couple of weeks whether it was chosen as the OKC winner. *fingers crossed and toes wiggled*

You can read more about the team members and the making of the project here.

Because I’m a  resumé nerd and find things like that actually enjoyable to make, I am in love with this new site, vizualize.me.

After connected your Linked In profile, which you should have and be maintaining because it will just make your life that much easier, you can mouse over the different sections to see what they include.

Your recommendations also make an appearance towards the end of visualization.

Overall, I think this is just a great way to start re-imagining your resume and beefing it up. You can modify the content that displays, change colors, change themes, change the backgrounds and fonts. It’s still in Beta, but in the future I hope you can export it out as a web URL that’s unique to you and maybe use code that you could embed on a site. Other than those few wishes, I just love it! It’s too much for one organizing/resumé junkie to handle

I have taught three classes with kids this summer. To say I had a blast, is an understatement.

The first class was a free summer camp offered by the Norman Public Library called Videomaking for Young People. A fellow filmmaker friend of mine, Scott Mellgren, came up with the idea and brought me on-board to help teach. Together we came up with the camp curriculum and structure. The class took place over three days (Monday, Wednesday, Friday) from 1-3 p.m. The days were broken up into Pre-production, Production, and Post-production. While learning what each process entailed, we also produced a 1-page project with the ten students, ages 10-15. These kids were awesome.

For the structure of the video we had students write down 2 props, 2 locations, 2 characters, 2 lines of dialogue, and 1 conflict and we drew them out of the basket. They ended up being- props: lamp and shoe, locations: park and park sidewalk, characters: crazy aunt and mom, dialogue: “I like fried chicken” and “Come back!” and the conflict was a lost shoe.

Here is the final result! I find it adorable (especially the behind the scenes footage).

The other two classes I helped teach were with the Oklahoma City Museum of Art young filmmaking classes offered by Geoffrey Smith. He brought me in to teach the storyboarding section of the camp. The first class was 9-13 year olds, and the second class was the Advanced Film and Video: Sci-Fi class that consisted of ages 13-16. Overall, these kids were serious about making movies. Teaching a class in the OKC Museum of Art also gave me another kind of satisfaction. This is one of the most prestigious museums in the state, and I was no longer just a visitor in it…I was a teacher in it. Working with Geoffrey and Chandra Boyd, Education Curator, was more than a delight. They really know what they are doing with their summer education.

And because I’m a weirdo and I like to hear what people think, I had all of the students fill out feedback forms. The form asked if they had fun, if they learned anything, and their opinions on the class. The result? Overwhelmingly positive response from the kiddos! In the older group one of the kids said they liked that I talked to them like adults. All of them felt like I knew what I was talking about, so that’s a plus! I found it very helpful to solicit the feedback, because you never really know if what you are doing is working until you ask, which is pivotal to me for own personal growth.

And the thing that made me the happiest with these summer teaching gigs? The kids. How fun it was to connect with kids, and not be baby sitting them or listening to them whine in a restaurant. They were excited to learn and looked up to me. It was a great feeling that I’m sure parents feel all of the time. I even got my first teacher present

…a sweet origami bird!

I will say, however, although I enjoyed myself, it boggles my mind how people can do this for a living day in and day out. My mom is a middle school art teacher and I now have a new appreciation for teachers. I’ve always known it was difficult, but now I truly say that the best teachers are the ones that give it all. And it’s exhausting. Never forget to appreciate teachers…they need (and deserve) it.

I’m excited to announce that I’ve recently undergone an upgrade, this time sans Beyoncé. My new title with OU Web Communications is Junior New Media Specialist.

New media is something that most businesses participate in. With the interwebs evolving on a day-to-day basis and branding becoming harder to keep in-house, it’s important to have people paying attention to the trends and actively participating in them.

Over the past 3 years, myself and my boss, Kam Stocks, Senior New Media Specialist, have taken OU social media networks to the next level. We’ve been working hard to make sure fans feel listened to and that the web presence of the OU community is heard loud and clear.

Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Gowalla, Foursquare…we do it all. And we love it. Branding the University through social media is about as fun as it sounds. Interacting with students on Twitter who are enrolling for the first time and can’t wait to be Sooners is a joy. Or producing videos that showcase the University and get parents and prospective students alike excited about their future career here at OU is just part of the joy of my job.

This new position title will help advance OU and the Web Communications Office to the forefront of the hottest trend out there: new media. I’m ready to be all new, with media. #teamwebcomm

But before we begin. You have to realize that sometimes you get lucky. Sometimes everything I’m about to say doesn’t matter. You could do it all, and still fail. BUT probably not, ‘s all I’m sayin’.

You should also know that I have a deep appreciation for Kickstarter and all that they do. I love the symbiotic relationship between the web and artists. I love that people can stumble upon things they normally wouldn’t ever hear about. I love seeing the beginning, middle, and finishing of a dream. And I can be a part of it if I choose.

When I first started doing my Kickstarter research back before launching 1 in 3, I looked at all of the successful campaigns and looked at some of the failed ones. I mainly looked at the successful ones. Mine failed, so you can look at that for a failure example. Check out our updates on the project, too. We did a series of Behind Closed Doors interviews with cast/crew to talk about why they worked on the film. I think they complimented the campaign nicely.

TOP 10 Kickstarter.com Tips

1.) Decide your project’s goal. Be realistic. But also don’t cut yourself short. Think about options such as raising money for only pre-production, or costumes, or supplies. Sometimes people will be more down to donate if they know exactly where their money is going.

2.) Think about your timing! If your campaign ends around Christmas, probably not smart. Or if you start mid-month, realize that most people get paid at the end of the month so they will be plum out of money by your ending date (same goes for the last weeks of the month). And honestly, I think the best campaigns last for 30 days. It gives a sense of urgency, and you don’t sit around for two months trying to market the thing, annoying people with your Facebook status updates (sorry friends!).

3.) Your video (in my opinion) is the most important part of the Kickstarter campaign. I have donated on projects just because I liked the person. Here is an example. This girl rocks. I <3 you Allison Weiss.

4.) Be creative with your project incentives! Have fun with these. I’ve received everything from snazzy ringtones from donating to I am I.

And virtual hugs from Brand Rackley with Splice of Life. I loved them all.

5.) Try to raise funds before launching the campaign. Have people sign a “donation commitment” for a pledged amount and then when you launch it send a personalized follow-up email. Pre-fundraising fundraising will surely help!

6.) Do the viral marketing thing with tweets, facebooks, and such. Your campaign is online so think about your audience.

7.) Try your darndest to get featured on the Kickstarter blog. I contacted the awesome Kickstarter crew in Brooklyn (best place in the world, fyi) and they said it’s all editorial choice. So appeal to them. New York is pretty darn cool, so you’ve gotta kick it up a notch. Being featured on their blog/newsletter is a great way to get audience recognition from around the world. All of the projects that I have seen be featured have succeeded.

8.) Remember, Kickstarter doesn’t want you to fail. It’s in everyone’s best interest to achieve. So, don’t blame Kickstarter if you don’t meet your goal. Or do, just to make it through the failure shock and then realize that you were just hatin’ because you’re sad. Just raise your head, put on some boots (…or whatever they say?), and make your own “don’t fail” list. Oh, yeah, and start again.

9.) Recruit help. Don’t just be the sole marketer of your campaign. Hopefully your project has people in your life who are already behind it. They can help you do the dirty work. Never be afraid to ask for help.

10.) Remember your passion. When you just have $105 out of your $7,000 don’t be discouraged. When your campaign fails, don’t give up. If failing at Kickstarter is what it takes for you to call it quits, maybe that was your problem in the first place. No one wants to donate their dollah billz to a half-dream.

Dream super size and you will never have any regrets.
 

We’ve nailed a premiere at one of the coolest film festivals around…deadCENTER! I worked as Associate Producer and Assistant Editor on this 40-minute short film about the incarceration of women in Oklahoma. I am so proud of this film and the director, Amina Benalioulhaj. It has truly been a labor of love. Currently we are working on a poster design and I am working in After Effects to finish the title sequence and credits. This is my first time to work with AE, but I’m excited to share the final result with you! You can check out the other cast/crew on our IMDB page.

So save the date: Saturday, June 11 @ 4pm at the Ronald J. Norick Downtown Library

This is the official trailer for WOMEN BEHIND BARS: The Voices of Oklahoma’s Incarcerated Women and Their Children. Learn more about the issue of female incarceration in Oklahoma at www.womenbehindbarsthefilm.com