Behind The Scenes: March 26th, 2005

We invaded the very cool theater at Papio South High School. It invoked  the cast and crew's own high school memories, which then quickly made us feel really old. Suck. Anyways, it was a 9am call time, which is always fun on a weekend, I'm sure everyone was thrilled with me. SEP veteran actors Diane Watson and Ron Moore were on set today for a scene I've been looking forward to for a while. The scene is a cable news political show called "Political Watchdog" that comes to the campus and Deana and Bonnie Rockwell (aka Ann Coulter-like) battle it out. Fun stuff. Everyone was really on today, it was weird seeing Diane play an antagonist. She's always played a nice character, so it was enjoyable to me having worked with Diane many times to see here play someone the audience is supposed to hate. We had plenty of space to light and we were even able to use some of the lighting and monitor equipment at the theater. Six hours later we were wrapping up. We did some cool stuff shot and sound wise that I think it going to cut together quite nicely. So Webisode 3 is in the bag, we have some fill stuff, but only post is left and it should be in cyberspace shortly. Here's some pics:

The White House Marketing Machine

The political stream is one based on proposals, public mood and focusing points. To get your agenda passed, you need the support of your colleagues, the right timing, a built-in base support and a well organized campaign to win over at least a majority of the public. Winning public opinion for certain policies is a tough sell requiring many speeches, events, advertising, it's like selling a product. Sadly that's politics. And if you can't quite make the sell, it goes down in defeat like Clinton's Universal Healthcare, his first big proposal in office. But the Bush Administration is giving creativity and ingenuity a new name, "propaganda". That's a harsh word I know, but can you really call it anything other than that. First off are their infamous "town hall meetings" with the President traveling the country meeting with the "people", interacting to hear their concerns. Except that's not what it is at all, the forums are packed 100% with pre-screened supporters, and the average Americans up on stage are hand picked and go through rehearsals the day before. It's theater, the Bushies know what is best and rather than listening, they are going to put on a charade until you come around. Next is the paying of what are supposed to be independent "free press" journalists like Armstrong Williams and Maggie Gallagher. Both pushed Bush agendas because they were paid to by your tax dollars, are you hearing the warning bells, yet? Let's continue. We can't forget the Gannon/Guckert White House correspondent fiasco, presumably planted to ask softball questions in briefings to bail out the press secretary. Gannon's credentials were incredibly shady at best and we all know now, that is putting in mildly, so how did he get in when others bloggers are continuing to be denied? And when all else fails, when the news isn't going your way, just make it yourself. That's right the various departments (Defense, State, Education, etc.) from the White House direction have producing their own news reports with fake actors, fake reporters and fake narration and making them available to local news stations to play as part of their local newscast! Can you hear Paul Revere coming down the street? This doesn't surprise me about the Bushies, but for a local television Producer to accept and program for free, a fake news report produced by our government, passing it off as news, is incomprehensible. Just some things to think about.

EvansAmerica at SXSW 2005: Update 1

Thursday & Friday: We left for Austin around 8pm and drove all night, (somwhere in Oklahoma, when Boro and Dan, the only two up, decided maybe the overnight trip wasn't the best idea). Rolled into Austin about 11am, got some sleep at our hotel and headed to The Wendall Baker Story premiere. Wilson brothers were there as well as mf'n Harry Dean Stanton. Well shot and very funny film, lots of fun cameos. Came back to the hotel and passed out from exhaustion.

Saturday: Refreshed and ready to go, passing our EA cards like crazy, and by that I mean plastering them on every wall and lightpost, Dan gave one to a cracked out homeless lady along with a dollar, and Givani gets the gold star for most passed out, (by handing out all the guys who hit on her).





Films we saw today:
*Max & Grace - Dark comedy by this first time director, great ensemble cast. Enjoyable.

*Cavite - Incredible film shot mostly in the Phillipines. Tense thriller that was able to capture the culture, poverty, and roots of terrorism.

*Enron: The Smartest Guys in The Room - Absolutely incredible documentary. Beautifully shot, well edited, great drama. The amount of emotion it was able to bring out of the crowd was incredible. It really made you hate corporate america and the free market even more, and do something I didn't think was possible, make Gray Davis look decent. Amazing.

*Jesus is Magic: Sarah Silverman's standup, brutally funny, just no holds barred, she's not afraid of touching any subject. We have some good pics of Wendy and Lara with Jimmy Kimmel, Sarah Silverman and Brian Posehn as soon as I get them off my camera. Good times.

Talked with Adam Schwartz, one of the writers of My Big Fat Independent Movie for a while, good guy, shamelessly passed our cards out to him. Went over to 6th street to hit the bars, got our drink on and are now passing out one by one in the hotel. More to come.

What's new with EvansAmerica

It's hard to believe a year ago, EvansAmerica was just notes in Scotty's notebook, and through all the setbacks, working in the middle of the country on zero, I repeat, zero of a budget, this show is a reality. Not only is it a reality, but it's very alive and doing very well. We are off to a great start out of the gates, the character shorts and the first two webisodes are already up and traffic has been more than we hoped for the site only being up two short months. We have received a number of requests for DVDs of the first two webisodes from college groups around the country wanting to screen the show at their next respective meetings. They were just mailed out last week, so hopefully all goes well with that. We are spending March filming new webisodes and embarking on our second big publicity and marketing push. A group of the show's cast and crew are heading down to the SXSW Film Festival in Austin, Texas this Thursday for 10 days of networking and promotion of the show, while catching some great films and hopefully finding some time to relax for once. We will continue to try and blog during the trip, granted all goes well with the internet situation. The site will be getting some updates very soon as well. New behind the scenes videos and pictures, production journals, cast diaries, the unveiling of a message board and much much more, all coming soon. Plus, to fill your fix. TWO ALL NEW WEBISODES OF EVANSAMERICA COMING IN APRIL! The saga continues. Thank you for your support.

Behind The Scenes: March 6th, 2005

This is going to be the most timely entry I will ever write. Unless somehow, we develop the technology to hook blogger.com up to my brain and allow me to blog as I think. People may get a different view of me as I would be unable to censor my thoughts. It would also out my Debbie (or is it "Deborah?") Gibson fetish.

...but I digress....

Today, we shot at MJ Java's in downtown Omaha. Re-read my title and you will see how much they rock in my eyes. Props to Darren and Christina (apologies for name misspellings) for hanging out and selling us coffee on your day off.

First we shot the opening scene from episode 3 with virtually the entire cast in a rare truly ensemble scene. Really got to see the EA chemistry in full effect. It's something that we don't get to see enough, but it really came through today. Ann, Chelsie, Lara, Givani, and Branden showed no rust, not that they would, but we haven't all shot together since maybe October(?). (EA needs a historian like View Askew has... If you want to be EA historian, send Dan an email. Pay's great, just ask anyone we've worked with.)

Shooting went on without any foolish beats. Thanks to our luxuriously large crew (FIVE people!! I kid not.) We had Director Dan on camera, Chris on sound, Greg on dolly, newbie Justin Brink on lights and yours truly on...

well...

Um... I watched the monitor. A lot. It was like a normal Sunday afternoon for me. I also ran slate. That's important I guess. Without me, they wouldn't have been able to know what scene and take number they were on. I swear I'm intregal to the production of this thing. I'm not just a pretty face.

The second half of the day was spent in the presence of the greatness that is Bill Wassem. I know this is kind of a mild spoiler, but bear with me. I can't just speak in vagarities the whole time, though I can speak in vulgarities a lot...

This post has been edited for content. And for being the WORST JOKE EVER.
thanks- Gods of the Internet.

So, anyways, Bill was there to shoot a scene from ep4 with Givani. Again, both people were prepared and brought it. Needless to say, the luxuriously large five-person crew got served (saw'd?).

LSS: Bill rocked. Givani rocked. I get lost in your eyes. Production of Ep4 has started.

Which brings me to my next point. Episode 4 is where shit really starts to happen. Eps1-3 have been good get-to-know-you eps, but now that we've established our players we can really get down to business. It's not cool to say because we're a good amount of time away from unleashing this baby (oh no, we're not merely releasing this one...) . The EA family has expanded with the addition of Tyson Sevier and Rick Pecararo to our massive stable of writers. Not to get pretentious, but it's like the first time new parents leave their kids with a sitter. (note: I'm totally the Dad in this analogy. Totally.) Only in my dreams could the script have turned out better. Anyways, before this gets sappy, I, for one, was really pleased with the way the script turned out, obviously.

Damn, I thought I could get six "appropriately" used commas into that sentence. Oh well. Next entry, I guess.

Anyways, if you're still with me at this point, thanks for reading. Tune in next time where I briefly write about EA and then blabber on about stupid crap out of the blue.

love,
scotty c
the electric youth