The ShamCom Trilogy

Hey folks! Andrew here...

Eric, Marcus, and I hope you’ve been enjoying our podcast, ShamFiction. We’ve had a hell of a lot of fun making it, all while learning a lot about writing and storytelling.

If you haven’t started listening, now is a great time to subscribe and start. We just finished a special run of episodes called the ShamCom trilogy, in which we each wrote for popular sitcoms that we hadn’t ever seen. Eric wrote The Big Bang Theory, Marcus wrote Friends, and I wrote Frasier!

For these episodes, we wrote in screenplay format rather than prose and then invited four actors from previous Two Jackets film productions - Rachel Palashewski, Joe Rapp, Katie Vannelli, and Allen Voigt - to perform the scripts on air!

We Jackets are used to performing the fics ourselves, so handing those duties over to the cast was both a relief and an absolute pleasure! As anticipated, they rocked it.

Speaking of rocking, I haven’t mentioned another treat of the ShamCom trilogy: the theme songs! You can’t have a sitcom without a theme song! (Well, you can, but-- why?) As an added challenge for these ShamCom assignments, each Jacket had to write an original theme song for their show. To ensure choice quality, we brought in our good friend and composer extraordinaire, Reed Reimer, to create the music.

The results are, well… How about you just listen to them? You can hear them on the podcast, or you can check them out in these wonderful music videos that Eric cut together with footage from the shows:

Pretty great, right? The “Bazinga” bit in the Big Bang video makes me laugh out loud every single time.

So check out ShamFiction! You can find it here on TwoJackets.com or in the podcatcher of your choice. If you like the show, be sure to subscribe to get a new episode in your feed every Sunday. And if you want to lend a hand, leave a rating and review. Those things do legitimately help us reach a larger audience, and we appreciate your feedback.

This upcoming weekend (June 3-5), Two Jackets Productions is diving back into the filmmaking game with the 2016 Minneapolis 48 Hour Film Project. We’ll be back soon with a recap of how that all goes down. We’re pumped!

Until next time, enjoy ShamFiction!

Limpwings is now available on DVD and VOD

Hey folks, Andrew here…

Finally, over four years since its premiere at the historic Fargo Theatre in October 2011, our first feature-length film, Limpwings, is now available for purchase on DVD and digital purchase or rental via Amazon.com.

Check out the trailer here:

Limpwings is the story of Daniel Hall, a fourth year college student who’s nowhere near graduation. Daniel sits idly by as his best friend and roommate, Hope, prepares for her medical school exams and a future that will take her far away from him. In the midst of a serious arrested development crisis, Daniel awakens after a one night stand with blood gushing from wounds in his hands and feet. A quick Wikipedia search tells him that he has stigmata, the wounds of Christ. Soon after, he is visited by a real (albeit wingless) angel, whom Hope nicknames “Limpwings," who tells Daniel that God has chosen him to lead His people. Now Daniel is torn between his responsibilities as a savior-in-training and as a friend to Hope. The trouble is that responsibility isn’t really one of Daniel’s strong suits.

We are so excited to have Limpwings available online for you and the whole wide world to see! As our first foray into feature filmmaking, it holds a special place in our hearts. You see, Limpwings isn’t only the coming-of-age story of Daniel Hall; it's the coming-of-age story of Two Jackets Productions. We produced it just after wrapping up our college web series, 3rd West Ballard, and just before becoming involved in the Twin Cities film community. In seeing it through, we proved to ourselves that we could handle a project of this scope, both artistically and logistically. Since then, with our short film work, we’ve continued to hone the creative and practical aspects of the craft.

Before you head over to Amazon to buy or rent the film, I want to give a shout out to the cast and crew who helped make it a reality. Their commitment and selflessness every day on set, across five weeks split over two summers, reminds us of how special the collaboration of filmmaking is. This is why we continue to hold a deep respect for the time and talents of our collaborators, no matter how big or small their role.

Now get on over to Amazon and order the film! Then check back in early February, when we will announce our next big endeavor. Until then, keep it limp!

Andrew

Film Challenge Retrospective: Cosmic Questers '97

Hey there, Questers! Marcus here...

It was great looking back over our old projects during Film Challenge Month last May. Now, six months after our latest film challenge was completed, I’m pleased to be able to share a retrospective on the making of “Cosmic Questers ‘97”!

In the green room at our location,  rehearsing the script with our talented cast. 

Unlike our past projects, we shared a lot of the details of this production before it began. You can find our cast and crew announcement and our planned schedule in previous blog entries. I won’t repeat those details in this post, but I will talk about how the production differed from our expectations.

Before getting critical, I have to say I couldn’t be happier with the contributions everyone brought to this film. I gushed about them in the announcement back in May, but the cast and crew brought their A-game to this project, and Andrew, Eric, and I are very proud of what the team came up with. 

Check out the film on your viewscreen here before we dive into the production details:

Pretty rad, right?

Okay, so how did the actual weekend differ from our plan? It all started at the genre drawing. Right there at the beginning, the odds were simply not in our favor. 

Andrew went up and drew "Film de Femme," which requires a female lead. This was literally the only genre we didn't want to use. Normally, it wouldn't be a problem, but we had lined up Bill Dablow, Lucas Vonasek, and MJ Marsh as our actors—three guys that we had been aching to work with for ages—and we didn't want to discard the opportunity to showcase them together. So we reprimanded Andrew and sent him back up to draw a wild card genre.

We were excited for the wild cards. We could make do with any of them except “Period Piece" because our reserved location was a production office space with a very modern look. Guess what we got?

Yeah. Andrew isn't allowed to draw anymore.

We were left with the following elements after taking our wild card choice:

Character: Kevin Whitefish, Club President
Prop: A coat hanger
Line of Dialogue: "You choose. I can't/cannot decide."
Genre: Period Piece

I’ll freely admit that we weren’t thrilled by the genre selection. Our location wasn't going to work for any distinctive period, and it was set to rain that weekend, which meant it would be hard to do an outdoor shoot—woods look the same in most periods. As a rather risky play, we decided to change our location to a more versatile studio space and double down on the period elements. The film would take place in the late 90s during a public access production inspired by a 60s era sci-fi show—in an homage to the original "Star Trek" series and Minnesota’s own “Mystery Science Theater 3000."

With "Cosmic Questers '97" we won our first “Best Use of Prop” award for our coat hanger monster! We affectionately call him "Coatie"!

Our risky move to fulfill the "Period Piece" genre really began to throw us off balance come Saturday morning.

While I rehearsed and refined the script with the cast, our concept's need for period props and costumes pulled Andrew's attention away from his co-director responsibilities to more of a producer's role. He spent a majority of his morning on the phone with our production assistants, arranging the acquisition of materials. Due to the last minute change of location, Eric was forced to run to our unused location to pick up a bunch of equipment. He also had to stop by a couple of places for additional props and costumes. As a result, neither Andrew or Eric had much time to plan our shots for the day, and we started shooting late. Once we got going, the team made up for lost time by working quickly, but at the expense of more deliberate blocking and visuals, which could have better communicated our characters' motivations. At the time, the stakes were clear to Andrew, Eric, and me, but I don’t know how well they came across in those first few crucial minutes of the film.

Our expectations for the weekend were exceeded when we got into post-production, thanks in huge part to our pre-production sessions with Ben Pimlott (editor), Eric Pagel (sound mixer), and Reed Reimer (composer). With these meetings before the weekend, we established a clear and effective post-production plan and encouraged frequent communication. As a result, everyone knew what was expected and each role was executed beautifully. We were able to have the film ready early enough to export safety copies several times before turning in our final, which really helped reduce anxiety at the end of the weekend. Ben and his workmate Cody Rowan, who assisted with visual effects, went on to be nominated for Best VFX—believe it or not, it takes a lot of work to make something look that (intentionally) bad—and Eric P. won for Best Sound! The film itself was nominated for Best Film and screened at the Best of Fest!

The big lesson for us here is to better plan how the three of us are going to collaborate and then reflect that within the schedule. This time around, we isolated ourselves too much in order to address the challenges of the production. When we finally came together to plan shots, we didn’t have the time to make the best of our collaboration. I had spent too much of my time rehearsing the cast off stage, not aware of the need to get the blocking down on stage early enough for Andrew and Eric to work on the shot planning.

In the end, we’re still very happy with the film we made. The 2015 Minneapolis 48 Hour Film Project was a great experience! We keep learning more every time we run a production, and I for one can’t wait for our next film challenge! Hopefully that retrospective will come along a bit sooner…

Marcus

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year!

It’s 2016, and it’s time we had a talk. Last year we teased a few projects that didn’t get out the door, and, before we can jump into the fun we have planned for the New Year, we wanted to give you a status update!

“Cosmic Questers '97” Retrospective

We’ve (mostly Marcus) mentioned this in quite a few posts over the last six months, but it has yet to materialize. The retrospective will finally be posted this Friday!  We have enough distance now to look back at the project more critically, and we hope the post will be stronger as a result.

“Meanwhile at the Citadel of Superheroes…”

One of our favorite projects has finished its time going out to film festivals, and is ready for its online debut! We will be posting the extended cut of Citadel on January 12th at a YouTube near you!

“Limpwings” on DVD and VOD

At long last “Limpwings,” Two Jackets’ first feature film, will be coming to DVD and VOD on Tuesday, January 19th! The film will be available on DVD and for digital rental and purchase via Amazon.com. We’ll provide full details when the link is live!

After “Limpwings” is out the door, we’ll be able to start talking about the next big project we’re undertaking. It’s not a film release, (though, we are still planning more of those) but a brand new creative endeavor we’ve been working on for the past few months. 

Stay tuned at the end of January for all the details!

Marcus