Watch and Listen: Short Film

Here's the soundtrack for our short film, as well as the launch of the website for The King of SPAM. All the music was written, composed, performed and mixed within 24 hours in our audio studio. A special thanks to Courier for helping out.

ArtPrize

The world's largest art prize in coming to Grand Rapids. The Creo team went down to see the unveiling this morning. Here's the idea:

Artists will display work all over downtown Grand Rapids from September 23-October 10.

The public votes on the best artwork. First place is $250k, second is $100k, third is $50k, and fourth through tenth are $7k each.

ArtPrize is the brainchild of Rick DeVos. Here's a couple quotes from the press release:

“It’s time to reboot the conversation between artists and the public. ArtPrize will be a celebration of art, design, and innovation that will bring artists and the public together like never before,” said ArtPrize creator Rick DeVos.

“I’m astounded by the potential for social networking, community involvement, and the expanded view of the role of art,” said Grand Rapids Mayor George Heartwell. “ArtPrize will excite the world, and the world will look at our city differently because of it.”

It's a great idea to bring people together. As the presenters said this morning, the brilliance lies in the conversations bound to happen, the stage it's happening on (our city), the quality expectations increasing, as well as the openness of the competition to multiple art forms.

We're looking forward to it!

Here's a Rapid Growth interview with Rick DeVos:

Premier: 24 Film Festival Tonight

Join us tonight at 8 p.m. for the Compass Academy 24 Hour Film Festival Screening. 

Tickets are $8 at the door, and they suggest coming early to get tickets. 

Celebration! North

2121 Celebration Dr. NE

Grand Rapids, MI 49525

P.S. Our film is titled, "The King of SPAM."

The 24 Hour Blog: Recap

Note: I’ve collected all the posts from the 24 Hour Film Festival and condensed them into the following timeline. Here’s our posts, from beginning to end.

The Assignment

Here's the specs for the film:

Theme: Two Can Play This Game

Prop: Thermos

Line: "We're paying you to sing, not share your thoughts on life." 

Location: Under a Table 

We've got 10 people around the table thinking of ideas. 

Will keep you posted, literally. 

The Plot Thickens

It's 2:13 a.m. on Saturday morning. 

After 5 hours and 13 minutes of debate, we're on the same page. 

It's a bit wild. It's time to take the ideas and make a script. 

The crew is setting up gear, nobody's asleep. 

Tears of Laughter

Welcome to 3:39 a.m. 

Derek just had us in tears with his voiceover on the line. 

Tears of laughter.

Hopefully it's still funny (later today). 

5:43 a.m.

The script is finished. The story is put together. We've spent over a third of our time developing the idea behind the piece. We feel peace. We're loopy. Actors will arrive at 7 a.m. for an 8 a.m. shoot.

The Morning Sun

Both our main actor and actress arrived at 7 a.m. Dax came in from Lansing, and Jill is with us from GVSU. 

It's a quarter after nine, everyone is wide-eyed and ready for the day. 

We're into shooting the second scene, a voiceover was completed in the studio, and I'm working with the musicians downstairs. Graphic designers are plugging away. Photos have been taken. 

It's a beautiful day. 

Sound and San Chez

The shoot is going well. The video team is headed around the corner to San Chez for a new scene. The band and I've been busy in the studio writing a couple new tracks for the film, including the jazz-influenced, "My Inbox is Full."

Our lead female Jill says, "Estoy muy bien." 

Si.

Chaos

It's been awhile since the last post. It's 5:33 p.m. 

Three and a half more hours.

Controlled chaos. All around. 

But it's the best. We love it. 

Now, all we have to do is shoot the final scenes and edit...and deliver... 

Miracle on Division St.

It’s 11 p.m. At 8:20 p.m., we were starting to get a bit nervous. 

We'd captured the majority of our ambitious story plan, developed two fantastic characters and scored four all-original songs in the audio studio. Two on the crew chose to remain sleepless, while the rest of us took an hour or two here and there. 

And we pressed the buttons to compress the video for the proper format.

The clock begins ticking. And the file is taking forever. 

Thoughts start entering your our minds about the last twenty-four hours, and how difficult it would be to put this much work in and fall one second short. After abandoning any hope of an in-person delivery, by some sort of miracle, we delivered "The King of SPAM" via an FTP site at 8:57 p.m. 

We're in. 

As soon as it went through (it looked to be two-thirds completed before it finished decoding at 8:57), we cheered, and I quickly ordered video and still cameras to take a snapshot of the feat, yelling, "Where's time.gov?" 

Needless to say, it was intense. On the quiet drive over to Compass, I reflected on what our team had accomplished, and I'm proud of our work, whether we'd been able to have the judges gauge or work or not. 

It's been an interesting and amazing 24 hours, thanks for following along. 

A big thanks to our excellent actors and crew, who worked tirelessly for some pizza: Dex, Jill, Andrew, Matthew, Dustin, Dominic, Ella, Anna and Robert. A huge thanks to Matthew for composing and running the audio studio for hours on end, and Courier members Matthew, Dan, Andrew and Katie for developing an really impressive score, and San Chez for allowing us to film on location. 

Can't wait for you to see it...

Follow Us for 24 Hours

At 9 p.m. tonight, The Compass Academy 24 Hour Film Festival begins.

We'll have 24 hours to write, shoot, edit and score a 5-minute film, using four elements drawn from a hat: prop, line, location and theme. Everything's original, turned in by Saturday at 9 p.m.

I'm blogging the process throughout the weekend, not only for my own sleep-deprived sanity, but also for the enjoyment of others. We've got great people lined up, including a talented crew, a full band, fresh actors (and a lot of coffee).

If you can't follow along live, check the blog next week to see how it went, or attend the top ten showing next Thursday, April 23rd at 8 p.m. at Celebration North.

It's going to be fun.

P.S. Watch Spish, our top ten entry from 2008.


Spish from Creo Productions on Vimeo.

Media: Our Video Case Study of Whirlpool

We're proud to announce that we're working with Design West Michigan to develop a video case study of Whirlpool's Duet Series. Read the Rapid Growth story below or click here:

April 9, 2009

Video case study to demonstrate economic benefit of design

By: Deborah Johnson Wood

Design West Michigan and Creo Productions have teamed up to create what they believe is the first-ever video case study highlighting the economic value of design. The study will follow the design and development of Whirlpool’s innovative Duet Series washers and dryers.

“Good design, classic design and economically valuable design starts with design at the beginning of the process,” says John Berry, Design West Michigan director. “Part of the issue of understanding design is the difficulty in defining design, and the all too often assumption that design is styling done at the end of some process.”

Berry says design is actually problem solving. Everything gets designed, and constraints like time, money and production capability are problems to be solved. Good design considers all the factors up front to help manufacturers determine how and where to cut costs.

Creo Productions will produce a 10-minute video that highlights the ethnographic research that identified the need for modern efficiencies in laundry appliances. That research resulted in the Whirlpool Duet series, which revolutionized the industry, Berry says. Some of the conveniences consumers wanted include faster drying time, side-by-side appliances, water conservation, wrinkle prevention, variable heights to reduce bending and stooping, and reduced noise.

The video will highlight interviews with Whirlpool researchers and designers, the ethnographic research, the incorporation of drawings and prototype concepts, and a visual timeline.

Berry will make the video available to individual businesses and online.

“The goal of Design West Michigan is to use design to help grow the economy of the region,” Berry says. “The case study will educate non-designers on the value of design where design has the ability to enhance their profits and markets. We hope to produce several case studies representing different design disciplines, such as graphic design, architectural design, digital interactive media design, et cetera."

Media Story: Creo's Audio Growth

Rapid Growth ran a story today about the expansion of the audio studio and hiring Matthew as our full-time audio engineer. Read it below or click for the link:

April 2, 2009

Young Grand Rapids A/V studio adds audio engineer, recording capabilities

By: Deborah Johnson Wood

Creo Productions has taken a big step in its plans to offer sophisticated audio recording services with the hire of its first full-time position, an audio engineer to run the firm's new recording studio.

Last year, the company moved from 200 square feet in owner Aaron Carriere’s Eastown home to 1,425 square feet at 40 S. Division, Grand Rapids. Some 475 square feet of the lower level is dedicated to the audio studio completed in December, dubbed 40 South.

Carriere, 26, and business partner Andrew Tingley, 27, moved downtown with the intention of eventually adding the audio studio for recording musicians.

“With the growth of the video business we decided to make the jump to add a full-time audio engineer,” says Carriere. “We’re primed to grow very quickly with this move.”

The audio studio consists of a soundproof recording room, mixing room and post-production area. Musicians, voice overs, sound effects and more are recorded directly into the mixing room computer system where the audio engineer controls the sound quality, special effects and track layering.

Carriere says there is “tons of collaboration” between the video studio upstairs and the audio studio downstairs. One advantage is that Creo draws upon a network of local musicians, including Carriere and Matthew Korn, to write custom music for any video the company produces. Korn is the new audio engineer.

“Original music increases the value of your video production,” Carriere says, “and you can fit the music to the video.”

Creo Productions’ produced the audio and video for a new short film, Celebrate Heartside, which debuted last month as part of an initiative to bring projected art to downtown Grand Rapids.