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NEWS: HOLLER AND THE MOAN
February 17, 2011
Ze Catalist owner, publisher and lead writer Greg W. Locke made a movie! The film, a documentary that focuses on a year in the life of singer/songwriter Lee Miles, will have two fundraiser screenings at the Cinema Center Tech theater in Fort Wayne, Indiana on Friday, February 25 (8 pm) and Sunday, February 27 (4 pm). Tickets for those screenings are only $5, and your ticket stub from Friday's premiere will get you into a Lee Miles concert at The Brass Rail following the show. An after-party of sorts. All money made from these screenings will be used to offset the cost of entering the film into some film festivals.
Here's a synopsis:
We follow Lee Miles, a struggling singer/songwriter working his way through both personal setbacks and health problems, as he navigates through another year as an out-of-time artist who can't find his way out of the mud. Along the way we meet his friends, fans and bandmates, hear his songs, go on tour, get a look at his city and learn that our hero has a personally relevant - and quite grand - new project in the works.
Head over to www.hollerandthemoan.com for additional details, some footage, plenty of production notes and still and more! Wish Greg luck!
Written by G. William Locke
INTERVIEW: KNEW FRAME'S MATT MCCROY
February 16, 2011
GREG LOCKE: Tell me about the production team. Everyone. How did you guys all get together?
MATT MCCROY: Knew Frame Productions is made up of Matthew McCrory, Nichole Root, Kiowa Ackley and Evangeline (Evan) Figg. We all met while at IPFW in production classes and then a Film Production Organization that Nichole had started. She started the group in an attempt to expand upon the limited filmmaking resources offered on campus and in the Fort Wayne area in general. We worked on lots of projects together ranging from bad to worse (that we wouldn't dare show anyone!) and basically taught ourselves everything we could until our projects progressively got better. We got to the point where we were quite confident in our abilities and we knew we just needed to have the right project, and a talented cast and crew, to be dedicated and make something happen, which, is no easy feat in this area. We've all been involved with projects with other local production companies and local TV stations, and some of those experiences have been great, but we really wanted to have the chance to do something more artistic.
GL: Tell me a bit about how you guys decided to turn Kiowa's script into a film.
MM: Before I had moved to Fort Wayne, Kiowa, Nichole and a few others had the intentions of turning the script into a film (it was called "Spiral", at that time), but they decided to wait and focus on shorter projects. Kiowa had showed me an early draft of the script about 4 years ago and I immediately related to it. Not just the fact that one of the central characters finds himself returning to small town life from Los Angeles, which I had just done, but the dialogue and storylines of the film's troubled and apathetic leads was so authentic to people I knew and had been surrounded by, spending my teenage years in a small Midwestern town.
I had read scripts and seen films set in small towns that always depicted them as a "safe haven" or sweet escape from the problems of troublesome big city life and it was interesting to see a different perspective. In the story the characters are in an environment where everyone knows each other and nothing substantial ever happens. To focus on characters who are lost, it seemed important that they be in a town that could easily be lost on the map. It was an interesting dynamic having a setting where the characters are essentially isolated from most of the outside world, but also in a location that could be relatable to a lot of people. Reading the script I almost thought of it as a "Lord of the Flies" type story, but instead of a bunch of kids trapped on an isolated island doing horrible things to each other, it was a bunch of kids trapped in an isolated small town. There were different instances in the town I grew up in where the police would not report a crime or not bring someone with a warrant in, simply because they knew that person. When you have a group of characters in a setting like that, where no one really cares what you do, it makes the situations they find themselves in seem more out of control. (Note: although we filmed in Fort Wayne and surrounding areas, the small town which the film is set, is NOT Fort Wayne nor meant to resemble Fort Wayne as none of us actually grew up here) ... [Continued]
Written by G. William Locke
ALBUM: MY DIVIDER
February 15, 2011
I first heard Dinosaur Bones on a fluke, playing in the Indie Lounge in Indianapolis after a screening of Another Year. (I was drinking a $6 Blue Moon and (loved the film, if you're wanting to know all the deets.) My first impression of what I heard was that maybe the guys in The Whigs all had wimpy younger brothers who also formed a band. Never mind that, I ended up intrigued, seeking out the record within a few days.
The record's cover - simple, timeless and cool - also helped sell me on My Divider, the excellently titled new debut record from Toronto's unfortunately named indie rock studs, Dinosaur Bones. Produced by Jon Drew (Fucked Up, Tokyo Police Club, etc.), the 11-track debut reminds instantly of Chavez, but without Matt Sweeney's sometimes-too-big guitar play (blasphemy, I know!). The vibe here is 90s New York indie, where the boys play it cool and fuzzy, warm and detached. A band trying to make accessible songs that Lou Reed would like if Lou Reed liked anything other than Lou Reed.
But, really, my first impression was the one that matters - Dinosaur Bones are a more Canadian - and less lively - version of The Whigs, but with an added layer of cool guy drone. It all works just fine, the result being a record that would've done very well on college radio in 1998, back when cool was still cool and fuzz wasn't always a click away. The non-typical element of sound here (for pseudo-garage stoners, that is), a keyboard, works well enough, though at times it distracts from the faux lo-fi fuzziness more than it aides it. Ben Fox, the singer and lead guitarist, has his eye ... [Continued]
Written by G. William Loc
SCREENTIME: EAST OF NOWHERE
February 14, 2011
A few weeks ago I mentioned a local production called East of Nowhere, a feature film which has been in production for almost a year now. I haven't seen any proper footage, I don't know the people involved personally and I've not read a script … but, from what I can tell, it feels like the real thing. I recently interviewed one of the film's major players, co-director Matt McCroy, about the production.
As McCroy broke down the members of his production company, Knew Frame Productions, I got the feeling that Nowhere was, in fact, a project to very much look forward to. Joining McCroy (who studied at the New York Film Academy and is currently a camera operator for the NBA Development League) are McCroy's co-director Nichole Root,Nowhere writer Kiowa Ackley and Evan Figg. I'd go over the credentials of these four people if I had the space; needless to say, they're all seasoned video production professionals.
After a period of working on a number of smaller projects, the foursome began to really come together as a unit. "We got to the point where we were quite confident in our abilities and we knew we just needed to have the right project, and a talented cast and crew, to be dedicated and make something happen, which is no easy feat in this area," explained McCroy.
It started, as it always should, with a script. "Before I had moved to Fort Wayne, Kiowa, Nichole and a few others had the intentions of turning this script into a film, but they decided to wait and focus on shorter projects. Kiowa had shown me an early draft of the script about four years ago and I immediately related to it. Not just the fact that one of the central characters finds himself returning to small town life after living in Los Angeles, which I had just done, but the dialogue and storylines of the film's troubled and apathetic leads was so authentic to people I knew and had been surrounded by."
McCroy next explained that he and some of his cohorts realized that they were all soon to graduate and, mostly likely, move out of town for a job in their field. With that in mind, they felt it was time to take Ackley's script more seriously ... [Continued]
Written by G. William Locke