In our twelfth meeting, Russell, Mike, Ed, and Rowan discussed the flyers (plus an awesome surprise was revealed for our next meeting on November 6th, to be shared in a separate post). Rather than annoy you with details, here’s the comic book summary of our meeting…

Howdy Folks!

It’s really a joy to be in a room full of creative and enthusiastic people. That’s what I got to experience at our most-recent meeting of Pioneer Valley Films!

With our April 2020 date set for filming Sound Staged, we put the focus on…

• Russell designs the flyer (he will be posting versions to get comments on shortly). The flyer will be one of our tools to get the word out to potential members.
• Rowan provides Casey with boilerplate replies for when people enquire from the flyer.
• Mike, Russell and others (not sure who else is doing this) create a video of our members: a round-table of interviews with inserts/cutaways to talk about our current involvement, past experience and upcoming interests. Russell said to think of it as an explanatory commercial of PVFilms. To create this, they need:
  • clips (or pointers to clips) of videos that show what you’ve done in the past, and
  • a biographical statement that describes you (in whatever way you want: personal, hobbies, filmmaking experience, what you’re planning to do) or anecdotescfrom your experience.

Howdy Folks! In the face of evening torrential rains and on-going existential ennui, four brave filmmakers met for our eighth meeting at Packard’s in Northampton this past Wednesday.

We had a short meeting and discussed…

Howdy Filmmakers! Last night we had the largest turnout ever: 9 people, which is a healthy representation of our budding group.

The biggest news is that we voted on a name with the provision that we can change it anytime we want. There was discussion about still being early in our formation so another name might emerge as we develop as a group. With that caveat in mind, the name with the most votes is

Pioneer Valley Films

Hiya! Last night we had another productive meeting of our short “pull a film out of a hat” group. Here is a summary:

• Discussed
  • Script: multiple read throughs, general agreement it’s in great shape with just one bit of dialogue needing work (and some other changes that we will do via email).
  • Shooting timeframe: script can be shot in 2 or 3 sections on separate days; start with easiest section (likely the Twilight Zone spoof scene) and end with most difficult after we have some experience together (the first scene which is )
  • A working agreement: as in, we need one before starting production (and that means deciding on a name)
  • Actors needed: a minimum of 8
  • Money: we need to have a way to pool together some money and someone to manage that…we need someone to step up to be a Producer and make this happen.

Hiya! The past two days have been amazing. Over the weekend we had two meetings starting with the fourth meeting at Russell’s animation studio in the Eastworks building in Easthampton, MA. Luis, Mike, Russell, Rowan, and first-time attendee Casey, met to discuss our little group’s name (more on that in a separate update) and to develop Sound Staged further.

Most of our three-hour meeting was a nonstop idea fest of how to make the script tell a compelling and whimsical story about filmmaking that will put us on the map. (I don’t know which map, but a definitely somewhere important, for sure!)