A Bit More W+K

A few days ago KG did a post about Levi's new campaign "G.O. Forth" This campaign is one of the newest created by our very own resident ad geniuses Wieden+Kennedy. W+K is easily one of the best and heaviest-hitting ad agencies in the world, with offices all over that same world, and they're headquartered right here in Portland.

The spots are beautiful, the phonograph-style recording of Walt Whitman 'O Pioneers' over gorgeous photography give an overall feeling of indomitable spirit. The Levi's brand pops in at the end with a snare hit, reminiscent of a colonial America, or maybe just a time of change an opportunity. Here's the Levi's spots one more time.





Why all this W+K? Recently, the Willamette Week, our local news/culture paper did a cover story about this crazy new thing: WKE or Wieden+Kennedy Entertainment. Apparently the earliest iteration of WKE started back in '04 or '05 as WK Radio, which fizzled. Now they're back, they've hired this creative director Aaron Rose, and they're producing their own online content. They're not sure if it will work, but they're giving it a try. Why is this so crazy? Because top ranking ad agencies don't do this. They design and produce campaigns for high-end clients, that's it. So its awesome that they're doing something new, now if Aaron Rose would just answer my phone calls.


Santa Kennedy

Great Success at the Radio Room

Last night was the first ever Beat My Shorts night at the Radio Room! Beat My Shorts is an event where filmmakers make movies based on challenges and then screen them at the next BMS. Quarter Orange kicked it off with Eli's thesis film Dos Hermanos Tacos, and our latest robot short, the Robot Halloween Special. There were some awesome experiemental pieces, a sweet music video shot on 8mm, and some absolutely hilarious stuff from Cinema Queso. We'd like to give a big shout out to Donovan for hosting the event and showing our work! We look forward to future Beat My Shorts events.

Check out our video blog from the Radio Room!

Have You Seen Me? #2

Sorry for two posts in a day, but I am still intrigued by these Levi's commercials and the film makers that created them. Through some research and helpful links from Jeffree Newman I've procured some more information on the campaign and film makers that I'd like to share. For a awesome breakdown on the campaign and all involved check out: W+K Levi's Blog

The director of the "America" spot is Cary Fukanaga. below is the trailer for his film "Sin Hombre." I have not seen it, but am very intrigued:



The other director appears to be a Portland local, M. Blash. Here is the trailer for his film "Lying."



If you're wondering what it's about, so was I, here's the brief synopsis from IMDB:

"A long weekend brings four women together in the countryside. Virtual strangers, the women are forced to navigate the depths of social interaction. On the surface all seems placid. But the atmosphere of calm is a facade."

Not a ton of information on the plot, but the visuals alone are enough to get me interested.

Have You Seen Me?

Last week while I was at a showing of "The Road," I was sitting through the usual garbage before the movie begins, when all of a sudden something came on the screen that blew me away. It was a Levi's commercial, part of their "Go Forth" campaign. Upon further investigation of the campaign I found that it was produced by Portland's own Weiden + Kennedy. These two commercials are two of the best I have seen in a long time, they go past the point of commercial to art, not to mention propaganda. I just wanted to share them with you. Enjoy!

Nov. 20

Well, we had a productive day Friday! Went down and turned the RACC proposal in first off, then spent the remainder of the day talking over our upcoming feature. Speaking of which, I think it is safe to say that we are in pre-production on a feature film we are planning to shoot in the Mt. Hood area in February! We're all pretty excited about it!

Looking forward to Thanksgiving this week? We sure are. If there's one thing we like doing over her at QO it's, well, making movies, the second thing we love is food. Good food, green bean casserole, ham with mustard sauce, it's gonna be a good thanksgiving.

December 4th, we'll be heading over to Spokane, WA to snag a few bottles of Whiskey from Dry Fly Distillery. It's only their second batch, and man was the first one good! They're only selling in washington, so looks like a mini road trip for us. If you get a chance to try Dry Fly, you really should. They also make vodka and gin, and need more representation in the Portland area.

The importance of Behind the Scenes: What happened in October.

BTS or as it is more widely known, “Behind The Scenes” is great. It gives audience members a feeling of “being there” on set with the crew, joking around, having a good time. The interviews will often give the audience a deeper understanding of the filmmaking process. Sometimes, the BTS footage on a film will do better than the movie itself. Lost in La Mancha is a documentary film that originally started as BTS. We watch as bad decision making, plus a good dose of bad luck, plague filmmaker Terry Giliam. His Don Quixote movie never saw the light of day but Lost in La Mancha is a film school staple on how not to run a production.

Sometimes the making of the movie is more interesting than the actual movie. This is how I felt about Mark Singer’s “Dark Days” about the homeless population in New York City’s subway system. Singer was so obsessed with his project that he actually became homeless in the process of trying to get the film made. He ended up moving into the subway with his reels of exposed film while he worked on getting the money to develop the film. He ended up getting DJ Shadow to do the soundtrack, which is a feat in itself for the reclusive musician. And while “Dark Days” is interesting and a well put together movie, the Behind the Scenes is astonishing.

I have Behind the Scenes for my senior thesis film “Dos Hermanos Tacos” which includes an amazing conversation between my DP and my Sound Guru about the mythology of Leprechauns. I still watch some of this footage for my own enjoyment, watching my friends act like idiots in the desert. In short, BTS is great.

Which is why we were shooting behind the scenes for our Quarter Orange Halloween special. We had this idea for this really spooky scene…well I won’t go into it much here, since we might use it next year, but suffice it say: It was going to be awesome. Until Robot got a surprise visitor. We were able to cut what little BTS we had together with an interview, immediately after the fact. Check it out.

It's a QO workday!

We got an e-mail from our friend over at AiPD, Tafflyn, letting us know about a call for proposals for The Regional Arts & Culture Council's (RACC) Work for Art program. They are looking for proposals for three short videos detailing their Work for Art program, which allows employees to have a donation automatically deducted from their paycheck to go to RACC. We have jumped on the opportunity to produce something for this great organization and have been spending most of our workday today generating ideas. We have a pretty solid one involving many different facets of the arts community in Portland, focusing on the importance of art in the community culture of a city. Too often the arts are taken for granted, and their importance is not realized until they are close to being shut down. I think this program is a great way for people to make a statement about how important the arts are, without having to deal with the stress/cost of making lump donation. You can find more information on the program here.

We're also calling the companies we sent our marketing packets to a couple weeks ago. It's always important to follow-up on things like this. Often people will receive something, be intrigued by it, then forget about it as more important things come up. Therefor it's always nice to give them a helpful push to get back to that packet they wanted to take a closer look at, but never got around to.

Keep you eyes peeled next week for a brand-spankin' new robot short! It's gonna be a good one!

Liquor, Action and Fall

We're enjoying the brisk autumn days we've been getting up here. Luckily the rain has been taking a break. It's getting dark early now, though I guess that forces us inside to work on all those writing tasks we keep talking about.

Thanks to all that came out to the QO Halloween Bash, we had a ton of fun, and hope you did as well.

Here's a little essay I want to share with you all, our buddy Jed sent it to me. I think a lot of you out there would appreciate it, laugh with it, maybe even learn something from it. It's written by Josh Olson, writer of "A History of Violence," and is called "I will not read your f**king script." Check it out here.


Jason, Walker and I were able to go check out the Great American Distillery Festival a couple of weeks ago, and make some contacts with some awesome distilleries. This festival was made up solely of Craft Distilleries, a majority of them from right here in the PNW. Here are a few of our favorites:

Dry Fly Distillery
Vodka, Gin and recently Whiskey
These guys are definitely a craft distillery. They only put the best part of each of their batches through the stilling process, using charcoal filters only a couple of times. This process allows for their liquor to maintain the true intentions and flavors of it's ingredients.

Pacific Distillery
Since it became legal to produce Absinthe once again in the states, these guys have been kicking ass at it. They had the full Absinthe set up at their table. In order to conserve tickets we didn't get a chance to try their Gin, but I'm sure it's great as well.

New Deal Distillery
The previous two distilleries hail from Washington, while this one come from right here in Stumptown. New Deal specializes in crafting vodkas. As of now they have five, New Deal Vodka, Portland 88 Vodka, Hot Monkey Vodka (Pepper infused), Basil Vodka and a new chocolate vodka that I think they were premiering at the festival, it's not available on their website yet. They are also involved in producing some liqueurs.

Artisan Spirits
This guy produces some knock-out vodkas. It's a very small operation, but once again this allows him to craft his vodka even more. At the moment Artisan has two types of Vodka out (both available at Rose City Liquor if you get the chance.) The first is distilled from wine, and is a very simple, delicate, flavorful vodka. The second is a honey vodka, distilled from mead, once again simple, yet complex in it's flavors. Artisan, along with New Deal, are part of Portland's Distillery Row.

Bakon Vodka
I know, it sounds weird. I wasn't sure what to think at first. That's why I'm glad I got to try it at the festival, and you know what, pretty awesome! I mean, you couldn't drink it straight for too long, but they definitely nailed a niche. The bacon flavor doesn't stick around to long after taking a sip thankfully. I'm looking forward to trying this in either a bloody mary, or the chocolate martini recipe I've heard tell of.

Organic Nation Spirits
Coming from Ashland, Or these guys will kick your ass, organically of course. Probably my favorite Gin that I tried at the festival, came out of nowhere and hit me smack dab in the lips with a tingling of black pepper! Check 'em out. I definitely plan on stopping in next time I'm down there in Ashland.

Well, I hope that little run down helps you make informed liquor decisions. If you don't see these guys at your liquor store, ask for them. Because of the way the OLCC works distilleries must ultimately sell themselves to the stores so that the stores put in orders for their stuff. This is heavily aided by customers asking for these craft liquors.

In other news I'm really digging the video sharing site Open Film. They've got a great interface and have chosen a number of our pieces we've uploaded as editor's picks. They also have a donation option, to help us with collecting donations.

We are working on producing a "mix tape" of sorts for your pleasure. Not sure how much the guys want me to reveal, so I'll leave details on that for a post a little bit later this week.


We are also working on our holiday themed action piece. We have a tight little script written by Eli that is undergoing some revisions. I'm excited to direct it, looking forward to the challenge. I need to start digging through the DVD collection to find some good action BTS. Any suggestions? Looking for anything detailing directing/blocking action sequences, and working with action effects. Jason will be focusing on the Vis FX of the piece, digital blood, gun shots etc. Eli will AD, and Walker will be producing.

Soon this month we will be shooting a couple short sketch pieces and we are looking for some assistance costume wise. If anybody has any pieces of clothing or accessories (female) that could be attributed to "goth" culture, and would like to help us out shoot, me an e-mail, kg@quarterorange.com.

Check in later this week for an update on all of our current projects.