It’s not news to any of us: the advertising industry is competing with shorter and shorter attention spans, and now even Facebook encourages brands to pack their video messaging into 6 second hamburgers. Just checking.
For those of you who have fallen prey to this sliding decline in attention, we created an incredibly short trailer for your consideration. Maybe it’s all you have time to watch, and this cryptic 57 second piece will have required only 5 months of producing a 40 minute mockumentary (not to mention weeks upon weeks of editing) to make. That’s an awfully long walk through the woods to get to a porta potty, sure, but hey, we made it.
Perhaps, though, the trailer will leave you wondering what in the United States of America am I witnessing here?! Maybe you’ll watch the entire film to answer that burning question, and then you’ll want to Skype your mom and dad about it, which will lead you to rave to your dentist about it through open mouth gutturals. And once we give that mouse this cookie, you’ll probably want to learn more about why this project is so important to us.
You’ve probably figured out by now that at Form & Fiction, we’re fueled by a passion and obsession to make. We want to make new friends, new crafts, and sometimes just make fun of ourselves. After all, we understand that not everything in this life was meant to be taken too seriously. So we focus on what sorts of unexplored creative landscapes this journey can show us, and we’ll worry about reaching whatever destination we’re headed towards when we’re ready to settle down. On top of that, a healthy exploration of creative challenges like the mockumentary gives us the chance to challenge ourselves and see what we’re really made of.
And as it turns out, we’re made of some pretty good stuff, just like the people who we bribe with alcohol choose to partner with us. Putting their faith in our vision and creative fire, the entire crew of actors, production staff, and editors generously donated their time and talents to make this mockumagic happen, even though none of us had done anything like it before. In such wildly unfamiliar territory, inexperience was never once an obstacle, but a great excuse to get experimental, and get jiggy with it. There are not enough thanks in the world to begin listing them here, but we hope everyone involved knows how much they’ve meant to us.
Sleepless night upon sleepless night finally turned into our holiday party in December. We took over the Vogue Theater to premiere Here There Where with about 100 people we bribed with free food and booze of our good friends and family members in attendance, and it all played out gorgeously. Of course we had some 911 hiccups (weeks-worth of sound work disappearing a few days prior to the premiere, corrupt files not playing the afternoon of, and the entire video file converting for digital cinema projection…on a laptop…in the cab ride to the premiere), but the actual screening was flawless, and the speeches were superb (what we remember of them, at least).
It’s hard to imagine what in the honky tonk we can do to follow this one up, but 2018 promises to be the year we find out. So hey, even if you don’t watch the whole thing–even if no one in the world watches the whole thing–don’t worry. There’s plenty more to come.
