Best podcast of the summer

One of the highlights of our summer was being interviewed by the hilarious Lester Rowe. That's him in the picture, reacting when I called him "soft" for liking Hall & Oates.
Lester has a highly entertaining podcast called "I'm Kinda Famous." Back in June, he sat down with editor/DP Kenny Linn and me to discuss "Out Here In Kansas." We cover a wide range of new topics in an hour and a half, including ...
* How Kenny learned to trick me during the editing process.
* Why writing a documentary can be an exercise in futility.
* My original plan for the movie's premiere.
* The hardest part of the movie to edit.
* Why Kenny doesn't feel he fits the title of "DP."
* How much easier it's become to make a documentary in recent years.
* Our favorite movies of the last five years.
You can listen to the whole thing here.
Kenny and I love Lester. We tease each other a lot, but Lester has become a good friend and he's been a big supporter of our project since the day he heard about it. He's an accomplished filmmaker himself, having raked in awards for "Wifi at Rock Bottom," and is best known locally for his work with MMA fighter David "Caveman" Rickels.

Austin award nominations

Not only is "Out Here In Kansas" headed to the Austin Revolution Film Festival next month, it's even up for a couple of awards.
One is for Best Documentary Short, which is awesome. Another is for Best Documentary Director, which, as I've alluded to on this blog before, makes me feel pretty undeserving.
Our producer Savannah Rodgers is such a filmmaking machine, I'm not even sure which of her many films have been nominated. But I do know she's up for the Producer Award and Female Filmmaker of the Year.

Our videos on YouTube

This is long overdue, but today I finally tried to condense most of our making-of videos for "Out Here In Kansas" onto my own YouTube channel (which I haven't paid much attention to until now).
If you're at all interested in "Out Here In Kansas," or in documentary filmmaking in general, I invite you to check them out here.

Got a minute for a movie?

A quick note about our producer, Savannah Rodgers ...
She is in the running for a Sundance fellowship, based largely on her film "For Sale," which is a micro short. When I say "micro short," I mean it tells the story in less than 60 seconds.
So do us a favor and check it out here. I know it puts a serious lump in my throat every time I watch it.
If you like it, just hit the "Appreciate" button and log in through Facebook, Google or Adobe. It's simple, and it will really help Savannah. (And our "Out Here In Kansas" team loves Savannah.)

More out-of-state awards

While "Out Here In Kansas" has received plenty of love in our home state, to win awards we've had to go ... well, out of Kansas.
Our documentary took home a couple more first-place honors, this time at the Glitter (Okla.) Film Festival. It won best documentary short, which is amazing, because I can attest first-hand how great the films were there.
We also won best director for a documentary short. I guess that's me. I should note how sheepish I feel about accepting individual accolades, simply because I'm so aware how influential editor Kenny Linn, as well as producers Jon Pic and Savannah Rodgers, were in shaping the story. We even had a focus group to give us notes on our rough cut, which wasn't even my idea.
But hey, I'm glad to receive the award, it's wonderful publicity for "Out Here In Kansas," and I still think we've got big things coming.