As many of you know I have been pursuing with limited success a career in film and video. My friend/partner Mark and I, and a talented crew of friends and coworkers, won the Best Video Award for Razzle Dazzle, the most recent video we produced for Bank of the West. We also recently finished a special edition DVD of Razzle Dazzle that many of you will soon have in hand. While it is well known that I am rarely pleased with my own work, (a constant struggle against my inner critic), I am relatively pleased with how everything turned out and feel comfortable sharing it with the world.

Now with the bulk of this project behind us, we are eager to start our next venture: a short horror film we hope to enter into film festivals later this year. Today we took a giant and exciting step forward in that direction as we scouted the probable location of the film: a vacant shopping mall slated for demolition later this year. We are hopeful that this mall will serve as the backdrop for our own Halloween or Friday the 13th (when shooting for the moon, always plan to leave a huge gaping hole). The short visit inspired us, and gelled a number of the ideas we had talked about.

I am determined not to let our “film” equipment rust in the garage another year, waiting for the next Bank of the West video. This will be our first completely independent project, and produced under the banner Elma Films (derived from the first two letters of each of our names, Elvis and Mark). But many details remain, including the writing and polishing of a script, casting, crewing the shoot, securing the location and all the preproduction that goes into putting it all on screen.

I hope to document much of it here, giving you some taste of how it all comes together. And if any of you are interested in participating, please let me know. It will be a bumpy but amazing ride.