Thursday, November 20, 2014

NEW SHAWANGUNK JOURNAL ARTICLE ABOUT OUR MOVIE!

ARTICLE LINK:
http://www.shawangunkjournal.com/
2014/11/20/news/1411203.html


An Ellenville World Premiere!
Nursery School's Iron Man 6 At Shadowland
Lorie Kellogg working with
the students on thier flying scene.
ELLENVILLE – Most little boys want to be superheroes, but not five-year-old Jonah Althouse. At age four he didn't want to be a hero; his dream was to film them... and in his quest to do so, mom Natasha Althouse says, something truly magical happened. A whole community embraced her "little man's" dream and made it real enough to be pegged for a premiere at Shadowland Theatre this Friday evening, November 21.
Green screen cut out and sky added.
For Iron Man 6's origins, reach back a year to the morning that a then 4-year-old Jonah bounded into the kitchen and
declared his intentions to be a film maker. Mom and son got busy writing the story, with Jonah dictating his short film idea to mom as she busily transcribed at the table what's become a twenty minute film based on those Marvel comic characters, The Avengers. The plot, created by Jonah, revolves around the kidnapping of "Max" and a subsequent rescue.
Green Screen before Effects
 Playing the Marvel Avengers in real life were young Althouse's fellow Ellenville Cooperative Nursery School students and friends.

The director's mom pointed out how Jonah's long had a nightly wish for his parents to come up with a story "from their heads" each bedtime. She also surmised that the superhero interest may have stemmed from the boy's shift from only child to big brother.

Still from final film using green screen key.
"Phil and I are avid supporters of whatever they want to be," Althouse said of her young director and his eighteen-month-old sister, Norah's, future career choices. "We encourage him and explain that to manifest a dream, you have to visualize."
Jonah, who plays Hulk in the movie, has no idea how big a deal all this is, his mom added. He took his role as co-director seriously, she went on, writing scripts, reading scenes and directing the film. But film mechanics aside, she's as interested in that special something else that happened while Iron Man 6 was being made.
"It's the affirmation that people are still out there, taking time out of their lives, trying to keep afloat and say, 'I believe in that, let's do it,'" she said. "Ellenville gets a bad rap but it's beautiful to see this in fruition; this little man did this, and I feel blessed."

Helping bring the film project to life was a large crew of local professionals with film background, including award-winning producer, director, writer and actor Joe Bevilacqua, who created the Iron Man 6 soundtrack and produced its sound effects, music and voice editing, and Lorie Kellogg, an actress, writer and video /graphic artist who produced the visual effects and graphic design for the short film. Filling out the crew was co-director Jaf Zarkas, set design and construction by Jesika Farkas, special effects by Johann Kunz, voice work by Kenny Savoy, and Prashanti Massage as executive producer.

Jonah Althouse left and Jonas Trzeciak

Filming was at the Ellenville Cooperative Nursery school, over the course of two days last February, and at nearly one hundred hours of editing, over ten hours of filming, and loads of professional filming apparatus such as green and blue screens, Kellogg noted how the short film would have cost nearly $50,000 to create were it not for the community help.
"We all liked the fact that they're really trying to raise money for the school," Kellogg said, noting that all proceeds raised from ticket sales and raffles will go to keeping the Ellenville Cooperative Nursery school up and running.
"I don't think I could have done anything like that at Jonah's age," Bevilacqua said. "If he stays in this and continues he'll go professional."

Jonah himself, meanwhile, was excited that everyone will see his movie. Now, the director/writer/star turned Ellenville Central School kindergartener said, he's more into Star Wars. Although he added that he is working on an armor suit — like Iron Man's — to keep soldiers safe.

The premiere of Iron Man 6 will be held this Friday, November 21 at 6 p.m. The evening will start with a showing of 'Hatching Houseflies for Profit,' an animated short-film produced, directed and voiced by Bevilacqua and edited by Kellogg that features characters created by Bevilacqua when he was eleven. Aroma Thyme Bistro will provide appetizers and there will be raffles for items including an original signed print from Marvel illustrator Herb Trimpe, plus other surprises.

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Wednesday, November 19, 2014

SCRIBD DEAL IS GOOD NEWS for Waterlogg Prod. and Blackstone Audio!

ARTICLE FROM THE VERGE  http://www.theverge.com/cribd-adds-audiobooks-to-ebook-subscription-service

Scribd expands its subscription library to include audiobooks

Subscription service takes on Audible with unlimited access

Scribd is about to give Audible a serious run for its money. Today it's adding an audiobooks section to its ebooks subscription service, giving its customers access to more than 30,000 audiobooks as part of their existing $8.99 per month subscription. That's a huge addition, and it's going to make Audible's subscribers think twice about paying $14.95 every month for only a single audiobook.
INCLUDING ALL OF WATERLOGG PRODUCTIONS TITLES!
ONLY ONE OF THE BIG PUBLISHERS IS DIRECTLY SIGNED ON FOR NOW
Subscribers may not want to jump ship just yet, however. For one, Scribd won't let you keep ebooks after you cancel like Audible does. And more importantly, Audible offers over 150,000 audiobooks as part of its subscription service. For now, Scribd only has a direct deal with one of the big publishers, HarperCollins, and it gets access to other big publisher's books through deals with companies like Blackstone Audio. Scholastic is also on board, so you'll at least be able to start listening through The Hunger Games before the next movie comes out.
Ebook subscriptions services have had a tough time getting off the ground because of their limited content offerings, with the big publishers generally being hesitant to sign on. Over the past year, however, Scribd has grown to include ebooks from both HarperCollins and Simon & Schuster. That's still not everything you'd want out of the much-fabled Netflix for ebooks, but it's a solid start. And more than anything, it's a great deal compared to Audible.
"Audiobooks are more than a $1 billion a year industry, and they are a natural extension of Scribd’s existing content offering," Trip Adler, CEO of Scribd, says in a statement. "This has been one of our most popular requests and we’re excited to reach book lovers wherever they are and however they choose to read – or listen." Scribd is adding audiobook support to its Android and Kindle Fire apps today, with an update its iOS app coming soon. Audiobooks can also be listened to on its website.
Audible has dominated the audiobooks world for what feels like time immemorial, and the fact that it's become part of Amazon's empire only entrenches that. Though it has a distinctly different business model than what Scribd is offering here — Audible is essentially signing you up to buy a single audiobook a month — that model is far from ideal for a good many listeners: it's expensive, and it negates the benefit of having access to 150,000 audiobooks because you can only ever try out one each month anyway. It certainly remains to be seen how well that can be challenged, but HarperCollins makes it sound like that's something it welcomes.
"Audio is a growing category and one that needs additional distribution channels," Chantal Restivo-Alessi, HarperCollins' digital chief, says in a statement. "By making our audiobooks available through Scribd, we’re opening up a much wider market for our authors’ works."
AMAZON HAS A COMPETING KINDLE SERVICE, BUT IT DOESN'T HAVE MANY AUDIOBOOKS
While Scribd may still be widely known for hosting PDFs, that's built it a big audience — 80 million monthly readers — that it can attempt to transition into paying customers (Scribd hasn't stated how many paying subscribers it has just yet). Scribd is also facing off against the competing ebook subscription service Oyster, which has also signed HarperCollins and Simon & Schuster but doesn't offer audiobooks.
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Amazon actually does offer a directly competing service to what Scribd is launching today. It's called Kindle Unlimited, and it lets you read and listen to books for a monthly subscription. But Amazon says that it only grants access to "thousands" of audiobooks — it launched this summer with around 2,000 — suggesting that Amazon's offerings are far more limited than what you'd find on Scribd. That figure is small enough to make Kindle Unlimited a nonstarter for someone who's primarily interested in audiobooks. It also costs a dollar more, at $9.99 per month.
That makes Scribd's announcement a direct shot at Amazon in one way or another. It's not hard to imagine that Amazon will eventually step up its game in response, and when it does, that's likely to be good news for everyone interested in listening to a book.
Correction November 6th, 1:50PM: Scribd has access to many big publisher's audiobooks through its deal with Blackstone. This article previously stated that Scribd only had access to one of the big publisher's titles. That is in fact its only direct deal.


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