Red Roses and Petrol

Another year, another Mercury Players Theatre Blitz event. This time, RASHfilms wrote our first Romantic Comedy. Below is live, edited video footage from the play.

Red Roses and Petrol from Josh K on Vimeo.

Ooops...and Wis-Kino 48-hour Kabaret March 20th

Well someone forgot to pay for hosting and the RASHfilms website went down. Unfortunately, in addition to that, our offline backups of the RASHserver were from about...well...2006. So there are various things on the site that are/will-be-for-the-indefinite-future down. For one thing, some of the graphics from the front page are missing. All of the graphics from the "Equipment" page are missing. Also, many of the iPod-formatted videos are missing from the lineup on the right of the screen.

Also new. Due to the account being deleted, the changing of hands of web domains, etc, rashfilms.com is now located at rashfilms.thegentlemanloser.com. For the time being (probably at least the next year) going to rashfilms.com will forward you instantly to the new site.

Sam and I are cooking up a fresh new film to show at the Wis-Kino Spring 48-Hour Kabaret, March 20th (Kickoff) and 22nd (Main Screening) at Sundance Cinemas in the Hilldale mall. So you should come to both screenings, as we will bring new films to both. That is all.

Two new films from the 2008 Fall Kabaret

Films from the Trip to Louisville

Kino Louisville had their twice-yearly Spring Kabaret back in June, which means we were on the scene. This time, we got Emily and Rob to come along with us. Here is a video shot during the trip, part of the ongoing "Sam and Josh Go to Louisville" series:



Later we made a quick and dirty unstructured little film following that weekends Kabaret theme of "Distraction," it was basically just a camera set up in a corner and us passing the other camera around. It's called "Distraction (Joan)" and it's groovy:



Now you may have noticed that we had that little "(Joan)" thing next to the title. That's because Rob wrote and directed a little ditty by the same name. It's a continuation of the story started with his film "Complicated" and you can view it below:



Lastly Rob and Emily and Sam came up with this quick little Kino Louisville ID:

Two More From The Vault

Below we have two films from 2007 that just never quite got up on the site until now. They were both edited on a PC using Windows Movie Maker (yuk!) and thus they never got on to the main RASHfilms computer until now.

The first one, "Tom Waits Was Right" was created during the 2007 Kino Louisville Kabaret, the theme for that Kabaret was "drunk" or "drinking" or something like that. It is based off of a lyric in the Tom Waits song "Heart Attack and Vine" and in addition to Sam and myself, includes a bunch of local Louisvillians and a brief cameo by our friend John Mirsberger. Basically, it's about the devil going out to drink and causing mischief.



The second one, "When Brothers Fight" was created for the 2007 Wis-Kino Fall Kabaret, the theme for that Kabaret was "Down the Gutter." In it, two young children learn a valuable lesson brotherhood from a wise father figure.
I suppose that somehow your content was reencoded. BTW, did you elect to have anything put in the DVD-ROM area?

The Miscellaneous Ailments Foundation

Posted below here is the video footage of the play we wrote for the 2008 Blitz a few weeks ago. It's called The Miscellaneous Ailments Foundation, and the play was directed by Gary Kriesel. This play had a great cast as well as an amazing crew that brought this and seven other amazing short plays to stage in a little less than 12 hours.

It's a twisted little play that is your basic farce. A bunch of people, in a silly setting (a Victorian era sanitarium, think "Road to Wellville" in a different time setting) cross paths as they run in and out of scenes. There is mistaken identity, odd sexual disorders, and a whole lot of marital aids...

We will likely post the scripts to this play, Smoochy Woochy Poochy, and Be Careful With That Axe Eugine (who's video footage is unfortunately lost) on the website sometime in the near-ish future.

Well I am off to go edit a crap ton more of the various Mercury Players shows that we have filmed. Toodles.

All projects loaded, multiclipped and synced...

From our Blitz 2008 play: "The Miscellaneous Ailments Foundation"

Blitz/Blitz Smackdown 2007 Discs Available

The Blitz 2007 collection is created and ready for sale. Come to Blitz this Friday (Jul 11th) and Saturday and pick up a copy for $15 (it includes three discs, Blitz Friday Night, Blitz Saturday Night, and Blitz Smackdown, as well as a photo gallery and some bonus RASHfilms). Also available will be DVD's for "Revenge of the Mini-Musicals" and "Mercury Rising" for $10 each.

Note that the first five Blitz 2007 Collections sold will have a bonus disc containing some footage from the Saturday night of the *2006* Blitz. These five bonus discs are THE LAST COPIES of those discs that will ever be available. So you may want to rush to get this before it sells out this Friday (Jul 11th) at Blitz, at 8pm at the Bartell Theatre.

Blitz 2007 Collection

***UPDATE****
Sam and I developed a workaround and the first two of three master discs are done, the third one will compile overnight. In the meantime, I have already started producing copies of Discs 1 and 2. So tomorrow I will make copies of Disc 3, buy DVD cases, and print labels for those cases.

So to be short, the Blitz 2007 DVD collection *will* be on sale for Blitz this Friday. Also, it will be available for purchase directly from us while we are writing this Thursday night for Blitz on Friday.
***************

We are encountering technical problems with the system that we use to master DVDs. I have ordered a replacement part, but unless it arrives in the next 48 hours, it is unlikely that we will have the DVDs ready by Blitz, but they definitely will be ready by the time Mercury Players Theatre opens it's next show, The Full Monty.

In the meantime, "Mercury Rising" and "Revenge of the Mini-Musicals" discs will be available at the Bartell box office during Blitz this Friday and Saturday night. We apologise for any inconvenience.

Smoochy Woochy Poochy

Last year Sam and I wrote a script for Mercury Players Theatre's Blitz event. It was called Smoochy Woochy Poochy and it is full of spite and dirty thoughts. Rob wrote an "interrupting" play for the night that interrupted each play, this one included, you'll know it when you see it.

This Thursday night, Sam and I will once again write for Blitz. You can see the fruits of our future labor by going to the Bartell Theatre (on E. Mifflin, just off of the Capitol Loop) at 8pm on Friday and seeing Blitz. Also, if you have ever, in any way, wanted to try out your acting abilities on stage, contact Mercury Players about acting on Friday night, they will take you in, whatever your skill level (all you have to do is be available all day Friday). And hey, you could end up in our play, that would be cool.

What has RASHfilms been up to?

So yeah, we have been pretty dormant lately. That's not to say we aren't busy doing things though. However, as far as short films go, we have went from torrent to trickle, and that is because, well, real life is a bitch to us both in different ways. Plus running Wis-Kino (thank God Emily keeps up the Wis-Kino Myspace page for me) can kinda drag as well (though in the coming month, we will be making some announcements about changes on the Wis-Kino front...)

That's not to say that we are completely down and out. For example, check out our most recent creation RASHnotes - 1984 which is part of a planned series of adaptations of briefly read Cliff's Notes (Sam and I recently stopped by the local Barnes and Noble's in house Starbucks to quickly read the synopsis to "Fahrenheit 241" and "All's Quiet on the Western Front"). Not to mention the slew of films we made a few weeks ago in Louisville with our friend Emily Mills and Rob Matsushita. Plus you can count on us always making something for each Wis-Kino Kabaret.

On the live front, I personally have been very busy catching us up on old projects. The Aporia footage is edited and awaiting further plans. The Selfish Gene project has been officially closed. I have edited about 70% of the Reverence '07 footage. Blitz/Blitz Smackdown 2007 are being edited right now. "Revenge of the Mini-Musicals" (which I got to be an actor in for the closing weekend) is finished and available on DVD as is "Mercury Rising." Footage of "Celeste and Starla Save Todd and Win Back the Day" was shot and already burned to DVD and distributed in a matter of days. The footage of Mercury Players "Reefer Madness" will see the cutting room sometime in August I think, as will a few other archival projects we still have of Mercury shows that fell to the wayside. Early production on the Blitz 2008 DVDs (planned release in July of 2009) will begin soon as well.

Footage from ourtrip to France has finally arrived, and it will soon be edited into something shared on the website. Lastly, a RASHfilms Year 2 and Year 3 DVD are in the works. After that, our slate will be clean, and years of footage caught up with; hopefully all by then end of summer.

In the near future, we will be attending and filming for posterity, Hot Mess at The Majestic, a celebration of Burlesque Shows, Drag Kings, and these two broads we know, sponsored by DANE 101 and INDIE QUEER.

Also, unrelated, I got a blog: http://blog.thegentlemanloser.com, so that's fun.

Up to something,,,

2 New Films (NAADS, and RASHnotes: 1984)

RASHfilms is coming out of it's Year+ long hibernation. First off is NAADS, a film that we shot several months back incorporating our new audio rig (though we still didn't know how to use it so well). This film was created for Wis-Kino's February 2008 screening (theme: love/sex). It's about ballsacks.

The other film was created in April for the Wis-Kino 2008 Spring Kabaret. The theme (drawn out of a hat two nights beforehand) was "Prop: Ice Cream Cones". It's called "RASHnotes: 1984" and it's a kickoff of a new series. Basically the premise goes like this: Sam and I pick a book we have never read, we go to the mall's Barnes and Nobel, grab the Cliff's Notes for the book, sit in the attached Starbucks and drink overpriced coffee while we read the two page summary, then make a movie with minimal costumes and props. We think it will start a trend on YouTube, unless someone else has thought of the idea first, but we are so confident that we are being original that we won't even check to see if that's the case. (NOTE that this is the rush-cut version, a reshoot is planned to fix some of the audio issues and tighten the script.)

It Lives...

Support the NAADS today. Let RASHfilms show you how this Sunday at WisKino (7pm at Escape Coffee).