May Day! May Day!

Happy May everyone!

I have no idea why none of the other Krej people aren't blogging. I like how we are midway through May and Steven hasn't announced the winner of April's D-Bag contest. He shall be flogged for this.

OK, so as always things are very busy for Team Krej. The past two weeks we have been doing table reads at the Relapse Theater for our new movie "Of Rats and Men". It has been going amazing, we have recruited a wider range of actors this time around. And they have been awesome.

One of the things that I noticed during the readings though was the story was a bit lost. It was funny, but I feared the audience would have a hard time figuring out who they were supposed to cheer for. I had myself flogged for not being a good writer. The good news though was that this had been figured out early on.

During pre-production on "Tim and Katie" I had a gut suspicion that the relationship between Tim and Jimmy needed to be worked out more. But I ignored this as I was to busy just trying to get the movie made. That was a big mistake. And after the first table read I got that same gut feeling, that something in the script wasn't right.

So now that I have learned from my mistakes I reworked the script. This afternoon I finished up what I hope will be close to the final draft. What was wrong was Steven and Grantz's characters were drowned out, so I gave them an opening scene and reworked how they interact with everyone else. With a bit of luck the audience will now know they are the central story.

In other "Of Rats" news we filled out the cast and locked in one of the locations. We were hurting to have access to an actual exterminator office. Good ol Jeff Grantz came through and found us one. Now we just need to find a house we can film in over a weekend and all locations are locked.

So far pre-production has been much better then it was on "Tim and Katie". At this point last year we had one location and lot's of question marks. All we need now this year is one more location and a director of photography (and camera). Both of which we have some options for. It is a very good feeling, and I am somewhat on guard. Normally things don't go this smoothly for us, so I am sure something bad is about to happen.

Outside of that not much has been going at Krej Productions. We have been hyper focused on "Of Rats", which doesn't leave time for much else. With production slated to begin at the end of June, it's time to dig in and get ready. Going to get onto the other guys for not posting more, stay tuned for more Krej Heads!

Your Hero,
Jeff K

Cutting it Close

Hola,

As I promised I would try and get around to posting more then once a month. And here I am at the last moment fulfilling my promise. Cutting it close? Maybe, but that's how we roll at Krej Productions!

So what's been going on at the scuttlebutt? As always a lot!

Starting casting for my new movie "Of Rats and Men". I have just a few roles left to fill. The big difference between this production and "Tim and Katie" is we are going outside our pool of friends to bring in actors. Thankfully Steven, Trent and Grantzy have been taking improv classes and have met new/talented people to help fill our ranks.

Another big change is the use of more locations. Which is proving to be the Achilles' heel. We are desperate for a house we can film in for a weekend, and a Pest Exterminator's office we can film in for about a day. The idea with all this new stuff is to up our production value. We want each film to be better then the last in some way.

In other production news Hannah Davis has begun story boarding the "Hero Sandwich" short. With a little bit of luck we will be able to show you more much sooner then later.

How about them Braves? Been hard to watch the 8 game loosing streak. But it's only April, and I have this deranged gut feeling that they are going to turn things around on May. Go Bravos!

For the three of you who keep up with the "Douchebag of the Month" competition, I have some news. Young Steven Tuechert is well on his way to clinching his first win. He easily has my vote. So if over the weekend he declares himself winner, he has my support.

As for the long lost "Director's Critiques" of "Tim and Katie" I will be honest with you. I haven't worked on it one bit. Not enough time on my end. Pre-Production for Rats has been taking up my time. And I feel that is infinitely more important. But if the stars align and I find some free time I will try and finish it up (when I last stopped I was about halfway done).

Last but not least, Jerry did a great job adding the "Talents" page to the website. Just needed to give him some props. Also if you want to help out with our summer productions let us know!

Peace out Krej Heads!
Your Hero,
Big Daddy K

P.S. You STILL need to listen to Titus Andronicus, that band has been getting me through a very craptastic week.

Who will it be???

The month is winding down, and what a month it has been for d-baggery. Every player has given it their all, and left everything on the field. Just in case you missed it, I'll give you a recap.

Jeff Kaminski has pleased his fans by making a strong start in the early weeks by attempting to write philosophy...who cares Jeff? Not only did he decide to be a pretentious asshole, but he passed up two, count them, two girls who for some ungodly reason were showing some interest in him, thus he won major d-bag points there.

Not to be out done, the other Jeff had a strong start in March by making me drive allll the waaay back from Atlanta to Lawrenceville, then aalllll the waaay back to Atlanta for no damn reason. In an even more stunning turn of events, our own Jeff Grantz managed to up his game by starting a rap group.....a RAP GROUP, need I say more?... I will, it looks as though Grantz will be attempting to pull off an impressive two month victory.

I did manage to get on the score board for multiple accounts of shooting Nerf darts at unarmed civilians, and not showing up at places when I was invited, and not bothering to pick up my phone. While both Jeffs and myself offer up amazing examples of d-baggery they will both have to contend with the astonishing amount of points scored by Jerry, who for some reason decided to take a two week vacation from.....??

So as of now it seems as though Jerry is in the lead, but there has been promise of a last minute victory by our first month winner Trent. What could he be hiding up his sleeves? We have already seen his balls too much, so showing us again would just be amateur hour, he will have to pull out all the stops if wants the title back in his slimy grasp. Its heating up to be one for the record books, that's for sure!


STAY TUNED NEXT WEEK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
-Steven




(edited for mass comprehension by Jerry)

And the winner is...

Yes, I know. I haven’t blogged in a minute. Been way too busy watching way too much LOST. So, I figured I’d take this opportunity to kill two birds with one stone: to give an update on what’s going on with me, and to announce the January Winner of The Douchebag of the Month Award (albeit a few weeks late). Last things first…

The winner of the KREJ Douchebag of the Month for January is… our very own Trent Whitmire (naturally). You can come claim your prize of an old trucker hat I found, a bag of Skittles, and a good old fashion ass whoopin at KREJ headquarters.

Ok, so as for me, I’ve had some crazy stuff going on with me lately. I got a new car yesterday, and it’s about time. I forgot what it was like to have a car with working windows, seat adjusters, ac vents, and an overall lack of old rain towel stank. Now, I just need to get the stereo replaced with the one in my old car. Luckily, the dealership said they’d do that for me for free. I know Trent won’t mind taking another trip up there, seeing as he has a fondness for a certain ”Baby Girl” that works up there.

I just had some family in town, so I haven't been able to get too much writing done. I did however get to spend some quality time with my ten-year-old cousin, Nick, who you may recognize from the Cheese Bit in the Behind-The-Scenes Doc from Tim and Katie. He's almost a bigger fan of zombie movies than I am, and most definitely a better video gamer than I.

Lately, I’ve been working on getting the script for the Tim and Katie Redux up to snuff. I’m gonna do one more formatting pass, and then all it needs is a good dialogue pass. After that, it should be ready to shelve and move on to the next project. As for my next writing project, I’m not sure what it will be. I’ve got a few different ones in the works.

The voice recording for the very first Hero Sandwich short went very well and was a lot of fun. You can see evidence of all the fun had at the below link: http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=694285532&ref=ts#!/profile.php?v=app_2392950137&ref=ts&id=694285532

And lastly, Trent and I took a little Valentine’s Day trip to the park. We took an assload of pictures which we’ll be uploading soon. Stay tuned. It was cute. Warning: NSFA (Not Safe For Anywhere)

That’s all for now. I just bought Skate 2 for the XBOX 360 machine, so I’m gonna go play the shit out of that until the sun comes up... or at least until I finish downloading every episode of "I Didn't Know I Was Pregnant."

Word to the biggest bird,

-Grantzy

Hey again!! We got news!!

Welcome back, time for another installment of The Daily Scuttlebutt!!

A couple of us had a bit of a brainstorming session this evening on the future of this website/blog to come up with ideas to liven things up a bit. We've decided to bring back the ancient art of the weekly news update; in a hilarious manner of course. So in the coming weeks, we'll be bringing you videos with all sorts of news, national and local, from entertainment to technology, social media, restaurant reviews and we'll even be handing out weekly awards to those deemed worthy of our praise. There will be two different awards; one will be the highly coveted/or-not-so-much-coveted Douche-Bag-of-the-Month Award. The other is still being discussed. 

We can't wait to bring you all the important news and updates you never knew you needed; and we hope you'll bear with us and check back often! We hope to have the first episode online in about 2-3 weeks.  

In other news, we're hoping to record the primary audio tracks for Hero Sandwich sometime this week. Then Hannah and myself will begin work on character redesign/ streamlining & background design. I can't freakin' wait to begin animating and I am looking forward to trying out some digital matte painting for the city background(s).

The Tim & Katie trailer will be done relatively soon, and should be up on our IMDB page sometime after that. Rather than try to include parts of all the different excellent songs we had contributed to our film's soundtrack, I scored something simple yet intense, so hopefully people will really enjoy the trailer.

Much love,

-Matt