Losing Ticket Productions

Well, this site as been successfully neglected. Sorry for the delay of news to anyone who still swings by from time to time to check us out. Everyone around the Losing Ticket camp as been pretty busy. One guy had twins. Another guy has a second baby on the way. I crammed 54 school credits into the last eight months. We did manage to fit in the 48 Hour Film festival this year. We pulled the Detective/Cop genre. You can check that out here:

We filmed that all in one shot. We were pretty proud of that angle. Didn’t win anything, as to be expected, with our unwillingness to bend to the ideal that profanity shouldn’t be used.

Another reason for the long delay in communications/updates here at the site is due to the fact I got to direct a play I wrote. You might recognize the title and if you feel like supporting a local playwright you can purchase a copy of that play right here:

Love’s Fine Wit.

an original one ac…

By Taylor Gruenloh

Book Preview

The animation stuff I was talking about last year at this time is still being worked on, but we decided to switch the content of the project. And as I am sure anyone knows, animation takes a long, long, long time. So, still keep and eye out for that. Would love to have a teaser up here in a few weeks for it.

And one final note: Losing Ticket Productions might be spinning off a side company of Losing Ticket Publishing. Was always a dream to help out local St. Louis authors get noticed. More info as that gets going.

As always, leave a comment and let us know you stopped by or email me at taylorg@losingticketpro.com

Would love to hear from you guys!

-Taylor

Hey People,

Been a while since we posted. Some good things are happening and some bad things have already happened. Lets list the shitty:

1. Production on “Love’s Fine Wit” has been halted due to budget and equipment problems.

This is the movie business we are talking about, so its not that suprising that this had to happen. It was a long shot that we would have been able to pull it off this soon. Hopefully, I will have time to fine tune the script and we can make another pass at it in the spring of next year.

2. The film we made for this years 48 Hour Film Festival will never see the light of day. This is a personal choice. There are even some involved that won’t be seeing this short film. The script I wrote was only 6 pages long and had a character in it that had a very distinct accent. It was much to the ode of a playwrite/filmmaker that I adore. I wrote a whole page of dialouge pertaining to one specific topic said in a specific accent. One month after filming this scene, I watched a movie that was released by said playwrite/filmmaker who wrote almost an identical scene 2 years prior to me. That said, he beat me to the punch and I don’t take the subject of plagerism lightly, so our flick has been shelved permanently.

ON TO THE GOOD NEWS!!!

I have been busy the last couple of months filming weddings and editing the footage. Good because it helps pay for new equipment so we can get back to business. Semi-bad because I have no time to write. So, no more weddings for the year. Just good ol’ fashioned film making!

Before the weddings I wrote 2 new short scripts entitled “A Future Left Behind” & “I Will Save Her”. The first is a straight forward narrative about love and alcholism. The second is a stab at modern/German-expressionism regarding deals with the devil. I’ll be damned if either of these make it to principal photography, but that’s up to me and Losing Ticket Productions permanent Production Manager Brittney to find out.

But that’s neither here nor there. The big news is this. Since production halted on “Love’s Fine Wit” we don’t have some equipment. And working all the time, I am too tired to write at 2 am. But, alas, I have found something I can do with little to no brain activity:

Draw!!

Here is a really early shot of our new project hitting bandwith this fall. 1 Spy, 2 Spy: The Origin Saga. Our second short film is now getting the origin treatment. We already have the teaser made for it, just need to get the liscensing agreement to the song I want and we can post it!. If you haven’t seen our film 1 Spy, 2 Spy I strongly encourage you to do so. It was made for a mere 50 bucks (the ninja costume and food) and was probably the best thing we have done to date. So, in the vain of George Lucas, lets tap that fucking well dry!

So, stay tuned for the teaser for the new cartoon and the possibility of a new website design!

-Taylor

It’s that time of year again! The LTP crew are 12 hours and 30 minutes into this years 48 Hour Film Project. At the kickoff meeting we drew Drama. The required elements are:
Character: Earl or Ellen Frickle, Chair of a Board of Directors
Prop: A magnet
Line of Dialogue: “I’ve been there. You don’t want to go.”

We had a strategy and brainstorming session at Vincenzo’s (which you may recall was a location in our last 48 Hour Film “The End”). After which we went our separate ways so Taylor could write and the rest of us could get some sleep. We are meeting up at our local Waffle House to plan for the days shoot.

Good Times…

A sample of two weddings and a clip of our new film “Loves’ Fine Wit” (before sound editing and f/x).

Sample Work Reel

Here are some cool images for “Loves’ Fine Wit”. Enjoy!

Hey people,

We had a workshop for a few scenes from the script of our upcoming flick “Loves’ Fine Wit” with all the main cast today. It went really well. Out of the whole afternoon, we only have a minute of footage for ya. I am still not sure what info I want released before we actually shoot the movie. There are one or two suprises in the movie so I didn’t want to reveal anything, so I put together some safe footage of the cast doing their thing. If it doesn’t make any sense what they are talking about, its ok. Its several scenes just meshed together. Take a look!

(the video file ended up a bit screwy with the compression software we were testing out and a weird crackle is heard through out the video. I’ll replace it with better one soon.)

Loves’ Fine WIt: Workshop

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Hope to have some more info as we get really going on this thing. We should have some location pics up soon as well.

Thanks for stopping by,

-Taylor

Hey ladies and germs,

I finally have some footage of the read through that happened back in December for our new flick, “Loves’ Fine Wit”. I was hoping to be a bit more presentable with the footage (i.e. some transitions and better quality footage), but I’ve been so busy trying to raise money for the film I just decided it was better just to chop a minute of it together really quick and throw it up on the site. So here goes:

“Loves’ Fine Wit”: Read Through

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We are hoping to cast the rest of the film by the end of February, then start shooting the end of March, and then be completely edited and show it off in May. Here’s hoping.

In some other LTP news, “Gravity” a screenplay I have been working on for some time, received an analysis from a competition I entered it in. Here are some plot-free quips:

The Good:
“On a positive note, you create engaging characters with many layers and they interact in an emotionally satisfying manner.”

“Even though much of the story has a somber tone, you provide some appropriately lighthearted moments of subtle humor…and you end the action on an optimistic note. You manage to tug at the heartstrings…but by the end, we are celebrating.”

The Bad:
“The set-up could use some clarification.”
“…don’t make the audience work so hard.”
“The action could use some narrative unity.”
“Decide what main goals you want to accomplish. Is Chance’s friendship with Katie the focus of the story or is it Chance trying to define himself as a gay man and potential father? Once you know what you want to say, you can shape the action in a more decisive direction and then you will achieve the emotional resonance to which you aspire.”

Not that I think those last tidbits are bad, but more constructive criticism that the script really needs. Its still a long way from reaching a finished form. Which is pretty much the reason we are going ahead with shooting “Loves’ Fine Wit” first.

Hopefully we will have some more news as “Loves Fine Wit” nears production time. Right now is just budget meetings and making sure we have the equipment. As soon as we are 100% on those we can cast the rest of the characters and start the rehearsal process.

Hope to have more news later,

-Taylor

Hey Ladies & Gents,

If you ever dropped by the site here before you know that I have been working on a screenplay called “Gravity” for a very long time. Only this year as it really been making progress on paper. Here’s a pretty pic of the title page:

and here is what was on my computer screen just moments ago:

It has been entered in the BlueCat Screenplay competition. You can check them out here.

Wish us luck! And I should be back with more news on the “Love’s Fine Wit” read through taking place in December! And of course, the countdown of the inspirational movies of Christmas here at LTP.

Chao,

Taylor

Don’t get too excited, I’m not announcing a sequel, but how cool would that be. I have, however, finally got around to fixing the broken link on the sidebar. So to those of you missing your “What Happened to Johnny?” …Enjoy.
Or as always you can find it along with our other movies on the sidebar on the left.

UPDATE: The page has been fixed for FireFox. -JC

FROM OUR MYSPACE BLOG:

Hey ladies & gents,

Losing Ticket Productions was sort of put on a stand still for most of 2007. It seemed everyone involved in this production company had some serious business to attend to.

Jason had a baby:

Eric got married:

I got married:

Bryan had a date with a woman:

(Sorry, no hard evidence of that occurrence at the moment)

And I had to finish up on some back logged wedding footage that I was supposed to edit last year. Take a gander at a dance montage (everyone loves a montage!):

1st Dance 2.0

And now that the dust has settled we are ready to get back into action!

We are currently in pre-production of a film titled “Love’s Fine Wit”. As of right now, it looks like it should be around 85-90 minutes long. We are planning a read through in December with some of the potential cast. Hope to have pictures of that up as soon as it happens.

We are planning to send in our script ‘Gravity” to the BlackCat screenplay competition at the end of this month. BlackCat is one of our MySpace friends if you want to go check them out, I’m sure they would appreciate it.

I plan on finishing the “Movies Of Christmas” series this year. I dropped out at 17 days left until Christmas last year on our blogs, so I will pick up were I left off this year. No breaks in between days either!

A good friend of ours, Melissa Malan, who will be appearing in a great deal of Losing Ticket Production films has a comedy show in Chicago right now. She is part of the Suspicious Clowns troupe. Check them out if you have a chance , too.

So, come check out our previous movies if you haven’t seen them yet and keep stopping by, because we plan on having a lot more up real soon.

-Taylor