Welcome back to heathwilder.com. I felt a little silly not adding something about MOViE ON to the page considering as it took up Xmas for Tristan Kenyon, Drew McCourt, Michael Walker and myself (and many others).

It started as an idea over the years for a TV dramedy (we don’t know what that means either) based in a small indy video store similar to the one we may have worked over the years for a little extra $ (depending on who asks). As anyone who has ever worked retail and customer service can tell you the show started writing itself. Odd customers and over qualified staff at the wrong end of the art form they loved.

"And I will always looove you"

After a particularly rough spot Tristan, Drew and I eventually sat down and came up with a concept for the looming Optus one80 comp.  It was a deadline we new could motivate us – a 3 minute trailer by New Year and one month to do it!!!!!

Video stores are dying for a number of reasons including piracy, the shift in marketplace to downloadable content and a GFC. All things that are boring as hell to read about but tough to live through, especially when you are a struggling artist 30 something artist who is at that particular time in their life when they need to work out if mom was right and they should have stuck with med school. We were all guilty as charged.

The face I made when they told me we didn't make the cut for Optus one80

The characters were a mix of ourselves, our immediate friends and enemies, and a distillation of the bizarre customers we had known throughout the years and wanted to celebrate on film.  Tristan wrote the initial script and he and I worked on subsequent drafts. That lead us to the trailer. We filmed this over a couple weeks like mad men after hours and juggling a schedual that looked mad. Our saving grace was our amazing crew (ie. friends) and especially our good pal and amazing camera genius Michael Walker. Click here to see his other recent stuff.

The cast were off the chart as well.  Often we gave a brief to the guys coming in (also great friends donating their talent and time) that set up the playground we wanted to work in and let them improv their way to success.  Bless you all for running with that. the results are GOLD!

Coupled with Tristans vast talent and experience as a director, editor and DOP we got this trailer together.

However Optus didn’t love it like we did (#sadface) so we were sad for about 5 minutes. NOW Tristan and I are putting together the whole story.  It’ll be all the stuff that was AWESOME but couldn’t make a 3min trailer and tells more of the story of MOViE ON.  With some luck a rich(er than us) network will give us some $ to make more of it and we’ll see how that goes.  Stay tuned for updates on MOViE ON.

I’m going to leave you with a gallery of the amazing cast (and crew as practically everyone doubled in classic Sam Raimi style).