The real and imaginative adventures of Dennis Spielman

Month: September 2012

Uncovering Oklahoma’s Date Guide Book 3.0

Today I released the Third Edition of Uncovering Oklahoma’s Date Guide! The biggest change with this edition is that the book expands further away from the Oklahoma City area and includes places like Tulsa, Medicine Park, and Pauls Valley. No matter what type of date you want to go out on, Uncovering Oklahoma’s Date Guide has it. Here’s a detailed list of what’s new:

  • Updated cover design with logo, featuring the SkyDance Bridge in Oklahoma City, with thanks to Jeffrey Burleson and Susan Riley
  • New Section: Tulsa with the Center of the Universe, Queenies, Gypsy Coffee House, First Friday Art Crawl, and the Oklahoma Aquarium
  • New Section: Elsewhere (for places that don’t fit into one of the larger cities) with Medicine Park, Wichita Mountains, Magnetic Hill, Turner Falls, The Toy and Action Figure Museum, and Bedré Chocolate Factory
  • New in the Oklahoma City section is Paseo District, t an urban teahouse, Castle Falls, and Kaiser’s
  • Updated video links for OKC Improv to showcase them at their new home
  • New in the Norman Section is LOCAL, Coriander Café, Syrup, and the Norman Wine Trail with Redbud Ridge, Canadian River, Native Spirits, and Redland Juice Company
  • No businesses were removed in this edition!
  • Updated and replaced pictures, quotes, links, etc. throughout the book

I hope you enjoy this new edition! I have amazing plans for the fourth edition to be released in January, including more places in Tulsa. I only managed to make one trip to Tulsa for this book. I have time scheduled to personally visit the First Friday Art Crawl in the Brady Arts District.

I’m just going to share this information on my personal blog: the fourth edition will be dramatically different as I will include a printed version. I’ve been doing researching into making this completely feasible. I already have a new page making program to produce it. I’ve decided to format the book in the standard 11×8 magazine size. I’m really exciting about 4.0.

FINAL CHECK-IN

The mock trailer for the action-spy movie with a library theme, FINAL CHECK-IN, is ready to be checked-out! Watch it above or here on YouTube.

Even though it was a short movie, we have the following blooper reel:



Tonight we held the watch party for the movie and it’s bloopers. Lessa and I were still doing some last minute editing when people started to arrive at six, forcing guests to make conversations with each other. We were only behind about an hour so everyone took turns talking about their day/week in a dramatic story-telling fashion while enjoying pizza. Yum. We also watched some of the raw footage that didn’t make the final cut and afterwards went out for gelato. More yum.

From all of us involved in making this movie, we hope you enjoy it!

Final Check-In: Update #4


Yesterday, Lessa and I edited the librarian-action-spy-style mock movie trailer, Final Check-In. Editing went extremely well. There’s one particular moment I want to share: About half way through, Lessa wanted to watch the whole video to get a feel for it. Before doing that, I quickly tossed in some background music for ambience. The song synced up beautifully. We ended up editing the rest of the video to the song, syncing up scenes with its beats and changes. There are lots of cool moments in the movie and overall it’s very smooth. We didn’t use all of the footage, but that happens. Better to have too much than not enough.

We’re going to do one last touch-up edit next week immediately followed by the watch party with the YouTube video, including blooper reel, being posted on Monday.

Lights, Camera, Eyemart!

I created this one-man-production-team comedy video for an eyeglass shop for a contest. The final date for entires was on August 31, so I’m free to share it now. The winners should be announced soon. The top ten winners get $500 and a two-day trip to Dallas, Texas to be in a commercial. I feel pretty good about my chances. I’ve gotten lots of positive feedback and laughs. I just hope I make it to the top ten.

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