Category: Real Page 91 of 157

Downtown Norman during the Norman Music Festival - photo by Dennis Spielman

Festival Recaps

On May 1, 2018

Two of the area’s biggest festival, the Festival of the Arts and the Norman Music Festival, have passed. Actually, last week was jammed packed with stuff. For the festivals, this year, the weather was amazing. The Festival of the Arts only got rained out on one day, while last year the weather was just awful. I even got a little sunburnt at the music festival.

I had a great time at both festivals. For the arts festival, I filmed several local artist shout-outs. I even volunteered for a few hours there on Sunday. Then for the Norman Music Festival, I filmed b-roll on Thursday and Saturday. Thursday was interesting because it was the first time they did an outdoor stage that day, so it was busier than past years. On Friday, we had a date night at the arts festival, but on Saturday I was back at the music festival from Noon to 11 pm doing my press thing. I filmed the entirety of Jarvix’s main stage set for him, which you can watch below.

Before I went to the festival on Saturday, I was taking a shower when I was like, “I should I film interviews where bands interview bands. I got the technology to do that now.” When I did my Deep Deuce Pub Crawl video, I had this sound setup that worked well in the noisy environments and it worked great at the festival, even with a stage playing in the background. Because it was a last minute idea and I was doing a man-on-the-street on the spot thing, there wasn’t as much diversity as I would’ve liked to showcase, but the interviews were still great. Watch that video on Uncovering Oklahoma. I’ve also released the uncut interviews here on Patreon.

I want to wrap this story up by talking about My Brightest Diamond, who was one of the headliners at the Norman Music Festival. She was a major source of inspiration to my first fictional book I published a few years ago, The Crashing of Heaven and Hell. She was such an inspiration, I even dedicated the book to her. So of course, I wanted to give her a copy and personally thank her. I was lucky enough to meet her and talk to her for a bit. She was so nice and I’m so thankful she took the time to hang out with me. She said she would read it while on tour, so I hope she does like it.

On the subject of meeting your heroes, my friend, Jarvix, also got to meet Tune-Yards, who was was a major inspiration for him. You can read this article in the Oklahoma Gazette about his journey.

A final shoutout to my superstar supporter, Revolve Productions over on Patreon.

Jimmy’s Round Up Cafe

By Dennis

On April 26, 2018

In Real

Jimmy’s Round-Up Cafe is everything good about how a cafe or a diner should be by making everything from scratch daily and serving breakfast all day. If you want frozen, pre-made food, Jimmy Collins will advise you to go somewhere else. Located in Oklahoma City, Jimmy’s specializes in chicken fried steak, fried catfish, chicken strips, fried pies, meatloaf, and their famous rolls.

Festival of the Arts

By Dennis

On April 19, 2018

In Real

Oklahoma City’s rite of spring, The Festival of the Arts, is a community celebration of the visual arts, performing arts, and culinary arts. In this video, I share stories from patrons of the festival to share a community point of view on the popular art festival. This video does use some clips from my documentary, Inviting Art, and includes some parts that didn’t make it in the film.

Festival of the Arts is home to over 100 artists with media forms that include oils, water, drawing and printmaking, photography, clay, glass, sculpture, fiber, jewelry, wood, leather, and two and three-dimensional works. Throughout the festival, the artists will be there personally to answers your questions and discuss their work.

From appetizers to desserts, the Festival is a celebration of the culinary arts as well! Various vendors bring their specialties to the International Food Row and throughout the grounds. Each food vendor is partnered with a local arts organization, so each bite you take supports the arts in central Oklahoma!

The 2018 Festival of the Arts will take place April 24-29.

If you love making art a destination in your travels, then check out my new series, Colorful Escapes!

Kwan’s Kitchen

By Dennis

On April 12, 2018

In Real

Get to know the French Chinese restaurant, Kwan’s Kitchen, in Oklahoma City. Mary Jia, Pak Kwan Keong, Zhander P’ng, Donald Kerr, Taylor Gilstrap, and Kim He all explain why you don’t need your passport – just an appetite – to come visit.

This is a unique feature piece for Uncovering Oklahoma for two reasons. First, it features six interviews talking about one place, which in the past the most I’ve had was three people. Second, it’s the first time I did an interview not in English. I had to come up with a solution on the spot, so Zhander translated for me and afterward, provided a dub of the lines in English. I edited the video NPR style where the first few words were in Cantonese and it crossfades into English.

If you haven’t already, please go visit my new series, Colorful Escapes. There are some exciting new rewards for backers.

Support The First Season of Colorful Escapes

By Dennis

On April 6, 2018

In Real

Colorful Escapes is a travel series where art is the destination I’m producing with host, Heide Brandes. The series highlights art galleries, art museums, public art, and artist studios, as well as restaurants and hotels with an emphasis on art. Basically, if it’s creative and artistic, we’ll visit it. The show will be filmed with a road trip styling, documenting colorful sights along the way.

Art has become a huge factor for economic development with small towns being relativized because of their creativity. In a study led by Americans for the Arts, nationally, the nonprofit arts and culture industry generated $166.3 billion of economic activity during 2015. Despite the power of the arts, there aren’t many travel shows dedicated to the subject and we want to change that.

With your support, we’re going to show you that art isn’t just for some museum in New York City or Paris, but sometimes, you can find art in an alley or in nature. Become a backer on Kickstarter and help us make this show a reality.

-The Test Pilot-

While Heide and I have experience with travel shows and writing, we filmed a test pilot of the show to give you an idea what Colorful Escapes will be like and for us to test some things out. Above is the 4K version of the Norman, Oklahoma episode, minus our Kickstarter pitch. We’ve definitely taken notes and plan to amp up our game when we hit the road.

However, as we mentioned in our Kickstarter video, this isn’t the first project Heide and Dennis have worked on together. Below are our videos on Davis, Oklahoma done for Uncovering Oklahoma.

-Goals & Rewards-

For our first season, we’re keeping our plans realistic and simple. We want to film between 6 and 15 episodes for the first season, with each episode running under 30-minutes. The initial goal of $5,000 will allow us to film three cities in Texas – Dallas, Austin, and Marfa. If this is the only goal we hit, we’ll include Oklahoma City and Tulsa on our own time/dime and with our Norman episode, we’ll at least have six episodes.

Additional stretch goals will allow us to include more states, typically covering two large cities and a small town in each state.

Stretch Goal #1 $9,000 – New Mexico
Coming from Marfa, Texas we’ll visit Rosewell, head up to Santa Fe, then Taos.

Stretch Goal #2 $14,000 – Oklahoma and Arkansas
If we reach our ultimate stretch goal, we’ll visit Denver, Colorado and then we’ll visit Arkansas for Bentonville and Eureka Springs.

Executive Producer Reward Locations
We have four Executive Producer rewards where this person gets to pick a city for us to highlight in the continental U.S. There is also a chance for bonus episodes depending on connections with Convention & Visitors Bureaus.

By becoming a backer on Kickstarter, you can get one of the following rewards.

$1 Project Updates

$5 Early Access to Weekly Update Video

$15 Digital Download of Season 1

$25 Bonus Content

$50 Thank You Credit

$100 Autographed Blu-Ray (Limited to 100)

$500 Story Time

$1,000 A Colorful Party

$1,500 Dinner with Us

$2,000 Postcard Collector

$2,500 Guest Speaker

$3,000 Executive Producer

Details can be found here.

-How You Can Help-

The best way you can help us make Colorful Escapes a reality is by becoming a backer on Kickstarter and encouring your friends to do the same. The next best thing you can do is to follow us on all of our social media platforms: Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube. We’ll be sharing our adventures as we have them.

-FAQ-

When/where will the series premiere?
Our goal is to give our supporters download access by September 2018. As for when and where it will air for the public, we don’t know. Ideally, after the season is complete, we would love to sell it as an exclusive original series to the likes of Amazon, Hulu, or Netflix. We’re funding this season via Kickstarter to have complete control of the production.

When do you plan to start filming?
Filming will begin in late May, after our campaign ends on Sunday, May 6 at 9:30 am! We’ll be working on our travel plans in conjunction with how well the campaign goes.

What will happen to Uncovering Oklahoma?
Dennis will still continue to update Uncovering Oklahoma while on the road. While there won’t be any videos from him during the filming of this project, he’ll feature guest videos. When he returns home, he’ll resume filming local stories.

Visit Colorful Escapes on Kickstarter for more information and to support a new travel show!