Tag Archives: Mike McCafferty

Two Weeks to Go!

Posted on by

Can you believe there are only two weeks left of voting for Round 1 of this competition?  Yikes!  So how are we doing?  Well, in one week we went from 40 people voting and 95 votes to 111 people voting and 341 votes!  We more than doubled the number of voters we have and we more than tripled the number of votes!  Way to go!

But the big question is, how are we stacking up against the competition?  Last week I found 33 entries with more votes than we have.  We plowed right past about a dozen or so entries that seemed to have started out pretty strong, but then fizzled out.  And we are getting very close to passing by four more.  But then I found a few more entries that were in front of us.  So as of today, there are 25 entries that I know of with more votes than us.  While it is very encouraging that we appear to be moving up, please keep in mind that I haven’t seen all the entries and have no idea how many that I haven’t seen have more votes than us.  Also, I’ve found at least three entries that started after us and have passed us by.  So we need to keep voting every single day and we need to keep finding more voters! 

To see how we stack up against the top players, here’s how the top ten entries (that I know of) are doing:

  • 3,235 votes, 706 voters
  • 1,334 votes, 299 voters
  • 1,283 votes, 156 voters
  • 1,025 votes, 269 voters
  • 958 votes, 145 voters
  • 898 votes, 111 voters
  • 895 votes, 196 voters
  • 863 votes, 181 voters
  • 722 votes, 96 voters
  • 721 votes, 151 voters

So please don’t get complacent!  We’ve got a ways to go yet!  We need every vote!

Joyce, our I-Maniac fan club president, is currently moving the fan club mailing list to a more reliable program.  So if you get an email from her, be sure you opt in.  She’ll be sending out an announcement about this contest as folks opt in.  Some of the email addresses no longer work, so if you have contact with an I-Maniac that may not be aware of this contest, please lend a hand and let them know about it.

I attended a United Filmmakers Association mixer over a week ago and was able to get a free copy of the Reel Directory, which is the Northern California version of the Hollywood Creative Directory.  Basically, it’s a directory of services and everyone in the business from audio post facilities to production equipment to stunt equipment rentals to traffic and crowd control services…virtually everything you could possibly think of and would need to make a movie.  I’ve used it to start calling around to studios and getting rental rates for the video we’re shooting.  My director is prepping for another shoot right now, but we’ll be meeting again on Friday.  I’m happy to say that my financing came through, so this video is officially green lit!

I’m also starting to get quotes from artists and will be commissioning some custom artwork as part of my submission.  Exciting stuff!

The contest requires that if I use any third party’s name, I must have a signed release from them.  This weekend, I got emails from Paul Ben-Victor, Eddie Jones, and Mike McCafferty and I talked on the phone to Vincent Ventresca on Sunday.  All these wonderful guys are very willing to sign a release so that I can use their names when entering my submissions into the contest!  Vince is contacting Shannon for me and I’m still waiting to hear from her.  Do you realize how lucky we are to have such a supportive cast?  I can’t think of another cast that would do what these guys do.    

There is still so much to do and it’s going to get crazy.  Please don’t mind me if you see me wearing a straight jacket in the near future!

Contest Wrap Up

Posted on by

The NAME THE MOVIE CHARACTERS CONTEST has now come a close after a run of eight weeks.  My does time fly!  I hope you all had fun! I want to give a big congratulations to our winners:

Rochelle Ramos for naming Eddie Jone’s character Sam Weber
Cheryl Johnson for naming the antagonist Sebastian Grey
Rochelle Ramos for naming Mike McCafferty’s character Lester
Carol Ward for naming Vincent Ventresca’s character Ethan

It’s not often that the opportunity to name characters in a movie comes along and now our winners will have those bragging rights; and Rochelle Ramos gets those bragging rights times two!  And if your friends and family don’t believe that you named that character, just show them your name in the credits.  That’ll vindicate you!  I’ll be contacting each of you winners in the very near future to sign a release form, so keep your eyes open for an email from me.

To everyone else who participated, thank you for your support and enthusiasm!  If you didn’t win this time, don’t fret.  There will be other opportunities in the future for you to participate and support the project.  I’m cooking up ideas all the time!

I, also, want to give my appreciation to my fellow judges:  Shawna Buchanan, Joyce Harrell, and Joan McCartney.  I couldn’t have done it without these wonderful ladies giving me a hand.  To keep it fair we each got an equal vote, which means that they had the power to outvote me.  But, we were actually pretty much in agreement most of the time.  (You think it might be because we are all fans of the same show? 🙂 ) 

A little about the voting process:  I first listed all the submitted names in an email to the  judges. (Towards the end that got to be quite laborious with the large number of entries that were submitted!)  Then everyone gave their opinions about the names.  That afforded us all an opportunity to get each other’s viewpoints, which was really useful because many times someone would make a point that the others hadn’t thought of yet.  Finally, I created a voting form (Again quite laborious with all those names!) and each of the judges voted for their favorites.  It was always majority rules with each name needing at least three votes to go to the next round, which is where all of you would make the final decision based on your votes.

So, Shannon Kenny’s character’s name, Tara, remains the same because of a tie that left the final decision with the judges.  But, not surprisingly, the question has been asked, what about Paul Ben-Victor’s character?  Don’t worry.  I didn’t forget about Paul’s character.  I just didn’t include his character in the contest because he already has a name that fits him perfectly and I think it would be a crime to change it.  Sorry to disappoint anyone who may have been  looking forward to naming Paul’s character!

Next Steps

So what’s next?  Well, I need to get some computer problems solved first before I’m completely without a computer.  Then I’ll be getting right back to work getting the story finished.  This means I need to finish the story bible.  After that I’ll be giving the treatment a very thorough going over and have my screenwriter make the changes.  Hopefully that will be the final edit before I send it to the story analyst(s).  

I’m, also, going to do some research in preparation for my series of interviews of distribution companies for the United Filmmakers Association.  That keeps getting pushed back, but once my computer problems are solved, I’ll be able to move forward with that.  

I’m looking forward to a productive year and really making some progress with this project!

 

Character #4 (Results)

Posted on by

The voting has now come to a close for Character #4.  I’m pleased to announce that the name that got the most votes for this character is Lester!

Congratulations go to the winner, Rochelle Ramos, for getting the most votes!  This is Rochelle’s second win!  She’s a tough competitor!  Rochelle not only named this character, but her own name will appear in the movie credits!

Character #4 (Voting Period)

Posted on by

Now starts the Voting Period for Character #4!  The Judges discussed the pros and cons of each name and then voted on them. Names were chosen by majority rule, which meant that a minimum of three votes were needed to move the names to the Voting Round.  In this round one name received four votes and the other two names received three votes.  Two of the names were submitted by the same finalist.  One of the names was submitted twice by two different people, but the rules say that the first person to submit a name gets the credit.  Congratulations to the two finalists who made it to this round!

Now the naming of this character rests with all of you. It’s out of the Judges’ hands. It’s your decision.  Please take a minute to vote and show your support.

Some reminders:

  • Be sure you are logged on to this Blog.
  • Each person gets only one vote, including the contestants who entered the contest and the finalists.
  • Enter your vote in the comments section (below) of this Blog post.
  • You have one week to enter your vote. The comments will be closed Monday, January 3, 2011, at 6:00 p.m. PT.
  • This is a popularity contest. The most popular name wins! So finalists are free to campaign if they wish.

Here are the finalists’ character names.  Please vote for one of them!

Arthur
Henry
Lester

Character #4 (Judging Period)

Posted on by

The Submission Period for Character #4 has now come to a close.  I’ve closed the comments on the thread so no further names will be accepted.  We again beat the number of submissions we had for our previous character with a whopping 119 submissions for this round! I am blown away!

For the next week the judges will deliberate and choose our favorites.  The finalists will be notified by email that one or more of their entries made it into the final round.  If you don’t receive an email from me, your entry was not chosen.  But there is one more character to be named, so please keep trying!  I will post the names on the Blog next Monday where everyone will get a chance to vote for their favorite!

Character #4 (Submission Period)

Posted on by

The NAME THE MOVIE CHARACTERS CONTEST continues!  This post starts the Fourth Round, which is where you get to submit names for the next character in the movie.

A few reminders:

  • Be sure you are logged on to this Blog.
  • You will enter your submissions for this character only in the comments section of this Blog post below.
  • Remember, only one name per comment. But you can submit as many names as you wish.
  • Don’t forget to fill out the Entry Form if you haven’t already done so.
  • You will have one week to enter your submissions. The comments will be closed Monday, December 20, 2010, at 6:00 p.m. PT.
  • Please keep in mind that you need to follow all the rules to avoid the risk of being disqualified, so be sure you read and understand the Rules and the Terms & Conditions before entering this contest.

Character #4

The next name we need is for a character anticipated to be played by the wonderful Mike McCafferty.  For this character we are looking for only a first name.  Here’s a short character description:

He works for a toy company as an accountant.  Nerdy, nervous and timid, he has a lot more going for him than most people give him credit for.  He also loves to play video games.