We Got Film

The Capital Times has a piece about NFL player Chad Johnson filming a potential Super Bowl ad in Middleton on Tuesday. Which is, y'know, pretty neat.

"ProVideo, a Madison-based video production firm, makes commercials for GoDaddy.com, a Web site domain registration company, and was in charge of the Middleton shoot."

(side note: I wonder if this one will include scantily clad women growing more scantily clad as the ad progresses. Does Middleton's new status as the "#1 town in the US" mean they disallow sexual innuendo on their high school football field? Because that would be a shame.)

Now that we've finally gotten around to passing legislation to create funding and incentives for film companies to come to Wisconsin, this sort of thing is likely to start happening a bit more often (though a lot of the action so far seems to be in Milwaukee, which is too bad).

There are a number of independent movies recently filmed in the area and now looking for distribution and/or making the festival rounds, most notably "Madison," starring long-time American Players Theatre favorite James DeVita. For the super-independent fare, you can turn to internet superstars Blame Society Productions, who brought you the "Chad Vader" series. Hilarious horror more your style? Check out "Zombie Hero" from Digital Mad Videos or, and I'm a little biased here for being involved in the production but I swear it's completely awesome, "Massacre! The Musical" from Graveside Productions. No attention span? There's always Wis-Kino, the scrappy film making group open to anyone with a camera and a dream.

Before I leave you with the current "Massacre" trailer, I'll just sum this all up by saying that damn, this state sure has a lot of talent floating around, waiting for the harsh light of the national spotlight to fall upon its pasty features. I can't name all of the projects here, but you get my point. The coasts have their benefits, but seriously, stop hogging all the attention, eh?