Exploding Goldfish Films began in January of 2003, when I got together with Gregory Ley (the even­tual star of Wholesale Souls, Inc.) with the intent of mak­ing a short film for entry in Loveland’s Silver Spoon Film Festival. We con­cep­tu­al­ized a story about a youth trapped in his own dreams, and I set to work writ­ing the script.

Greg and I had worked on films before; I still have stacks of VHS tapes of ran­dom snip­pets of noth­ing in par­tic­u­lar, made with the aid of my first-ever, dinky lit­tle black-and-white video cam­era. The pre­vi­ous sum­mer, we had worked rather half­heart­edly to make a film writ­ten by Greg, the name of which escapes me (not because I don’t remem­ber, but because it is too embar­rass­ing to repeat here). It failed because not only did we not have a bud­get (small prob­lem), we had no way to edit it (medium-sized prob­lem) no idea how long the movie was going to be (big prob­lem), an incom­plete script (REALLY big prob­lem), and absolutely no idea how the movie would end (absolutely HUGE monster-that-ate-Tokyo-sized prob­lem). Needless to say, we never fin­ished that movie.

When we went to work on our new film, which we titled RAPTURE: A Love Story, it became clear that it wanted to be feature-length. This time we had a com­plete script (although not a very good one), peo­ple, a new cam­era, and we failed again. It just… ran out of steam.

Then, I stag­nated for two years, as far as writ­ing and direct­ing films. I got an intern­ship at a local TV sta­tion, where I learned Final Cut and decided that there was just no sub­sti­tute for hav­ing a Mac to edit with.

At 9:00 on New Year’s Eve 2004, I grabbed my lap­top and started writ­ing. I wrote a com­plete short film, fin­ish­ing at exactly mid­night on January 1^st, 2005. Good sign. I enlisted the help of Evan Riffe, who learned the script (basi­cally a com­pli­cated mono­logue), and then acted it out on cam­era in my liv­ing room some time in mid January. I had a fin­ished cut of Hear, Speak, and See by the fol­low­ing Monday. This film went on to be a runner-up for best com­edy at the Silver Spoon Film Festival. First place was some stu­pid movie about nin­jas. Not that I’m bitter…

I got more expe­ri­ence work­ing at high speed when I did a project for speech class, a video enti­tled How to Siege a Castle, out­lin­ing in a bizarre, Python-esque way the proper tech­nique to lay­ing waste to a medieval cas­tle. This was shot and edited in three days, and fea­tured a func­tion­ing tre­buchet built by one of my group mem­bers using only scrap wood and a chain­saw. It played pub­licly only once because show­ing a pix­e­lated graphic of a leper fly­ing through the air and smash­ing into a poorly-constructed model cas­tle was, in my opin­ion, not my best work. Strangely, the video spread through­out my high school and even­tu­ally other parts of the school dis­trict through some sort of sophis­ti­cated under­ground rail­road for bad movies.

In the sum­mer of 2005 I under­took a chal­lenge I made to myself years ago: to fin­ish a fea­ture film before I grad­u­ated high school. That would be Wholesale Souls, Inc., the story of James (Gregory Ley), a high school stu­dent who sells his soul over the inter­net to Stan McReynolds (Stan McReynolds), a man who may or may not be the devil incar­nate. Also fea­tured are Evan Riffe, Arin Baun, Erin Ray, Micah Buchele-Collins, Parker Cagle-Smith, Paul Binkley, Mikhail Twarogowski, Eric Kurzmack, and Vynni Gagnepain. The film was shot over a period of nine months in 2005 and 2006 and pre­miered in May of 2006 at Poudre High School. In early 2007 it was released as a free down­load.

Making Wholesale Souls was an over­whelm­ingly pos­i­tive expe­ri­ence for me and I got to know a whole bunch of peo­ple who I really wanted to work with again. An oppor­tu­nity pre­sented itself when, while wrap­ping up shoot­ing on Wholesale Souls, Parker Cagle-Smith told me about a script he was writ­ing. This devel­oped into Terminal Philosophy: The Somber Tale of Leonard Noblac, a short (35-minute) film direc­to­r­ial col­lab­o­ra­tion between myself and Parker, star­ring Vvinni Gagnepain, with appear­ances by Wholesale Souls alumni Evan Riffe, Mikhail Twarogowski, Arin Baun, and Paul Binkley, intro­duc­ing Sean Cummings as Friedrich Nietzsche and Leroy Twarogowski as God and, from the Fort Collins the­atre com­mu­nity, Gale McGaha-Miller as Satan and Eric Corneiluson as Jesus. Principal pho­tog­ra­phy on Terminal Philosophy wrapped just in time for me to leave Fort Collins for the Minneapolis College of Art and Design. Post-production on the project has since stalled, but I insist that the movie isn’t dead, it’s just resting.

2007 saw me work­ing with Ethan Holbrook to develop and even­tu­ally direct his fea­ture film script 16 Heads and Counting, co-produced by Parker Cagle-Smith, star­ring Sean Cummings and intro­duc­ing Rosalie Robinson, the ter­rific dis­cov­ery of a last-minute cast­ing call, who really brings the role of Fran the ser­ial killer/vampire slayer to life. 16 Heads was by far the biggest and most pro­fes­sional project Exploding Goldfish has ever embarked upon, revolv­ing around a three-week, round-the-clock shoot­ing sched­ule, allow­ing us for the first time to work with cin­e­matog­ra­pher Kathryn Criston and plac­ing at our dis­posal a bud­get of lit­er­ally thou­sands of dol­lars. In-progress edits of the film have screened pub­licly in Fort Collins, and post-production for a pub­lic release cut is ongoing.

Parker Cagle-Smith and Ethan Holbrook joined me at MCAD in the spring of 2008, which saw us cre­at­ing, among other things, 11:32 P.M. (made with the help of ter­rific film­mak­ers Matt Kane, Bobby Anderson and Ella Schreck, and incred­i­ble actor Mike Burns), an award-winning 24-hour short film.

In the sum­mer of 2008, Exploding Goldfish Films col­lab­o­rated with Vincent Gagnepain to pro­duce his film Tracy McKnightly and the Case of the Lead Shirt Embezzler, cur­rently in post-production.

In July 2008, Exploding Goldfish Films became Exploding Goldfish Films, LLC, a com­pany held by equal part­ners Parker Cagle-Smith, Ethan Holbrook and Andrew Gingerich.

What’s in the future for Exploding Goldfish Films? Probably noth­ing, but you’ll never know if you don’t keep check­ing back!