Kinorama Turns One
Today marks one year since the initial filing of Kinorama LLC. To celebrate, and keep track of what we’ve done, I’ve decided to indulge on a Year in Review, a practice we can hopefully continue in the years to come. This is also the first post on this Blog page which we’ll continue to make sporadic use of.
On set Take Your Time, June 25th 2023.
How & Why This Came To Be
I, at first, thought that the initial filling of Kinorama LLC was mostly practical. The timing of it was very calculated, with the creation of the LLC occurring roughly a week before we shot the Take Your Time music video (Take Your Time being the first independent project I produced outside of film school). Having this LLC made the production of Take Your Time smoother, allowed me to get certain insurance policies I wouldn’t have otherwise, and, well, protected myself legally from any shit that could potentially go down (thankfully, none did).
Having lived in California for the past 3 years, talking with people who work in the industry, and taking business classes at Chapman, it became pretty apparent to me that in America things simply work better if you have an LLC. Grouping your business endeavors, and presenting your productions as a part of a greater LLC rather than as an individual producer is a practice pretty much everyone does in this industry. So I knew if I wanted to stick with this, which I did, I would eventually have an LLC of my own. I figured why not start now that I’ll be producing this music video on my own without the safety-net of the school. And the Kinorama name had been brewing in my mind for a couple of months. It harkens back to the history, global identity and spiritual elements of cinema, things I am deeply passionate about. I knew I wanted this production company to really encompass the intersection spirit and cinema; it also just sounds cool. So I did it, I filled the LLC and used it as the legal entity behind the Take Your Time production. That was the practical side of things.
On June 21st, during a King Gizzard concert at the Hollywood Bowl I had a vision. It had been 4 days since the filing of Kinorama LLC, and it would be an understatement to say I was excited about the possibilities of what would come; my mind spent every waking moment thinking about what Kinorama could become, why I chose to start it now, and what I could achieve through it. I thought about the uncertain times we were living through, the new age that awaited us, and what that entailed for the future of cinema. I reflected on my life, and the journey that had led me to where I was: about to enter my senior year studying producing at film school while living in California. The future seemed unknowable, except for one thing. I knew I wanted to make movies, and I knew I wanted Kinorama to mean something. I told myself that no matter what happened, I would have Kinorama as the outlet I’d use to partake in, and evolve, the practice of filmmaking. To bring art into the new age. The core of Kinorama to me is the intersection and mergence of art and spirit, the treating of cinema as a religion.
When I first applied to film school I did so with the idea of me becoming a writer/director, I thought I would make my own movies and create a name for myself as a filmmaker and artist. However as the semesters went on, and I learned more about what a producer actually does, I fell in love with the idea of it; producing all kinds of cinema, executing visions, and giving artists a platform and a voice. I came to the realization that as an individual filmmaker I could only bring my own films and stories to life, but as a producer I could do that and a lot more. And as I stood there listening to the Lizard Wizard play Rattlesnake I concluded that through Kinorama I could do that. I didn’t want Kinorama to just be my stuff, rather I wanted my stuff to be a part of Kinorama. I wanted Kinorama to be much more than just me. And although I also realized that Kinorama would have to start with me, I hoped to reach that future where it evolved to become more.
And now, a year later, I think I’ve taken a solid first step in nurturing this vision of Kinorama. We published a short film, a music video, and made a logo which I am quire fond of. This is where we start, our first year.
Take Your Time
Take Your Time was Kinorama’s first production. Checo, the artist behind the song, is a man of music, and for his latest single we wanted to make a fun music video that harkened back to the MTV rock vids of the 90’s.
Checo liked the idea of having ballet dancers in this, so I talked with Ashton Titus, my good friend who is a choreographer and dancer. She had a handful of creative conversations with Checo, and brought her other dancer friend Caroline to set to make the dancing happen. The boxing ring being a part of the warehouse location we rented was the cherry on top that really made those dance sequences stand out. I also brought Mason Hipp on board, another good friend of mine who happened to compete on jump-roping competitions in their youth. The dynamism and motion of jump-roping and ballet dancing on a boxing ring seemed to be just the right amount of punk and rock that Checo wanted for the video.
Getting June on board as our Director of Photography, and Juan as our Editor really brought the whole thing together and finished off the music video. They understood the vision, and it was through them, and our dedicated small crew, that the video got brought to life.
We published Take Your Time in November of 2023 and shot it in July of that year.
Be Water, My Friend
Be Water was the AP, or Advanced Production, I produced as part of my Creative Producing BFA at Chapman/Dodge. Every semester third-year students from different majors and areas of specialization collaborate on an 8-minute short film, which is essentially a smaller-scale thesis.
We brought Be Water from script to screen in 3 months with a dedicated crew of students and 2 filming days. The story follows Zhiyi, a first-generation Chinese immigrant struggling to find his way in America, and is a project birthed from Sean Yang’s unique sense of humor and satirical sensibilities. The ridiculous and unapologetic world of this short is what made me want to produce it, and I am extremely happy to see Sean’s vision breathing life. I could not have asked for a better crew, and it was truly a privilege to make this film happen.
We toured Be Water through several festivals, and seeing the short on the big screen with audiences was always a really satisfying experience. In December of 2023 we decided to unleash the film unto the public and publish Be Water on the Kinorama website
Even though the short was produced before the filling of Kinorama LLC, Chapman allowing students to retain the rights to their films allowed us to retroactively begin the canon of Kinorama with Be Water My Friend. Instead of letting this short fade away, as so many student productions tend to, I hope it will continue to be known and remembered as the first Kinorama short.
Creating our Logo
In late 2022 an old projector was spotted through the window of an antique shop at Orange’s historic circle. This projector would later serve as the inspiration behind Kinorama’s design, aesthetic language, and specifically its logo.
When first developing ideas for the Kinorama logo we knew we wanted to pay homage to the iconography of Old Hollywood in the form of a film projector. While our original, very rough, concept had the projector projecting out the Kinorama name, we ultimately decided to streamline the logo, focusing on the projector by itself and its vague “K” outline.
For the first iteration of our logo, we literally got a picture of the projector we purchased and outlined it using a stylus, adorning it with a vague Art Deco color palette to harken back to the glamour of the golden age. We used this original logo for most of our first year, but it was always meant to be a placeholder.
Several months later, around March, I got my sister in law (an architect and designer) to work on our actual logo. We went through a couple of iterations and had conversations about how to make the logo recognizable while still being able to have multiple versions of it. I liked the idea of the logo changing with each film/production we made. She ended up creating a gallery of different logo palette options to get a sense of what different color ways of the logo could look like. We also made a much simpler ‘all black’ version of the logo to use as a general logo in things like profile pictures and our favicon. I really like the silhouette and simplicity of it. We retained the circular K in its base/body along with the couple of art deco inspired lines above it to add a little more flavor.
Logo concept developed in July of 2023.
The projector used as the inspiration for Kinorama and its logo.
First logo, drawn in November and used by Kinorama for most of its first year.
And that concludes our first year. I’m excited for all to come, specially now that I’ve graduated from Chapman, and hope to see Kinorama grow in the coming years.
