Crossroads for the Arts

After graduating with film degrees from the University of Kansas, SenoReality Pictures cofounders Ryan S. Jones (left) and Patrick Rea decided to stay in the Kansas City area.

Photo by Blane Sutton.

You might have heard of Kansas City's most famous
filmmaker. After brief stints at the Pesmen-Rubin Art Studio and
the Kansas City Film Ad Company, Walt Disney started Laugh-O-Gram
Studio in 1922. Although he packed up and moved to Hollywood little
more than a year later, he already had a soon-to-be-famous stable
of animators in his employ and the inspiration for his flagship
character, Mickey Mouse.

The city Disney left behind is a surprisingly rich
content-creation community — with more of a history of
filmmaking than one might think. When University of Kansas (KU)
graduate F.O. Calvin founded the local educational and industrial
film outfit the Calvin Company in 1931, he embraced affordable 16mm
early and became the country's leading producer of films for
businesses and schools throughout the '40s and '50s. One director
who cut his teeth during the Calvin heyday, Robert Altman, shot his
first feature film — The Delinquents (1957) — in
two weeks in Kansas City.

At the same time, just 45 miles west of Kansas City on I-70,
Centron Corporation was making its own industrial, educational, and
governmental films. Housed in what is now the main building of the
KU film department, the company was the training ground for cult
director Herk Harvey, who worked there for 35 years and eventually
taught film production at the university. Using coworkers and
mostly local actors, he shot the eerie and influential 1962 horror
film Carnival of Souls in a two-week time span as well.

If something about Kansas City brings out unorthodox innovation
and speed, it's still there — fueling content-creation
businesses that leverage Midwestern advantages over coastal
glamour.

Kansas City-based motion-graphics company MK12 has worked with high-profile clients such as Adidas, Budweiser, ESPN, MTV, and Cartoon Network. The nine-person art collective works on Adobe After Effects, Photoshop, and Illustrator, as well as Autodesk Maya.

Started by four graduates/dropouts of the Kansas City Art
Institute in 2000, MK12 has grown to a nine-person art collective
that's known across the world for its inventive motion-graphic
design. The company's profile was raised considerably last year
when London-based Eon Productions hired MK12 to design the graphic
interface of MI6's computers and direct the title sequence for the
latest James Bond movie, Quantum of Solace. The stylish
opening features the iconic silhouette of Bond — Walther PPK
drawn — wandering around a desert that is made up as much of
soaring naked female curves as it is of sand.

“It's the first time they brought in a non-British
commercial director,” says MK12 cofounder Tim Fisher of the
Bond opening, one of the Holy Grails of modern commercial graphic
design. “We pitched for six or eight months of time. [At
first] we didn't have the titles. … We were just doing the 2D
animation interface stuff. Through that, we paralleled all that
work with working on pitches to talk to Eon and its
crew.”

Although MK12 shot its first round of tests in London, the group
used its own greenscreen stage back in Kansas City to secure the
deal with a long, persuasive motion test. Located in the northeast
corner of the Crossroads Arts District, MK12 occupies a warehouse
with a brick façade and a sign out front that reads
“MK12 Tactical Design and Research Bureau: Worldwide
Ultraglobal International Top Secret Superheadquarters.”

MK12 recently used its onsite greenscreen to land the job of designing the titles for the latest James Bond movie, Quantum of Solace, as well as the graphical user interface of MI6''s computers.

With such a mysterious slogan on its doorstep and website, it is
clear that the group applies the same unique brand-marketing
sensibilities to itself that it creates for its clients.

More than anything else, MK12 values collaborative creative
effort, so the partners founded the company with this specific
thought in mind. It's a tight-knit group of people, and MK12 is
hesitant to call attention to any one particular member — no
matter what part of the production phase is happening at any given
moment.

“We've had as many as four people on set before — a
couple people to oversee the technical side, a couple to oversee
the talent,” says Ben Radatz, cofounder of MK12. “For
the amount of manipulation [in postproduction] we do, it's a good
way of going about it because some people can focus on the bigger
picture and other people can focus on some of the more specific
things like the acting, the framing, and stuff.”

“We're like the Voltron of motion graphics,” Fisher
says, referring to the animated team of smaller robots that could
form into one giant robot at will in the 1980s Japanese
cartoon.

Just past the salvage airplane wing that serves as the lobby
conference table is a wide-open space where the artists have their
own work desks, each one personalized with the kind of mess that
indicates there's not a lot of sleeping going on here. Separated by
an enormous black curtain to the right is the shooting stage.

“That's the beauty of having that greenscreen there. If we
want pickup shots, it's just walking over to the studio,”
Fisher says.

Being based out of Kansas City hasn't stopped the group from
netting high-profile clients such as Adidas, Best Buy, Budweiser,
ESPN, MTV, Comedy Central, and Cartoon Network. Since 2002, MK12
has been represented by production company The Ebeling Group, which
has offices in London and New York and handles business acquisition
for nine other leading design collectives and commercial directors
as well. Between producing network launch packages, music videos,
and motion graphics for television commercials, MK12 has also been
able to balance its own creative projects.

For four years, all of the group's off-time was spent shooting a
30-minute motion-control animated satire called The History of
America. The movie, which toured film festivals and was part of
the Sundance Film Festival in 2008, is a tongue-in-cheek
celebration/condemnation of America through a war that pits cowboys
against astronauts. It was a labor of love for the studio, and it
was filmed on a shoestring budget with a lot of help from
friends.

“This place is a wonderful mecca,” says MK12 partner
Shaun Hamontree. “The cost of living affords you [certain
opportunities]. History of America would have never happened
had we been on the coast.”

Though the images that MK12 produces are on the cutting edge of
design work, the group uses the same off-the-shelf computers and
software (such as Adobe After Effects, Photoshop, and Illustrator,
as well as Autodesk Maya) that everyone else in the motion-graphics
world uses. “Our software profile is pretty
unexceptional,” Radatz says. “[We have] learned to
tweak it over the years, but it's nothing proprietary or
custom.”

Whether the company is creating an original piece, helping to
tell a Hollywood story, or doing product-based work, MK12 is at its
happiest when it can inject narrative into something and merge the
world of graphic design with storytelling.

“It's easy to teach yourself how to do graphic design.
What's not as easy is putting it in a context where it resonates
and lives. Those are the challenges. We like to find out how to
accomplish those two things and make them work together,”
Radatz says.

MK12's recent film work for director Marc Forster has been a
source of great creative inspiration, allowing the group to take
its work to a new level and apply both narrative and functional
concepts to design. In 2006's Stranger Than Fiction, MK12's
onscreen graphics provide the audience with constant visualizations
of an obsessive-compulsive IRS agent's mathematical mind.

The character, played by Will Ferrell, creates tightly organized
lists and charts in his head, and MK12 was responsible for bringing
those graphics to life onscreen. All the while, the challenge was
to remain as true to the character as possible. When he goes
through his daily routine, everything is as clean and organized as
a chart could be. It's when Ferrell is met with something
unexpected that the visualization changes.

“There's a point where he goes to the IRS office and
somebody asks, ‘Quick, I need you to add these two
numbers,'' and those are just hand-written on the
screen,” Radatz says. “Because that's just stuff he
hasn't organized as well as everything else, so he doesn't have a
place to categorize it.”

The graphical user interface (GUI) for British Intelligence in
Quantum of Solace was designed with the functionality of the
user in mind. MK12 took into consideration that agents must be able
to process information quickly and that each agent had a different
set of needs. True to its slogan, the group did research and
development into how the brain processes information, how the brain
sees color, and how the placement of objects in relation to each
other creates associations in the mind.

“M's office is a good example,” Radatz says.
“If you look at all the stuff that happens in her office,
it's very clean and you don't get a lot of extra data. Whereas when
you're in the forensics lab and you have that big touchscreen
table, there's stuff all over the place because they're a bunch of
nerds that know how to operate at a programming level. M doesn't
care about any of that. She just needs to know what the top-tier
info is, so she gets the condensed version of what they
have.”

This behind-the-scenes functionality also attracted the
attention of Damian Gordon, a computer science professor at the
Dublin Institute of Technology, who wrote about the pros and cons
of the fictional interface of the movie. That same detail was
carried over into the design for MI6's cell phones as well. Radatz
says it is exciting to step out of the realm of what the group
usually does to play “pretend” programmers.

“Until they call us on it,” Hamontree says.

See MK12's reel at reel-exchange.com/members/73b31d1a/profile.

Based in Kansas City''s Crossroads Arts District, TakeTwo (T2) is a full-service production and postproduction design and effects company that has worked with industry giants such as Time Warner, Sprint, and Wal-Mart through its ad-agency clients.

The first thing you notice when you enter the two-story TakeTwo
(T2) facility, also located in the Crossroads Arts District, is an
ultramodern architectural design that's disguised by the
100-year-old brick building exterior. The company's place of
business is a metaphor for its work ethic — one that revels
in surprise. Never satisfied with merely doing what its clients
expect from them, the artists at T2 promote a creative culture of
always pushing things one step further.

The full-service production and postproduction design and
effects company is housed within 15,000 square feet and contains
not just your typical edit suites, conference rooms, and shooting
stage, but also a bar and a kitchen area — which houses T2's
executive chef.

It's a long way from T2's beginnings as an inhouse video
department for former hardware giant Payless Cashways. CEO Teri
Rogers started TakeTwo, which was about a block and a half from
where it is now, in 1984 with two other partners. In four years'
time, it became a profit center. Ten years later, in 1998, T2 had
grown to around 20 employees, and the company separated from
Payless completely. By 2002, Rogers was the sole owner. The new
space, which was finished in 2006, ties in perfectly with the
aesthetic of the burgeoning Crossroads District — which is
populated by creative companies, hip art galleries, and trendy
shops.

Kansas City also houses two of the top independently owned
advertising agencies in the country. T2 has been able to capitalize
on this to build the company, and it has worked steadily with
industry giants such as Time Warner, Sprint, Hallmark, and Wal-Mart
through its ad-agency clients. “The advertising work that we
do is what really gives us the opportunity to push the creative
work we do,” says T2 Director of Marketing Linda Buchner.

In the rapidly changing world of content creation, where
software moves forward almost as fast as business trends, companies
have to stay one step ahead of the game. As tools become less
proprietary and more desktop-driven, the focus of T2 has evolved
into the motion-graphic design and visual-effects side of things.
This concentration on postproduction has as much to do with desktop
software and affordability as it does with the nature of emerging
talent.

“Before, graphic designers tended to be
print-background-oriented, and the video world is very
technology-driven. Right now with the software becoming more
friendly to designers, designers are more open to designing stuff
for motion graphics,” Creative Director Michael Ong says.
“It's a merging of these two areas that's making today's TV
content more design-driven.”

“Graphic designers coming right out of school always have
some sort of interest and knowledge of motion now,” Buchner
says.

Because of this motion-graphics-design-driven direction, T2 has
acquired more clients in the entertainment industry. Two years ago,
the company designed the broadcast identity for ABC's fall season.
It also recently did work for MGM Network's cable channel
rebranding in at least 10 different countries. Its motion-graphics
department is currently getting quite a workout from an unusual
documentary that is being filmed in the IMAX format by Inland Sea
Productions, a Kansas City-based production company.

TakeTwo's facility includes edit suites, conference rooms, a shooting stage, and a bar and kitchen area that houses T2''s executive chef.

Modern communication and file distribution over the Internet
have been game-changers for the Kansas City-based company, making
it easier for T2 to get high-profile entertainment work. There
wasn't even one face-to-face meeting with ABC during the entire
process, and the MGM project would regularly include conference
calls with up to six or seven countries on the line at one time.
When a design is in its rough stages, clients can view rough-stage
videos online or on their iPhones and directly respond to it.

T2 is leading the art direction and doing most of the
motion-graphic design of We the People, a nonfiction movie
that covers important American milestones such as the Constitution,
the Declaration of Independence, and the civil-rights movement. The
Smithsonian Institute, the Library of Congress, and the National
Archives are just some of the film's sponsors. Buchner says the
movie is groundbreaking because a large bulk of the film is motion
graphics, which is not typical for IMAX films due to the unwieldy
size of the digital files.

Despite this recent work, the notion that a company in Kansas
City can't run with the big boys is still something that T2
sometimes finds itself up against. In Buchner's estimation, it's a
perception that literally comes with the territory. “It's
being [in] a second-tier market. People from New York and L.A. look
at coming to Kansas City for work kind of like we'd look at going
to Des Moines for work,” she says. “There are probably
very talented people in Des Moines — it just seems
smaller.”

In another attempt to disprove that idea on a production level,
Rogers started a traditional full-service production company eight
months ago called Back Alley Films. The formation of the new
company was also a growth strategy to help push forward T2's new
direction, allowing the company to sell more motion design outside
of Kansas City. Back Alley Films, in turn, can go after commercial
spot work while both companies work together to complete
projects.

“We wanted to go after the bigger kind of production jobs,
and we knew we couldn't do it with production sitting inside a post
facility. Commercial agencies believe that production companies
need to exist as production companies and post companies need to
exist as post companies,” Rogers says.

While the company's corporate clients were content under one
roof (“all they want to know is that they're going to go to a
company and they'll take care of it from concept through the
dubs,” according to Rogers), agencies see it differently.
“We wanted to get some of the bigger projects and bring
business in from out of town, so we started Back Alley to sell
production with the idea that it would also extend over into
including post [at T2],” Rogers says.

Rogers' other position as chair of the Greater Kansas City Film
Commission also helps encourage out-of-towners to film their
projects in Kansas City. A $2.5 million feature called Last
Will recently wrapped production in Kansas City, and T2 handled
the film's dailies and synced up audio for the crew. Besides the
obvious hotel and restaurant revenue that hosting a production can
generate, many actors and actresses from the area appeared in the
film, the crew was filled out with members of the Kansas City film
community, and local equipment rental companies benefited as
well.

“It really benefits the city and the industry,”
Rogers says. “We are taking inquiries almost on a daily basis
[from] filmmakers who are interested in knowing about locations and
the tax incentives that are available in Missouri and Kansas. Our
goal is to work with the Kansas and Missouri film commissions and
bring film to Kansas City specifically.”

See T2's reel at reel-exchange.com/members/15429304/profile.

For the short Misfortune Smiles, Lawrence, Kan.-based SenoReality Pictures used a Panasonic AG-HVX200 with a Letus35 Extreme adapter for a film look.

One company that benefits from its films being shot in the
Kansas City area is Lawrence, Kan.-based SenoReality Pictures.

“A lot of people in Kansas City and Lawrence work on each
other's films,” says cofounder Patrick Rea. “We just
all know each other. If someone needs a sound guy, they'll give
Ryan a call, or [if they] need me to do something, they'll give me
a call.”

Since graduating with film degrees from KU in 2002, Rea and Ryan
S. Jones have been staples of the independent movie scene in the
Lawrence/KC area, producing an indie feature film and at least 15
short films together under the SenoReality banner.

Rea handles the writing and directing duties, while Jones does
almost everything else — although he specializes in sound
mixing, sporting one of the only 5.1 surround mix setups in the
area. Another partner, Josh Robison, moved to Atlanta last year,
but he still edits certain projects and sends them back to Jones
for the finishing touches.

The company may not have a fancy workplace, but SenoReality does
have an office space — not that they maintain regular hours
there. All the editing and sound design is done out of the house
that the duo currently shares with another roommate. This means
that the office is almost always dressed as a set and is used
mostly as a shooting location.

Living in a liberal, arts-friendly town such as Lawrence has its
perks, and SenoReality is quite happy to be in the heartland.
“There's a lot of local support,” Rea says.
“Virtually all of our locations we get for free because we're
able to kindly ask them. If you're in L.A., you have to have a
permit wherever you go. You can't put your tripod on the sidewalk
without someone stopping you and saying, ‘Where's your
permit?''”

SenoReality's Patrick Rea at work shooting the short Paint Shaker.

A partnership with Free State Studios, a local television
production company, provides SenoReality with some valuable
financial support as well. In 2008, Rea and Jones produced three
short films in collaboration with Free State. The first one,
Woman's Intuition, won a regional Emmy award. Rea also works
part-time for the studio, while Jones somehow manages to hold down
a 9-to-5 at Free State working in advertising production. On
weekends and at night, Jones is hard at work on SenoReality
projects.

Making short films is the best way to get hands-on experience
with filming and editing techniques, and it's also very valuable
when it comes to trying out different gear. SenoReality's feature,
The Empty Acre, was shot with the standard-definition
Panasonic AG-DVX100A. After that, the company moved on to the Sony
HVR-Z1U. After some Super 16 film projects, Rea shot five shorts
with the Panasonic AG-HVX200 using either the Redrock Micro 35mm
lens adapter or the Letus35 Extreme lens adapter for a filmic look.
A teaser for SenoReality's newest project was shot using the
Thomson Grass Valley Viper FilmStream, and Rea just recently shot
some 4K footage with the Red Digital Cinema Red One camera.

It's been two years since Rea shot anything on film — and
that's mostly because when he started shooting in HD, nobody could
tell the difference. The ability to look back at the footage you've
shot immediately rather than waiting for dailies to be developed is
a huge plus as well. This is especially important for short films
that may not have much of a schedule for reshoots or money for more
film.

“With [the short] Emergency Preparedness, which was
shot in 2006, the last shot of the day we got was only a half a
take of it because we ran out of film,” Rea says. “We
ended up barely having enough to make that shot work in the film
and then we were done. I had no more film.”

Down in the basement, Jones does his sound-design work amid
walls covered with DVDs and Indiana Jones posters at a desk
that's surrounded by loudspeakers. He just recently switched to
MOTU Digital Performer for his audio workstation, and he says he is
quite pleased that it doesn't eat his processing power like Apple
Soundtrack Pro did.

The film festival circuit is very important for a small studio
such as SenoReality, which will be screening its shorts at the
South by Southwest Film Festival in Austin, Texas, this month. Not
only does it gain exposure for the films, but it's also a chance to
meet people — if you can afford to go.

DP Hanuman Brown-Eagle shot Paint Shaker using the Panasonic AG-HVX200 with a Redrock Micro lens adapter and 35mm lenses.

Most of the shorts being produced by SenoReality are rooted in
suspense, sci-fi, and horror, so Rea and Jones have been traveling
to the three Weekend of Horrors conventions put on in cities such
as Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, and Austin each year by popular
horror magazine Fangoria. These conventions are three-day
weekends filled with appearances by cult film directors and stars
alike, and SenoReality has been showing its films in a 30-minute
block called “Horrors From Kansas,” making appearances
whenever possible.

Related Links

Woman's Intuition MK12 T2-TakeTwo

SenoReality Pictures, LLC

“When we go to film festivals, we stick out a little
more,” Rea says. “It's a good thing, especially when
they see our production value is slightly better sometimes. They're
like, ‘Wow, you guys are doing that stuff in Kansas?''
and we tell them how much we're doing it for and people become more
interested in shooting in Kansas.”

Back in 2002, it was odd for Rea and Jones to not immediately
move to Los Angeles after graduating from film school. Students and
faculty at the university fully expected them to go, but they were
too busy actually making films to ever look up. After getting their
feet wet, it just seemed like sticking with the creative community
that fostered them was the right thing to do. Some of their friends
traveled to the coast, only to come back after not being able to
find work. Others have been successful. With the support system
SenoReality has built in the Lawrence/Kansas City area, however,
the company has no reason to leave.

Although both Rea and Jones agree that getting audiences for
their movies — whether it's through film festivals or a DVD
compilation of SenoReality shorts called Heartland Horrors
— is satisfying, they also both agree that their greatest
satisfaction comes from seeing a project through from conception to
postproduction. Creating your own work from the ground up can be
frustrating and challenging, but it's that very process that makes
it so rewarding as well. The only thing Jones says he wishes he
could change are the number of hours in a day.

“Sometimes I don't have enough time to work on
projects,” Jones says. “I wish that the days were
longer than 36 hours a day, but you can't do that. There's just not
enough time, and it really irritates me that I can't work on
[projects] more.”

“It's like we wish we were Michael Keaton in that movie
Multiplicity and we could clone ourselves,” Rea says.
“Unfortunately, the dumb one would [probably] be out
shooting.”

See SenoReality Pictures' reel at reel-exchange.com/members/83ef381f/profile.

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