THE BAG is a short film in production in southern Oregon from a festival award-winning team, local to the area. THE BAG is a simple yet disturbing story of an elderly woman who has grown tired of living. The film is scheduled to go in to production in late October 2009.  THE BAG will be directed by Ray Nomoto Robison and was written by by Marlyn Mason. The film is set to star Peggy Stewart.

Robison and Mason previously teamed up on a short film, Model Rules, which has won a Grand Prize Best Screenplay Award at the 2008 Rhode Island International Film Festival and Northwest Emerging Artist "Best Short" at the 2009 Salem Film Festival.

Investors are welcome to contribute to the film, here.

Local Stand-Up Comedy is back in Ashland, and soon to spread through Talent & Phoenix, too. The Black Market Comedy Group is a collection of local comics who have begun performing regular shows at the Hong Kong Bar in Ashland. The group last performed together regularly when the Caldera Pub was known as the Jefferson State Pub, in between two stints as the Siskiyou Pub.

Members of the group host a comedy open-mic at the Hong Kong Bar in Ashland on Sunday nights, bi-weekly.  They are planning on a monthly showing at the new Caldera Pub in Ashland, as well as a the Little Brown Jug in Talent. Comics include Scott May, Tyler Foley, Dan McLaren, and Levi Anderson. 

Sid is editing video right now.  We've got a big DVD project coming out for our good friend and client over at http://filmtvworkshops.com. Film Producer Tom Kane teaches a 3-day intensive film budgeting and scheduling workshop.  The workshop is not just for film students, though it is a great benefit to those just starting in the industry of film and motion picture production.

Tom Kane's Film Production Workshop is also a great resource for people who work in various departments of film production, but would like to pursue the roles of Assistant Director (AD), Unit Production Manager (UPM), and/or Line Producer.  Tom has years of in-the-field experience, on feature films including Taxi Driver, Kramer vs. Kramer, Prizzi's Honor, as well as producing record-breaking original cable features such as Crossfire Trail, Last Stand at Saber River, and Girl in Hyacinth Blue (filmed in Holland).

Netfirms is not only the best price for domain name at $6.99 for the first year, but they are a great small business host.  SidFilmz and Sid's Family of websites started out being hosted on a Netfirms Advantage account, which provided databases, shopping cart plug-ins, Joomla Installs, image gallery plug-ins, and more.  Their control panel gave you much more access to DNS Admin settings than most I've dealt with, which made it really easy to update domains when I was juggling a bunch of start-up websites for people. Recently, Netfirms has added Google Apps integration and upgraded their Control Panel to make it even easier for first-time domain owners to manage their own hosting.

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