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Backyard Productions is never one to stand still, always finding a new way to serve emerging trends?like its newly-formed Seed, a content company led by former DDB award-winning group creative director John Immesoete.

Immesoete is Seed partner/creative director and also a director for Backyard.

Seed will concentrate on “entertainment opportunities such as TV shows and Web-based films,” said Backyard partner/principal Roy Skillicorn.

Since signing with Backyard in December, Immesoete directed the “Lady” Bud Light Super Bowl spot in collaboration with DDB.

Seed, a new L.A.-based commercial company, is the joint venture of Backyard partners Roy Skillicorn and Blair Stribley and Science+ Fiction founders Steve Mendelson and Kevin Townsend. Their focus is developing young directorial talent for commercials and programming content. Backyard COO Dan Bryant is Seed’s executive producer.

Seed starts sprouting with recent Pasadena Art Center grad Michael Chaves, who has directed McDonald’s and Char Broil spots, and Jim Byrkit, now helming a McDonald’s spot via Mad Films, which reps him in Canada.

“All truth passes through three stages,” Ky Dickens, a producer for commercial MK Films, says in her documentary “Fish Out of Water.” “First it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. And third, it is accepted as being self-evident.”

“Fish Out of Water” screened Sunday as the documentary centerpiece of the 29th Reeling: Chicago Lesbian & Gay International Film Festival.

Dickens interviewed religious figures, scholars and everyday Americans in more than 20 states about shifting religious, social and political views on homosexuality.

SCREENWRITERS WILL GET A CHANCE to quiz L.A. screenwriting consultant Phillippa Burgess on how to move their careers forward and other vital breakthrough info Dec. 7 at the Chicago Screenwriters Network meeting.

As a partner in Creative Convergence, a multifaceted entertainment company representing writers, directors, producers and the like, Burgess is certainly equipped to provide the answers.

It was a near-chance meeting with his school’s janitor that set Bruce David Janu on the road to producing his first feature documentary, the 90-minute “Facing Sudan.”

Twenty-three year old janitor Brian Burns approached Janu after seeing flyers for the Teens Against Genocide group that Janu sponsors at John Hersey High School in Arlington Heights, where he teaches history.

Burns told Janu about the relief mission he’d volunteered for in Sudan.

For weeks, my pal Lisa waxed poetic about a small Mexican restaurant that co-mingles the hearty influence of Lebanese cooking with the rustic bliss of homegrown Mexican cuisine.

Finally we made it over to a bleak section of North Ave. and Taqueria Puebla, 3619 W. North Ave. the only restaurant of its kind in Chicago.

The Puebla region just south of Mexico City has the influence of Lebanon blistering all of its dusty hills and many thanks to owner Tony Anteliz for bringing its fierce flavor to the rough streets of Chicago.

Film Wisconsin is cautiously optimistic that its film incentives package will be enacted retroactively to Jan. 1, 2007 when the state legislature convenes in January.

The state lost $77.5 million of potential feature business when pre-election partisan politics pushed the incentives start date back by 18 months to Jan. 1, 2008 from May 30, 2006.

If the package is not enacted Jan. 1, “the worst case scenario would be a later date of July 1, 2007,” said Scott Robbe, one of the founders of private industry group Film Wisconsin.

JOHN LOGAN, Oscar-nominated author of “The Aviator,” has made a $43,200 gift to the small City Lit Theatre Company, thereby eliminating a long-term debt that’s clung to City Lit since 1999.

Logan’s unsolicited gift was in honor of City Lit’s new artistic director, Off-Loop theatre veteran Terry McCabe, a long-time Logan friend and colleague.

John Logan Three local independent feature films screen in Polish and Lesbian/Gay Fests Three locally-made features screen this month at the Polish Film Festival in America and the Reeling: Chicago Lesbian and Gay Film Festival. The improv film collective Split Pillow showcases their second improv feature at Reeling. And Polish-born local directors Filip Rymsza, and Aleksanda Hodowany and Monika Szewerniak, screen their debut features at the Polish Festival. $2.5 million raised for $5 million horror feature scheduled to film here next year Writer/Producer L. Pat Williams’ SerpentWise Films is halfway to financing its $5 million horror movie “10,000 Doors” to shoot here next year. “We’ve got $2.5 million in escrow,” said Williams, “but we’ve got a huge CGI requirement. We need the other half to come in” before setting a firm production date. Improvements in treasurer’s film loans State treasurer Producing pair launches animation festival and animation feature studio It’s an idea whose time has come. A full-fledged, super-sized, international spotlight on animated films. And it’s being launched in late fall by a producing pair who brought their major studio feature to Chicago to be animated here. The Nov. 6-9 Cineme’, The Chicago International Animated Film Festival, will be the largest venue of its kind in North America, said Lee Litas, partner with Brooke English in both the festival and their animation company. Green’s indie feature starts self-distribution route in Chicago John Mahoney and Ian Gomez star in Terry Green’s “Almost Salinas.” MBC short on renovation funds MBC’s new home Kinzie & State. The Museum of Broadcast Communications (MBC), the 15th most-visited cultural attraction in Chicago, will move into its new home at Kinzie and State next year. So far, so good.   Loading Comments...   Write a Comment... Email Name Website