GONE WITHOUT A TRACE? Just a year ago this month Brooke English and Lee Litis with great flourish announced their Dreamation Studio was moving into a huge Buffalo Grove facil...

CHICAGO FILMMAKERS' Onion City Experimental Film and Video Festival June 16-18 opens with a program featuring a who's who of avant-garde heavyweights: Michelangelo Antonioni...

THE COMEDY "ALLEYBALL," co-written by director Dan Consiglio and actor and "Alleyball" star Johnny Ray Meeks, starts filming June 18 on Chicago locations. The story revolve...

Richter Brothers Studios is getting ready to send its just-completed, high-end interactive CD to a replicator that will produce 1 million discs for grocery store distribution in...

FOR A MAJOR CHEVROLET SHOOT Schumacher Camera brought in the new handheld Arri235 camera at the behest of director/DP Dana Christiansen, shooting for Plum Productions of L.A. ...

Illinois will continue to compete for film production by offering wage tax incentives until Dec. 31, 2006, an extension of one year. The state Senate late on May 31 passed...

HURT McDERMOTT'S 2004 Slamdance best screenplay winner, "Nightingale in a Music Box," has its New York premiere Tuesday, June 7 at 8 p.m. at the Brooklyn International Film Fest...

PAULA FROEHLE is in production on her 2004 IFP/Chicago Production Fund-winning short "Up on the Rope." Froehle is shooting on an elaborate set at Resolution Digital Studios, par...

For the eighth year, Blue Sky Video's Bruce Himmelblau donned his golf cap, picked up his camera and headed out to the Deerpath golf course where he'd have a short video waiting...

Rerecording mixer/Sound designer Pat Yacono has seen the future and there's nary a spot in sight. The future for his new Signal Hill Sound is independent films. In fact, his...

a Friendly's Restaurant/Laughlin Constable spot at a Friendly's in Kissimmee, Florida and a Kids "R" Us store in Orlando. Father (Adam Vernier) takes his son (Evan Nave) to...

From his hometown of Winnipeg, Manitoba, Guy Maddin has staked out his territory as the leading practitioner of a style that applies lyrical silent film grammar to aggressively ...

Media Process Group's Bob Hercules is working with political consultant David Axelrod to develop a long-form documentary on Mayor Richard J. Daley. The new doc will be an ex...

Leave it to Adrenalin TV's daredevil Duke Hillinger to come up with the next big rage in action sports. You couldn't guess what it is in a hundred years?unless you're one of th...

Life is a Dream Productions is developing its $500,000 HD feature drama "Gray, White & Black," from acclaimed Yugoslav-born director I. Michael Toth, to shoot here and in Paris ...

WITH "SIX FEET UNDER" winding to the end of its final season, Emmy-winning writer Rick Cleveland wanted to find a way to pay tribute to Chicago, the town where he cut his early-...

The owner of a Texas equipment company is asking for local help in recovering $17,000 worth of camcorders brazenly stolen by a Chicago man. Craig Berlin, president/CEO of ...

THIRTY OPTIMUS "SPOTS"?not about the post house, but 30-second creative confections by all Optimus employees and not just editors?have been airing as commercials on Comcast. ...

SPLIT PILLOW'S CHALLENGE 3.0, the group's third annual collaborative filmmaking contest, runs Memorial Day weekend, May 27-30. Friday, each filmmaking team writes a short scri...

EMILY ARMSTRONG and PAT IVERS will be on hand for the May 29 screening of their hour doc "Nightclubbing: Greatest Hits," a collection of performance footage culled from their ?7...