IOW: Our first TABLOIDS headline
A sunny afternoon to you, citizens of C-U Blogfidential! Just as you are pining to read more from us again than the weekly Calendar, we are revving up our editorial engine to bring you fresh posts on the movies of Champaign, Urbana, and the cities beyond! Today, we’d like to point you towards the upcoming animated Web series TABLOIDS, created by double-majoring University of Illinois junior Andrew Ambrose Lee, for which a $6,500 Indiegogo goal was successfully achieved this past Thursday, July 30. Moneys will cover production and promotion costs for a six-episode Season One, to be premiered at the Art Theater Co-op as detailed in the campaign and then released on-line later this year according to a recent Daily Illini article, as Lee has engaged a remarkably large crew of ambitious young people from across the Midwest to help. Based on Lee’s personal experiences working on his high school newspaper shaded by a would-be staff romance that didn’t quite work out, TABLOIDS follows the comedic pursuits of five friends: Nathan (Derek Schneider), Shannon (Jenna Conway), Robby (Peter Cowley), Chelsea (Erin Kaufman), and Greg (Justin Klett). On the team is Dan Drake, a semi-regular at Champaign Movie Makers meetings and a Pens to Lens director who also holds the distinction as the only active filmmaker du C-U to have ever lived adjacent to the Secret MICRO-FILM Headquarters. (Hopefully, he’s honored the “secret” tenet of our home base like we have!) You can meet the entire cast and crew at this Web site and keep your nose for TABLOIDS news turned to this Facebook page; below, we share their proof-of-concept short “Truth or Dare” wherein the gang passes a little classroom time rather awkwardly.
~ Jason Pankoke