Archives - The History of Whole Wheat Treats Productions

Sean Carter first approached me about collaborating with him on a film the summer before my freshman year of high school. He had written an original script, titled "Beige Behavior." It was a script that was far too mature to be portrayed by a bunch of 14 year old kids, but that didn't stop us from trying. The one scene I was able to film with him that summer before the project was cancelled was scene #18. It involved me getting a tip from a friend that a hitman was waiting for me somewhere inside my house. I grabbed a metal pole from the garage, and stalked through every room in the house. The scene culminated with me surprising him in the bedroom, and beating him to death with the pole.

It was that first meeting, 5 years ago, that started this whole rollercoaster. Two years later my friend Chris and I had an idea for a short comedy to be posted on YouTube. We had no experience with anything film related, and I thought, "...Let's ask that Sean kid if he wants to help out." Now, a Freshman in college, it's funny to look back on all of our projects and see what incredible progress we have made as filmmakers. Following is a complete list of everything we have collaborated on, in order from oldest to most recent.

Beige Behavior, Scene #18 - The only scene that was actually filmed for Sean's original screenplay. Filmed on Sean's little handicam that he got for Christmas a few months prior.

YouTube Films: (Note - YouTube, no longer its former magnificent self, deleted the audio from some of our films because we had used copyrighted material. As if a couple of high school kids would know better anyways!)

300 Balls - Our first full project together. Filming, editing, and sound are crude, at best. A mixture of the story lines from the then newly released 300, and the upcoming Balls of Fury movie. I star as Xerxes, and my friend Chris stars as Leonidas, as we settle our differences via an epic game of ping pong. Who is the victor? Take a look!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ad_RU71OTo

Sexy Slasher - Our twisted version of a typical slasher film. With no female actresses at our disposal, Chris donned the blouse and skirt. I play the jock who is trying to get "her" into my bedroom all night. Leonardo Figueroa plays the demented murdered - who gets sexually aroused while killing. What is the only way to stop a killer that thrives on arousal?...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pks019t_qew&feature=related

Tumbleweed Volumes 9, 10, 11 - This trio of films, which is three segments of one Western, were the films that were damaged the most when YouTube stripped them of their audio tracks. Now they are just shadows of their former selves. At least our cinematography is improving, though!

http://www.youtube.com/user/FranksFurts#p/u/6/PEj6Z6tDeJA

http://www.youtube.com/user/FranksFurts#p/u/5/6OgOEqsh398

http://www.youtube.com/user/FranksFurts#p/u/4/K9mYAzUxaPA

It was at this point that we began getting more serious about what we were doing. Sean and I began looking into some small local film festivals.

Sand Creek High School Annual Film Festival (Spring 2008): This was our first film festival, which took place at our high school. Devil's Free Time took 1st place, and boosted our confidence enough for us to look into entering more festivals.

Neighborhood Watch - This was a fictional documentary-style film that followed a neighborhood watch volunteer and his hilarious encounter with a local redneck. Lighting was the major problem we faced here, and is something we have improved on largely recently.

http://www.youtube.com/user/FranksFurts#p/u/2/dDzGhUcqcjM

WTF!? - Almost a spoof style film that we made one night after seeing "Cloverfield." This film was almost just as much of a flop. (Not quite, though :P)

http://www.youtube.com/user/FranksFurts#p/u/1/z6Fgi4Q63Ug

The Devil's Free Time - This short follows the storyline of "The Devil Went Down to Georgia," except it revolves around the popular video game Guitar Hero 3. This, the film that won the film festival, is where our skill in editing begins to accumulate. It may not be so visible in the film, as we were still filming on a simple handicam, but every experience yields newfound knowledge and skill.

http://www.youtube.com/user/FranksFurts#p/u/3/Ui5gOzSL3Sw

At this point, our "conquest" was but a hobby. It was something we would do every once in a while to hang out and have a few laughs. That dramatically changed with the start of our senior year in high school. The fine arts department had just received a huge grant, and was inundated with top of the line industry standard equipment. Cameras, microphones, editing programs, Mac computers, anything we could have dreamed of. The best part? We've got access to pretty much whatever we want, whenever we want, via a connection to the department leaders. Movies were becoming more than a hobby to us. Our dreams started to shift from "getting a college degree and living a comfortable life" to "dominating the global film industry in every genre." We started to get serious.. The next step, enter the city-wide high school film festival.

CIVA Charter High School Local Film Competition (Spring 2008): a film festival that was open to competitors from across the Colorado Springs region. We were jokingly calling ourselves "Whole Wheat Treats Productions," a name that Sean had randomly spouted off during one day of filming. Did we come home with the Best in Show award? Absolutely.

Waiting Room - The CIVA FilmFest was our first foray into more serious genres. This film was about a man (played by me) who has a close call with death after barely being missed by a speeding car. As he goes about the rest of his day, things slowly get more and more weird, almost nightmarish. He encounters a spooky figure, dressed on his left side in black, on his right side in white. As the movie draws to a close, the main character goes to cross the street late at night when the scene suddenly cuts back to the daytime shot from the beginning. He is struck by the speeding car. He has been dead the whole time, and had been in purgatory awaiting judgment. (Best In Show)

Paranoia Prima - Paranoia has a more simple plot that Waiting Room. It focuses on a student who is slowly becoming a paranoid recluse, who thinks that another student is following and wants to kill him. The movie climaxes with the main character running away from the guy who is following him. When the man sprints after him, that character turns, revealing a gun, and shoots and kills him. It turns out that the student who has been following him all along was really just trying to return the iPod that the main character lost earlier in the film.

After the festival wrapped up we were inundated with congratulations from all kinds of attendants, including professional actors and radio personalities, who were impressed with our work.

Once we won this larger film festival, we wanted to continue our undefeated streak. Thus far we had only competed with other students, it was time to take our game to the next level.

Sundance Film Festival (Summer 2008): Our dream was to enter the Sundance Film Festival in Park City Utah. If we worked hard enough over the summer and really took our time to create a professional caliber short film, we knew we could make it in..

Duality - No doubt, our best film to date. It would have been close to half an hour in length. It was about 12 months in the life of one man, the main character. They were delivered out of order, which created an intense dramatic effect. For example, the man's girlfriend is killed in November, which is shown third to last in the series of months. In the next month (October) we find out that she was pregnant with their first child. We took our time planning, traveling, and filming. All that was left to do was edit and send it off to Sundance. This was also our first experience filming a major film with all of our new equipment. When attempting to transfer the files onto the computer for editing, there was an electronic error and ALL of the files were corrupted. Everything was lost, and we were devastated for losing over 2 months of work. It was hard to keep going, but we couldn't stay away from a camera for long.

Boulder 24 Hour Shootout (Fall 2008): This festival hosted professional competitors from around the country. The competition was to film a short video and edit it within a 24 hour period, all using only in camera editing techniques. We were upset after viewing the winners and finding that we were not chosen. However, after the banquet we were approached by one of the judges. She said, "Are you the guys that made Stik Bug? I don't know why yours wasn't chosen. I was one of the judges who saw it, and I thought it was absolutely amazing. Don't let this bother you - you guys need to continue making films." Such a simple conversation had a deep impact on us, and we were driven to continue.

Stik Bug - Centered on a man who, throughout the movie, wanders the city of Boulder, CO trying to complete some project of his. It is some "work of art" that he is trying to get done before something happens to him. In the end, an employee of an insane asylum arrives to take this man back after he had escaped a few days prior.

It was hard not winning the competition, but our filmmaking had begun to look more polished, more professional. We were hired to film a video for DriveSmart to be shown at a school assembly. Soon after that, Sean got word that he had been awarded a $40,000 film scholarship for our accomplishments as a film company thus far.


Sand Creek High School Annual Film Festival (Spring 2009):


Decay - Decay was a perfect example of everything we had learned up to this point in our so called "careers." It focused on the main character, Chris, who graduates high school a semester early. Over the course of the following months he alienates his friends, family members, and eventually he even loses touch with reality. The film culminates with a great final scene in which Chris murders his neighbor. Just afterwards, though, we find out that he had actually committed suicide, and envisioned his killing of his neighbor in place of his killing of himself. Thus far, Decay incorporates our best use of music, lighting, sound, and editing techniques. It was a great opportunity for growth, if nothing else.

We graduated, and took the next few months off to prepare for college, and our biggest projects yet..

Now, Sean and I work for a marketing company, Barzhini! Marketing Ventures. We are the head of the film department, and we handle all of the advertising for Barzhini! and its many clients. Just a few days ago we finished filming a series of 8 commercials. It was our first project with producers, professional make-up artists, professional sound technicians, and profession actors/actresses. Even though it has only been 3 days, we have already been offered 2 more contracts with other organizations. Hopefully this will help to legitimize our business, and, in the end, contribute to getting us to our goal of producing our own full length independent film.

Sean has already written the script for it, titled "Black Coffee." It is an incredible story, and will make for a spectacular film. We have signed on with a local company, Producers Group Studios, to help us with the financing and production. We are currently in the financing stage, and hope to begin filming this coming winter.