As part of the LA screening of Gone Doggy Gone, Buzzworm Films held a contest to locate the cutest Yorkie of all time. Here are the winners, announced live from the Arena Cinema Hollywood.
Finalists:
“Butterball” owned by Heather Landry
“Lady Shelby” owned by Nancy Phillipps
Skipper Neuzerling’s three little furbabies: “Queen Zoey,” “Princess Maya” and
“Prince Moet”` via Crazy Yorky Ladies (Third Runners Up)
“Sookie” owned by Kimberly FitzGerald submitted by Yorkie Morkie Universe
“Hollywood” owned by Bobbie Blyle
“Gizzy Rose” owned by Carlene Guthrie (Second Runner Up)
Gayle Hope’s baby submitted by Yorkie Morkie Universe
"Gus" of the famed Facebook Yorkie duo “Gus and Rosie” (WINNER!!!)
"Gus" picture here with the champagne bottle, won "Best in Show" and received a very special prize from Gail Jones, (Plain Jane Back to Basics). Gail was the exclusive costume designer for Laila, Yorkie star of the comedy feature "Gone Doggy Gone".
Also among the prizes, "Gus" won a fancy front carrier doggy bjorn similar to the one worn by Laila in the film.
Other prizes include, autographed posters, signed by Yorkie star Laila, and writer/directors Kasi Brown and Brandon Walter. The finalists received signed DVDs of "Gone Doggy Gone", a wacky film that critics are comparing to Raising Arizona as "the surprise comedy of the year"... (read reviews)
Film starring Yorkie selects spcaLA as charity partner
BuzzWorm Films, has selected SpcaLA as their official West Coast charity partner for the LA theatrical release of Gone Doggy Gone. Dog lovers in the Los Angeles area are encouraged to attend a special screening of the film where a portion of the ticket sales will go toward helping animals in need. Tickets are still available to the June 26th - July 2nd screening and may be purchased at Arena Cinema Hollywood.
Gone Doggy Gone is an award-winning comedy about a couple stuck in a lack-luster marriage that treat their dog like their own human baby. Working the grind in Los Angeles, they leave little time for each other. What free time they have is spent doting on the dog, until it gets kidnapped for ransom.
Building the movie on DVD is simple these days, but getting the best looking film is such a pain! Unfortunately, it's still safer to send a DVD rather than a Blu-Ray even though it looks subpar. So our film is 89 minutes and you can pick a setting in Compressor 4.1 for DVDs and it will build a disc, but I found the quality to be subpar. After messing around with the settings and letting it build 6 different verisons of the movie (which took all day BTW!), you can get your film to look pretty darn good.
The custom setting I ended up going with for our 89min feature was this one:
CBR (BEST) 6.5
The disc ended up being 4.37GB + the audio of 129MB for a total of around 4.38GB which is really good. DVDs have a ceiling of 4.4GB. The first disc I built using Compressor's default settings was only 3.3GB. That's 1GB less data of on the TV and it really showed.
You might say, "why not use VBR (Variable Bit Rate)? Isn't it supposed to be better?" I did try a few of these out... 1 pass and 2 pass versions and found the CBR was better. I think if our film had more chopity chop action it would have made more of a difference and I would've used VBR.
You might also say "why not using a higher encode like 7.5Mbps?" This can be tricky. It will play back fine on a computer, but some DVD players will choke. I gleaned most of the compressing info from Larry Jordan who's a king at this stuff.
He says the following:
So, to make sure that your DVDs will burn properly:
1) Set your average bit rate between 4.0 Mbps and 6.5 Mbps. (The lower the number, the more video you can squeeze onto your DVD. 4.0 Mbps should allow a little more than 2 hours of video.)
2) Make sure your peak bit-rate doesn’t exceed 7.5 Mbps. 7.0 Mbps is better. (I use 7.2.) This makes sure you have enough head-room to compress active scenes without creating so much data that computers or older DVD players can’t keep up.
Minnie missing
Echo park and the hills thereof.
Lost dog - INDO
Echo park area
Rocky needs your help!
Rocky needs your help to live. His "mom" Megan helped us make our film and any kind of help you can give to raising money for this adorable pooch would be much appreciated!
A day after we finished shooting our film we discovered that a real life yorkie named "Walter" was kidnapped. The similarities to the situation of our film are eery. Walter is 11, deaf and is somewhere in the Hollywood. Walter's mom was instructed to post missing dog flyers, then the kidnapper would return the dog and accept the "reward". If you see this little guy with someone other than its owner please contact helpfindwalter@gmail.com.
An email from the owner:
We don't know much about the guy who took him, except that he has an Armenian accent, and is very familiar with an area near our house that's referred to as "Little Armenia" (between Wilton & Normandie, and Franklin & Sunset. My guess is he lives somewhere in that vicinity.
Walter is tagged, but they may have removed his collar. He is also microchipped. He's deaf so won't hear you if you call, but if he sees you he'll come to you.
UPDATE 5/19/13 :
Walter has been returned to his owner! The kidnapper dumped him off on Los Feliz boulevard and a good samaritan returned him.
Laila has famous friends: Laila and Anjelah Johnson do Art Walk
It’s hard to decide what to eat at a street fair. There’s so many choices, most of them bad. Comedienne Anjelah Johnson and Laila the Yorkie are picky eaters.
Restored from the Internet Archive. The original video was hosted on Vimeo and is no longer available.
Found Doggy Found!
Nala, The Australian Shepherd, who we featured on our website a month ago has been found! Such great news.
The Inspiration behind 'Gone Doggy Gone'
People often ask us what the inspiration is behind our film, Gone Doggy Gone. Well, let me tell you. I had a dog walker named Jill who considered Laila to be one of her best friends. She would come and pick her up and then at the end of the day would report that she had smuggled her into the grocery store, taken her to the movies, to visit her friends and even to her waxing appointments. She also began to return Laila later and later, because she was having so much fun with her. And I began to worry. One day, I expressed this concern to Brandon and he said, "What if Jill just kept your dog"?... I really considered that and so did he and an idea was born. What if... someone kidnapped your dog?
The original video for this post was hosted on Vimeo and is no longer available.
Nala is missing - $5000 reward
Found this poster all over Pacific Palisades. $5000 reward if you can find this dog.
They have a very cool website for filmmakers. They offer the latest news, classes, books, dvds, how-to articles and a FREE DIGI copy of their latest magazine. Worth checking out.
Henry is missing
Posted at the PCH and Heathercliff road in Malibu.
I cannot help but compare my recent introduction to surfing to my current experience in Independent feature filmmaking. When Brandon and I mused about the possibilities of producing the feature we wrote, I told myself that this time I would sit back, be creative, direct the film, act in it, but NOT be involved in the mind numbing, brain splitting, production end of things. I'd done it before for a short film, 'A Woman Reported' (Sundance 2004) and it was rewarding, I could do it, but this time I was going to just be an "artist". I pictured myself mussing up my hair over endless cups of coffee, making script changes, worrying over character choices, but never scheduling, budgeting, number crunching. NEVER AGAIN is what I said. Ha! As the weeks closed in and no lowly paid "passionate about the project" producer showed their face, Brandon and I realized that if we wanted to go forward with the film, we'd have to buck up and take up the reigns.
Which brings me to the surfing. Being an athletic person, I sort of pictured myself paddling out into the great blue yonder and effortlessly taking smooth waves toward white sandy beaches. Wrong. It's more like paddle, paddle, gasp, paddle, paddle, Holy Shits a huge freaking wave is cooommiiiing--- Oh, I'm on top of it and I might be fine...nope glugluglgluglgluglgug. Oh my God I'm alive! And back we go again in case it's not so bad next time. That's how the producing hit us. We had no idea how to use any of the programs (Movie Magic Scheduling, Budgeting) but people were asking us questions like, "what's your budget"? and "if I give you money, what's my investment"? Also, actors we respect were reading the script and loving it and asking what their time committment was going to be. Just as we learned one thing, we'd realize we'd scheduled it wrong and have to start over. It was exhausting and more than one nervous breakdown was had, but we are both wholeheartedly thankful that we were shoved into the swell and forced to learn the hard way, because only through drowning do we understand what we are getting ourselves into and truly appreciate the ride.
Stuffed Yorkie
We've been looking for a stuffed Yorkie to double for our star. This is close, but a little too Chewbacca. Thanks Donna!
We launch our campaign on Monday, the 27th!
Our video is complete, the perks are all setup and we'll be launching mid-day Monday. Can't Wait!
Mo is missing
Be on the lookout for this lovable pitbull mix in the Silverlake area.
Pickles is missing
If you've seen this cute pooch who answers to the name of "Pickles" please contact tammy.hollis@sbcglobal.net.
