Production

We've been producing commercials and films for nearly a decade. Our portfolio ranges form small internet spots to the #1 commercial of Super Bowl XLV.

KNOW MORE

Development

We develop feature film properties for both studio and independent production. For a list of available properties:

CONTACT US

Publishing

In 2014, we decided to branch into the publishing world. Click below for a list of available titles and submission policy.

KNOW MORE

“The Princess of Prophecy” – Now up for Pre-Order

We are proud to announce Book Two of Aria Cunningham’s “her-story” retelling of the Trojan War has an official release date! Mark your kindles for March 1st. 

Ebook-Cover---Standard-Ratio---Small-Size

Join Helen and Paris in Volume II of their epic adventure.

The star-crossed lovers have escaped Mycenae, but they are not safe yet. Still in hostile waters, every port from the Greek mainland to the Old World presents a risk of exposure. The wrath of Menelaus and Agamemnon follows in their wake, but Helen keeps faith that her love for Paris is ordained, trusting to the prophecy of her childhood.

When the Fates force a costly detour to Egypt, Helen and Paris are placed at the mercies of the Egyptian crown and temple. Pharaoh is dying, and the line of succession is anything but secure. The pair soon find themselves embroiled in local politics, and the High Priest of Amun-Re, troubled by conflicting omens, takes a dangerous interest in the forbidden lovers. In order to escape the Two Lands, Paris and Helen will have to decide how many traditions they are willing to forsake in the name of love.

But the sands of the hourglass are running out. Clytemnestra, hell-bent on revenge, has hired a former sell-sword to retrieve her twin at all costs. Little does the queen know, this Scylax is a man conflicted, torn between his allegiance to, and hatred for, royalty. He is a raptor, and once his prey is in sight, he never misses…

The Princess of Prophecy, Heroes of the Trojan War, Volume II

AVAILABLE FOR PRE-ORDER NOW!

Visit our Amazon Page to reserve your copy.

——–

If you are a blogger, book reviewer or media outlet interested in author interviews or reviewing an ARC copy of the book, please contact Tess Burningham at tess @ mythmakersent .com .

Published: February 10, 2015

The Princess of Sparta – Now an Amazon Best Seller!

eReader_Cover Last week, “The Princess of Sparta: Heroes of the Trojan War” topped 3 Amazon best seller charts! With almost 28,000 downloads in 5 days, it became the #1 Historical Romance, #1 Ancient World Romance, and #1 Greek & Roman Fantasy/Mythology kindle book. At the peak of its run, it also was the #7 downloaded book out of the whole kindle store – that’s cross genre!

We are excited to welcome the new readers for Aria Cunningham’s “Her-story” interpretation behind the Trojan War, and hope they continue to read the whole series. Book 2, “The Princess of Prophecy” is hitting book stores March 1st, 2015. Pre-orders are up now at Amazon.

Published: February 2, 2015

Mileage Tracking, Something everyone in our business needs to do.

Hey everyone – this is a little off topic from film, but it’s a topic that’s come up in a lot of our conversations recently and is something that basically everyone working in the industry should know about because it can put a heck of a lot of cash back in your pocket at the end of the year.

Almost everyone in this business drives a lot for work – especially if you live in LA.  From Santa Monica to Hollywood to the Valley and back, maybe more than once a day, you put a lot of miles on your car.  All of those miles driven for business can be deducted from your gross adjusted income at $0.56 per mile.  It’s an absolutely huge deduction – literally putting thousands of dollars in your pocket every year.

The problem is that nobody keeps a mileage log.  We know the drill, it’s impossible to remember to keep a log when you are being pressed for every ounce of time on set.  Besides that, it’s a huge pain and frankly it’s just too easy to forget to keep a mileage log by hand anyway.  We have the same issue – and over the last several years we’ve tried just about every tool out there to do it for us, including a bunch of apps and even a few devices.  Apps really don’t work very well and we never liked anything, and found that our logs were still totally incomplete.

But a month ago we finally found the thing that does what everyone wants.  It’s called The Mileage Ace and it’s the best mileage tracker, hands down.  It stays permanently in your car and creates a 100% accurate IRS mileage log for every trip you drive.  It never misses a thing.  And the best part is that you do not need to lift a finger if you don’t want to – and it still works.

We could give you a bunch of details on it, but you can get it all at their website www.mileage-ace.com.  All we can say is if you’re driving for business and claiming the mileage deduction, go buy The Mileage Ace.  These mileage trackers should be so mandatory that every car should ship with one.

Published: October 17, 2014

Doritos “Pug Attack”

Portfolio_Pug_Atack

Dorito’s Pug Attack – USA Today’s #1 Commercial of Superbowl XLV from JR Burningham on Vimeo.

In 2011 we created the #1 commercial of Super Bowl XLV. Below is a partial list of some of the stats the Pug took on like 150 lbs. Rottweiler.

USA TODAY: Best Super Bowl ads: A doggone tie for Ad Meter

TWITTER: Pug Attack Most Tweeted Super Bowl Ad

NIELSEN: Pug Attack #1 Most Recalled Ad Of The Super Bowl

Ace Metrix: Doritos Ad Most Effective of Super Bowl

#1 Favorite Ad in Young Adults

 

Published: January 30, 2014

WEBSITE UNDER CONSTRUCTION

Just two weeks ago, our web hosting server upgraded their PHP to version 5.5.  If that’s gibberish to you, it is to us too!

The consequences, however, are that it killed a whole bunch of our site and reset many elements in our database (that’s why the site looks like a template now).  We are in the process of getting everything updated, but please bear with us as we do.

 

Published: January 23, 2014

DisneyLiving – Ghoulish Greetings

Halloween_DisneyLiving_Logo

Director Sebastian Davis, Producer Tess Ortbals


Ghoulish Greetings Spot #1


Ghoulish Greetings Spot #2


Ghoulish Greetings Spot #3

Published: October 31, 2010

Disney Living – A Post Coloring Tutorial

Hey folks,

Our friends over at Basher Films put together a detailed blog on the process of color correcting our Disney “Ring” spoof spot.  Entitled “Anatomy of a Grade” Chris Hall takes us through the process of matching the cool style of the original material.  I highly recommend it for all those interested in the emerging art of film coloring.

Check it out:

http://basherfilms.blogspot.com/2010/10/anatomy-of-grade-episode-04-ring.html

Basher films (http://basherfilms.com/) just announced the addition of the DaVinci Resolve to their facilities.  If you are in need of quality color correction at a reasonable rate – give Chris a call!

Happy Halloween!

Published: October 29, 2010

MooVision Goes Live

Moovision Logo

Hey everyone!   The complete site for the two webisodes series I edited just went live today.  Below are the details!


MooNews

Click Here To Visit The Site

A tongue-in-cheek mockumentary Moo News team covers breaking news, investigative reports, revealing interviews and more for milk lovers coast to coast.

 

 

 

 

 

Lydia Sighting - MooNews Facebook Connect Episode

Click to see how we placed YOU into our episode!

 

 

We have 2 more episodes all finished, and they will be posted up there in the coming weeks.


MooLah Logo

Click Here To Visit The Full Site

Coronado and the Moo Mobile take Boston and Miami by storm.

There are 3 more episodes we’ve already finished, and they’ll be rolling out in the coming weeks…


Gourmoo Cookoff Logo

Click to view full website

Enter now to compete in Gourmoo Cookoff, a cooking competition featuring lactose-free milk. You could win a trip to Los Angeles, win premium kitchen gear and a dream culinary vacation!

The competition will be held in early December, and full episodes will roll out in February, 2011.  If you’re a cooking enthusiast, send in a video!!

Published: October 15, 2010

WCA 2010 Industry Forum – Not Your Mama’s Film Industry

Not Your Mama’s Film Industry

Every year the Women of Cinematic Arts puts on a killer conference with a line up of current power house players in the Industry.  On the whole, there are a ton of USC alumni and most encouraging – WOMEN in key creative roles.  Aside from hearing personal anecdotes on blockbuster movies and shows, it is also a great forum to catch up with up-and-coming peers in the industry.

I’ve been a volunteer for the WCA for the past four years and at every Forum as well.  I’m a bit of a junkie to these events.  But the value isn’t with the face time with these Industry elites – it’s really with the connection to the women in the audience.

The WCA is now about 700 members strong with a wide variety of people in various stages of their career.  From current students to working freelancers to young execs – We cover the spectrum.  And we also hire each other.  The Forum is always a great place to reconnect with old friends and new, and to seek out new opportunities.

I have to quote one member – an old friend of mine whom I started film school with back in ’05 – Kate Powers (MFA Screenwriting ’07 – now a writer’s assistant on Breaking Bad).  Her thoughts on the Forum:

As I write this, I am sitting at my desk, doing the *exact job* I dreamed of
landing when I started at USC — and I’m reasonably sure I couldn’t be here
without the guidance and lessons I’ve learned at these industry forums.

Kate is super talented, and I know she is going to be writing in the room on a show in the next five years, for sure.  I’ve had the privilege to direct her work which always had witty dialogue and fun comedic action twists that keep audience engaged.  If not for the WCA – I might have lost touch with Kate.

Yesterday I was able to touch bases with people I haven’t seen in over a year – and in some cases over 5 years!  All dynamic women with a lot of new exciting projects or job opportunities before them.  Many women were exchanging cards and figuring out how they can help each other in their objectives.  That was when it occurred to me…the WCA had achieved it’s goal.  Women supporting women in this industry.

I left yesterday feeling invigorated, as though I got a shot of adrenaline towards my goals.  The keynote speaker, Linda Woolverton, said you have to live your dream and every day work towards that goal no matter how discouraged or alone you may feel.  If you want to write – then write!  And as it turns out, most of the recent phenomenon “Alice in Wonderland” was written in the bathroom to avoid persistant animal distractions.  With organizations like the WCA, I feel a breath of relief, because it IS HARD and LONELY – but with them, that supposedly insurmountable mountain seems more like a challenging hike.

Thank you to all the volunteers and the School for all the hard work of putting on the Forum.  As always – top job ladies!

Published: October 10, 2010

Don’t Make Your Characters Dumber Than Your Audience

There should be a universal list of no-no’s that every writer (and editor) should be forced to go through when they have completed their work.  Amongst them, in fact maybe even atop this whole list, is that your main character should never become dumber than your audience.  Here’s what I mean:

I’m in the last 150 pages of a 2500 page fantasy trilogy.   I have some real pet peeves with this series (which I run into in a lot of fantasy novels) , but here’s what just happened.  Throughout this complex, intriguing, and very good story we have gotten very close to this character named Fitz.  He’s had to endure massive tragedy, massive pain and punishment, and massive discrimination.  He’s strong-willed, clever, and dedicated to his King most of all (who was overthrown by his scheming brother when the King went searching for a way to stop the raids from evil foreigners on their coasts).

Now, nearing the end of this epic story, Fitz and a small group of others have traveled out of their land to find the good King and help him overthrow his conniving brother.  For Fitz, this also would mean that his wife, a woman whom he loves more than anything but believes him to be dead, and his daughter whom he’s never seen will be safe and that he can return to them.  We are close to these people, and we want Fitz to get back there and finally have something good in his life.

Fitz holds The Skill (like Jedi mind tricks – only a few people hold this power and some are evil), though he was never trained in it.  There is a group who are from the conniving King, however, who have been very well trained in it.  They have been following Fitz and his group into the wilds, hoping to corrupt his mind and find a way to hurt him.  Fitz and his group members have realized that a very minuscule Skill-link has formed between Fitz and another character in his group, The Fool (he was the King’s fool – kind of a mysterious prophet).  They are all concerned that this link could be exploited by the king’s Skill users to get into Fitz’s mind without him knowing, or worse – they could take control of the Fool’s mind and get to Fitz.

Then the conniving king recently communicated to Fitz through one of his Skill users that I know where your wife and daughter are.  I will rape her, torture her, and then kill them both.  You can do nothing to stop me. As you can imagine, this is horrendous news for Fitz.  However, he quickly realizes that there is no way any of them know where she is.  So he simply must not allow them to know.

A few pages later, The Fool begins acting strangely.  He asks Fitz if he would be okay with him visiting his wife were Fitz to be killed.  Fitz responds that he’d rather his wife (remember, she thinks he’d dead) never know that he still lives because she’d be hurt he didn’t come to her.  But the Fool persists with his pressure and Fitz says, “Well I don’t even know where she is specifically.  Only that she’s near this town called Buck Cliffs.”  And suddenly the Fool freezes, collapses, and acts exaclty like the last two times evil King’s skill users tried to take control of him.

What does Fitz do?  He gets angry at the Fool for acting like an idiot.  Even when the rest of his group claims that they found the Fool laying on the ground having violent dreams.  They even say, “It’s as if he’s been Skilling using.”  What does Fitz do?  He gets concerned the Fool is sick.  Eventually the Fool wakes up and Fitz has a change of heart, telling the fool he does with him to visit his wife if he were to die.  “Why on earth would you be telling me that, Fitz?”  He doesn’t remember the conversation – only as if it were a remnant of a dying dream.  What does Fitz do?  He still assumes the Fool is sick.

So here I am.  150 pages left, and my main character has been deliberately made an idiot by the author.  Why wouldn’t they realize that the Fool is doing exactly what they’d warned themselves about for days and days on end?  They would realize it!  Instantly!  And if they couldn’t prove it, Fitz wouldn’t be able to hold himself back from using the Skill to try and kill those other guys or at least use people’s minds to try and warn his wife.  Oh I’m certain he’ll realize that the others have now found the approximate location of his wife.  But not for a while (and the book is nearly over).  And in the meantime, I don’t believe anything any longer.  I think a hell of a lot less of the characters I should care most about.

For the love of god, DO NOT ALLOW YOUR AUDIENCE TO GET AHEAD OF YOUR CHARACTERS OR YOUR STORY!!!!

Published: October 9, 2010