Digital Content Producer
March 2009 issue

SenoReallty Pictures
One company that benefits from its films being shot in the Kansas City area is Lawrence, Kan.-based SenoReality Pictures.

"A lot of people in Kansas City and Lawrence work on each other's films," says cofounder Patrick Rea. "We just all know each other. If someone needs a sound guy, they'll give Ryan a call, or [if they] need me to do something, they'll give me a call."

Since graduating with film degrees from KU in 2002, Rea and Ryan S. Jones have been staples of the independent movie scene in the Lawrence/KC area, producing an indie feature film and at least 15 short films together under the SenoReality banner.

Rea handles the writing and directing duties, while Jones does almost everything else—although he specializes in sound mixing, sporting one of the only 5.1 surround mix setups in the area. Another partner, Josh Robison, moved to Atlanta last year, but he still edits certain projects and sends them back to Jones for the finishing touches.

The company may not have a fancy workplace, but SenoReality does have an office space—not that they main-tain regular hours there. All the editing and sound design is done out of the house that the duo currently shares with an-other roommate. This means that the office is almost always dressed as a set and is used mostly as a shooting location.

Living in a liberal, arts-friendly town such as Lawrence has its perks, and SenoReality is quite happy to be in the heart-land. "There's a lot of local support," Rea says. "Virtually all of our locations we get for free because we're able to kindly ask them. If you're in L.A., you have to have a permit wherever you go. You can't put your tripod on the sidewalk without some-one stopping you and saying, 'Where's your permit?'"

A partnership with Free State Studios, a local televi-sion production company, provides SenoReality with some valuable financial support as well. In 2008, Rea and Jones produced three short films in collaboration with Free State. The first one, Woman's Intuition, won a re-gional Emmy award. Rea also works part-time for the studio, while Jones somehow manages to hold down a 9-to-5 at Free State working in advertising production. On weekends and at night, Jones is hard at work on SenoReality projects.

Making short films is the best way to get hands-on ex-perience with filming and editing techniques, and it's also very valuable when it comes to trying out different gear. SenoReality's feature, The Empty Acre, was shot with the standard-definition Panasonic AG-DVX100A. After that, the company moved on to the Sony HVR-Z1U. After
some Super 16 film projects, Rea shot five shorts with the Panasonic AG-HVX200 using either the Redrock Micro 35mm lens adapter or the Letus35 Extreme lens adapter for a filmic look. A teaser for SenoReality's newest project was shot using the Thomson Grass Valley Viper FilmStream, and Rea just recently shot some 4K footage with the Red Digital Cinema Red One camera.
It's been two years since Rea shot anything on film—and that's mostly because when he started shooting in HD, no-body could tell the difference. The ability to look back at the footage you've shot immediately rather than waiting for dai-lies to be developed is a huge plus as well. This is especially important for short films that may not have much of a sched-ule for reshoots or money for more film.

"With [the short] Emergency Preparedness, which was shot in 2006, the last shot of the day we got was only a half a take of it because we ran out of film," Rea says. "We ended up barely having enough to make that shot work in the film and then we were done. I had no more film."

Down in the basement, Jones does his sound-design work amid walls covered with DVDs and Indiana Jones posters at a desk that's surrounded by loudspeakers. He just recently switched to MOTU Digital Performer for his audio work-station, and he says he is quite pleased that it doesn't eat his processing power like Apple Soundtrack Pro did.

The film festival circuit is very important for a small stu-dio such as SenoReality, which will be screening its shorts at the South by Southwest Film Festival in Austin, Texas, this month. Not only does it gain exposure for the films, but it's also a chance to meet people—if you can afford to go.

Most of the shorts being produced by SenoReality are rooted in suspense, sci-fl, and horror, so Rea and Jones have been traveling to the three Weekend of Horrors con-ventions put on in cities such as Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, and Austin each year by popular horror maga-zine Fangoiia. These conventions are three-day weekends filled with appearances by cult film directors and stars alike, and SenoReality has been showing its films in a 30-minute block called "Horrors From Kansas," making appearances whenever possible.

"When we go to film festivals, we stick out a little more," Rea says. "It's a good thing, especially when they see our production value is slightly better sometimes. They're like, 'Wow, you guys are doing that stuff in Kansas?' and we tell them how much we're doing it for and people become more inter-ested in shooting in Kansas."

Back in 2002, it was odd for Rea and Jones to not immediately move to Los Angeles after gradu-ating from film school. Students and faculty at the university fully expected them to go, but they were too busy actually making films to ever look up. After getting their feet wet, it just seemed like sticking with the creative community that fostered them was the right thing to do. Some of their friends trav-eled to the coast, only to come back after not being able to find work. Others have been successful. With the support system SenoReality has built in the Lawrence/Kansas City area, however, the company has no reason to leave.

Although both Rea and Jones agree that getting au-diences for their movies—whether it's through film fes-tivals or a DVD compilation of SenoReality shorts called Heartland Honors—is satisfying, they also both agree that their greatest satisfaction comes from seeing a project through from conception to postproduction. Creating your own work from the ground up can be frustrating and chal-lenging, but it's that very process that makes it so reward-ing as well. The only thing Jones says he wishes he could change are the number of hours in a day.

"Sometimes I don't have enough time to work on proj-ects," Jones says. "I wish that the days were longer than 36 hours a day, but you can't do that. There's just not enough time, and it really irritates me that I can't work on [projects] more."

"It's like we wish we were Michael Keaton in that movie Multiplicity and we could clone ourselves," Rea says. "Unfor-tunately, the dumb one would [probably] be out shooting."
See SenoReality Pictures' reel at reel-exchange.com/ members/83ef381f/pm6le

From:
http://digitalcontentproducer.com/dcc/revfeat/crossroads-arts-0309/index...