BT Media Productions

There is a new trend in Macon and the midstate that has me very excited. There are currently three films either being shot or in pre-production to shoot in town. All three movies are providing jobs to local people, whether it be as an extra, a lead actor, or in production. I believe (and hope) that this trend will continue. Tax incentives, a variety of shoot locations, and great local people like Elliott Dunwody of Bright Blue Sky Productions and Tabitha Walker have all led to this trend that will support our local economy.

The first and highest budget film, “The Crazies,” is being produced by Rob Cowan and stars Timothy Olyphant, who played the bad guy in the most recent “Die Hard” film. The film is budgeted at $23 million and could have a $5 million impact on the midstate, according to Cowan in a Macon Telegraph article. Most of the production has taken place in Perry, GA, but the film has also shot some scenes at the Fountain Car Wash in Macon.

“The Hardest Hitter” is a smaller budget independent film that is being filmed in Macon. It is about Ricky Hill, who aspired to play in the MLB. More synopsis information available here. As a smaller independent movie, it is bringing less of its own people to Macon, and relying more on locals for talent and production work. Most production will take place at Luther Williams Field. Two local friends and associates of mine have already been hired on this project, Tabitha Walker in the art department, and another in the accounting department. Production is currently slated to begin late May.

The latest movie setting up shop in town is called “Stuck!” and is being directed by Steve Balderson. According to the film’s website, it is a “homage to film noir women-in-prison films.” Balderson’s “Firecracker,” starring Karen Black, was recently shown at the local MAGA Film Festival. According to Con Browning, Balderson’s assistant, Karen Black will also be in this film. The film is being co-produced by Elliott & Beth Dunwody of Bright Blue Sky Productions. Production on this film is set for some time this summer.

About “Hardest Hitter,” Mayor Reichert said that he was very excited to have such an uplifting movie being filmed here and that they would be working to attract more filmmakers to the city in the future (Macon.com). I’m also very excited about the future of the film industry in Macon and I’m definitely looking to get some work from the ones currently in production.

I started this website as a component of Dr. Lucas’ Writing for Digital Media class. I already had a portfolio website up on another domain (which I have since taken down), but this one is much more robust. The class has covered from purchasing a domain name and web hosting all the way through how to install a CMS and add content. All of the class materials can be accessed on the LitMUSE website. And be sure to check out my fellow classmates’ portfolios. I decided through making this site, to start marketing myself as a “Media Professional,” hence the domain name and headline. A more straightforward domain, like brandonthompson (dot) com was not available, but I’m glad that I chose the one that I did.

There are many options today for a content management system. They each have their pros and cons. WordPress, Joomla, and Drupal– all free and open-source– are what I consider to be the best. I ran a Joomla site for MSC-TV. I haven’t had the best experience with it, though I understand that it is a very powerful CMS. I think that most of my problems with it have stemmed from the fact that the MSC website department didn’t install it correctly and I was unable to install any plugins. I have not used Drupal before. I understand that it is a powerful tool, but does not have a lot of support behind it. So, I chose WordPress for this portfolio site. I’ve been quite happy with it so far. I love the mass amounts of plug-ins and how easy it is to automatically install them from the backend. What I don’t like about it is how it is difficult to make the site, as a whole, NOT look like a blog. It is possible, and I think that I was somewhat successful in presenting a portfolio site and not a blog site, but it is difficult to do with most templates.

I’m particularly proud of my header image. It is intended to look like a bird’s eye view of a desk with polaroids from different projects that I have worked on. To do this, I took a background image of a desk WordPress template and used it for my background. Then, I took screencaps from my video projects using Quicktime. After converting those images to JPG, I put the images through the program Poladroid. Finally, I put those images on top of the desk image in Photoshop, made them look scattered, and that was it! I took a little bit of inspiration from the different desk themes for WordPress, but for the most part, I came up with this on my own. Feel free to take inspiration from my idea for your own site– just please make it your own in some sort of way!

For anyone who has or is thinking about making a site of their own, I’d like to point out the importance of having what is called a favicon. From Wikipedia, a favicon is, “a 16×16 pixel square icon associated with a particular website or webpage. Browsers that provide favicon support typically display a page’s favicon in the browser’s Address bar and next to the page’s name in a list of bookmarks.” Basically, it’s that little icon that shows up next to the URL or bookmark in a browser. I think that having a favicon really makes your site stand out. For those of you also making a portfolio site, it gives you a better branding. It can be difficult getting something that looks clear in a 16 x 16 image, but just having something there really makes a difference. “BT” was an easy choice for me.