The wife and I got this Nasa suit from a good friend and we went and played outside yesterday. (pic below) Neither one of us have lived in a place with snow in a longtime so it feels like Disneyland showed up to our little house nestled in the red rocks. 

I haven't been snowed in since I was a kid down on the Loop Road in the 80's. There was no phone app to check and see if school was cancelled. We called. If no one picked up, school was cancelled. It was a simple and magic time that I can only fully appreciate now because we can see the difference in being plugged into the internet at almost all waking hours of the day. We have become such a demanding "I want it/need it now" kind of folks because of this access and it is great and concerning. With the awesomeness of the "Weefee" (wifi), there is always something to do, task to complete, game to play, videos to learn from. It's like eating but not digesting. If we keep eating without digestion, what will happen to us?

I have a phone, lap top and desktop computer. Don't forget about the TV wired in with Amazon Fire stick in the living room. Even though, with this snow, we are physically, somewhat cut off from the world for the moment, I have all the connection I need. It's great and it is a bit tiring.

I feel that there is not much time for reflection and contemplation. As I write this, adding more content to the thing that keeps us all so occupied, I ask myself "Is this a good thing?" Boundaries has always been one of my weak points. As I get older, I become more aware. I write out lists everyday. Usually, they are too ambitious but if I get 60-80% done, I will be easier on myself at the backend of the day. We all have to have goals and we can all take little bites at a time. Are you out of shape? One wrkout isn't going to do much. But if you workout for 2o minutes a day, 5 days a week for 6 months, you will see a huge difference. 

Personally, as time goes by, I see myself, naturally, moving away from technology to a degree, because I enjoy quiet time now. I didn't realize how much noise threre was, that I put into my life at all hours. Now, I enjoy nature, listening to wind in the trees and water in the creek. The key is to get out of that energetic pull that keeps us all in the "FOMO" stage (Fear of missing out) I'm 46. I don't know if I'm allowed to say that. There is so much going on in the world (good and bad) at all moments of the day that we will never be able to experience it all so let's all pace ourselves and find a healthy balance.

In my developing "hippie mind" I think this Busy-ness / business (see that?) is designed for us to evolve to a point where we only use our phones and internet for a fraction of the day. Then we disconnect, the the tech away and be present with ourselves and fellow humans. 

When I spend time with friends and or family and we are engaged and talking and a phone goes off and that phone becomes the center of attention, I feel as if the experience is being ripped away from both of us. It's sad but the great thing is that it's in our control to say no, turn the phone off and just be people, "people-ing" around for a while. There will always be calls and emails and fb updates but those loves ones are only here, in our lives for so many minutes. How many minutes of them do you want to sacrifice to look at someones food post, complaining text or buzzfeed notification about the 10 best body scrubs for under $10?  

When Theraysa and I were on our honeymoon, I was constantly in a battle between enjoying our week in Moorea Tahiti and taking every picture and video that I could because that place in like heaven. Wow, it's cool. I often had a problem in deciding if I should shoot with my Canon or my iphone or just be present. Canon give better quality footage but iphone allows me to post on IG when we get back to the room. Sometimes I would do both. At least when I was in the water, snorkeling or paddle boarding, I didn't have to be connected to a camera...just kidding. That's where my knockoff GoPro came in.

It's called an Akaso Brave 4. If you don't have the $400 to drop on the GoPro 9000, this is a great way to get your feet wet in seeing if you will use it enough to justify the cost. I've had this one for 8 months and have taken it in the ocean, ATV riding in the Tahitian mountains that look like the set of Moana. I've done some crazy mounts on my bike for some mountain bike rides at Broken Arrow and Girdner trail etc. It is a pretty good camera for under $100 and the only thing that broke was one of the clips. I dragged my bike up a rock so that was my fault.

I could start nerding out on the color profiles and that I see hints of green where there shouldn't be but that is being nit-picky for such a budget camera. I am honestly gonna beat this thing up until it dies out and then see if I will switch to GoPro or if Akaso has earned my business for the longer haul. So far, I would be glad to pay a few more bucks and stay with Akaso if the picture improves. 

I also had some correspondence with GoPro on a camera rig I had built and was looking to prototype and market. GoPro was the obvious first stop. They were interested in doing business and sent me a deal memo to start the actual process. I read the deal and in the small details, it basically stated that they could take any of my ideas, develop them with or without me and my say so. In the end, they stated that they could take all of the credit and give me zero compensation, residuals etc. The whole thing was essentially a scam. Why would they do that?

​When you are an industry leader, you can do whatever you want and people will still say yes because you are so big. Things like this start to happen which is a huge bummer since (I believe) GoPro was started by one person with a cool idea. 

I'm sure Mr. GoPro didn't start this policy. It was more than likely drafted up by a team of lawyers who have plans to take over the world through contract loopholes for aspiring entrepreneurs trying to get established but I am an optimist. I believe that we will all collectively learn, in the future that control and money seem great but it doesn't grow the collective consciousness. These big companies with big overhead aren't always putting out the best stuff but their expensive adverts might try to make us believe different. 

There are so many companies that used to be considered "Knock offs" and they were the cheap alternative. Now, I am seeing that these previous "Second Rate" companies are hanging in the pocket with the big dawgs, producing close to and sometimes better results than the more expensive "brand names." Platforms like Amazon are leveling the playing field a bit more so that ad money isn't as effective as it was before ad targeting on IG and fb.  

My Viltrox lens adapter on my Canon R6 was needed to use my EF lenses. Canon was sold out and I had no other options so Viltrox was the only option. I'm a Canon guy because Canon always gets the job done. I was not excited about buying an "off brand" lens adapter but it turned out to be a great piece of gear at, under $100.

Now, I have been playing with some GoDox flashes and softbox, wireless remotes that fire 2 flashes at once. For the money, it's pretty solid. Not perfect but very good. If you compare my current GoDox experiment at under $1,000 to a high end $3,000 strobe setup, it really closes the quality vs cost gap...My wife and I recently did a shoot with a great photographer who does use the much more expensive gear. When I got the pics back, the flash quality was no different than the ones I am using currently. This is great news for all of you aspiring photographers on a budget. You don't have to be rich to get gear that does a great job. If you are just starting out or looking to upgrade some gear and don't know what you need/want, shoot me an email and let me know if I can help.   

Back to technology and how it keeps us so occupied. Yes, I get the irony. I am finding moments in time to get away and be alone without technology and its awesome every single time. 

My apple watch was always a pain when it came to syncing and giving me music and not rerouting to my iphone or pulling music that it didn't have without wifi. I just wanted music when I ran or rode my bike. After almost a year of getting frustrated with 2 different bluetooth earbud sets and apple watch, I put that stuff away, got a $30 Sandisk mp3 player at Best Buy and some $20 wired earbuds. I dropped a ton of my music onto the the Sandisk. It holds like a million hours of music (rough estimate) and it is NOT connected to anything. I charge the player every other week if I use it often. The apple watch would sometimes die mid-workout. The earbuds would also die from time to time.

With $50 of "old school" gear, I put my $400 apple watch and $100 bluetooth stuff away for good. Sometimes, more expensive doesn't mean better. It just means you bought equipment from a companies that spends a lot advertising a product that isn't superior. It just has that feeling because we see ads everywhere that make us believe its the best. Remember: Perception equals reality. If you believe its the best, it is...until it gets proven otherwise.  

Don't get me wrong, working in the film and photo world, it's almost impossible to function without apple products because they work, don't get viruses and they last. I'm a 20 year Apple guy but I'm just not an Apple watch guy and probably never will be. But, I am typing on a refurbished 2012 MacBook Pro that I bought from Melrose Mac in Hollywood in 2016 I think? I haven't switched to an "air" because I love having ports on the side. My audio jack died so I bought an $8 USB audio adapter made by "Millso" and this thing is still trucking. I mainly write, do email and make music on this lap top and it still does all of those very well. 

My hope is that, I can get some computer genius to rebuild my laptop in a few years and put whatever new parts are needed, into it and I will continue to blog and make music from it. 

When my iMac phases out, I'm pretty sure I'm gonna get that Mac M1 and a aftermarket monitor that is made for photo color correcting. All the reviews I have seen are that it handles and out performs some of the other, more expensive Apple products in speed tests. 

My perspective is probably a bit different in that, I'm not a "consumer" in the traditional sense. I don't run out and try to be the first one to get whatever the new, cool gear is out. You will NEVER see me in line for much of anything, especially whatever new iphone comes out. I'm not hating. I just don't understand this phenomena the way I don't understand those polar bear club people jumping into ice water on New Years or those crazy Irish people who fall down that hill and call it a race. It's just not for me. 

This gear, in my humble opinion, should be used to enhance our collective experience. I have many photo/film friends who are often getting on me and laughing that I don't go get all the "cool" new stuff. Why? I don't need or want to do long boring talks about what the best iphone or 8k camera has the best dynamic range, color space or bit rate. If the image looks the way I was hoping it would look, I am so happy. We have so much technology and if we spend more time on learning the art of storytelling and picture taking in place of getting the next awesome whatever, we might all wind up much happier. The newest does not insure the best outcome.  

I am a "Film Gap Kid" (just made up the term) in that I started in the film/photo world when it was still film, did my first short films on 16 mm, won awards then transitioned to digital in 2009 when RED released their MX.

If you were born after 1990, the chances of you physically working with real film (it gets developed with chemicals in a dark room) are almost zero. If you learned photography and video on an iphone or even a Sony PD 150, you have not seen an entire dimension of what it took to make this thing work. The reason I am addressing this is that the kids don't realize how easy it is to make an image now because they never knew different. A kid with an iphone and a lap top said he couldn't make his first short because he didn't have any money. I pointed to his iphone and lap top and said you have everything you need to do your short. Write a script and make something. Whatever you don't know, look it up on youtube or email/call me. I'll help. 

Your iphone will auto expose and auto focus which are the two tough parts to the tech side. Put a handle on that iphone and get at it! 15 years ago, none of these things were possible. Money to buy film and pay for processing used to be the enemy. Now, I believe it's just laziness.

I am the same way with food. My ancestors grew it out of the dirt and I have no idea what to do if my dinner doesn't come wrapped in plastic. It's just subjective to the times I guess.  

I wandered again. My point is that we only appreciate when we don't have certain things. I lived in a house for a year without hot water and showered at the YMCA when I first moved to L.A. Now, there isn't one time in my life when I ever, take for granted, a hot shower. I say a thank you to the Masters of the Universe every time I have a hot shower.   

I made my film "GOD SEND" (Amazon) with a camera that only shot 1080p aka 1K. Many "Independent" film festivals won't even look at your movie if it wasn't shot on a Red or $30,000 Alexa in 4K. This is silly because it is no longer rewarding the ones who get out there and do it with almost nothing. The concept of "Independent" film is that it was often done with little to no money. I made my entire film with less money than some of these other folks spent on the camera and I beat them. Our "independent" industry needs to rethink how it is finding and promoting content because the true future masters of cinema and visual storytelling might not have a Komodo in the closet and a monthly subscription to the Adobe cloud. That matter not though. Keep creating people. Follow your voice. How your work is recognized does not matter. What matters is that you keep making things that keep you fired up and inspired.   

My film winning multiple awards with a "cheap" camera isn't to brag. It's to prove a point that you can do great art without all of the coolest, newest gear. I attribute some of this to being very crafty in how I shot the film in that I didn't have money for permits or any crew members or any lighting packages. I had lights that construction workers use, bought at home depot. Not even the nice ones. I had $10 silver bowl lights and put regular light bulbs in them. My softbox was from cowboystudios.com and cost like $10. Maybe they paid me to take it. It was so cheap that when I put (4) 100 watt bulbs in it the whole thing melted...and I kept using it because it was all I had. I am so graetful for cheap gear when it comes through because you push your limits and you appreciate good gear when you can afford it. That is a win win. 

I got my first Canon 10 years ago. I have shot other projects on many cameras and most of them have been great. I just love Canon as my personal go to. I don't buy the newest, coolest ones every year because I'm not a rich guy. I just really value my equipment and push it as much as possible. I like to figure out how to do as much as I can with what I have because I was raised that way.

In 10 years, I have bought 3 Canon cameras. I got my 60D in 2010. When I upgraded from my 60D to my 6D in 2014, I gave the 60D to my brother in law and it's still cranking out great stuff. When I bought my R6 a few months ago, I decided to keep my 6D as a 2nd camera. If I can win film festivals on a $1,200 camera, it can sure as heck be my B camera until it chooses to go up to the big camera heaven in the sky. 

Canon (camera/lenses) and Sandisk (SD storage/mp3 player) and Sennheiser (sound) Tamron (lenses) are some of my tried and true favorites over the years. They have been consistent. I picked up my first Tamron 70-300 4-5.6 lens in a pawn shop in Phoenix for $80 in 2010 and I still use it and love that piece of glass. 

​I love Moby's music. I recently saw that he still has his first Korg keyboard that he bought in like the late 1980's for $100 I think. I bought a Korg after seeing how much Moby loved his Korg and I am not disappointed. After 30 years, he still makes music with it and he is one of the biggest music people on the planet!

Appreciate what you have folks. If you want to be a photographer and only have an iphone 6, get on youtube and learn all of the tips and tricks you can and shoot 10,000 pictures with it as you save for the camera you want to upgrade to. I saw a video last night where this kid was shining a flashlight through a bottle of water, onto his model, creating this cool shadow pattern on the model. It was in black and white (also cool) that whole set up cost nothing and the pics are great!

Lean on your creativity and hone your skill of innovating. Because, when you get the cool gear, that skill will always serve you well. If you learn on expensive stuff, if it goes down, you are dead in the water because you never learned to innovate. Learn on the cheap stuff and you will be able to push the good stuff to do more than the others who have the same gear. 

Still, one of my favorite books on filmmaking is "Rebel without a Crew" by Robert Rodriguez. It's an awesome read for anyone who loves an underdog story. This guy took nothing but his passion and drive. He forced creativity because he had little to no resources. He sold his body to medial experiment companies to fund "El Mariachi" and had time to write it because he had to stay at these facilities who were using him like a lab rat. This determination put him at the top of the Hollywood food chain and still to this day, I quote RR saying. "Take your disadvantages and turn them into your advantages." I hope whoever is reading these blogs gets inspired.

If you aren't inspired, send me an email and let me know what I can do to enhance the desired outcome of you taking the time to read this blog. Much Love everyone. levi@flickershackfilms.com     

Having a political opinion nowadays, seems to be off the table, especially when you are running a business but I really think it's good to share ideas and points of view. A different perspective is good if both parties are there to share and not condemn. There is a fine line but let's keep looking for ways to connect rather than judge and dismiss. Sometimes, it's easier said than done.

I grew up here in AZ until I was 13. I am going to guess that we will call that a "Conservative" experience. I went to Christian school and the family always voted Republican. Then I lived in Hawaii, then Phoenix for some more years. In my early 20's, I moved to Los Angeles, spent 10 years in a very liberal place, moved to Louisiana for 2 years to work in film and also as a volunteer in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. That would be "Conservative" for the most part. Back to CA for another decade and then back to Sedona.

I would say, generally speaking, I have spent almost exactly half of my life in a Conservative place and the other half, in the Liberal places...generally speaking. 

​I am grateful to have this experience because despite what our news outlets might want the people to believe, almost every conversation in either place (Conservative or Liberal) comes down to the same talks and almost, the same belief systems. We all want to feel safe and happy. We want to be able to provide for our families and live in a safe environment. Love and safety is the through line that I think we can all agree on. 

I am no expert in any of this, just a recorder of observations and they have been all over the map. I have no interest in "swaying" anyone about anything because the more I learn, the less I realize I know. All I can say to any of this is that if we want love and safety, we need to be that to ourselves and our community. I have had many great conversations with some very loving and intelligent folks over the years and the sentiment is almost always the same. "We are a great country...but we can be better." I agree. This country is awesome but it can be better if we can be better.

​My goal, this year and every year moving forward is to try to give everyone what I am looking for...a friendly "Hello" when I am out and about, a wave to the person in the car, driving by, as I walk my dog, handing a few bucks to the man or woman who is at the corner with a sign that says "Anything will help." It makes the world (just maybe) a little better. At the very least, it feels better to help. I started volunteering 13 years ago and it has given back way more than I have been able to give.  

If we all make little efforts here and there to show our fellow humans that we are all connected, in one way or another, it will benefit all of us in the best ways. Show Love family. We are a great bunch of humans but we can do better. Let's all start with one little action today because that stuff ripples out. I am grateful for you. Go be the best version of you that you have and I promise to do the same. LOVE LOVE LOVE. 

Photo: Paul Hage-Chahine

If we were to jump in a time machine and go back 5 or 10 or more years ago. If you were to tell me that I would be giving marriage advice on a blog, designed for hopefully inspiring folks to get out of their comfort zones and take some risks for the betterment of themselves. I would have asked to you hold my Pabst Blue Ribbon while I fall on the ground, crying with laughter.

I used to be one of those "I'm probably not ever gonna get married" kind of guys. There is a very short and long story to this but blogs are supposed to be bite-sized, I think. So I will give you the short one. 

I grew up with parents who loved each other very much. But, both of them had rough childhood's with parents who were alcoholics and had mental stuff that made regular life very difficult. My parents didn't have any good examples of good relationships so they were just doing their best and they both made their fair share of mistakes. They would often fight, dad would leave and my little sister and I were young so we never really understood what was going on. After seeing this cycle of break ups, get back together for the first 13 years of my life, my dad left for good. This is right about the time boys and girls start paying attention to each other in that hormonal kind of way. I liked girls and every once in a while, a girl would like me. The dating thing would happen and eventually, one of us would call it quits. 

Break ups always hurt but I was pre-programmed. Break ups are a very natural part of the dating, love, relationship cycle because that's what I saw and that's what my parents saw and that's all I really knew about that. It's Plato's "Allegory of the Cave" all over again. How do you explain sunlight to someone who has only seen shadows?   

Now, I promised to try to keep this short so I will cut out some huge, dramatic chunks. What I learned from this was getting married is probably a bad idea because my parents relationship was a mess. Both of their sets of parents had all kinds of issues. Based on my limited ideas of what the relationship world is, I would be best not to ever get married. 

Well, we can look at this in a very simple way. If you got food poisoning, would you never eat again? And it really is that simple. Just because you see something happen in someone else's life (bad or good) doesn't mean that is going to be you life. You have so much more say so in your reality than you might think. In order to learn that, you will have to challenge yourself. I only delve into this pile of cliches because I have been challenging myself thoughts, ideas and very belief system for about 10 years now. I have no no means, figured out the secret to life or consider myself any kind of guru of anything. But, my life has changed in the greatest ways over the last 10 years and all of that comes from releasing old thought patterns and taking new risks based on no experience in these new "risky" environments.    

This long intro bring me to the the reason for the title of this Blog. This was supposed to be about a conversation I recently had with a good friend. He wants to propose to his girlfriend of one year but doesn't have enough money in the bank to buy her the ring he wants to get her. 

Now, this could mean one of two things. 1. He is BS'ing and doesn't want to pop the question so the money is a great excuse. I don't think that is the truth in this scenario. So, it's probably 2. He really does want to marry her but he uses the money thing to delay because there is a fear that lies under the surface. These are all maybe's by the way. A. He is petrified of being turned down. B. He's afraid that he will mess it up. C. Maybe I'm just projecting all of my old silly programming onto this story that he doesn't even know I'm blogging about. As I get older, I find out that I am usually never right about much and when I am, it's usually only a portion of the whole story. 

I told him, we'll call him "Big Mike", I told Big Mike, don't worry about the money or size of the ring. She loves you. She won't care what kind of ring you get her. I know this because I was using this as an excuse for a while as well, before I popped the question to my girl. And it was only in my head. I gave myself the same excuses. But was it really money for a ring that kept me/Big Mike from proposing? I doubt it.  

Despite what you ladies might think about us guys, we are all not the same. Most of us, who seem like we don't care, really care the most. We have grown up in a society that told us to not show our feelings so we spent a lifetime, trying to push it all down to look more "masculine" and all that did was pushed away any possibilities of finding "the right girl" or guy or non-binary, which ever applies to you. Times are changing and guys are being given more room to express themselves and open up which means less dating issues in the future I hope. I won't pretend to know what teens are going through now but I hope they are getting more opportunity to show their emotions so that it doesn't take decades to unwind enough programming to give ones heart to another person who is probably a bit of a mess but is trying to find someone who will help give some balance to their lives. 

There is no perfect scenario and I know that's a cliche to even mention but we humans need to hear things many times, before it really sets in. I was 44 years old before I asked my girlfriend of 8 years to marry me. I had a mental war within myself for way too long, coming up with all of the reasons why I shouldn't get married while staying with this lady, who, by the way, never pressured me to take that step. If she did, I would have probably spooked and left. You can suggest to people, new ways to look at and deal with life but they will almost never do what you think is right. They will do what they are able to do at that time and not a second sooner.

There is a delicate balance and there is no perfect science or mathematic to figure out the opposite sex and how we all find our "perfect" person. We are all just trying to figure it out and in 100 years, the speech and ideas and processes will be vastly different but we all will still be working through age-old stuff like "Am I worthy?" You are not alone. We all feel like this at one point or another.  

When I popped the question to Theraysa, my neurosis and negative mind was working overtime, coming up with every reason to not pop the question. I had enough excuses to fill a Bible but I went out, bought a very small right that wasn't even the right size. I was pretty sure she wouldn't want to keep it because it wasn't really her style. She did want it and when we went in to get it resized, the design was already as small as it could be. We had to return the ring, find another ring, resize that ring and so on.

None of it was perfect and none of it bothered her and that's how I got to begin to see that she was the girl for me because she had already seen me at my worst many many times. She still said yes. She sees my effort that often falls flat and she still seems to love me because I am trying and rarely succeeding. I didn't do any of the proposal stuff perfect and she still said yes!

I will highlight more imperfections in other posts because that's what we all need to see in life. The tv/internet commercials keep presenting life as this shiny, perfect experience and it isn't and that's ok. One thing that I battle with on a constant basis are these wedding websites and platforms that make everything seem perfect when they aren't. Then I changed the way I approached the situation. Maybe they aren't trying to be perfect rather, they are just trying to focus on the lighter side. There is more than enough darkness to see in the world everyday. maybe we all need to start looking at life they way most wedding websites do. Let's find the light and fluffy. Let's look for the good. Let's be nice at all possible turns. 

Even if all of that effort were a total failure, wouldn't it be better to be better to yourself and everyone around you, looking for light rather than focusing on the things that don't work? Feel free to comment and add your ideas of what resonates with you. Is this on point? Do you feel that this message of "Finding the Light" is delusional? We are all connected and in this together. How do we make it better for ourselves and everyone else we connect to?  

PICTURE BELOW: Airstream Road trip 2017. Theraysa and I had lunch at stellinamarfa.com in the famous MARFA, TX. The food is awesome. We spent 3 days in Marfa, ate at almost every restaurant and every one was top notch. Everyone needs to go to Marfa, TX at least once. It is a gem in the middle of nowhere. It heats up between May and September so cooler months are ideal.   
​  

STORY ONE – THE BACK STORY (Part 1)
 
40 Plus years of life, smooshed into some paragraphs.

My love for photography/video & film started when I was 5 aka the 1980’s! My dad found out that JC Penny had released a video camera that connected to a VHS tape machine. JC Penny had their logo on the actual Camera.
 
Dad was semi-obsessed with capturing all kinds of randomness on video. Once he had the camera, he brought it everywhere. I might be one of the only kids on planet Earth who has soccer and baseball games from the early 80’s on VHS tape. I have re-found many of these old tapes and have begun to digitize them. Sedona was a very tiny place, tucked away from most of the world.
 
I plan to make a documentary about the camera and our little town that no one knew about back in the day. Sedona used to be a word of mouth place minus the photography of Bob Bradshaw via Arizona Highways Magazine. This place was quaint. This video camera was such an anomaly that when dad showed up to shoot a game or town meeting at the Masonic temple on Airport hill, many folks thought my dad worked for KUSK tv.
 
When the Holiman Family moved to Sedona in the 70’s, there were exactly zero stoplights, zero round abouts and no sidewalks on 89A. There were no leash laws, Starbucks or Range Rovers. It was pickup trucks and “Robert Begood” or “The Great Randoo” on KAZM AM radio. Robert was also our soccer coach and Randoo was my dad’s good buddy.  
 
Sedona was one step up from an old West cowboy movie set. Thanks to businesses like Basha’s, AJ Bayless, Yellow Front and Coronet, the Flicker Shack movie theater, we had just enough modern to stay fed, clothed and entertained. If we wanted to be fancy, we ventured to Flagstaff.
 
The Flicker Shack and the Holiman’s both started lives in Sedona in the same year. It might not mean much to you but it’s a big part of what I hold in my heart as the place I grew up. I am so honored to use this name for my business all of these years later. It is sacred to me like touching the old log at the Apollo or screaming “GO PACK!” at Lambeau Field in Green Bay.
 
The theater (building) might be a Whole Foods now but it is forever in our hearts The Flicker Shack. Whole Foods just occupies the space now. Don’t get me wrong, my wife and I love the Whole Foods and you will find us in there 2-5 times a week. But it will never not be the sacred ground of the place all of us kids saw movies “Indiana Jones” and “Aliens” for the first time.  
 
I recently won the Ojai Film Festival for my second Feature “GOD SEND” available on Amazon. We also won the first annual Bill Paxton Award in honor of longtime resident of Ojai/legendary actor/director. As I kid, I knew him as “Hicks”. Winning that award which was presented by his son James, was such a huge honor. James’s dad was one of my biggest memories as a kid, watching Aliens and feeling just a bit less tense when he would yell things like: “That’s it. Game over man!”  
 
To Be Continued… 

We shot with Autumn and Adam, the day after New Years day. We ventured out to slick rock and found our spot. Autumn was rehabbing a broken ankle but still got out there. We had a great time and in the end, made some new friends. The "A" Team tie the knot on April 20th this year. We are so happy and excited to welcome them to "The Flicker Shack Family."