For this week’s Geek of the Week I got to spend of a few minutes with one of my favorite Philly film geeks, Lansing Sylvia the Director of Development over at the Philadelphia Film Society. I first got to know Lansie during the 20th Philadelphia Film Festival where she helped me co-ordinate some of the great content and contests for Geekadelphia.

For it being her first year she really brought a fresh passion and perspective that I feel was really missing from the festival, and I look forward to see what she brings to the Film Society in the years to come. I hope you enjoy our little chat about all things Philly film.

Most of our readers will probably know you as the voice of the Philadelphia Film Society’s Twitter, so what exactly do you do at the Film Society and how did you land that gig in the first place?

I haven’t been able to do the Twitter as much as before.

So what I do at the Film Society is I am the Director of Development, which is philanthropic foundational individual and corporate giving. So what that means is I am partially responsible for keeping the lights on.

How I got the gig is I got my masters in non profit leadership and one of my professors had just joined the board of the Film Society, so she knew they were looking for someone with development and marketing experience. She also knew I wanted to stay in Philly, so she recommended me to Andrew our executive director who met with me and I was hired about four or five weeks after I graduated.

What is it like working with an organization like the Philadelphia Film Society?

One of the things I am constantly amazed at is how tiny the Philadelphia Film Society is, the year round staff is like 6 people and we have a great seasonal staff that comes in as well.  Working in such a small environment, its like working in a family. It really honestly is.

Everyone plays a role and those roles always change.  That is the best thing but it is also the most challenging.

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If you live in Philadelphia and you love sports, then you are probably a Philadelphia Flyers fan. While the Eagles may have the bigger fanbase, Flyers fans are more like a cult; they are devoted to their team to a fault and will follow them through good and bad, thick or thin.

If the above is a good description of you, then you are going to be jealous as hell of this week’s Geek of the Week, Sarah Baicker. In addition to being in charge of all Flyers content on CSNPhilly.com, she gets to go to every game, interview players and handles social media for the team.

I was lucky enough to interview Sarah about the Flyers, Philly sports fans and what any of this has to do with little green dinosaurs.

Have you always been a sports fan?

I’ve definitely been a hockey fan for as long as I can remember. The other sports … well, they were slower to come.

I have this memory of being maybe 11 years old or so, and my dad had promised to take me ice skating – something I was very excited for, as I’d really jumped on the hockey bandwagon by that point – and his friend called him up and offered him two really good free tickets to an Eagles game. He pitched the idea to me, and I immediately rejected it.

We were going ice skating, come hell, high water, or free Birds tickets. These days, though, I’m pretty sure I’d take the tickets … even though the team didn’t live up to expectations this season. (Ugh, that’s a whole other issue!)

You do a lot of Flyers coverage for Comcast Sportsnet. What’s a typical day like?

It probably sounds cliché, but there’s no such thing as a typical day for me. Technically, I’m a digital producer responsible primarily for overseeing the Flyers coverage on CSNPhilly.com, Comcast SportsNet’s home on the Web. But … it would take me three days (or about 300 pages) to list everything I do. (more…)

Today we talk to Cory Anotado, a good friend of mine and a graduate of La Salle University’s Digital Art and Multimedia Design program. Sadly, since we did this interview, he’s moved down to Baltimore to be an Interactive Production Developer at GKV Communications. However, we’re being nice and posting it anyway.

Of all the geeks I know, Cory is hands-down the biggest game geek, and I’m not talking video games.

How did you get into loving game shows so much?

I blame my grandmother for keeping the TV on while she watched me when I was a kid. Family Feud was at 10, and then the Price is Right was at 11. Various cable game shows, like Press Your Luck, Debt and some USA originals were in the afternoon. Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune came on at 7. I suppose saturation breeds obsession.

Tell me about your favorite game show and why.

Narrowing my favorite game show down to one is an oft-requested, futile task. If it’s based on current consumption, then it would be the British game show QI: Quite Interesting. It’s a panel show flanked at the help by Stephen Fry. They ask seemingly simple questions like, “Who was the first President of the United States? And give the seemingly complex (and quite interesting) answer of “Peyton Randolph.” Other shows I enjoy are Pointless (a British game show best described as ‘Backwards Family Feud’), Jeopardy!, Press Your Luck and Family Feud.

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Mark L. Miller might not be a name you’re familiar with yet, but this March that will all change as he and Zenescope Entertainment bring us the latest Grimm Fairy Tales miniseries, The Jungle Book. Mark was nice enough to answer a few questions about himself, what fans can expect from his take on The Jungle Book and what it’s like to be the new kid on the block at Philly’s own Zenescope Entertainment.

Tell us a bit about yourself. You’re an editor at Ain’t It Cool News, correct?

Yes, I still do edit and occasionally still review on Ain’t It Cool as Ambush Bug and have been providing horror and comic book related content for them for over ten years on my weekly AICN COMICS and AICN HORROR columns. I don’t plan on leaving any time soon either, just possibly shifting my role more to editing than reviewing as the demands on writing increase.

I also practice expressive therapy at a residential home for boys and girls in Northern Chicago and have been doing that for about a decade. And then I teach expressive therapy in the grad program at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago as well. Over the last few years, I’ve written some comics; LUNA: ORDER OF THE WEREWOLF for Famous Monsters Magazine and VINCENT PRICE PRESENTS and NANNY & HANK for Bluewater (which was just optioned to be made into a film for 2013).

What is it like to join the ranks of Zenescope as their newest writer?

Joe Brusha, Ralph Tedesco and Raven Gregory have been great to work with. They are extremely supportive of my writing and have encouraged me to do my best (which I hope I’m doing). They have built a really fun company and so far, it’s been nothing but great as far as my collaboration with them on THE JUNGLE BOOK. (more…)

Equal parts supernatural spaghetti Western and buddy comedy, The Grave Doug Freshley (see my review here) is a story about the friendship between a cowboy and the boy he swore to protect. The twist here is that the titular Mr. Freshley dies early on in the book, yet his commitment to keeping the young scamp Bat safe is so great that he doesn’t let his own untimely demise get in the way of keeping his promise.

Originally released as a mini-series by Archaia, the issues have been compiled into a just-released graphic novel. The writer of this most wild of Wild West tales is Josh Hechinger, a 24-year-old Downington resident. Don’t let his young age fool you though, as Hechinger writes with a humor and pathos well beyond his years. Over the past couple of years, his creative output has included the historical comic Okita and the Cat and the ursine wrestling epic Bear Beater Bunyan (both of which are available as iPhone apps).

I recently had the opportunity to conduct a Q&A with Hechinger in which he discussed The Grave Doug Freshley at length, as well as his favorite things to do in Philly. Read on to check out the fun. (more…)

The music of the Beatles is something that, no matter whom you are or what you are into, everyone knows and can appreciate. They are one of the few things on this planet that is truly universal.

So imagine stepping into the shoes of one of these icons to play their music and pay tribute to what they accomplished. This is the situation Steve Landes finds himself in every night as he portrays John Lennon in the Broadway smash Rain: A Tribute to the Beatles. The show returns to Philadelphia from Jan. 31st to Feb. 5th at the Academy of Music and, since Steve is a local guy (from Lansdale) he agreed to answer a few questions about being John Lennon, his own music and returning to Philly.

Were you a big Beatles fan growing up?

The biggest! I was born after The Beatles’ time, but my parents and older sisters were fans, and got me into them from pretty much the time I was born! So yeah, I’m kind of a life-long Beatles fan! My first Beatles records were the old 45s, whatever I could find in boxes in the attic. There was other Beatles stuff up there that used to belong to my sisters – posters, magazines, T-shirts. I just pulled it all down from the attic, put it in my room, and it was all mine from then on in!

Is it intimidating to try and become someone as iconic as John Lennon?

I guess it could be, depending on how you look at it. I think the fact that he’s such an icon actually helps – we could never ever be those people, they’re just so huge, so much a part of our world, so well known. No, our main focus is replicating the music as authentically as possible, and then to set the stage, we embody their character in the show. It’s been a lot of fun to study who he was, how he felt at any given time, where he was coming from musically. All of that stuff helps to bring him to life, and as a fan, has been really eye-opening and inspiring, to see him from a whole different angle. (more…)

Robert Drake is a prominent figure in Philadelphia. He DJ’s at several places around Philly such as Club Fluid and The Bike Stop in addition to opening up for almost every 80’s act that breezes through town (think OMD or the B-52’s). He has a monthly DJ’ing gig on WXPN radio entitled “Land of the Lost” where he shares is New Wave gems.

He is a co-founder of the Zombie Crawl, Zombie Prom and Zombie Beach Party. Amidst all this awesome, he finds time to be on the Board of Directors for the South Street Headhouse District where he is a member as well as serving as Vice-Chair through 2011.

How long have you been DJ’ing? Have you always been most interested in the 80′s music scene?

Robert Drake: I started my DJ stint back in the early 80s with occasional gigs at some of Philly’s underground clubs of the day; Hot Club, Kennel Club and even a guest stint at NYC’s Danceteria. As with most people, you always have a soft spot for the soundtrack of your youth – so do I. Plus, I always felt the 80s got a bum rap in the look-back machine and I made it my mission to celebrate New Wave for those that loved it and those that never really got to explore it before.

How did the Zombie Crawl movement get started here in Philly?

Robert Drake: The Philly Zombie Crawl began over beer at Tattooed Mom several years ago. We were discussing the idea of hosting a party on Easter to celebrate the world’s most-famous zombie on His big day. One thing led to another and the birth of the first Philly Zombie Crawl had happened! It was held Easter 2006 along South Street. After a couple years, the zombies groaned for more – so the Philly Zombie Prom was created to start the Halloween Season in Philadelphia.

Held the final Saturday of September at The Trocadero, the Zombie Prom has become THE event of the Halloween season with over 1,100 zombies gathering in full prom or costume attire. We’ve also created the Zombie Beach Party to start off the summer season – and we are always exploring other creative ways to celebrate the undead all year long.

Awesome! The Zombie Invasion at Dorney Park was also a great success this summer! What are some of your regular Philly haunts?

Robert Drake: Well, I mentioned one – my home away from home, Tattooed Mom on South Street. I also am a huge fan of one of the best dive bars in Center City – but uncharted by many – The Bike Stop. Located on Quince Street; an alley behind The Forrest Theatre; the Bike Stop started as a gay leather bar, which it still proudly is – - however, they have grown to welcome people from all walks of life; especially

Friday happy hours (which I DJ along with my partner John Stanley) … it’s a mix of retro rock and new wave nuggets, cheap drinks and a great cross-section of Philly.

For food – I’m always satisfied at The Latest Dish on 4th Street between South and Bainbridge; also The Perch Pub at the corner of Broad and Locust (overlooking Avenue of the Arts) – a great gastropub; and recently John and I have fallen in love with Circles Newbold – great Asian cuisine.

Geekadelphia loves Tattooed Mom – AGREED! What else do you geek out to?

Robert Drake: Easy: FRINGE.

Who’s your favorite character on Fringe?

Robert Drake: Although I am fond of Dr. Walter Bishop and his quirks, my partner John seems to have the hots for Agent Olivia Dunham. I think it’s her ‘tomboy nature’ that attracts him – HA! The show is just wonderfully written and reminds me of the excitement I had when I first watched such classics as Twin Peaks or X-Files back in the day.

Last month I chatted with Måns Mårlind and Björn Stein, the Swedish directing duo behind the fourth entry in the Underworld franchise Underworld: Awakening. The first Underworld film in my opinion was A LOT of fun and really added something new to the then tired vampire vs. werewolf sub-genre of horror.

But like all franchises you deal with the law of diminishing returns, and by the third film Kate Beckinsale was no longer starring and some people argue the franchise had gotten pretty far off the beaten track. Well, looks like for number four they are rebooting the franchise with Kate back in the lead and a firm goal to give the people what they expect from an Underworld film, and in 3D no less.

I hope you enjoy this interview with two well known Swedish directors coming into a very established US franchise, trying to breathe some fresh life into it.

So how did you guys come about directing Underworld: Awakening?

Björn: Our agent was representing one of the writers who was writing with us and working on the script. We weren’t on their list of directors they were thinking about.

But we looked at the script, read it and really liked it.

We were fans of the prior films as well and really worked on our pitch and then they got to see our little Swedish film called Storm (A great little sci-fi flick!) and pretty quickly after that we got a call from Gary Lucchesi who is one of the producers and he was really excited because they thought we hit on some of the notes that they were concerned about.

After that we had a conference call with Len Wiseman who is the creator of the series and we found we were very similar in the backgrounds of stuff that we liked with regards to films, music and things like that.  He really responded well to Storm and after that meeting we hit the ground running, scouting locations in Vancouver. These things usually take months and years, but it took us a couple of weeks.

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Most of the time when I’m trying to dodge actually doing any real work during the day you can find me buried in any number of webcomics.

One local Philadelphian has been penning the fantastic Guilded Age every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for a while now, and I had the chance to catch up with him after hearing that his book had been featured in Previews.

For those who aren’t acquainted with you and your work, who is Phil Kahn?

A guy trying to become a career weirdo. A careerdo, if you will. I’m from Silver Spring, Maryland, but I moved here to attend Temple for Film & Media Arts. After I graduated, I decided to try and make it in Philly with no real career prospects or any sort of a plan after college besides “get a job that hopefully resembles my degree in the vaguest sense.”

I did want to do both film and comics for a while, but the honest truth is that the actual process of shooting a movie is too involved for me. Too many cooks in the kitchen, too many hands on deck, too many schedules to manage and just… blagh. I liked writing and editing most of all, so I decided to say screw it and pursue comics exclusively. I’ve been doing webcomics for eight years now, and I’ve been doing good webcomics for two.

Right, Guilded Age. Bring us up to speed, what’s GA all about?

Guilded Age is the saga of the working class adventurer. Most fantasy fiction is about heroes of destiny who are chosen by something this one time by a bunch of guys to do a thing that saves everyone from some other thing. I wanted to take a hard look at what it’s like to be any other adventurer in that universe: a regular working joe with personal ambitions in addition to world-saving ones.

Arkerra is a land where war approaches and industry grows, and the area of opportunity for our sword-wielding independent contractors gets narrower. So they get on the crown’s payroll, and become the Peace-Makers of Gastonia, dishing out diplomacy and justice in equal amounts. But over time, the gang has been starting to wonder just whose side they ought to be fighting for.

We’ve got a brilliant cast of characters and have sought out to embrace the best tropes while weeding out the worst, giving our story a unique, quirky flavor that gets you wanting to know more.

Very cool. I’m sure it’s not a solo effort; tell me about the rest of the team behind Guilded Age.

I’ve been co-writing with T Campbell of Faans and Penny and Aggie since day one, and we have a pretty good system going where we’re able to tear each others’ work apart viciously and still remain great friends. Erica Henderson was our original artist, and did the illustration for our first volume.

She left us for greener pastures developing Facebook games, and she has our blessing forevermore. John Waltrip was then tapped to jump on board, and has since been owning it with his mastery of action and detail. Having a staff of three is pretty damn handy, because you can always call in the third guy to settle an argument that won’t end.

Word on the street is you’ve got a book?

The book is out and available on our website, but we just made it into Previews catalog which is kind of a big deal for us, and causing my fingernails to be devoured on a daily basis. It’s my first real break, big or small, and I’m hoping a whole bunch of people go to their local comic shop and tell them “we want Guilded Age!”

What’s that process like for a webcomic creator? How tough is it to make the jump to being published like that?

The only difficulty that comes in being a webcomic creator is not giving up. If you’re new to the scene and you’re not already God-tier talent, you’re going to have work really hard for a long time before you start to get noticed, gain an audience and make a business out of it. And we’ve been very, very lucky to have great friends and fans who help spread the word about our little yarn.

“Being published” is getting more vague in definition, because self-publishing is more viable than it’s ever been. We had our own book printed and sell it at cons and the website. Last year at our “home con,” Intervention, we were extremely fortunate for one of the staff members to approach us and say “Give me a copy of your book so I can put it in stores everywhere.”

So yeah, it’s one part luck and one part hard work. But you won’t get the good luck if you haven’t been working hard.

So, when you’re not working on Guilded Age where else can we find you?

Karaoke Tuesdays at National Mechanics, on the road for a convention, or nestled up in my fortress of solitude bashing zombies in Dead Rising 2. Sometimes you can find me in WoW on the Steamwheedle Cartel server as Fnip. Yes, we have a Guilded Age Guild, and anyone’s welcome.

You may not know the name Nick Murphy but if you are an avid reader of the site or just into video games in general you are more than aware of his handiwork. Nick won a Geek Award last year for his trailers for Zelda (1987) and Indie God of War, and he has now tackled the game that seems to come on every electronic device from Nooks to microwave ovens these days… Angry Birds.

I spoke with him about directing his newest trailer and what goes into creating these little viral masterpieces. You can check out his newest parody at the end of the interview.

So how did you get started doing these game parodies?

I got hired working for the company Gamervision, they were setup already and they were like a video game news site and they had some web video content. They had this idea of combining Mario Brothers, but as Inglourious Basterds since the film was to come out.

So a friend of mine worked there and was like, I know my friend is a filmmaker lets bring him on. So they brought me in and I did it and it got like 300,000 or 400,000 views so it got passed all over the place and went pretty viral.

So right after that, they paid me for my time working on that, and they were like we want to hire you full time. So we kept making shorts.

It started there and we tried to keep that momentum going. It was a lot of fun.  I love it but it is such a niche thing. I am always trying to find that guy that loves video games, but loves movies the way I do too.

What do you think goes into a good video game mash-up trailer?

It’s hard because someone else did an Angry Birds thing and it has like 11 million views. But they did it in a way where it is super over the top. It’s like Michael Bay doing it. There was this government program that manufacture these birds to fight these pigs, who are the enemy.

For us that was an easy joke. We wanted to challenge ourselves and try and incorporated it into the real world. They came out with this Mortal Kombat realistic, gritty web series, so we thought if they can come out with something like that we can make Angry Birds gritty and visceral I guess. That is what I wanted, could this be a real thing?

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After checking out Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol at the Tuttleman IMAX at The Franklin Institute, I went back a week later to take a tour of the projection booth and talk with some of the fine folks who work there. What I found was the folks that manage and work in the theater are not just IMAX geeks, but really knowledgeable film geeks in general.

I also decided to interview the projectionist Matt Lorenz about what it’s like working with the format and took some pics of the booth to share. Being as interested in film as I am, I had a lot of fun chatting with Matt about working with one of the hottest formats out there right now.

So how did you become the projectionist at the Tuttleman IMAX?

Wow, that’s interesting. I was unemployed and I had done some theater work in live performance, doing sound engineering and that sort of thing. I actually applied to be one of the ticket takers and what they call a console operator here. What the entails is essentially working in all the theaters and the planetarium, introducing the shows and that sort of thing.

A projectionist position opened up and I got it. A lot of it is very specific training. So unless you studied IMAX somewhere else, a lot of it is just having some technical know-how and being able to learn it. It’s almost like assembly line work in terms of its repetitive motion, but once you understand how it works its pretty easy.

What kind of training did that entail?

Again, it’s very specific especially with a lot of the soundtrack stuff, computer knowledge is important. Some math skills are kind of important in terms of when you are trying to sync up soundtracks you need to count frames and break it down into minutes and seconds. So not complex math but you need to think not abstractly, but when you’re assembling film there are a lot of things you have to keep in mind in terms of head and tail and emulsion.

We train for a month before we can run any film. I was trained by the chief projectionist here and pretty much just followed him and did a lot of practice running films in the off hours, so that if anything went wrong there is not a live audience in there. It’s really just getting to know the equipment here. (more…)

One of the best looking and most entertaining new webcomics to hit the net in the last few months has been Ace Kilroy. It follows the escapades of the title character as he lives a life of mystery and adventure in the early part of the 20th century.

Created, written and drawn by friends Rob Kelly and Dan O’Connor (both local guys), Rob was kind enough to answer a few questions about the comic, themselves and whether Ace will ever make it to Philadelphia.

How do the two of you know each other?

Dan and I attended the Joe Kubert School of Cartoon and Graphic Art (located in Dover, NJ) together. At the time, it was the only school that specialized in teaching the art of comic book illustration. Dan and I were in adjoining rooms in one of the houses the school had available for students. As soon as I saw his work, I knew I had a lot of catching up to do, in terms of pure drawing talent, especially when it came to drawing for comic books. I remember being so jealous, and I still am!

Where did the idea for a character like Ace Kilroy come from? What influences went into his creation?

After losing touch for a few years, Dan and I ran into each other at the 2010 New York Comic Con. Since going to school, we both maintained careers as artists, but each of us doing work other than strict comic book stuff. Dan’s art had only gotten better, and I was really horrified that he had so many horror stories to tell me (clients cheating him out of money, not treating his work with any respect, etc.), so on the way home I started thinking of a project that he and I could collaborate on that we’d both enjoy on a creative level. And if we somehow found a way to make it profitable, that would be all the better.

We’re both big fans of the classic newspaper adventure strips of the mid-20th Century (stuff like Steve Canyon, Dick Tracy, Secret Agent X-9, Terry and The Pirates), so I thought doing that kind of strip would be fun for me to write and fun for Dan to draw. I pitched the idea to him as, basically, “FDR hires Steve Canyon to fight the Universal Monsters” and he took to that immediately.

I figured we could work in those newspaper character influences, plus classic monster movies, as well as indulge in our mutual passion for 1930s and 1940s Americana. It’s basically the kind of strip we’d like to read, so we created it ourselves. (more…)