Temple of Art: The Documentary

SDCC Temple of Art Video
over 8 years ago – Thu, Jul 30, 2015 at 06:23:56 PM

Just a quick post to share some video of the panel we did a couple of weeks ago at San Diego Comic Con! Featuring ourselves (Allan Amato & Olga Nunes), as well as lovely Temple of Art artists David Mack, Bill Sienkiewicz, Barron Storey, and Satine Phoenix.

Pull out a sketchbook, or go for a wee walk with your phone, and hit play:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BeC_u3-PJg8

(And if you missed it, here's the Facebook post featuring the newly released trailer from the film: http://tinyurl.com/templeofart-fb
You can also check it out on YouTube, here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7vHIKqgVOA )

weekend art squish,
allan & olga & jason
the temple of art team

TEMPLE OF ART TRAILER
almost 9 years ago – Wed, Jul 22, 2015 at 04:21:39 PM

Hallo all and sundry supporters of the Temple of Art Empire! TEAM TEMPLE OF ART (Allan & Olga & Jason) have been insanely hard at work over the last few months, cutting together the first bits of footage which we previewed a week ago at San Diego Comic Con to pretty resounding enthusiasm. (Hurrah!)

Things we have done in the last few weeks: 

•  began shipping our first piles of rewards out to backers 
• had a crazy successful panel with David Mack, Barron Storey, Bill Sienkiewicz, Satine Phoenix, and your favorite Temple-of-Art-makers, Allan Amato & Olga Nunes 
•  created three original scores for two film vignettes & a trailer (thanks to Good Bully Collective resident composer, Jason Seigler) 
• edited, re-edited, re-re-edited and exported those vignettes and the trailer 
• AND premiered all that footage at Comic Con to over three hundred people

It’s been a bit bonkers with fourteen-hour days and working well past midnight for weeks at a time, but the amazing thing is? We wake up bright and early in the morning to go right back to it. It’s a strange and lucky thing when you get to work on a project that inspires and compels you to happily work on it basically non-stop.

We want to share the trailer with you, but first we want to ask you a tiny favor.

If you happen to be one of those humans that uses Facebook, would you mind liking our Temple of Art trailer and sharing it with your friends?

Here’s the link to our Facebook post about it: http://tinyurl.com/templeofart-fb

(And if you’ve noticed, that link ALSO trickily includes the trailer, if you wanted to watch it right now, and let us know what you think. :D )

We ALSO have two vignettes, one featuring the inimitable Kevin Smith & Jim Mahfood on REJECTION, and another featuring a much larger cast of the film on GRIT. You can check those out (and the trailer, if you’re not on Facebook) here : http://www.templeofart.net/film

We’re so grateful to the artists and everyone involved for being part of this giant art monster, and we hope you enjoy what we’ve all wrought together so far.

Huge love from the Temple of Art Team, 
Allan, Olga, Jason

Ouroboros
almost 9 years ago – Wed, Jul 22, 2015 at 08:03:36 AM

THREE MEN AND A BABY.

Ok, so one is a woman and the baby in question is a film about being an artist. Our mutant bionic baby, growing at an accelerated rate, as its dutiful parents fill it with knowledge, wisdom, curiosity and humor. Oh, and artists. So, maybe the title metaphor TWINS is more apropos, as long as I'm caught in an 80's feedback loop. The perfect Schwarzenegger offspring culled from the genetic material of our best and brightest. Which would kinda make the trailer Danny Devito, I guess... way shorter and far more insolent. 

 I may have gone off the reservation, somewhat... what I'm trying to say is the 80's is a far more whimsical decade, where celluloid is concerned, and.... Nope, that's not right, either. I think it has something to do with film babies, how this project about creation, has in fact become the embodiment of creation itself. Which despite sounding pretty meta, is the literal figurative truth. Everything discussed within, reflects without, like an art event horizon (stay with me). 

 Every lesson learned over 160 hours of raw footage, distills into content fodder for the final film, and an approach that informs the philosophical structure of the film itself. This is our first film, and we often have no real clue as to how to proceed; fortunately that is exactly what this story is about. How to create, obsess, start something big, rely on others, emotionally connect to your work. And fail, most of all. Because aggressive investigation, experimentation with what doesn't work, ultimately knocks you smack into what does. As the Almighty Barron Storey says, "If you don't fail, you're not aiming very high."

So with our very first trailer almost in the bag after umpteen 14 hour days, here's to my equally deluded partners Olga and Jason, the legion of creators who've so graciously allowed us into their lives and process, and all of you out there who've helped us along. May this film be the wheelbarrow for your dreams! Only far less wobbly.  

-allan

PS - We have packaged up the first 50 rewards, which are headed to USPS.  Our plan is to persist throughout the ramp up to Comic Con, and get as many out to you as possible!

TOA at San Diego Comic Con
almost 9 years ago – Mon, Jul 06, 2015 at 01:18:21 AM

Excelsior, true believer!

We have a panel at 10:30am Room25ABC and 1pm signing with creators from the panel at Baby Tattoo #4712 on saturday at SDCC, for those of you attending.  

http://www.comic-con.org/cci/saturday

We will also be briefly vending saturday only at the lovely TOA all-star Satine Phoenix's booth, #1603

We'd love to say hi, so come on by!

The TOA Team

Closer To The Mountain
almost 9 years ago – Thu, Jul 02, 2015 at 11:19:52 PM

I am writing from the headquarters of Good Bully Collective. Inside these chambers is, in no particular order: six cats, one jungle gym, a ball pit (yes, really), a room filled with fur, a bedroom fort transformer couch, walls piled high with paintings, a pirate ladder, and a teepee filled with stuffed animals.

It’s stationed in the heart of the Brewery, the arts compound of Los Angeles, home to acrobats and prop-makers, photographers and painters alike.

Each morning we awaken to the sound of a robot voice over the house speaker system, beckoning us, “GOOD MORNING, GOOD BULLIES. IT IS TIME TO GO TO THE GYM.”

We trundle to the rock climbing gym (conveniently also located in the Brewery) and run hard, and sweat. Sometimes we lift heavy things. And then we mosey back to the Good Bully Bull Pen and get to work.

If we had a MTV’s Real World style confessional, you would see video of us, in succession: eating lunch some days speaking only in French, firing up Skrillex to practice our best— weirdest— twerking, taking micro-breaks to fling kettlebells in the living room, pinning ideas to our monster wall of creativity, chasing cats, drawing, playing League of Legends, playing mandolin, and in general: playing.

But mostly?

We sit at our laptops, for hours on end, endlessly conversing with this film that is Temple of Art: how do we build it? What do we want to say? How do we best say it?

We watch footage. We take notes. We edit. Repeat.

We build the movie like tiny archipelagos, each stretching out tendrils of land mass until they touch the other, tentatively, tentatively.

How do we tell this story best?

Click.

Watch.

Click.

Click.

Edit.

And again.

Kevin Smith came to the house, and we asked him: you’ve been down this road many a time. What advice would you offer us, as young filmmakers? What is the best way to undertake this process, from where you’re standing?

And he tells us: “It’s all here,” pointing to his gut. Just feel it. Watch it, over, and over, and over, and just keep moving until it feels right.

So we watch. And we keep moving.

The first milestone is rounding the corner.

In two weeks we will show the first publicly shared footage of what we’re been working on in our strange art cave.

On Saturday, July 11, at 10:30am, we will be doing a panel at San Diego Comic-Con, sharing the first few pages of this story we’ve been laboring over for so long.

If you’re around, come by and see us (Allan Amato & Olga Nunes) in conversation with Grant Morrison, David Mack, Bill Sienkiewicz, Barron Storey, Jason Shawn Alexander, and Satine Phoenix. We’ll be giving away some surprise gifts, and would love to see your shining faces.

With fire and fervor,
The Temple Of Art Team