Fire-Wired Blog

Tiny Explosions 2025 Horror 48 film "Jeff" (which screened as Decafitation) was a big winner. In a surprise turn it won't Best Film Runner-up and Best Director . having seen all the films in the competition, I thought we maybe had a chance at third place. I never know how these things are going go. I should not even attempt to guess and spare others the hype. Either way, very proud of our team and the weird, disturbing film we produced. Now winning Best Director, this is actually the fourth time we've won this award out the last five competitions . I'm quite humbled. There is no artist I revere more than feature film directors. To have my work as a director recognized with an award at any level is wonderful. When we first received this prize for Wheel of Death in 2023 I accepted the prize by saying the film was not my work but a team of artists who carried the project to that moment. I meant it, but not just for Wheel but every film we produce. Whether they ...

First things first, Junk Mail is out and available for home streaming ! Go watch it with your kids and then awkwardly explain the main conceit. Or don’t… but if you do, know that is exactly what happened at the official 48 screenings. We laughed a very meta laugh. 2025 DSM 48HFP has been something special. Spoiler alert, we won Best of City for the second time , took home Best Directing for the 3rd time, BEST ENSEMBLE for the first time (lots of thoughts on this), and audience award for Group C. The hardware this year was also super cool. It should be mentioned Chris Kottman, new DSM 48 City Producer, nailed the assignment. Were there differences from a Sam 48, certainly but nothing to complain about. I can’t wait to see what Chris comes up with. The important parts are the big screen showings are still in place and the Best of City felt like a serious event for the people who are invested in 48. So Junk Mail, when we were announced as Best Film of the competition I was surprised of co...

For the last couple years, in the hours before the 48 Hour Film Project Des Moines kicks off I've spent too much time thinking about how the next two days will be a wild mystery that produces a fully unknown film . Our 2024 film is a perfect illustration of this, I mean who would pre-plan to make a movie about a secret plot to force the dissolution of a homeowners association. And now nearly a month later, I get to break down the ridiculous short "Defund the HOA." Those who know Brian Hogan, know he is something of a collector of the nostalgic and peculiar. Somewhere along the line he purchased a flag that states "Defund the HOA." During our regular 48 brainstorm, this flag was brought up and the all other ideas were out the window. Given our penchant for ensemble pieces a plot formed about an HOA board and a terrorist-like threat. Just reeking in Tiny Explosions trademark of demented flair. Production and editing went smooth, the result is probably our best p...

There she be, "Wheel of Death" in all her incredible, gory, gnarly, fun, and funny glory. There is nothing like finishing a film and just knowing it is a success. Not perfect, maybe it had perfection programmed into its GPS and along the route saw a tourist trap that was too good to pass by and soon decided that in its heart it needed to stay there for the night. That is what I'm talking about. Wheel of Death is a wonderfully wild tourist trap of horror comedy that actually delivers the good.  There are so many points I want to hit but I'll start with the thing everyone needs to know: Craig Bahnsen's performance as Doug the Demon is so impossibly good. I love so many things in this film and hit so many of my goals in it, but the top of the praise heap is definitely Craig. I didn't know in 2019 when we asked him to slap on some JNCOs that he had this in him, but I am so happy he hung around and delivered a performance that makes this film the most rewatchable ...

Making "Elf Off the Shelf," photo by Erin Hogan. I love the experience of watching something great. It could be film, TV, a stage play, live music, and many other arts, that feeling of you and a piece of art meeting for the first time is exquisite. There's only a couple things that top it, one is actually creating that art. When I discovered the real power of movies around 13 or 14, I think I watched my favorites on a loop. I would toss in new discoveries here and there, and it quickly grew into an obsession. But then a funny thing happened, I borrowed a camera from my media production classes in high school and one Sunday afternoon my friends and I made a mockumentary mixing skate culture and free-style walking called " Midwest Money Money. " This rush was similar to watching movies but the intensity was jacked to the nines and I carried that feeling for weeks. I showed our film to everyone and anyone who would sit in front of a screen with me. The filmmaking ...

No, that title is not a typo, Tiny Explosions transformed into Tiny Possessions this month to participate in the 48 Hour Film Project Des Moines Horror and things did not go as planned. Sam Pace-Tuomi hosting Screening Group A. Our filmmaking weekend started pretty normally. Friday night kickoff, brainstorm, and writing session. Around 10:30 we broke all set to make a film called "Death Wizard," then Saturday morning about 2am I woke up to a screaming child who didn't want to tell us why she was up but didn't want to go to sleep, so we watched cartoons for 10 minutes and she ran off and started to cry. Meanwhile, I was just feeling dizzy, lethargic, and had a sore throat. Next thing I know I'm running to the only 24 hour Walgreens left in Des Moines to get kids ibuprofen and I get back to sleep around 5am. Kiddo number two wakes me up at 7am and I am a big ball of yuck. I told the squad I was out, Tiny Possessions crumpled like a wet shirt, and Death Wizard vanis...

 A year and a half ago I had an idea for a short film. Between that moment and roughly a year later I turned that idea into an actual thing, No Shortcuts . That is probably the best thing in filmmaking; a match is sparked and if you've got the supplies you can get a pretty righteous fire roaring. Well my small fire came together this past March and TONIGHT in Burlington, Iowa at the Snake Alley Festival of Film , audiences will get the chance to warm their hearts and minds with it. Did that metaphor work? I'm not sure. Idea, production, creation equals match, spark, fire. Right? Oh well. I've been watching a lot of Justin Hawkins Rides Again lately so I'm prone to metaphorical and performative fun at the moment.  If you haven't been playing along, No Shortcuts is a one-man-band film I produced over the course of 2021 and early 2022. It's a mix of my 8 year-old self wishing he had the strength of The Ultimate Warrior so he could run a mile in 5 minutes and my 38...

Well it took 10 months but FINALLY..."No Shortcuts" is in the can. A one-man band short film I undertook in Winter 2021 to give myself a creative project when I had practically no free time is shot, cut, colored, scored, and ready to be submitted to a few festivals. Now looking back, I gotta say it was much more work than I was ready for. No Shortcuts has practical effects, computer generated effects, sound effects, compositing work and color touches that all together make it happen. Most films require a lot of post work, but science fiction requires an additional layer of care to make them work and not turn an audience off. Much of my efforts worked well, some will be nitpicked. But that's okay, I wasn't going for perfection. I was simply going. I will say I learned a lot about my tolerance for imperfection when tired and/or cold. I also cemented my belief filmmaking is meant to be a collaborative endeavor. Not only to produce a better end product, but get a grea...

The Film Lounge returns with a new season of powerful and exciting locally produced films. Join us on air and online Jan 31 and Feb 7 for Season 6 as we celebrate Iowa filmmakers with @ProduceIowa and the @IowaArtsCouncil ! #TheFilmLounge #IowaFilm pic.twitter.com/VAA30XfQDA — Iowa PBS (@IowaPBS) January 10, 2022   For six years one of my ongoing projects at Iowa PBS has been The Film Lounge . When the show launched way back in 2016, the show was brain child of Chuck Czech, former local programming manager at Iowa PBS. Chuck and I both started at Iowa PBS in 2014 and in the years leading up to the creation of The Film Lounge we spent a fair amount of time talking movies and filmmaking. In particular there was one night in 2015 after the crew wrapped a day-long broadcast of high school volleyball championships and everyone stayed up far too late sharing a few beverages in the lobby of our hotel. That evening Chuck and I talked our career paths and our love for film for probabl...

One month ago Tiny Explosions made it's 10th 48 Hour Film Project, The Special. Good times were had and here is said film. For the third time in our ten year run, a Tiny Explosions film did not make Best of City and you know what, I was totally cool with it. Why? Because for the last four months my life has been a blur of packing, moving, work, unpacking, and parenting two silly little girls. I've been so busy I was barely able to carve out time for 48. Our old house closed the day 48 kicked off and our new house closed the day The Special screened. I love 48 but the timing this year ended up being counter to practically every responsibility in my life. I barely managed to carve out time to write, shoot, and edit. Our film was written in one hour, filmed in five hours, and edited in eight. In May, I had all these plans for camera tricks I wanted to try, goals I had set for this year's film, and hopes for it's post-48 life. As soon as we accepted an offer on our house I...

  A year ago I was super jazzed to share that a short film I directed and a screenplay I plucked out of my family history were headed for the Southern Iowa short film staple the Snake Alley Festival of Film . Sadly, a certain global minor apocalypse got in the way of that happening. But if the delta variant doesn't ravage the state of Iowa over the next month, it looks like A Widow's Might and Family Tree are all set to take the stage and screen in Burlington next month. I don't know if anyone was planning on making the trek to the " Backhoe Capital of the World, "   but if so, mark your calendar for August 5th and purchase your tickets now. Burlington is a lovely town and SNAFF is supposed to be the bees knees. If it wasn't for how busy my life is at the moment I would be staying down there all week for the film festival and all the filmmaker events. Alas, I will probably only make it for my projects and a little bit more. Tickets are quite reasonable for ...

I have always been terrible at sitting still. My parents used to make me sit on my hands as even when I was in "time out," I would pester my siblings and drum on the wall or counter. So decades ago after my umpteenth hand sit, I realized this time was a gift to develop new adventures in my hyperactive mind. At the moment, my creative motor is standing idle . For years I've juggled several interests and outputs including:  Working a video production job,  Writing a weekly tech column,  Semi-regularly writing-directing-producing short films,  Composing music for video bed music and video projects,  Producing family videos and Podcasting.  As I type this, all of that has been culled to just my day job. This is of course temporary as our household becomes proficient in parenting two young children, but still... I'm restless. So since my 2nd daughter's birth in November I've returned to my handsitting brainstorming to figure out how I can fill the void left by m...

Believe it or not, 2020 has been a really fun year for me when it comes to filmmaking. Tiny Explosions released six short films, I wrote four short film screenplays, one of those screenplays was accepted into the Snake Alley Festival of Film (of course, Covid-19 put a real damper on that, but it was the only place I submitted it too so ya know... Woohoo!), we won a few awards along the way, I started writing a bunch of promising feature length scripts, and then finally, I guested on a podcast that I really enjoy. The Cinematic Heartland podcast is produced and hosted by  Kevin Isaacson of I Like Ike Films , a North-Central Iowa filmmaker who within the last five years has produced a nice run of short films and feature film. He is a really down to Earth guy and an easy person to hold a conversation with. It was a real treat to talk about my year in film, how I got interested in storytelling, and an opportunity to promote The Film Lounge. If you have an hour, I suggest to give ...

11 months ago Tiny Explosions produced Family Tree as part of filmracing.com 's 100 Hour Film Race, and after it's "festival run" here it is! Following the production and release of Red Flag , Hogan and I felt the sting to keep going . Not wait another year to make a short as we had been doing as of late. I love the 48 Hour Film Project as it allows all your collaborators to lock off a weekend, write-shoot-produce a short, and then see it on the big screen a couple weeks later. The 100 Hour Film Race is similar except you get double the time and it screens at the Film Racing home base in Atlanta, so the team didn't get a chance to see it on the big screen. And of course due to the pandemic, we never did.  So instead of just saying "Hey, we made that" and let it hit the internet –KER-SPLAT– I entered it in a bunch of Iowa film festivals. It was programmed in a handful, won an award in one, and even had an in-person screening at the Des Moines Undergr...