It’s been a year since I released our last pilot, ‘Brewing Company’, and I’ve found it difficult to revisit the final project since completion. Nothing wrong with it, quite the opposite. Despite changing weather, logistics, and scheduling around soooooo many other commitments (Steve’s and his Birthday parties), we accomplished everything we set out to do. It’s not often, almost never, that a television pilot is produced independently by people who are not in the industry. Search YouTube, I know I have. The fact that we accomplished it within just a few months, while maintaining such a high production value with a large cast (most whose second jobs don’t involve acting), is remarkable. But after all was done and delivered, I found myself left with an empty feeling. Distribution is not easy. Film Festivals just want short films to help pad theaters and to produce more profit from submissions. YouTube wants to push bite-sized entertainment, or creators that can mass-produce larger content blocks. A TV pilot that had a minimum of 10 filming locations, 30 actors and extras, rewrites, and reshoots can be neither of those things.
So why am I doing it again?
I’m writing this in a library (with an r, Christina :) ) in the middle of Anchorage. If I learned one thing this week, you climb up one mountain, and there’s just another right behind it. There is no great discovery at the top. The great enjoyment I found was putting one foot in front of the other, making it one peak, then thinking, I can keep going, and on up the next. Even if that peak is covered in three feet of snow, and you’re wearing running shoes, and have no gloves, and no one is aware of where you are… not to mention you have zero climbing experience. Honestly, it was pretty dumb. But I had a better reason to eventually turn around and return to home base. A drive to try again. Producing a TV show is like a mountain, but metaphorically. Whoa, so deep.
Anyway, I’m gonna cut this short. Not sure what the gentleman with the giant pot leaf tattooed on his skull is doing furiously in the chair next to me. On to the next peak, or in this instance, a used car lot.
Andrew Torkelson
05/30/26
Anchorage Alaska
Old Perspective,
New Beginnings.
Old Perspective,
New Beginnings.
Winter of 1999, my mom bought me my first video camera, a Sony digital Hi-8. I still have it, along with at least 50 MiniDV tapes filled with footage from street interviews, failed and 'successful' sketches, music video shoots, and I dread to discover what else.
I hadn't planned to spend the next twenty-five years behind a camera, and it should be clear from this photo that I hadn't planned where I would sleep that night I traveled back to Omaha to film our first project, 'Love Struck Out.' But while setting up for our first day of principal photography, I turned the camera on myself and snapped this image. I now find myself staring out from the other side, with a couple decades worth of filming knowledge, along with some thousand or so commercials, hundreds of interviews, hours of stand-up comedy material, a handful of documentaries, music videos, short films, and more failures and successes than I care to remember. That's the camera's job.
Old Perspective,
New Beginnings.
Winter of 1999, my mom bought me my first video camera, a Sony digital Hi-8. I still have it, along with at least 50 MiniDV tapes filled with footage from street interviews, failed and 'successful' sketches, music video shoots, and I dread to discover what else.
I hadn't planned to spend the next twenty-five years behind a camera, and it should be clear from this photo that I hadn't planned where I would sleep that night I traveled back to Omaha to film our first project, 'Love Struck Out.' But while setting up for our first day of principal photography, I turned the camera on myself and snapped this image. I now find myself staring out from the other side, with a couple decades worth of filming knowledge, along with some thousand or so commercials, hundreds of interviews, hours of stand-up comedy material, a handful of documentaries, music videos, short films, and more failures and successes than I care to remember. That's the camera's job.
So why dig out the archives after all this time? When you are new to doing something, you have yet to discover its limitations. I believe that a fresh perspective grants you a unique approach to your craft, even if it means more time spent learning from mistakes an apprenticeship in a larger operation steers you clear of. Complacency is the death of risk, and, therefore, artistic endevor. I won't be winning awards for originality while still conforming to established molds, but I will challenge myself to express my observation of reality, resulting in a product that, although raw and flawed, is uniquely my own. Bastard & Hoodlum Productions is a commitment to being estranged from established norms of a homogenized audio/visual landscape, and a homage to its namesake, and my mother, who so aptly coined it.
Andrew Torkelson
03/02/25
Bastard & Hoodlum Productions
Winter of 1999, my mom bought me my first video camera, a Sony digital Hi-8. I still have it, along with at least 50 MiniDV tapes filled with footage from street interviews, failed and 'successful' sketches, music video shoots, and I dread to discover what else.
I hadn't planned to spend the next twenty-five years behind a camera, and it should be clear from this photo that I hadn't planned where I would sleep that night I traveled back to Omaha to film our first project, 'Love Struck Out.' But while setting up for our first day of principal photography, I turned the camera on myself and snapped this image. I now find myself staring out from the other side, with a couple decades worth of filming knowledge, along with some thousand or so commercials, hundreds of interviews, hours of stand-up comedy material, a handful of documentaries, music videos, short films, and more failures and successes than I care to remember. That's the camera's job.
So why dig out the archives after all this time? When you are new to doing something, you have yet to discover its limitations. I believe that a fresh perspective grants you a unique approach to your craft, even if it means more time spent learning from mistakes an apprenticeship in a larger operation steers you clear of. Complacency is the death of risk and, therefore, artistic endeavor. I won't be winning awards for originality while still conforming to established molds, but I will challenge myself to express my observation of reality, resulting in a product that, although raw and flawed, is uniquely my own. Bastard & Hoodlum Productions is a commitment to being estranged from established norms of a homogenized audio/visual landscape and a homage to its namesake and my mother, who so aptly coined it.
Andrew Torkelson
03/02/25
Bastard & Hoodlum Productions
So why dig out the archives after all this time? When you are new to doing something, you have yet to discover its limitations. I believe that a fresh perspective grants you a unique approach to your craft, even if it means more time spent learning from mistakes an apprenticeship in a larger operation steers you clear of. Complacency is the death of risk and, therefore, artistic endeavor. I won't be winning awards for originality while still conforming to established molds, but I will challenge myself to express my observation of reality, resulting in a product that, although raw and flawed, is uniquely my own. Bastard & Hoodlum Productions is a commitment to being estranged from established norms of a homogenized audio/visual landscape and a homage to its namesake and my mother, who so aptly coined it.
Andrew Torkelson
03/02/25
Bastard & Hoodlum Productions
