Emulsion Arts launches crowd funding campaign

Last week Emulsion Arts launched its first crowd funding campaign to help complete a documentary about an obscure Hollywood collector, Martin Hill. Martin owns the greatest collection of vintage Hollywood film equipment in the world and its located in the modest, remote town of Midland, NC. The collection includes cameras, lights and stage props from Academy Award movies like Gone with the Wind, Lawrence of Arabia, Star Wars and countless other award winning films. Charlie Chaplin’s personal camera that filmed The Gold Rush is Martin’s most cherished piece in his collection.

“With the declining state of the collection we felt there was no better time than now to capitalize on the popularity of crowd funding by launching a Kickstarter campaign to fund the completion of the project,” said Bruce Clark, Director of Strategic Development at Emulsion Arts.

The campaign will run for the next 43 days. Emulsion Arts hopes to raise over $6,000. The money will be used to complete editing, scoring and post production work.

Information about the the documentary and the campaign can be found at:
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/emulsionarts/martin-hill-preserving-hollywood-history
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Martin-Hill/107770202466

http://historicmoviecameras.com/

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Emulsion Arts is an internationally acclaimed, award-winning film production company based in Charlotte, North Carolina. Emulsion Arts has produced feature length documentaries, national and international television ad campaigns and motion picture productions for Fortune 500 companies, as well as feature films.

For questions or interview requests please contact Bruce Clark, Director of Strategic Development. 704-343-0220, Bruce@emulsionarts.com

For Immediate Release

Emulsion Arts helps Thompson Child & Family Focus raise $1.3 million

CHARLOTTE, NC (6/1/11) At the annual fundraising luncheon for Thompson Child & Family Focus, something magical happened, $1.3 million dollars was raised through generous donations.

Working alongside the non-profit organization since 2005, Emulsion Arts has been helping Thompson Child & Family Focus spread the word about their life-changing programs and services for suffering children.

According to Toniette Wilkinson, Thompson’s Director of Community Relations, “Emulsion Arts has been instrumental in helping us raise $5.2 million dollars since they started producing our films seven years ago. The wonderful messaging via their powerful films has certainly been an important ingredient in our success.”

“It feels great to be able to affect people and help an organization reach new heights,” admits Amanda Van der Meulen, Editor/Producer at Emulsion Arts. “Being a part of Thompson’s milestone fundraising event is a personal reward for me”.

The 2011 film recounted the emotional true-life story of a Charlotte teenager and his family’s struggle to help their son by enrolling him in Thompson Child and Family Focus.

“Letting people in on your personal life through a visual story is truly worthwhile. A visual story stays with us much longer than a speech, leaving a mental image you’ll always remember. It is gratifying to see the emotion and understanding in a room after audiences watch our films.” added Lisa Gergely, Emulsion’s Director of Development.

Reaching this year’s extraordinary sum of $1.3 million dollars is remarkable, but the real story will begin when word of the positive results of Thompson’s programs are spread by the Charlotte business executives attending the luncheon.

Joanne Hock, founding partner of Emulsion Arts who has been the Creative Director behind Thompson’s fundraising films for the past 7 years feels fortunate to be in the position to help Thompson gain exposure for their wonderful programs.

Emulsion Arts is currently developing additional films for Thompson, as Thompson gets ready to celebrate their 125th year of making children whole. Ginny Amendum, President of Thompson, expressed personal thanks to Joanne Hock and Emulsion Arts, “For all you have done for us, with professionalism, enthusiasm and humor, I am forever grateful.”

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All inquires should be directed to Lisa Gergely at Emulsion Arts.
704-343-0220
Lisa@EmulsionArts.com

Emulsion Arts Creative Director and Founding Partner Joanne Hock participated in a panal discussion about the state of the North Carolina Film Industry. Follow the link to listen the program:

http://www.wfae.org/wfae/18_93_0.cfm?do=detail&id=13272

Information from a Thursday, May 12, 2011 WFAE Segment on the North Carolina Film Industry taken from www.wfae.org

North Carolina has been a destination for Hollywood filmmakers for more than two decades now thanks to our varied landscapes, large cities and a studio in Wilmington. Now North Carolina is becoming a source for films as more and more local writers, directors and cinematographers are making films right here at home. These filmmakers are finding that North Carolina is home to a deep talent pool and experienced crew members. What isn’t yet in place is an infrastructure of investors and a network of distribution. The members of our panel our out to change that and we will talk to them about the present and the future for the North Carolina Film Industry.

Guests

Linnea Byer – Director of Film, The Light Factory

Aaron Syrett – Director, NC Film Commission

Joanne Hock – Director, Writer and Cinematographer, Emulsion Arts

Juli Emmons – Co-Founder, Charlotte Film Community

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By Lawrence Toppman
Movie Critic
Posted: Sunday, Apr. 03, 2011

Ideal work environment for a 9-year-old: Your office is next door to one of Charlotte’s best bakeries, the conference rooms are full of pooches who snuggle when they’re awake and wheeze happily while they sleep, hip young people come and go to connect you to the zeitgeist, neighborhood kids drop by to use the computers.

No wonder Emulsion Arts, born in May 2002, flourishes in its NoDa digs.

The company is putting the final touches on its first feature film, a broad comedy with unexpected heart titled “Redneck Roots.” (The rough cut gets its public premiere Saturday at Sensoria, Central Piedmont Community College’s multi-cultural fest.)

Emulsion continues to shoot local, regional and national commercials and corporate films while planning TV, documentary and feature projects. And though its four leaders – all women in their 50s – collectively have 130 years’ worth of experience in the film business, they’re kids at heart.

“Nothing has aged about us,” says producer Heidi Dove. “We love learning, and our pulse is on what’s new.”

Dove created Emulsion with writer-director Joanne Hock and financial manager Doug Adams and was there when the company leapt forward with a changing of the guard in 2008: Former New York entertainment attorney Robin Grey became CEO, Lisa Gergely came in as director of business development, and Adams left.

“I wanted to reconfigure the business,” says Grey, who knew Hock from the board of directors of The Light Factory. “They were getting jobs but not making nearly as much as they should have. The question was, with the economy failing, how would Emulsion prosper?”

The answer: “By thinking bigger.” It raised $200,000 to make “Roots” last summer. That figure is deceptively low, because it doesn’t count in-kind contributions or voluntary salary cuts. (Emulsion’s long list of thank-yous begins with the town of Stanley, where policeman Derek Summey was so helpful with locations they made him associate producer.)

Emulsion chose not to do a horror film or a slacker drama, typical low-budget debuts. It shot a family-friendly comedy about businesswoman Chris (Heather Gilliland) and co-worker Ben (Dean Napolitano), who has proposed to her. When she visits the rural family she has always hidden from him, he goes after her to meet her flatulent, beer-imbibing but surprisingly wry kinfolk.

“We cast the comic net wide to appeal to as many people as possible,” says Hock, a veteran known for calm demeanor and firm control on sets. “We wanted to find the fine line between silliness and heart in the story.”

Their complementary skills

The four women seem to harmonize as smoothly as a barbershop quartet

“We’re not always so ladylike in production meetings,” Hock says, laughing. “But we fit together well. Robin has the business acumen I don’t have. Lisa has the people acumen.”

And, says Gergely, “Heidi is creative at everything: She can write, edit, shoot (footage), do voice-overs. We throw anything at her on short notice.”

In a way, the atmosphere at Emulsion seems placid: A few neighborhood kids come in to use computers, three dogs amble up to visitors, interns learning the business drift in and out of cubicles (and onto Hock’s film sets, too).

At the same time, Emulsion plans to ratchet up production.

Hock, who jokes that she goes home only to sleep, cook meals and do laundry, plunged from post-production work on “Roots” into directing “Trinity Goodheart,” a drama starring James Hong and Eric Benet. Emulsion didn’t produce it, but success would reflect positively on Hock and her company.

Commercially viable

Emulsion hopes to document the travels of Charlotte acting coach J.D. Lewis, who’ll take off with his two sons on a round-the-globe public service jaunt this summer. A “Six Feet Under”-style series in a tattoo parlor is brewing. Gergely recruits commercials for clients that could be local (Boyle’s), national (General Electric) or philanthropic (Thompson Child and Family Focus).

Yet a string of feature films would set the company apart as nothing else can. The next one could be “Wednesdays at the Gem,” a period piece – and thus more expensive to recreate – about the Gem Theatre in Kannapolis during the 1930s, when segregation kept black audiences out of the theater. Hock describes her pet project as “‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ Meets ‘Cinema Paradiso.’”

“We’ll try to do stories we’d want to watch, like ‘Driving Miss Daisy’ or ‘Fried Green Tomatoes,’” says Grey. “You have to be commercially viable, so people will invest in you, but a movie’s quality matters, too.”

Read more: http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2011/04/03/2192465/emulsion-making-its-new-mark-on.html#ixzz1IVgzTAo5