Cool Town Claymation's newest segment "Fresher Than Cool: Mic The Unheard" highlights artist/songwriter/engineer, Josh Whiting of Stage Red Studios. Read more about Josh Whiting below!
BIO: Josh Whitng Owner/ Stage Red Studios
Born in Albany New York and raised in San Diego Califorina Josh has been involved with music for over 18 years. He began producing and recording bands after graduating from Musicians Institute in 2002 and interning at Golden Track Studios in San Diego. In 2008 Josh moved to Los Angeles to pursue audio engineering of corse like any musician finding their place took work. After freelancing as an audio engineer and working various jobs such as West LA Music, Guitar Center and Center Staging, in 2010 he was able to build his own studio called Stage Red Studios. He has engineered and produced artists with genres that include Rock, Metal, Acoustic, Country, Pop, Rap, Hip Hop, Voice Over and Radio Commercials. Stage Red Studios has worked with companies such as Rostrum Records (Wiz Khalifa, Mac Millar, Vali Porter), Resort Entertainment & Technologies, Designmate.com, Electric Blue Media and other industry companies Stage Red Studios works with local and out of state artists, such as Army On the Dance Floor, Kourntney Klein (Nitzer Ebb), Juice McCain (Black Walstreet), Tru Collins (Transibierian Orchestra, Tru & The Strays), Juicy J (3 Six Mafia), Rome (Sublime with Rome), Mars (1500 or nothin) just to name a few. Josh also writes and produces music with many local artists. He has gone beyond the scope of just engineering music, he often records Foley sound for movies, animations, webisodes, and commercials and well as sound designing.
“At Stage Red Studios we take pride in our work and offer many services such as
tracking music, voice over's, commercials, post production and many more for your recording needs.
Our Mission is to provide you with a supreme studio experience while capturing your artistic vision. We are a talented group from both a creative and technical standpoint. The payoff is a staff eager and able to please.”
Cool Town is an innovative platform for creative artists to collaborate and turn a simple thought into something tangible-stop-motion animation that is entertaining, educational and visually stunning. We are looking for underground, indie, unsigned musicians in all genres who want to gain free exposure and add to their following. This is an opportunity to be headlined in our growing community; we'll conduct an intereview, feature the artists' material and highlight the artists in their own persnal segment we call "Fresher Than Cool" hosted by Cool Town's very own Claymation VJ's.
Email: cooltownclaymation@gmail.com for more info!
UPDATE!!! As of 6/9/2011 10:31 A.M. The video is here! Check it out peeps! And be sure to ask yourselves, "What can YOU do to help save the planet?"
In this short/promotional video we collaborated with Green Long Beach! to bring
you a segment about the importance of preserving our resources and cleaning up
our carbon footprints. All it takes is for one person to "ignite" and find a way to
contribute and empower others to do take action by simply taking action!
Introducing a new neighborhood in Cool Town! This is just a sneak peek at a few characters and set pieces from our upcoming video "Ignite Change" for the Green Long Beach Festival happening on June 11th 2011. The video will be posted at the end of the week so be sure to check back for it. Some of the sets that we built may not make the cut for this video, but will certainly be in our future projects, including short sketches and glimpses into "The Suburbs"! More photos to come and please feel free to comment....we loooooove to hear from our viewers!
Scroll down for more info on the Green Long Beach Festival!
It's finally here and ready to watch! Our latest collaborative project with Umbrella House Productions, "The Notorious 101" is a spec-spot for Tongal.com's Brisk Ice Tea Video Competition. Co-Directors, Carol Ras- of Cool Town & Greg Whitehead of Umbrella House, saw this challenge as an opportunity to finally work alongside one another as Directors. And, this is only the beginning of many future collaborations!
About the Contest:
The contest brief is to create a video between 30-60 seconds long demonstrating what we felt needed to be more "Brisk" is Life. The idea that spawned was a no-brainer being that both productions are Los Angeles based and know much about the chaotic, hot-mess-of-a-traffic-system we so graciously love to half-heartedly tan in. So, naturally and immediately, this became the concept that we kicked into gear and began developing.
And, unlike the traditional Cool Towners, these characters have FACES--WHOA!!! Is this a new realm for Cool Town? Possibly. But nonetheless, the faceless characters are somewhat of a trademark, however, that won't stop us from exploring and taking you in different parts of this fictional world where there are characters with features and other strange, unique and rather unusual traits. Be on the lookout!
In conclusion, this project opened up a new chapter for us and we are truly stoked about taking our viewers for a new adventure! WAIT! Scroll down for some Behind the Scenes Photos!
The Los Angeles Talent Magazine has a small section on our creator, Carol K. Ras! This is definitely a cool opportunity for those who don’t know much about the brains behind the operation to get a little insight! Check it out on pages 16 & 17: http://www.latalentmag.com/february_11/
Here's the first, of many to come, Behind the Scenes video with commentary by me, Carol k.Ras- the Creator of Cool Town Claymation. Read more about our experiences in the making of "Message From Cool Town" below!
Extended Commentary:
In filming this project, it being our first and all, we expected some turbulence. Some of which, we could've been able to prevent, others, not so much. All went well for several hours into the shoot, then our first problem occurred. The battery ran out and we had no back up! Not only was this a total inconvenience to sit around for an hour at a time just to get 15 minutes of juice so we could continue to shoot as much as we can before it died again, but it drained our patience and heightened our anxiety as it was a basic fundamental that we'd overlooked. Perhaps, it was because we hadn't expected the shoot to take longer than 3 hours, but we were entirely wrong.
Our second issue occurred, and it goes hand-in-hand with the battery depletion, was that the power went out in some parts of the building. Leaving us with another obstacle, searching for power to power the power source (whew, that was a mouth full!). We eventually found an outlet that was our miracle and as previously mentioned, what was supposed to be a 3 hour day turned into a, roughly, 9-10 hour extravaganza! Not to mention, that we powered (no pun intended) through the rest of the shoot having to light freestanding with flashlights and other battery operated practicals. That was fun and is very apparent when watching the video as some areas are darker than others. But fortunately, the shoot was an exterior night shoot, which was somewhat forgiving.
This project was truly adventurous, ambitious and tons of fun. Especially since this was our first stop-motion claymation video and we really had no idea what we were doing, yet alone, what we were getting into. I must say, we truly took a lot away from this experience and still apply what we've learned in our work today. We stumbled through the entire process all in good fun, with an open mind and ready to dive into the unknown. This project was definitely the planting seed of our journey to honing our craft in this artistry.
I'd like to personally thank all of our friends, fans and families for all of your continued support in making Cool Town Claymation what it is today. As cliche as it sounds, I would not be doing this if it weren't for all of the responses we've gotten from our viewers. I am grateful and truly humbled by your new found appreciation for the art. I hope you will continue by our side and I hope we can continue to entertain, educate and enthuse you to live, learn and laugh!
Looking forward to another great year with Cool Town Claymation!
