Hi everyone,
It’s that time of the year again, this is our 5th time reflecting on our previous year of work for Clicker Productions, as well as providing a sneak peek into what’s to come in the new year. I’m sure everyone is just as thrilled and equally relieved as we are that 2020 is past us. It’s been a tough year for the entire world, and our company had to face hardships following the COVID lock-down too. We are very fortunate to be resided in Western Australia and were able to get back on track by June. Despite the tough times, I’m personally very proud of both the quantity and the quality of what we’ve delivered this past year, so with that, let’s recap..
This year, we introduced a new weekly show: #SoaringSaturdays. The idea is simple, each Saturday, we release a set of photographs or a video onto our social feeds that utilizes an otherwise overlooked aspect of filmmaking. We’re talking time-lapses, GoPro footage, photography and mostly drone shots. We have a lot of different types of camera gear in our office so this series was a good excuse to experiment with it more. We did 20 weeks, or 20 episodes, and called it a wrap on Season 1 of #SoaringSaturdays, and we’re pleased with the results. We’re looking to have a stronger lineup of episodes for Season 2 in the new year.
We continued in our collaboration with ZKJ Productions to produce new weekly episodes of the Cinema Sideshow podcast, which just hit a new milestone of 100 episodes. It’s crazy to think how much audio of Zeke and I’s voice currently exist on the internet. We celebrated the milestone by having several of our guests return for brief audio cameos and we also held a competition where the winner could win up to 2 Blu-rays movies of their choice, based on the list of films we’ve covered. The winner turned our to be our own Nakeesha Moody. Congratulations Keesh! We are continuing into 2021 with our third year of episodes and with no signs of stopping. You can listen to the podcast on Spotify, PodBean or Apple podcasts.
Speaking of podcasts, we started a new one all on our own. Earlier in the year, we produced two episodes of the ‘Ability Advocacy’ podcast hosted by our friend Camilla. The show sees Camilla interviewing experts, advocates on, and individuals with physical and intellectual disabilities. Like I said, we’ve only produced 2 episodes but we plan to get back to work on the show sometime in the new year. It’s available exclusively on PodBean.
We also introduced a new project, a natural progression from the original ‘MegaGamer’ YouTube channel, ‘Have a Stream with Jake’ which is the combined Twitch and YouTube channels that see me, Jake, playing and live-streaming video games. I’ve played smaller games like ‘Twin Breaker’ and ‘LIMBO’ as well as bigger games on the new PlayStation 5 like ‘Spider-Man: Miles Morales’ and ‘Demon’s Souls’.
Keen eyed viewers may have noticed we announced a certain documentary sequel earlier in the year. ‘Ex-Rental: Part II’ was officially announced back in July and we’ve been purposely quiet ever since. This is an on-going documentary, mostly shot (in safe and pre-cautioned conditions) during COVID lock-down, and we’ve been dead silent on what the film entails until we’re absolutely ready to reveal more. In the meantime, we’ve put out a deleted scene from the original short film that further explores Blockbuster Morley.
There was also a lot to celebrate in the past year. ‘Ex-Rental’, our short documentary film about local video stores in Perth, WA became a part of the official selection at the Static Film Festival in 2020. It played to a worldwide audience online and exposed our story to more people. Another film we helped produce, ‘CRADLE’, also screened at this festival and won the award for the Best Student Film. We’re really proud of that one.
Our biggest film to date, ‘dis connected’, also became available for rental and purchase on Vimeo-On-Demand this past year, from as low as $2.49aud. The DVD, which features over two hours of bonus features, had a price reduction down to just $9.99 as well. You can purchase that DVD on this very website at our store.
Some other notable highlights include working on videos for the Indigenous Emerging Business Forum 2020k with Telstra and John O’Driscoll, Gina Williams and Guy Ghouse at the Backlot Perth, the opening of the Banjup Fire Station for the City of Cockburn, Bone Moe’s 2020 Fringe Show (which we live-streamed) and the Murdoch University Student Leadership Awards. I, personally, also had the pleasure of being a guest on ‘Amplify’ radio station, ‘The Pool Room’ podcast with Jesse Newell and the ‘Let’s See How We Go’ podcast with Brock and Joash.
There’s a lot here upon reflection, and we’ve found a way to make it easier for the audience to track everything we do at Clicker Productions. Starting from early November, we’ve been sending exclusive newsletters to subscribers that detail all of our work and weekly content from month-to-month. For more info, see the blog post below this one.
Well, that’s 2020 in a nutshell over here. But what can we look forward to in the new year? Well, we still plan to continue our series’ such as the Cinema Sideshow podcast, #SoaringSaturdays and ‘Have a Stream with Jake’. We also want to continue looking into publishing DVDs and home releases of local films that otherwise don’t have a distribution plan (much like we did with ‘dis connected’). Furthermore, we have a bunch of documentary ideas in the works. The most exciting of the bunch include behind-the-scenes documentaries for local films such as ‘The Raven’ and ‘Work from Home’ which are both in post-production. We were fortunate enough to be invited to make these videos on the set of these wonderful short films. ‘The Raven’ already has a 1min reel posted by Propel Youth Arts WA.
With each passing year, Clicker Productions slowly expands more and more. As we reach the 5-year anniversary of the company’s launch, this July, I can confidently say that I’m so proud of the progress we’ve made. I’m proud of the media we put out, I’m proud of the consistency in which we talk to our audience through our socials with hundreds and hundreds of posts a year and I’m proud of the ever-growing quantity and quality of our films. This is Jake, signing out, on another exciting year of producing films for you. Take care and happy new year!
- Jake De Agrela