Dennis Spielman

Alyssa and Bryan Buckley of Red Letters were challenged to be in a buddy cop film by pulling out cop archetypes from my hat and then venture out to “bust some punks.” Bryan played a hyper-active cop while Alyssa played the stereotypical black cop. Wade Martin and Kenny Madison of Good Cop/Nice Cop end up on the receiving end of Red Letter’s justice crusade.

This is the first challenge where I used a hat and pulling out the suggestions live. This was a great video and everyone played their characters wonderfully.

Raychel Winstead (Villain: The Musical, The MiDolls) is the first to accept a wild challenge! During her lunch break from work, Raychel met up with me at the Myriad Botanical Gardens. Raychel was challenged to sing a song about PMS with the title of “fire.” Before shooting, she had to pick a number from 1 to 15 for the subject to sing about. She picked 3 since it was 3 days before her Birthday.

Enjoy the debut video! Check back Mondays for a new video.

Dennis Spielman’s [Wild] Improv Challenge is just the first of many projects that will be released this year, so stay tuned for many more amazing things!

Happy New Year, everyone! I find setting goals to be great. I have some big works to debut this year as part of my resolutions. I don’t want to spoil the surprises of each reveal as they come, so I’m going to be vague in that there will be two books and two shows. Possibility more! I’m glad 2011 is over. I’m so charged up and I will make 2012 the most amazing year of my life yet! I have so many great ideas and friends that will make this year awesome.

The first of new projects that will debut is Dennis Spielman’s [Wild] Improv Challenge, which I’ll release the first video this month. The Wild Improv Challenge gives improvisers a wild, random, and improvised challenge from me. I’ve gotten some great feedback on the series and I look forward to releasing it later, so please keep visiting my site for this so much more.

The games section has its first game: The Movie Murder Mystery Party.

In this murder mystery game guests take the roles of various cast and crewmembers celebrating the completion of filming of their movie when the director suddenly dies at the party. However, the paranoid Director hid magical clues. These clues reveal hints as to who committed the crime. The scavenger hunt brings a unique aspect to the standard murder mystery game. The story of the party, the movie itself, and characters are improvised making this game different each time it’s played with between 8 and 16 people.

The game page contains a 22 page .pdf file to play the game and a movie I shot of the game’s first play test.

While I’m writing about this game, I want to give thanks to my friend, William Rader, for his help editing the document.

This is a great game for a party. I hope you have fun playing it!

Continuing my theme of places to show off Oklahoma to friends and family from out of town, on Uncovering Oklahoma I visited Science Museum Oklahoma. This was by far the most fun I’ve had shooting an interview. However, in everyone’s defense, it’s not like they had an opportunity to say, “Do you want to get video of us going down the giant slide?”

I hung out with the museum’s Wonder Instigator and Relevance Czar, Clayton P. Moore. Clayton’s job is to make as many people excited as he can possiably make them about whatever it is they’re doing in the building. We talked about the museum first in the genius lounge and then we did a guided tour. Everyone there was super fun to work with.

The picture to the side is from the Science Live show. After the show, the host, Erin Singleton, pulled out the Vortex Cannon and made smoke rings for me to shoot both pictures and video. This is my favorite shot I captured that day. Overall, the video segment came out great. I need to work on building my music loop library for videos as I wasn’t in love with the music I settled with for the video.

Science Museum Oklahoma is truly a fun place and worth regular visits.

On Uncovering Oklahoma, I released a new video on Urban Art. Urban Art houses Art Fusion Studio, Istvan Gallery, Maya Trading Company, and the Blue Sage Glass Blowing Studio. I personally enjoy going to the artist openings Istvan Gallery holds (which was when this video was recorded). If your family is visiting and you want to show them something cool in Oklahoma City, take them to Urban Art

The video actually started out as just a segment on Istvan Gallery, however, Stephen Kovash encouraged me to include all of Urban Art. I was able to meet with each of the owners that night and they were gracious enough to talk to me despite the short notice. Filming this video really stressed the importance of having a second battery for my new camera. Typically, I’m in and out of a place in about an hour, but there are going to be times where I’m including video from an event or the place is just simply large. I went out and brought one the following Sunday.

I recorded a bunch of materiel that didn’t make it into the final video. I’ll release full length artist interviews throughout the next few weeks. Some of the quotes I got from the owners I’m saving for my Uncovering Oklahoma book.

I’m happy with how the video turned out. Although I need not be afraid to make people repeat quotes if something goes wrong or doesn’t sound smooth. It’s amazing how much I learn from doing each video even though I’ve doing this for over two years now. Scenarios change.

Enjoy the video!