Have a Healthy Helping of '80s Action... With Extra Cheese

If you saw Portland's 48 Hour Film Project this year, you'll remember the winning entry, Through The Door Productions' sitcom parody, "P-Town Peeps," which featured a parody-within-the-parody in the form of a commercial break for a "24"-esque actioner called "48," which Through the Door outsourced to Uke Doiron of Mainiac Films.

"We only had 1 hour and 40 minutes to go out and shoot footage within a half-mile radius," says Dorion. "For what we shot it came out decent and everyone seemed to eat it up during the event."

Eat it up they did, and audience enthusiasm for that brief snippet set the ball rolling on a longer, more ambitious take on the concept.  Introducing Mainiac Films' entry into this year's Four Minute Film Festival, an even more over-the-top parody of '80s action flicks, features guns, explosions, and an upside-down Air Force One (all CGI effects courtesy of the insanely talented cinematographer and editor Eric Michael Dawalga).

Conceived by Doiron, Dawalga, and Skip Brunelle, the "Unhinged" trailer was shot over eight Saturdays in several locations around Maine that could plausibly pass for a run-down city somewhere in Eastern Europe (Kennebunk Beach, the Sanford Mills, and Indian's Last Leap in Springvale, for example). With no budget to speak of, the filmmakers relied on the generosity of their cast of heroes, who also doubled as masked terrorists. Top bad guy Marc Gardner is also a talented stunt man, and was game to jump off roofs and be kicked through doors.

Mainiac Films plans to make a sequel trailer to "Unhinged" every year, each one bigger and better than before.  They're also eying a web series, if they can secure the funding.  This trailer offers a tantalizing taste of what those Maniacs may have in store for us down the line.

Ladies and gentlemen, "Unhinged."

Introducing... 'The Professionals'

On this Thanksgiving Day, The Entertainment Experiment is proud to bring you something pretty special:  The pilot for an ambitious new show created by Logen Christopher and Corey Rich, the filmmaking duo behind Knight St. Media.

"The Professionals," shot entirely in Portland, follows four main characters (played by some heavy-hitters on the Maine film scene):  Owen (Matthew Delamater), a former banker turned professional homeless man; Gary (Ty Gowen), a lazy dropout who begs on the street and looks at Owen as a mentor; Aubrey (Ashley Brooks), an intelligent, strong woman who manipulates the weakness of men by using her body to make a substantial living; and Kenneth (Erik Moody), an insurance salesman who works, thinks and acts harder than anyone else.  Even in the pilot, these characters lives intersect in intriguing and surprising ways.

Challenging the concepts of success" and the American dream, "The Professionals" explores a world where the "plan" no longer works for everyone.

The pilot below offers a tantalizing taste of what this show has in mind.  The current plan is to launch a funding campaign both online and "on the ground" in February or March to get the funds to shoot the adapted first season of about 6-10 episodes in the summer of 2015.

Here's your chance to get in on the ground floor and see what folks will be talking about next year.  Take a look:  "The Professionals."