KCTV Filmmaker Series: Blake Calhoun

If you try and pinpoint the beginning of web television, you most likely end up somewhere in 2007. Sure you can point to Red vs. Blue in 2003, but machinima is a whole other genre. There was SamHas7Friends in 2006, but that series mostly flew under the radar. It was not until mid-2007 when the space was legitimized by a handful of filmmakers defining the medium with their own style of storytelling. That summer, an independent filmmaker from Dallas, Texas decided to take on the emerging medium by telling the tale of an assassin with daddy issues.

Web television was born from the core principles used in independent film – keep it contained, use resources available to you, call in favors, get creative. So it’s not a surprise that a multi-talented indie filmmaker like Blake Calhoun would take his knowledge base and business know-how to the web space – the micro-indie. In 2007, after watching web television blossom, Calhoun and Mike Maden sought to create a more polished, intellectual brand of web entertainment. They aspired to go beyond the web comedy one-off and bring their craftsmanship to short-form storytelling. In a market focused on comedy, Calhoun and Maden decided to tell the story of a contract killer who is haunted by her line of work and reminisces about the days when she was just daddy’s little girl: Pink. Having worked with both Natalie Raitano (V.I.P.) and Sheree Wilson (Walker, Texas Ranger) on his feature film Killing Down, Calhoun was able to secure a solid cast as he set out to complete the project by summer’s end. The months and years that followed the launch of Pink, in September of 2007, earned him a Webby, a Streamy, an agent (UTA), a buyer (Generate), distributors, a debut in Times Square… and the list goes on. Not bad, Calhoun, not bad at all.

Pink launches big-time at Times Square

It was a big accomplishment for a female-driven drama to find so much success in a male-driven comedy world. But it was proof that, like any medium, people want to be engaged, and they want to follow the journey of captivating characters. Calhoun admits that, overall, his projects not only focus on complicated characters, both male and female, but they tend to live in dark worlds. For example, his second web series, 88 Hits, a Spinal Tap-esque mockumentary, follows a family in the organized crime world who miss the good old days and are just trying to do right… by their standards. “My films, strangely, are all about trying to find happiness in life: Pink, and then 88 Hits, and even my first little gangster movie, Thugs,” recalls Calhoun.“I did an action film in 2006 called Killing Down. It’s about a guy who was tortured in Nicaragua during the Contra conflict in the late 80s. It’s not about trying to figure out who did this to him, but him trying to find happiness in his life… I’m a happy guy, so I don’t know where that comes from.”

With a healthy list of credits in several mediums, Calhoun is not choosing sides and he’s not slowing down. In 2010, he’s releasing Spilt Milk (an indie feature) and Exposed (a web series for Warner Bros. Television). He’s learned something that the music business has learned the hard way: the only way to survive the business of entertainment in modern times is to diversify, become the triple threat… or was that quadruple threat? With a slate that includes commercials, corporate videos, feature films, shorts and web series, his secret is to always have something in the pipeline and wear many hats.

When I asked Calhoun what inspired him to become a filmmaker, he revealed that he never dreamed of being Steven Spielberg and didn’t make Super 8 movies as a kid. “It just sorta happened,” says Calhoun. “I never had an epiphany one day where I had to be a filmmaker. I think you get that feeling where you just want to create. You gotta keep creating content. It’s a weird little disease that you get. You can’t get rid of it.”

Movies That Inspired Me:

Sex, Lies and Videotape – El Mariachi – Clerks – Reservoir Dogs – Pulp Fiction

Filmmakers That Inspired Me:

Danny Boyle – Quentin Tarantino – Paul Thomas Anderson – Martin Scorsese

If, like Blake Calhoun, you’re drawn to the dark side, you might want to check out: 10 Greatest Film Assassins from Movie History

Marti Resteghini is VP of Network Programming and Acquisitions here at KoldCast TV. Formerly, as vice president of development and production at Warner Bros.-based production company, HDFilms, Resteghini oversaw the development, production and distribution of feature films, television and new media content across multiple platforms. In this post, Resteghini produced many high-profile Web series including “Chadam,” “Creepshow: Raw,” based on the 1980s cult classic feature film, and Crackle’s “The Jace Hall Show.”