The questions were on art, innovation and inspiration.

Here’s an excerpt:

Tango Strategy: How do you define creativity?

Josh Shayne: All too often creativity is perceived as exclusive to the arts; however I believe that it can be defined as anything that involves using your imagination. There are creative conversationalists, creative astro-physicists, and if you’re lucky you can find a creative accountant.

Read the rest of the interview here.

Still, we are thrilled to have all the German photo-enthusiasts! You can watch the clip by clicking the linked image below — we come on around minute 2:00.

For those non-German speakers, my friend Tyler Mark has put together this super-quick, literal translation:

Not behind on another, but rather set next to one another, you can take a look at the pictures of Minty Forest — a project by two photographers where every day for a year they have published a photograph without consultation, with, for the most part, fully different but also to some extent astonishingly similar motifs.  And an equally interesting photographic comparison to see is found in N.Y. Secrets, namely the New York from 1961 compared with the New York of today.  Yes, and much there has actually not changed . . . OK, the time of the golden trashcan is for the most part in the past.

I’ve just launched the news/blog site KissingMatters.com.

Kissing Matters is really just an exciting, uplifting project with the main aim of delivering a little more positive news that people can feel good about receiving in their inbox or rss feed every morning. (It doesn’t hurt my spirits to write every day either.)

I also have several film projects in mind that would be perfect for Kissing Matters content-wise and it gives me a great excuse to produce them!

Visit KissingMatters.com

Lowered Expectations – My Life After College

by Josh Shayne

first appeared on yourhub.com | September 24, 2007 | link

When I first moved back to Boulder after attending film school at NYU, I had the feeling that things weren’t going to be quite the same. For one, I was still living with my parents. Secondly, the release of my thesis film had not been immediately been followed by the wave of studio offers and directing contracts that I had imagined. I had no car, few friends in town, and to make matters worse, shortly thereafter was canceled. The whole world was falling apart!

After quite a few months of sitting around all day in my underwear and flirting with depression by binging on Ingmar Bergman films, I knew it was time to start another project. I had a furtive meeting with my dad ( Vic Shayne) who has been my co-writer for years – and we decided that a web sitcom was the way to go. We’d had some success on YouTube with a couple of short comedy videos earlier in the year, and one of my NYU films had just aired on the Independent Film Channel (IFC) after it had been discovered online. We put our heads together and for once we didn’t hear a hollow noise – instead we came up with a show idea that I knew all too well – a comedy about a promising (and dashingly handsome) young filmmaker who is forced to move back home with his parents after college when his feature film deal falls to pieces.

The title: Lowered Expectations.

We began production on the first episode this summer. The cast consisted of my parents, my younger sister Tasha (a student at CU), my good friend Tyler Mark, Rachel Griego (a film student) and myself. I shot half of the episode in Boulder and flew to New York to shoot the other half with several very talented actors I had worked with on previous films – notably Erik Gratton, David Ovies, and Sara Friedlander.

The entire production was run-and-gun, on a zero budget, with a two-man crew – one man of which was myself – the other my friend James Darling who worked as cameraman and was visiting from New York. Shooting a film this way is a lot of fun because it frees you from some of the stress of managing a larger team, however there were occasionally some ripples in our plans.

For example – at the beginning of Episode 01, Josh (that’s me!) arrives in Boulder from New York. I’m supposed to step off the Airport Shuttle in front of the St. Julien Hotel where my sister is picking me up. So, early on a Saturday morning, we go down to the hotel. We set up the whole shot, waiting around for about 20 minutes for the shuttle to arrive with everything carefully planned. We see the shuttle coming down the block. I signal to the cameraman to start rolling and hide behind a fountain (so that I can step out and it will appear as though I’ve just stepped off the shuttle). However, just as the shuttle is arriving, one of those obscenely large black SUV limosines starts to back out of the St. Juliendriveway right toward my cameraman. It was either get the shot or wind up flat as a pancake. The choice was obvious — to the cameraman at least. He leapt out of the way and the shot was ruined. There was much wailing and gnashing of teeth.

From there, we sent the footage to our editing lab (my room), had the original score composed by Erik Desiderio (an NYU friend of mine in L.A.), held a test-screening at a local theatre (my basement) and then sent it off to our distributors (me again) and received worldwide release (the internet). Within hours, we were all over the internet. People were watching from as far away as Bangladesh and as close as Kalamazoo. The demand was overwhelming – we had to produce more episodes or face international riots, boycotts and hunger-strikes!

Rallying our crack-team, we leapt into production on Episode 02 – Easter Island. This episode signaled a big step up in production values for the show. Jason Lange, a Boulder cinematographer, came aboard as our official director of photography and we were able to spend a bit more time planning out our shots and working on production design. The episode featured both yourhub’s own Brit Horvat and giant home-made Easter Island costumes.

The world had received their second episode, but still they craved more and more! We received demanding emails from the international community – letters from Tokyo, from Vienna, from Longmont all saying things like: “When is Episode 03 going to appear?” and “What about Episode 03?” or as one particularly anxious fan wrote, “ Make Episode 03 quickly or I will resign from the head of my multi-national corporation to become a puppeteer. I am very important and this will throw the economy into a shambles. Please, don’t make me do this!”

The last one had us worried – we hurried to comply, but our ideas were getting bigger and bigger. Remember the stock scare over the last few weeks ? We believe that was because post-production took us so long. You see, Episode 03 was quite the bear post-production-wise – it involved some complex animation (cartoon planes and clouds and blue-screened 1930s pilots and such) and a bit of fancy editing tricks. But it’s finally done and can be viewed online. Our gift to the national economy.

We hope you enjoy and try not to be too demanding about Episode 04 — there are so many of you and so few of us — it will come soon, we promise! Thanks for watching.

Episode 03 – the Dream Analyst, just premiered on the Web on Sept. 22. featuring special guest star Vanessa Barcus and a special farewell to our comedy hero – Tyler Mark.

You can view the current episodes online at: www.floatinglightbulbfilms.com/news/category/loweredexpectations

This was a fast-paced production all the way down the line. Shot in 2 days and edited in a week and a half to meet our deadline, we’re going to need a bit of a rest over the weekend. But it was all worth it. We’re particularly happy with the level of production design in this episode – from colorful pie charts to complicated, cardboard Easter Island Head Costumes – engineered and constructed by Janice – we are continuing to push the boundaries of what you can produce on a zero budget.

WATCH the EPISODE HERE: Lowered Expectations Episode 02 – Easter Island

PHOTO: Brit, Josh and Tyler on Pearl Street filming Episode 02

The Sting divx

For the last couple months, we’ve been hard at work on creating the first episode in what we hope will be a continuing web series — Lowered Expectations. Superman II: Director’s cut movie full The show will be a comedy revolving around Josh, a filmmaker who, after losing a career-making film deal, has no choice but to leave New York and move home with his parents in Boulder, Colorado.

Starring writer/director Josh Shayne’s real family — his co-writer Vic Shayne, sister Tasha and mom Janice (in addition to numerous friends and acquaintances), the show is not quite reality, not quite fiction. We’ll leave it to you to figure out exactly where the lines blur.

The official premiere of Episode One is Friday July 6th, 2007. However, for those of you who can’t wait, we’ve shot a couple of trailers for the show and are posting them here on Floating Lightbulb Films.

You can WATCH the TRAILERS HERE:

Trailer 01 – Cut!

The Edge of Love film

Trailer 02 – International Banana Phone

Also, you can join the  Who Killed Doc Robbin ipod Lowered Expectations group on Facebook HERE

. And if you like the show, tell a friend.

Thanks! We appreciate your support.

on the set of the trailer shoot

Not Nina. She is a gifted and well-trained artist of the old-school. She paints people and landscapes and does nudes and knows all about her medium and physiology and art history and other contemporary work… all that stuff that you should know if you are going to call yourself an artist. Like anyone that is actually good, she strives to produce work of excellent technique coupled with compelling and innovative ideas. Form meets content — it’s basic but it works. You can check out more of her work on her website: NinaBarry.com

I shot this short at her studio in Boulder, CO last autumn. When I tried to edit it, I had massive technological malfunctions and I wasn’t able to complete it until recently. I think it came out decently in that it seems to showcase Nina’s tremendous talent and overall affability. Enjoy. WATCH Nina Barry [artist] HERE… The Fox and the Hound 2 download Think Fast, Mr. Moto dvd

- JoshRed Letters buyIgby Goes Down ipod

I just wanted to write and say thanks to everyone who caught the Le Voyeur screening on IFC last week and wrote in to us. screening on It’s always great to hear your warm/funny responses, feedback and bits of encouragement. If you missed the screening, never fear, Le Voyeur will continue showing throughout February. Rather than keep emailing everyone with updates, I’ll just list the whole schedule here for your perusal.

Thanks again so much and keep a lookout for a new short sometime in the next few days.
- Josh

Additional IFC Screenings:
Tue, Feb. 6 at 12:25 AM EST
Tue, Feb. 6 at 04:25 AM EST
Wed, Feb. 14 at 08:25 AM EST
Thu, Feb. 15 at 05:35 AM EST
Thu, Feb. 22 at 11:45 AM EST
Sat, Feb. 24 at 07:35 AM EST
Sun, Feb. 25 at 07:05 PM EST

Mission: Impossible video A reel of Josh Shayne’s directing work through 2006.