Summer Update

Well, much has happened this past spring and summer.  We moved to Irvine and I helped a friend produce an independent feature film.  Since I finished my main responsibilities with him in May, I've been writing and preparing for my next project: a film about the crisis in North Korea.

For those of you who haven't heard yet, Jenny and I are actually traveling to North Korea in September.  Officially, it's a tourist trip.  We'll be traveling with a team organized through Open Doors USA, a ministry that supports the persecuted Church around the world.  More info can be found on our North Korea blog:

http://bethkenk.blogspot.com/

Other exciting news is that Jenny has put her notice in with Biola University and will be finished working there on August 15th.  She'll be freelancing now and already has plenty of work lined up.  I'm also doing some freelance video work to supplement our income.  I've been working with other non-profit organizations that are focused on helping North Korea as well and there may be more opportunities with them in the future.

Janet and Brian Hill, my sister and brother-in-law, are moving here to Irvine next week!  They will actually live literally around the corner from us!  We're really excited to have family near us again.  He'll be taking a position at our church, RockHarbor, as high school youth pastor.

So that's our brief update.  Exciting things going on here in the west.  Please pray that God will use us to bring hope and freedom to North Korea someday.  

Producing Full-time

Hey everyone!

Just wanted to keep you up to date on what's going on out here with us. Hopefully you know that Jenny and I moved about a month ago to Irvine (about 20 miles further south from LA) to be closer to our church and friends. Part of the reason for the move further from LA is because I'm leaving my job at the Sci Fi Channel at the end of this month. It has been a great experience there and I really needed to spend some time in the industry to gain knowledge and confidence. I've met some great people up there and great business contacts to keep in touch with; but I won't miss much about the job, except maybe riding the train (despite the 4-hour commute everyday). I've been ready to leave Sci Fi for quite some time, and now I feel like I have a better grasp of how this business works and more prepared to step out and take another risk.

This new opportunity is not quite as big as moving out here to California, though, and I feel more secure about it. You might know that I've been helping my friend Jacob Roebuck to produce an independent feature film over the past several months. The shooting is mostly done and we are now in the post-production process, on schedule to have a finished movie by the end of April. Until now I've just been a passive advisor, but in March I'm coming on as a full producer to help Jake finish the film. On this project, I'm letting him take the lead as he has risked much to get this far. But in a month or so (when we're closer to finishing this film) we are forming a production company as equal partners to begin making more films together.

In the past I've been very cautious about this sort of venture as it can be dangerous for friendships. But watching the progress of the production this far has helped me feel much more comfortable and confident about it. We also have a similar vision and motivation for being here in California. It was a tough decision to let go of my infant career in television, but my involvement in TV is far from over and I feel that the more experience I get writing and producing indy films, the better chance I will have to create content in any medium. Jenny and I both feel at peace with this small change in direction but we're both also a bit nervous and very excited.

We have a document (let me know if you'd like to see it) to help people understand more about what we're doing with this current project entitled, Coyote County Loser. Again, this is really Jacob's baby and I've come on board to help him finish it and make a profit so that we can continue with more projects (we're hoping to shoot another one this fall). This investor packet explains a bit more about what we're doing. (Jenny did the design for the document - excellent, of course). Though fund-raising is going to be my main job over the next several weeks, I've never felt it wise to ask family and friends to invest in business ventures, so I'm not asking for your financial involvement.

That said, I would love your help in spreading the word about what I'm doing and passing this information on to other people that you know who might be able and interested in making an investment. We've already raised about $60k and we need to raise another $120k to finish and market the film (aka sell it to a distributor and make a return on our shareholders' investment). You can also find more info at www.coyotecountyloser.com

Mostly I just wanted to give you all a heads up on what we're doing now. Jenny is unsure about her future at Biola and is still considering whether she wants to move on or not. We both went on a middle school youth retreat last weekend into the mountains near Big Bear (with our good friends Tyler and Alison Carroll leading). That was a lot of fun to see snow again and get into the wilderness. We've really enjoyed being more involved in ministry at RockHarbor (and I've been glad to be involved without being on staff ;-)

We miss you all and hope to get back east to visit sometime soon... Thanks for your thoughts and prayers.

Fall Update

Well, Jenny and I are still here. We're surviving. It's been a difficult summer for me at work. Jenny is doing all right at BIOLA. We miss rain. We miss fall colors. We miss our Arkansas friends.

We set a time on a Saturday morning a few weeks ago to have a video chat with Casey and Traci Letellier, who now live and work in Oxford. It was much fun to show each other our apartments, have coffee and chat face-to-face for a good while (thank you Apple and iChat!). Discussing the pros and cons of living in a new place, I was reminded that there are some predictable stages when relocating. This past summer represented the "longing for home/we don't like this place" stage (at least for me), but I think I'm over it now.

Combined with this nostalgia, I was struggling to get along with my boss at work. I have a "good boss" and a "bad boss". The good one is fun and helpful and easy to get along with - the bad one is anal, passive-aggressive, and difficult to please. Though I think I have now adjusted and learned how to pacify his demands, it is still a bit stressful working there and I dread Mondays (never lived for weekends before with past jobs). Plus the 10-hour workdays added to a 3-hour (combined) commute each day was taking a toll. All that said, I keep reminding myself that I am very fortunate to have this job and when my commitment is up in April, I will be in a good position to get a job that is closer to where I want to be: in a tv writers room.

On the upside, we're grateful for our friends out here (though most of them are from Arkansas!) and we're both getting more involved in our church, RockHarbor. I've started working with the middle school ministry (about to start a small group with 7th graders) and Jenny is in a program to learn about counselling (and she's loving it). We're also preparing to come visit Siloam Springs in mid-October, so the anticipation of seeing everyone makes life eaiser as well. The cool weather of the past few weeks has also been encouraging and lightened our spirits.

Another highlight of the summer happened a few weeks ago when I had lunch with a TV writer (and a Christian) who is (pretty much) where I would like to be professionally in several years. He wrote for "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and "That 70's Show". He understands that neither of these shows were redemptive in any way, but feels that he made a contribution in making them cleaner than they could have been. He sees part of his role as being the "salt" that slows the decay in our media culture. But it was very encouraging to speak with him and hear his heart for creating media that points people toward Christ without bashing them over the head with it. I'm currently working on several scripts and hope to have them ready by next spring when I'll be looking for a new job.

So that's a small snapshot of the past few months. Looking forward to seeing some of you in October. Thanks for your interest in our lives...

Rob Got A Job!

For the last few weeks I've been working hard to prove myself with the internship at Sci Fi Channel. The assistant whom I was working primarily with had been offered another job within our office, so when I came they were already looking for her replacement. Over time as I became more familiar with the operations of the office, I put my name in the running for her position. Last Friday, the bosses sat me down and finally offered me the job! They had been interviewing for weeks and they had very good candidates (with more office experience than me), but I think that my hard work and late hours had been noticed. So, though I'm sure they also saw me as competent, they decided to reward my drive and passion.

My new title at the Sci Fi Channel (owned by NBC/Universal, which is owned by GE) is Assistant to the Vice President of Alternative Programming. In a nutshell, I'm a secretary. In the business, they call me an "assistant". Almost every executive and producer in Hollywood has "paid their dues" at some point by working as an assistant for an agent, producer, network exec, or various bigwig. So now my time has come to pay my dues by answering phones and managing calendars. I committed to work with them for a year, but I'm looking forward to it. I will learn a great deal about the TV business in general and make many valuable contacts by being a part of the mainstream media "machine". Though Sci Fi is a cable network, we work closely with our parent company of NBC.

Yes, I still have to commute for 3 hours every day, but I can be productive with most of that time on my laptop (riding the bus, train, and subway). The people in my office are great, it isn't very cutthroat like many networks, and the work is steadily getting easier as I become more familiar with how things work. The shows that I work on will be a little less interesting as I am on the "alternative programming" side. That means reality shows, docu-dramas, and late night. But I know all of the people who make the interesting scripted shows like Eureka, Battlestar Galactica, Stargate, and the upcoming Flash Gordon. The important thing is that when my year of servitude is up, the influential friends that I have made there will open up many doors that would be otherwise completely unavailable to me...

I'll send pictures of my commute and office sometime soon. It's been fun working at a large corporation (never done that before). I have to swipe a security card to get in to the 30-story bldg where I work, and there are occassionally "NBC family" town hall meetings that we watch in our office via video link. This helps me to see a side of the corporate world that I only read about during grad school and heard from friends in mega-corps like Wal-Mart.

So I'm having fun and very grateful for this opportunity. It's my foot in the door to a career in Hollywood - something that many others are still struggling to find in this town. We still miss Siloam and our calm, easy life there. But we know that this is still where we are suppose to be. Jenny is enjoying her work at BIOLA more and more, but I expect that we'll probably be moving north to LA sometime in the next couple of years. Thanks for your interest. I'll try to give more updates soon, but since I only get a couple hours of awake time at home each night, time has become much more precious. Take care, all!

Sci Fi

Well, I've worked a week now at the Sci Fi Channel and it has been very educational. Cable television is a very interesting world, similar to the national networks (ABC, NBC, CBS, etc.), but also very different. The people in my office are very friendly and casual (we wear jeans regularly). Though they are also very busy people.

The development office is divided between alternative development (animated, reality shows, and late night) and scripted development (normal 1-hour stories). There are four development executives that work with production companies to create various shows on the Sci Fi Channel, such as: Battlestar Galactica, Eureka, Stargate: Atlantis, Dresden Files, etc. Currently I work mostly with the alternative side, assisting the executives with their organization of shows like Who Wants To Be A Superhero, Ghost Hunters, Destination: Truth, etc. I'd rather be doing more in scripted, but I'm still thankful for the experience I'm getting. I may soon work more on that side, but most of the production of those shows are in British Columbia so there's not much chance of getting closer to the production.

However, last week I did get to walk around on the set of Who Wants To Be A Superhero. It was very interesting watching the dozens of people that are needed to successfully pull off a reality show... Yesterday I also sat in on a video conference meeting with our staff in L.A. and the New York Sci Fi staff (who mostly handle promotions and marketing). It was strange sitting at a long table and watching a video screen of a room full of other people at a long table who were 3 time zones away!

I've been able to watch shows that have not aired yet and read scripts for shows that won't air for another 6 months! I also get to read scripts for potential shows/movies that the network is considering; giving my own notes and thoughts on the various projects. Most importantly, I'm learning how this business works. Even my supervisor (an assistant who is probably 23 years old - yes, humbling) doesn't know how everything works. But every day I pick up a new term or a new understanding of the TV arena. I'm glad to be working in TV for now. Film projects may be a part of my future, but there are great advantages in TV as well.

One of the biggest changes I've made has been learning to do without my car... With gas prices ridiculously high out here, we're trying do drive as little as possible. Thankfully, my office building is just across the street from a subway station. So I leave each morning at 6:45AM and catch a bus outside our apartment - to a commuter train at 7:18AM - to Union Station in LA where I get on the subway that takes me to Universal City, arriving around 8:25AM. I'm usually there before most everyone else. The mornings have been fairly quite, so I usually get to read or catch up on shows I'm unfamiliar with. But the afternoons are normally crazy: making dvd duplicates, revising documents, always something different. They say I can sit in on pitches soon - that will be cool!

Though I'm usually gone 12-14 hours each day, this is a valuable experience that many people would love to have. I am hoping to write a few spec scripts for Battlestar and Atlantis. Since I have direct access to the execs who run these shows, there's a possibility this could lead to a meeting with writers or even my script getting picked up... Who knows... More soon!

Desert towns and tall buildings

Last week I took a road trip with my good friend Jacob Roebuck and another friend, Dave. We traveled east to Roswell, New Mexico. The purpose of the trip was to scout locations for an upcoming film project that I am writing called, "Coyote County Loser". It was a productive trip where we took many pictures of various locations, brainstormed story and plot formation, and made valuable contacts with the locals. The story is set in a small desert town, so since Jacob's inlaws live there (and are extremely hospitable to all) he thought it would make for a worthy and cost-effective production location.

It is always a joy to visit Roswell and Jacob's inlaws, Bill and Polly Hartman. There is something about the desert that excites and inspires me... We also stopped in Tucson at the home of Polly's sister, Ann. She lives in an adobe house on the edge of the Saguaro National Park, so we woke up the next day to a beautiful (though harsh and dangerous) landscape of brush and cactus. Writing this screenplay has been really fun and I'm excited about the project, but I'm also not sure what is going to come of my upcoming internship at the SCI FI Channel. If another opportunity does not present itself when my intership is through, then I will devote the rest of this year to helping produce the film with Jacob. He is the driving force behind producing this film, but I'm hoping that I can stay involved to the end as well.

Speaking of the internship, I drove by the NBC/Universal building where I will be working (as SCI FI Channel is owned by NBC/Uni). It is in Universal City in the middle of Hollywood. The building is near the Universal Studios and is about 30 stories tall! I was quite impressed and intimidated at the site of it. Supposedly, much of the NBC/Universal corporate activity is centralized in this building, so I will be in the thick of one of the world's largest media giants... pretty cool. I begin there at SCI FI on Wednesday and I'm not quite sure what to expect. But they always seem excited about my coming when I speak to them on the phone. Obviously, there will be a blog soon about my entrance into this entertainment machine.

Another fun thing that happened this weekend (while Jenny has been visiting Arkansas) is that an article written by my wife has been posted to a new online women's magazine called ZIA. I'm very proud of her as it is a well-written article, and already there has been great feedback about it from readers! Here is the link.
http://www.ziamag.com/index.php/zia/story/the_demise_of_prince_charming/

Well, we're still loving California as it slowly-but-surely continues to feel more like home. Hopefully I'll have energy at the end of this coming week to give an update on the intrigues of working at a national cable TV network!