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So a few weeks ago we made the decision to produce a few spec commercials for Doritos “Crash the Superbowl Contest”.

Our first one online is: Flip That Card! “A contestant makes it to the final round of the hit TV Game Show!”

The crew was essentially made up of almost all Face The Music crew alumni. Scott Law (Paul) and Paige Locke (Jade) returned to help us out with some of them.

The contest has an $1,000,000 prize for first place, so if you would be so kind as to, for now, just watch the hell outta these spots, that’d be super appreciated. Winning could mean we could produce more content and further reputation for our crew when it comes to pitching Face The Music to networks! We’ll be posting each individual video in its own post here as they appear on the Doritos site!

Check it out and rate "Flip That Card!” here: https://crashthesuperbowl.doritos.com/video/2475

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First official network proposal sent...

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Greetings everyone!

This is an announcement to everyone who has been following us as we slowly truck forward on Face The Music.

Due to some recent developments - those of which we are not at liberty to currently discuss - we have made the decision that effective immediately, we will be making the Face The Music Abridged Pilot and several of the other videos on our YouTube page inaccessible on YouTube due to our current pursuit of making this a TV series rather than web.

So while we’ve decided to pull the pilot, remember that this is a GOOD thing! Because while I can’t spill details, it means there are some gears turning.

But this is also a call to action. We will be online more often and engaging with you guys more - because we still need to show there is support for this series moving forward!

Thank you for understanding, and know that everything you’ve done by engaging with us and liking our content so far has been what’s made this even remotely possible.

Stay subscribed to our Facebook, YouTube and Twitter accounts for more updates.

Keep being awesome.

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To all our Canadian viewers, we just wanted to take a moment to remind you to go out and #VOTE today in your riding! Your voice is important and it makes a difference. Show this country that you are important. If you want politicians to care about you and to work to benefit you, then get out and vote! Politicians work for you and they work for your vote. Whatever your political ideology and preference may be, show then what’s what! You live in an amazing country where you have the right to do this. Oh Canada! Eh?

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Yes. Above is the title page for the official first draft of the Face The Music TV series pilot.

Things I can say about it... 

It retains the same basic story of our first two webisode scripts but with some heavy character and motivation changes

It’s 28 pages of basic insanity and depravity

We eliminated all uses of the word “Fuck” and felt that it opened up so many more opportunities for absurd behaviour

It’s much darker than our 3-minute R-rated pilot

The characters are all a little bit more... selfish? Would that be the right word? Yeah you know what, I’ll say they’re selfish.

Why am I posting this, you may ask? Well yesterday, Alex, Pronch and myself (Mike) had a meeting with our new executive producer (whose name I cannot post yet) about actually getting this story into people’s hands who can make something happen with it. These things always take a lot of time because there is money, reputations, and 

At the same time, our new executive producer is helping us shop around a FEATURE FILM outline that Alex, Pronch and I have been toying with for the better part of a year now. This story is a very serious, female-led mystery drama - a very different tone and direction from Face The Music, but it’s a story we’ve come to love and hope we’re able to tell eventually.

I know this is seldom updated, but stay tuned as we slowly (fingers crossed) move towards making this show a reality.

You are awesome and keep fucking being that way.

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Follow Mike’s Twitter and Instagram for other mundane parts of his life and more frequent updates, or check out his personal website and blog at www.mikechantaj.com for more creative, commercial and corporate work for stuff he’s done, and longer ramblings.

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Greetings from the seldom updated Face The Music Page!

Forgive us, for we have been busy as balls, but we have some news!

As you can see from this picture here, we’ve upgraded to a bigger, more colourful whiteboard and corkboard to work on the season. Alex and I have been working diligently away on rewrites and edits for a first season – and there were points where we had strings tied from one spot to another and looked like fucking conspiracy theorists before we cleaned it up – and then I blurred so we don’t spoil anything. We also have a new whiteboard coming into the office that is 3 times bigger than that one soon.

We’ve had some very fruitful meetings and discussions about the show recently (the details of which I can’t really post... sorry!), but good things may be coming!

However, due to our potential movement forward with some TV networks (of which I cannot technically say much at this point) we’ve been advised to make our online pilot a tad bit harder to find, and rebrand it as an “R-Rated Abridged Pilot”.

So as of tomorrow, August 31 2015, the FACE THE MUSIC ABRIDGED PILOT will be UNSEARCHABLE in Google and YouTube but WILL STILL BE VIEWABLE – just unlisted. So if you’ve got the URL (which will still be available on our Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr or Instagram) you will be able to find it and share it just fine. You’ll also be able to find it at my official website www.mikechantaj.com. So bookmark that shit yo!

Unfortunately, TV and production takes a long time to get moving... for example, I first conceived this series as is nearly two years ago... and it was loosely based on an idea I had for a show three years before that... so be patient and bear with us!

Additionally, Alex and I have been working on two feature films and a short film, for which hopefully there is news for in the future. Then our day jobs as well. We forgot what sleep is.

We will hopefully be able to provide you with some updates in the near future!

And just so you’ve got the URL... here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3uaQS_aed1Q

Mike

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I’m a few days late because of crazy #OpticFilm deadlines but still wanted to honour the fact that #lovewins 

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The people that loosely inspired the plot and characters of “Face The Music” circa September 2004 at the ages of 13 and 14 after playing a show in Toronto, Ontario.

Except it was 4 guys (and one occasional roadie) instead of 3 guys and 2 girls, and nobody died or got famous and I don’t think anyone would spit on a dead body.

L TO R: Jesse Gill (top left - roadie), Johnny Lima (bottom left - guitar / lead vocals), Barber (guitar / vocals), Mike Chantaj (drums), Russ Hall (bass)

We were so little.

Check out the pilot: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3uaQS_aed1Q

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FACE THE MUSIC

So yesterday Mike and Alex got together to work on some Face the Music. As you may have seen, we’re working on adapting our series as is into a full-fledged cable-style television series and once our full pilot is finished, we’ll start whoring it around. This is a process that will likely take a good long while. However we’re still open to the webseries avenue if money should appear for us to do that, and we’re still holding onto our short webseries scripts in that event... but in the meantime we’re also developing a 10 episode season of half-hour episodes that adapts the stories we’ve written so far and incorporates new ideas we came up with in our last session. We came up with some pretty rowdy storylines to throw Ronnie, Paul, Lew, Amanda and Jade into.


OPTIC

Mike has officially completed his director’s cut of Optic with his spectacular editor Sydney Cowper (background actress on FTM and key grip extraordinaire!) - the film using the Invisivision glasses that allow the user to experience two different streams of video at the same time, allowing them to customize their experience of a film. We really recommend you check out some of their websites and stay tuned on FTM’s page for some info on that project as well. It creates a whole new dimension for watching and ingesting media. Check out https://twitter.com/invisivision and www.twitter.com/mikechantaj for updates on that film. It stars Ethan Yin and Lescia Andrews as two badass young children who have had to fight to survive a robot-driven apocalypse. CGI and robots everywhere! ROBOTS!

OTHER PROJECTS

Mike and Alex are also in the midst of developing a dramatic feature film (in a completely different tone from Face The Music) that follows a story that contains elements of: - an adaptation of a fictional work - an adaptation of a true story - an original storyline created by Mike and Alex It’s about female empowerment in a 1970s male-driven society. It’s a project we’ve been slowly developing for the last year and a half and are really in the middle of hardcore research about life in the 1970s. As well, Mike has officially joined the series Here We Stay as a lead editor, a series led by the awesome Bea Macapagal - director of Young Badlands (where Mike was an editor), and production designer on Optic.

Also please enjoy that vine of Mike spinning in his edit suite after sending his commercials off for approvals!

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We said we’d be back. And we’re trying to do it big.

Follow Mike and Alex to find out about our projects and the Face The Music progress!

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FACE THE MUSIC - NEWS

Greetings everyone!

Mike here. I know. It’s been a while. Again I’ve kind of disappeared from social media - it has been a very busy couple months for me and a lot of the Face The Music team.

I’ve been working tirelessly on a research and development project called Optic with some amazing people. I’ll tell you about that in a moment.

Charlie Hamilton (Ronnie) has been directing some short projects and music videos, and that’s taken up his time.

Elise Bauman (Amanda) as I’m sure you know has been busting her ass on Almost Adults and I believe is starting production on Carmilla Season 2 very soon (like I need to tell you guys about that).

Scott Law (Paul) recently landed a gig as the voice of the Showcase TV network in their rebranding. I’m pretty proud of him because as an aspiring voice performer, that’s a pretty big fucking deal. Check out some of their more recent videos at this link to hear his sexy voice at the end of some of the spots.

Paige Locke (Jade) went on a trip to New York and recently did a play that I was unfortunately too busy to attend because I’m an asshole. Sorry Paige.

And Austin Duffy (Lewis) has been working on a music video and a short film he starred in screened at the Future of Film Showcase a couple days ago (also I was too busy and too big of an asshole to attend. Sorry bud).

And onto me and Alex. Last weekend I directed a short research and development project for a product called Invisivision. It’s a new type of cinema eyewear that allows you as a viewer to use glasses to do cool things like change camera angles in real time without touching a button or anything - purely through the lenses. It was a robot CGI experiential narrative project that has a bunch of dual angles, hidden content, etc for users to experience. Alex and I wrote it with the help of some great friends named Rob Brunette and Ryan Brooks (the latter of whom invented these glasses).

The Invisivision glasses have sparked some interest in Hollywood. I went to LA with these guys in December and met with some major studios about it, and they’ve been back and forth between LA and Toronto a few times now. I can’t say much else about it at this point... but it’s a big thing. Check out some stuff on Invisivision at the following links: My very good friend Ryan (creator of Invisivision and Executive producer on Optic) on stage explaining it Their official website

This project was called “Optic” and I’ve basically been slaving away on this since before Face The Music even shot back in January. - Pronch Murphy (producer from Face The Music) produced it - Ramit Arora and Ash Xavier (cam ops on Face The Music) were the directors of photography - Sydney Cowper (key grip from FTM) is editing it - David Turineck (DOP on FTM) was gaffer on it... - Bea Macapagal (creator and director of Young Badlands starring Elise Bauman, for whom I was one of the editors) was our production designer.  And there are even more FTM crew members on this Optic project I’m forgetting about I’m sure.

Now speaking of Face the Music. I’ve got good news and bad news. Since this is in type I can’t really give you a choice as to what you get first, so I’m going with the bad news first.

Bad news:

We were not chosen to move on to the second phase of the funding application for the Independent Production Fund. Meaning we did not get the money to shoot our first season. This means we unfortunately cannot go into production for it anytime soon as I simply can’t afford to pay everyone what they deserve.

We were pretty bummed when we found out. That was at the beginning of April, but Optic kind of took my mind off of it. Now that we’re editing Optic, my schedule is a little more liberal.

Good news:

Like usual, this persistent and stubborn bastard doesn’t give up. Myself and Alex have begun working on Face The Music as an ACTUAL TV Pilot. We hope to get a couple drafts done, and pitch it around to local and international TV networks to hopefully get picked up as a real TV show. Is it a big dream? Yep. But fuck it. The world is built on big dreams and unlikely scenarios. So what this means is we ask for your continued support as we slowly move forward on this. We’re adapting our scripts into full episode scripts and need the fanbase to stick around. We’ll keep you updated and do occasional videos and other transmedia content. It’ll be slow, but it’ll happen. Things like the music we mentioned last time is slowly unfolding, among other related projects. As we pitch around to networks, a vocal fanbase will always help us in convincing companies to support the project. So we want you to be LOUD AS FUCK when we need you to be.

Ensure to follow me: On TWITTER @MikeChantaj  & INSTAGRAM @MikeChantaj  to stay posted on Face The Music, Optic, Invisivision, and whatever other shit I get myself into.

You magnificent bastards are awesome and I thank you for your continued support.

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I like when I make a business phone call and the person says "I'll call you back, I'm in a session with Tatiana Maslany right now" #filmlife

— Mike Chantaj (@MikeChantaj) April 11, 2015

Movin' on up in the world. www.twitter.com/mikechantaj

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Are you a nerd like Mike?

Check out this Zelda film he did in late 2014 where he learned to shoot for CGI. Pronch was the producer as well!

(Yes we know the tunic came out looking brown - shooting in natural light didn’t help us)

Subscribe to Mike’s other channel and follow him to stay up to date on Face The Music, Optic, and other projects!

TWITTER ► http://www.twitter.com/mikechantaj INSTAGRAM ► http://www.instagram.com/mikechantaj FACE THE MUSIC ► https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3uaQS_aed1Q

SUBSCRIBE ►http://www.youtube.com/c/microbinfilms

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While the search for Face The Music funding continues, Mike has begun a video blog about being an independent filmmaker / artist. The first introduction video to what it’s about is here!

Expect more coming soon where he talks about all the aspects of being an independent artist - the challenges, the perks, the overwhelming sense of success you feel when something goes right, the crippling sadness you feel when it doesn’t, and more.

He’ll be trying to get other artists in from varying fields to talk about their art, their passion, and how they survive in a world where artists are often held down unless they’re famous and making a studio millions of dollars.

Like and share this channel and the Face The Music Series channel to help us FUND THE MUSIC!

TWITTER ► http://www.twitter.com/mikechantaj INSTAGRAM ► http://www.instagram.com/mikechantaj FACE THE MUSIC ► http://www.facethemusicseries.tumblr.com FTM PILOT ►https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3uaQS_aed1Q SUBSCRIBE ►http://www.youtube.com/c/microbinfilms

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Remember to Send us Cover Requests

Hey everyone! Just a reminder to keep sending cover requests so Johnny and Mike can begin working on some songs to record!

Send your requests to thedeadleadsingers@gmail.com !

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Meet a friend’s cat. It’s name is Bug.

Bug loves Face The Meowsic

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#tbt to a kinda fucked up, heavy, dramatic 2012 short film directed by FTM creator Mike Chantaj, written by one of the FTM editors Margaret MacDougall, and production managed by FTM co-writer Alex Shannon, with music composed by FTM musician Johnny Lima... and there were probably some other FTM crew members in there as well.

WARNING: It’s pretty heavy and might be a little disturbing - heavier than our usual comedic romps.

We hoped to demonstrate the kind of devastation sexual abuse can cause, and the facades people put up around themselves to convince others of their own normalcy or desire for normalcy.

We can be serious sometimes...