With the launch of NEWMYTHIC.COM, we’re changing that, by digging into all our archives and pulling up forgotten but extremely entertaining shorts that never got publicly released. This section of the site is called the Vault, and you’re welcome to peruse the dozens of shorts that served as labs, classrooms, and confidence-boosters to hone the skills we have today.

In the coming months, we’ll be highlighting each video in the Vault with some kind of NEW supplementary content such as behind-the-scenes video or photos, bloopers, audio commentary, or more.  If you’ve ever wondered about a certain video, how it was made, what the the initial idea was, or essentially anything, please let us know and we hope to incorporate any viewer requests into the content roll-out.

Thanks and enjoy!

Rene Amador & Jocelyn Hsu

“It’s a new type of company, we see an opportunity to experiment with release techniques,” says Rene Amador, the creative director of NEWMYTHIC, “For us, part of that was rebranding our public face.  NEWMYTHIC to me means reviving a feeling that cinema can speak to something intrinsically human in an audience.  That doesn’t necessarily mean sword and sandal movies, though I love those, I think there’s good modern filmmaking from all forms and genres that’s visceral and presents a valuable human perspective.”

This isn’t the first web property that Food for the Moon Productions has launched, the team has learned a lot and become familiar with what tools and opportunities are out there.  The new website is not just an aesthetic change, the entire site is an attempt at a modern self-sufficient video publishing platform.  That means monetization.

Jocelyn Hsu, the other mind behind NEWMYTHIC: “We’re just now seeing the accessibility for small publishers to use the same kind of tech used by major studios without going through middlemen.”  A lot of thought has gone into how advertisers, brands, and networks should enter the web with video, but a surprisingly small amount of attention has gone into how filmmakers can use all the existing tools to reach fans and make a living by owning the whole process.  ”It’s a new way of thinking about this problem while still allowing for us to be interested in building an audience with great content.”  Jocelyn gained a VSEO background while working for how-to video publisher videojug.com before leaving to form NEWMYTHIC.

Food for the Moon Productions is the production company founded by Rene Amador and Jocelyn Hsu, initially including them and their fellow high school filmmakers (Robert Treder, Christopher Sanborn Taylor) to serve as creative banner for the production of Real Ultimate Power: The Official Ninja Movie.  Real Ultimate Power was the short film adaptation of The Official Ninja Webpage REAL Ultimate Power!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! The short went on to garner over 3 million views in 2002 (a full three years before YouTube registered a domain name), and the Real Ultimate Power phenomena has among its many apparent fans Jack Black himself who courted a film adaptation.

Rene: “I was probably one of the first people to have to really think seriously about how I could make a web video production company, and now it’s happening. In 2002 we had Real Ultimate Power and our bandwidth got cut off after releasing every trailer because the traffic was just killing the host.  We were in high school, we couldn’t afford the $400 or whatever monthly fee that was suited to what we were doing.  I released it the night before our last day of high school, the next morning I couldn’t even enjoy myself because the site was over bandwidth and all I could think about was our fans.  We had a rabid fanbase of presumably other teenagers getting super pumped about ninjas.  I ultimately received among the hundreds of fanmail letters, somebody saying they’d be willing to donate hosting.  So now we’re on the other side with millions of views and hundreds of other videos under our belt, we’re ready to do some damage.”

Since then, Rene and Jocelyn got web hosting of their own, film production degrees, and experience.  Over 200 videos produced and counting, among them short films, commercials, TV pilots, trailers, how to videos, music videos, promos.  Rene: “Automaton Creative was a result of us realizing that commercial production was a really exciting place to be right now, and through it we’ve established ourselves as filmmakers, which is what we’ve been trying to do all along with our shorts.  It’s actually felt very much like getting paid to go to graduate school.”  Rene worked as a post-production supervisor for trailers right out of college, doing finishing for all the video marketing of Music & Lyrics, TMNT, Bratz, Hot Rod, Next, Heartbreak Kid, and others, before becoming a freelance post supervisor, and eventually commercial director/editor.

What does NEWMYTHIC mean for you awesome viewers? It means you now have one place to watch all the creative content we have ever and will ever produce and can cram into our spiffy new site!  Tell us what you like.  Tell us what you don’t like, we take it like champs. We’ll then use your feedback to consider the new work we come up with.  In return, share us, like us, send us, comment, post, review, but most of all watch.