AOTA-240621 - Rocky Walls, Chesterton Art Center Summer Classes

Rocky Walls, filmmaker and co-founder of 12 Stars Media, discusses his non-profit streaming service, WhoDocs, which features non-fiction Indiana-focused movies. He also talks about his upcoming film, Dirty Laundry. Hannah Hammond-Hagman, Executive Director of the Chesterton Arts Center, shares information about their summer camps and teen studio intensives. She mentions various art classes and programs available for kids and teens. She also mentions the Chesterton Art Fair and other events happening in downtown Chesterton. This week on Out of the Air, our whole show features filmmaker and co-founder of 12 Stars Media, Rocky Walls, who is also Executive Director of Who Docs, a non-profit streaming service for non-fiction, Indiana-focused movies, and will also discuss his upcoming new film premiering this fall, Dirty Laundry. Our spotlights on Chesed and Art Center, summer camps, classes, and events with Executive Director Hannah Hadman-Hagman. Express yourself, you are, and show the world your heart. Express yourself, you are, and show the world your heart. Express yourself, you are, and show the world your heart. Express yourself, you are, and show the world your heart. Express yourself, you are, and show the world your heart. Express yourself, you are, and show the world your heart. Express yourself, you are, and show the world your heart. You're in the know with Esther and Larry, Art on the Air today. They're in the know with Larry and Esther, Art on the Air our way. Express yourself, you are, and show the world your heart. Express yourself, you are, and show the world your heart. Welcome. You're listening to Art on the Air on Lakeshore Public Media, 89.1 FM, WVLP 103.1 FM, our weekly program covering the arts and arts events throughout Northwest Indiana and beyond. I'm Larry Breckner of New Perspectives Photography right alongside here with Esther Golden of the Nest in Michigan City. Aloha, everyone. We're your hosts for Art on the Air. Art on the Air is supported by an Indiana Arts Commission Arts Project Grant, South Shore Arts, and the National Endowment for the Arts. Art on the Air is heard every Sunday at 7 p.m. on Lakeshore Public Media, 89.1 FM, also streaming live at LakeshorePublicMedia.org, and is available on Lakeshore Public Media's website as a podcast. Also heard on Friday at 11 a.m. and Monday at 5 p.m. on WVLP 103.1 FM, streaming live at WVLP.org. Our spotlight interviews are also heard Wednesdays on Lakeshore Public Media. Information about Art on the Air is available at our website, breck.com slash AOTA. That includes a complete show archive, spotlight interviews, plus our show is available on multiple podcast platforms, including NPR One. Please like us on Facebook, Art on the Air WVLP, for information about upcoming shows and interviews. And we'd like to welcome to Art on the Air Spotlight from the Chesterton Arts Center, the Executive Director and President and CEO, Hannah Hammond-Hagman, and she's going to tell us about what they have going on this summer in teen classes, summer programs. Hannah, welcome back to Art on the Air Spotlight. Thanks. It's always good to be with you and Esther. I appreciate you having us. And yeah, we're in the midst of a pretty beautiful summer here at Chesterton Arts Center. There's a lot going on, as you just mentioned. Our summer camps are in full swing already. There's lots of availability for the months ahead through July. We've got camps starting for kids ages five and up. And then we've also launched a really fabulous series of teen studio intensives. So those are for artists ages 13 and up who want to delve into some different media-specific classes. Our camps for the younger kids are tackling really beautiful ideas, creatures of the rainforest. We have a fiber arts camp, some landscape painting camps. So there's something for every kid in those camps. And then the teen intensives, we have video production, another fibers and stitching camp coming up, and then a camp that specifically focuses on drawing with colored pencils for teenagers. So we're really excited to have all kinds of young creative artists with us in the summer months ahead. Excellent. Oh, no. I think it's the best summer program I have ever seen. Oh, my gosh. It just looks so fantastic. Thank you. Thank you. You know, we work really hard to make sure that we have engaging, fun things for kids to do with us this summer. And, you know, the teen studio intensives are new. We haven't offered those before. It's an expansion of our summer programs. We recognize that it's maybe a gap in teen programming, you know, around the area. So, yeah, it's been really popular, and we're excited. We're really excited about it. But thank you. I want to pretend I'm a teenager for a while. I know. Me, too. Me, too. We all kept saying, like, these are the camps we wish we had. Yeah. So we do, right? Are all of them at your building, or do you have some that are doing off-site? You know, they are at our building. They're housed here at the Art Center in downtown Chesterton. Some camps, like the landscape class, sometimes they'll do a little plein air close by in the area. But, no, you know, we kind of are the home base for all of it. If anybody's interested in those summer camp programs, every single one is listed on our website at chestertonart.org. And we offer a robust scholarship program. So if anybody's in need of that, you can find that information on our website as well. Or if you're interested in supporting young artists that can't afford it, we'd be happy. Okay, I'm cheating here. I am on the board for Chesterton Arts Center. But, yeah, you can also support Chesterton Arts Center and help these young people do that and everything. Absolutely. Great way. Send a kid to camp. Right. Yeah, our teen arts group is continuing through the summer months as well. You know, they do meet year-round. So there's, if any interested teens are, you know, wanting to join our teen arts group, which is an outreach program. It's a free program for passionate teen artists in the area. This month, kids are preparing for their booth at the Chesterton Art Fair. So every year the teen arts group has their own booth at the art fair, which will be August 3rd and 4th this summer. And they get to represent themselves and sell their own work. So, again, you can visit our website for any teen who's interested in being part of that as well. Now, are there any family art days? Yes, in August. Oh, in August. Okay. Yeah, our next one will be in August. Yes, keep an eye out on our social media channels for all of that. But we will have a nice end of summer family art day coming up. But there's still plenty of stuff to do for families here. June 21st, which is just around the corner, is the second in our Chesterton Third Fridays series. So the Chesterton Art Center, along with a whole host of downtown Chesterton businesses and organizations, have collaborated to create a really beautiful summer Third Friday series event that will actually go through October. So you can come downtown. You can walk around. The Doolin Plan Air Painters on June 24th are going to be around town, so you can see live art. Here at the Art Center, we'll have delicious food, a cash bar, and live music with Andre Duddy. And you can see the Chesterton Women's Club exhibition. So, yeah, plan to spend some summer Fridays, Third Fridays, in downtown Chesterton at the Art Center. And we can both say that we are both in the Women's Club exhibit, both Esther and myself. That's right. It's a beautiful show this year. It really is. It welcomes some of our whole creative community to be participating in that show. It's really fabulous. It's definitely worth a look. That's great. Well, we're running on to our last minute and a half, but I want to give you a chance maybe to update us, and we'll have another whole spotlight on the art fair. How's the preparation going for that? Beautifully. It's going to be a gorgeous fair. The application's closed. The jurying's been done. The artist selections are phenomenal. So, yeah, keep an eye out on all the social media channels. We're going to have a whole beautiful series of live music, delicious food trucks, family activities, and that will be, again, at Dogwood Park here in Chesterton August 3rd and 4th. And, of course, on August 3rd, we're going to have a special celebration of my wife's anniversary while I'll be working the art fair. I know. That happens to you. Well, you know, it's the way it is. The way it always falls. So let's do a quick wrap-up. Where are you located, website, and contact information? Chesterton Arts Center is located at 115 South 4th Street in downtown Chesterton. Our phone number is 219-926-4711. Give us a call if you need anything. You can find all information on our website at chestertonart.org. Well, we appreciate you coming on Art in the Air Spotlight. Chesterton Arts Center Executive Director, President, and CEO, Hannah Hammond Eggman. We appreciate you coming on the show, sharing all the things that are going on this summer. Hannah, thank you so much for coming on. You got it. It's always great to be with you. Thank you. Yeah, it's always great seeing you, Hannah. And some spotlight extras. The Valpo Creative Council Artist Reception for Larissa Julianas is Thursday, June 20th, at Lower Lincoln and Roots Cafe in Valparaiso. The ARC-CL's final weekend of their current comedy, Faith County, will run Friday, June 21st, and Sunday, June 23rd. On June 22nd, the Depot in Beverly Shores will host a mural painting viewing party, 6 to 9 p.m. with refreshments available. Bring your own lawn chair. Art in the Air Spotlight and the complete one-hour program on Lakeshore Public Media is brought to you by McAuley Real Estate in Valparaiso, Olga Patrician, Senior Broker. And as a reminder, if you'd like to have your event on Art in the Air Spotlight or have a longer feature interview, email us at aotaatbrek.com. That's aotaatbrek, B-R-E-C-H, dot com. This is Mary Clark, the author of Dandelion Roots Run Deep, and you are listening to Art on the Air on Lakeshore Public Media, 89.1 FM and WVLP 103.1 FM. We are pleased to welcome Rocky Walsh to Art on the Air. Rocky is an entrepreneur, director, artist, and collector. He is the co-founder of the production company 12 Stars Media and executive director of the niche streaming service WhoDocs, which is a video streaming platform featuring exclusively nonfiction Indiana-focused content, including documentaries, short films, series, podcasts, and more. 12 Stars Media produces video and films that make connections, spark conversations, and create positive changes. Thank you for joining us on Art on the Air. Aloha and welcome, Rocky. It's very nice meeting you. Hey, welcome. Thank you. I'm very, very honored to be here. Well, we're really happy to have you on board here. And tell us about your background and career, and that's where we like to start off is your origin story. I would like to say how you got from where you were to where you are now. So tell us all about Rocky. Yeah, well, I have career-wise a really nontraditional path. I think a lot of people probably can identify with this, that I'm not in a career that I went to school for or that I thought I would end up in when I was younger. I didn't have that, like, Sesame Street moment where I saw, you know, a police officer or a baker or a firefighter on the television and think that's what I want to be when I grow up and then follow that completely linearly. I've always been interested in stories, and I think both on the receiving end, hearing stories, but also on the giving end, being the storyteller. And I think that's kind of the thread, the common thread that you can see through everything. But, gosh, when you go way back, you know, I was born and raised in Indiana in a small suburban town in central Indiana, and I went to school thinking that I would go to college and get a degree and, you know, graduate with that degree that would earn me a lot of money because back then that was sort of the thing, right? I think in that time, I'll date myself a little bit, back in the, you know, 80s and 90s, that was like every parent's dream was that their youngster would go to college, especially if they didn't. And that was my situation, that my parents didn't go to college. The expectation was very high that I would go to college and do well for myself. And I did, I went to college, I went to Purdue, and I actually studied molecular biology for a couple of years and was really interested in it and did well at it. It's not that I wasn't enjoying it or that I wasn't performing from an academic perspective, but after a couple of years of studying molecular biology, I started to sort of scratch my head and think, well, it's probably time for me to start thinking about what I'll do for a living with this degree, if I get it. And I started exploring options, and I did some job shadowing, and I did an internship, and I did some volunteering, and eventually came to the conclusion that while I was interested in that subject, it actually wasn't a career path for me at all. And so I found myself halfway through a degree program thinking, I want to get out of here. And so I left. I actually left and went into full-time ministry, which is a big shift and one of the many little right-angle turns in my career path. But I spent four years in full-time youth ministry, not as a volunteer, but as a youth pastor, and really enjoyed that as well. As you can imagine, going back to the storytelling thing, I got up in front of people, sometimes a group of 40 or 50 or 100 young people, sometimes in front of a whole congregation, and I shared stories, and I tried to help people think about ways to improve their life, which was a wonderful thing to do, and I always look back on those years fondly. But as I started my family, my wife and I met during that time, and we got married in 2006, and started our family, and we decided that I would leave the ministry at that time. And in 2007, I started 12 Stars Media with my, at that time, new brother-in-law, my wife's brother, Zach. And he and I started 12 Stars Media, the company that I now run, and we'll probably spend a good amount of the time today talking about. We have been running that for, I just, nowadays I just round up and I say going on 20 years. It's around 17, 18 now, but yeah, just going on 20 years is easier. Rocky, so what were those first conversations with him like that developed this idea for 12 Star, like those initials? 12 Stars, I just want to make sure we have that right, because there are 12 of them. Yeah, 12 Stars. Yeah, media, 12 Stars media. So we started 12 Stars Media in 2007 because we both understood that we had a knack for all things kind of digital, and documenting, whether it be photography or using video cameras. And, you know, you got to keep in mind, in 2007, YouTube had only just barely started, and the idea of online video was limited extremely. You know, there wasn't, not very many organizations or people had videos that they were putting online, and the ones that were, were either highly, highly produced and very expensive, and a company might have done one in a year. And they were still putting that on DVD, even if they did put it on their website. They were still burning it onto a physical media and sending it out to people. Or if you were an individual, you might be uploading funny stuff to YouTube here and there, but it was a completely different world back then. We just knew we were good with cameras, and we thought, well, you know, since Rocky no longer has this full-time ministry job, and obviously now has a family to support, and Zach was very young at the time but was interested in beginning his career, we thought, let's just see who will pay us. Let's see who has a checkbook and can fog a mirror, and that's another old, I'm dating myself again, fog a mirror means like they're alive, they can write a check, they can pay us to do different things. And so we would make short videos, or we would help people build websites, because back then all that stuff was just so integrated and so connected. And we started off the first three years doing a whole variety of media things, and so we sort of started to refine it to video storytelling and ultimately documentary filmmaking, which is where we are now. So what got you interested in it? Well, let's look at the equipment thing. You talked about like some of the technology part of this, and so how we were drawn to the technology, but also there's another aspect, the artistic side of that. And basically filmmaking is storytelling with visual, a lot more elements than that. So maybe bring those two elements together. Did you come from a technical background? Did your partner come with a technical background? How did that all kind of start to become part of the 12 stars media? Yeah, yeah, I've never been super technical, only enough to, you know, make sure that what I was doing looked good and sounded good and that it would serve its purpose. For me, that's always been the main thing. I mean, I think back fondly to even some of our earliest projects. Like we had a family bring in all of their camcorder tapes from a trip that they took to Alaska. You know, this was in the first couple of years of Zach and I running 12 stars media, and I remember that just as fondly as some of the films that we produced, because what we were able to do is take all these tapes that were nothing more than some kind of, you know, memory storage device in a box in their closet, and then turn it into something that they could watch and enjoy with their family and really remember, really recognize and feel the emotions coming back to them from that trip. And I think for me, that's where my passion and interest has always existed, in this idea that film and video and these multisensory experiences that we look at and sort of group together as media have such an effect, or have a potential anyway, to have such an effect on people's emotions and their feelings. And Zach is not, I won't say that he's uninterested in that, but he is very interested in the technology piece of it. And so it was sort of a really good fit and a really good match, because he would do things like build all of our computers from scratch. Just about every computer that 12 stars media has used in its nearly 20-year history, Zach has built, you know, from pieces, you know, and he would understand the technology of how do we import this particular file and make sure that it still looks good by the time we export it to this format, so on and so forth. You know, I don't know anything about codecs. I don't know anything about bit rates per se, other than the higher the better, you know. But I do know how to set exposure and how to, you know, I can take a good picture. But those are all, you know, those are all sort of skills that ultimately, again, are only in my wheelhouse because they help to make sure that I accomplish the purpose that I've set out for. You mentioned photography. So did you have a little bit of background in photography? Yeah, yeah, dating myself again. I learned on, as many people did, a Pentax K1000 film camera, 35-millimeter film camera. I remember shooting a roll of film in Gatlinburg, Tennessee on vacation with my family back when I was probably, you know, barely double digits and asking my sister about, you know, exposure and shutter speeds and things like that. And so, yeah, I've always done photography mostly as a hobby. I do some photography and art-related things now that are more for myself than anything else. But I do share those from time to time and hope that they encourage people. But, yeah, I think those things go hand in hand. You know, photography and film are just, you know, two peas in the same pod, I think. Right. Now, the transition to digital, was that, again, did you ever make that, going from the old Pentax to a digital camera before you got into filmmaking? Yeah. Oh, yeah, for sure. I remember the first digital camera that I got was a Canon ELF. I think it was maybe a second edition or something. It was a 2.0 megapixel camera. And, wow, it took, you know, just the, if you look back at them now, they were probably just the lousiest pictures. But it worked. It functioned for its purpose. And then I got a digital SLR later to sort of match the Pentax in its versatility and the quality. And I think, yeah, after the turn of the century, still in the 2001, 2002 time period, I was still shooting a lot of both film photography and then switching over gradually to digital. By the time we started our company, pretty much everything was digital. Sure. Even the first camera, even the first video camera that we bought as a company recorded to tape, but it was digital tape. It was a mini-DV digital videotape. And so, you know, there was a, I don't even know, you know, I don't know the average age of your listeners, but, I mean, everybody kind of, most of us, most of our generation understands that, you know, there was a, it was a gradual shift. It went from, you know, from completely analog to, well, certain things were digital, but you still had a physical media component to it. And nowadays, it's like, you know, a younger, my kids, you know, the only digital they know is everything is just in the cloud. Everything is on the Internet. And, you know, you just have to have a device to view it, essentially. There's no physical media storage device for it. Yeah, I know that my transition to, I do photography, and I stayed with film for a long time, mostly because of my investment in high-end lenses. I was a Canon shooter. I skipped the entire autofocus generation with manual focus until the Canon 5D came out, which was the first, quote, affordable full frame at 12.9 megapixels. So that's when I jumped, finally jumped the ship and then bought the lenses. The 5D, boy, that was when everybody kind of jumped ship, it felt like. They really nailed it with that. We were, I remember, right, if memory serves me right, we were shooting video on the 5D. 5D Mark II. They introduced video on the Mark II. Yeah. And that was very popular. That was, oh, my gosh, everybody was into that because you could get that shallow depth of field. And it was so unique looking for, especially for video at the time, and everybody was doing that. So, but anyway. Well, that's good. Well, that's the equipment side of it. Was there a crucial moment when you shifted your, like, documentary focus with 12 stars media? I mean, was there a particular? Yeah. Yeah, let me give you a couple of stepping stones up to it, and then the big shift, right? I often tell people that 12 stars media has had an annual theme since its inception. And in the beginning, the first five years or so, we didn't actually know what the annual theme was until the year was over. And we can only look back retrospectively and be like, oh, that was the year of fill in the blank. And I always tell people, again, I think this is really important, especially if you've got listeners that are thinking about starting a company or a business. You know, I'm an entrepreneur, and a lot of people who listen to interviews of mine listen to it because they're interested in going out on their own and starting a business. And I do think that it's really interesting. It was pretty easy for us to look back at the first three years and identify them as follows. First, do anything for anybody. Second, do certain things for anybody. And then finally, do certain things for certain people. And I feel like that's a really common and probably healthy path for most people who are starting a business or even, you know, do a side hustle with a hobby or something like that. Because at first, you don't really know what you don't know. Defining what you like and don't like. Yeah, defining what you like, what you don't like, what you are good at. What can translate from something that you are good at and enjoy to a profitable business model? You know, because there's a certain aspect of, like, if you love making something with your hands but you can only make one a month and then what you could sell it for is not going to sustain you from a lifestyle perspective. Well, by all means, keep making that one thing a month, especially if it makes you happy. But you might not be able to make a living off of that. Right. And so there's a balancing act there and trying to figure out what that balance is. And then there's the other side. There's your side. There's the what do you want to do and what can you do. But then there's the what do other people want and what are other people willing to pay for and how much are they willing to pay for. And that was the back half of that three-year period where we learned what types of people we tended to work really well with. We started gradually shifting away from working with consumers and started working only with really with businesses and companies that had a budget and could pay for the kinds of work that we were doing. And so that was the first three years. And then you got, you know, four or five years of different things mixed in there that we don't have to get into to understand that by year 10, we had a team of somewhere in the neighborhood of 20 people. It was a good-sized company. We were constantly growing. It was year after year of growth, doing really, really well. And we sort of asked the entire team at that point, what do you all want to do to celebrate our 10-year anniversary? And we just sort of did like a brainstorming session. And one of the ideas that kind of rose to the top, and then after it rose to the top, became like the unanimous, you know, yes, let's do that, was to make a documentary film, to do a documentary, to take the work that we had been doing, the skills that we had honed and the types of things that we were interested in, and to put all that to work to make something that essentially could be mass-released and affect potentially, you know, people all over the world. And so we decided to go out on that journey, and we created a documentary, our first feature-length documentary film called Finding Hygge. And hygge is a Danish word that roughly translates to like a feeling of coziness or comfort, usually around the things or the people or the environment that you kind of surround yourself with. It's that place where you feel sort of most comfortable. When you feel hygge is when you feel safe, comfortable, relaxed. You're fully present in the moment and really enjoying. That's in a positive way. At ease. At ease, exactly. You can kind of let your guard down. And in 2016, when we decided to do this, the U.S. had entered, in my opinion, in many people's opinion, you know, a very, an era of divisiveness, unlike I think we've seen in a long, long time, where, you know, we had a difficult election year. We had a lot of, to swing the pendulum to a completely different side of the lifestyle spectrum, we had a lot of, like a lot of celebrity deaths that really impacted people heavily. The hashtag, worst year ever, was like, that was like the time, that was like the first time we started using that hashtag. It was in 2007, 16, 2016. Little did we know, we used that hashtag a lot more often in the years to come as well. But 2016 was rough for people. And I think we were all, especially in the U.S. and in the U.K., so speaking of U.K., you know, that was the year that, you know, that Brexit was voted for and affirmed. And so, it was just a, it was a tumultuous time. And people in the U.S. and the U.K. were looking for, looking for some, looking for some comfort, looking for some hope, looking for some answers to the things that they just weren't real happy with in life. And one of the places that they turned was the Scandinavian countries, which tend to rank very high on the happiness ratings, you know, the index that rates the, you know, countries by their, by their quote-unquote happiness. And Denmark is often in the top five, sometimes number one. And this idea of hygge sort of took off like, like a, like a wildfire. It just started, and people were writing books about it left and right. You know, you couldn't go to a grocery store. You couldn't read an article online without somebody talking about hygge. And so, we, we went to Denmark. We took the whole team. I think we all know, we kind of, we all know that, but we also need kind of guidance, I guess. And that's what it, that's what that whole thing inspired was, oh, here's a few things that we can tangibly do to make us feel better. Yep, absolutely. Absolutely. And that's, and that's what we were interested in. Is it, is it as simple as that? Is it as simple as, you know, pouring yourself a cup of hot chocolate and sitting by the fire? Or is it more complicated than that? Is it cultural? Is it something that can't even be experienced in the U.S.? Or is it actually related to Denmark and their, you know, their welfare state or their system of, you know, beliefs or culture? And so, that's, that's what we set out to try to understand. And so, yeah, we filmed in Denmark for about six or seven days. We went and filmed a happiness sort of expert, somebody who literally gave the TED Talk on the concept of happiness in the U.K. And we also filmed in Canada and in Colorado and really just dug into this idea of hygge. We basically asked everybody that, everybody that we featured in the film to tell us about their lives, tell us about how hygge had sort of impacted them and got a wide variety of answers. And that's what we wanted to share with the world is that, you know, if you are in a place where you're looking for something to make yourself happier, is hygge an answer? Or is there more to it than that? Is the idea of the journey of seeking happiness and finding happiness, is there, is there something more to it? And sort of, you have to watch the movie and find out. So, how did it impact you? Oh, boy. I love that question because the impact of filming, finding hygge, basically can be seen and felt in every single thing after. With my company, with my family, with the other endeavors that we've embarked on. And so, I would say like the first thing, first and foremost is, spoiler alert, we kind of recognize that hygge, just like everything else, isn't some kind of magic potion or genie in a lamp. Like, in order to be truly happy, it starts with, you know, understanding yourself and understanding the people around you and understanding your community and doing a lot of things, small things, to create that sense of contentment and safety and comfort for yourself. And so, we started, the first thing that we started to do was really, as a team, as a family, we started looking a lot more at our community involvement and our community building. Interestingly, one of the interviewees for our film, we didn't actually put this part in the movie, but Mike Viking, who wrote The Little Book of Hygge, which to date, I think, is still the number one selling hygge-related book. We had asked him what advice he would give to people in the United States who feel like we were entering or are already in a very divided time. And he said he would focus on organizing in smaller communities to better understand the people immediately around you and to make your impact there first. Because the people in your neighborhood, the people in your churches, the officials that you elect in your own city council, and all of that is going to have as much, if not more, of an impact on your life than some of the bigger picture things that are important. Don't get me wrong, he wasn't suggesting, and I wouldn't suggest that, you know, national or global politics and economics aren't important, but the idea of shifting your focus to the things that you can control in your own community became really important to us. And so because of that, we actually as a team, 12 Stars Media, over the course of a couple of years, we shrank our team a little bit. We got down to a smaller group and we stopped chasing every last project and we stopped chasing the idea that we wanted to constantly grow and be a bigger and bigger and bigger revenue and a bigger and bigger and bigger staff year after year. And we sort of refined ourselves to what are the things that we can do that are, you know, making us the most happy and what are the things that we can do that are making the biggest impact on the world. And that meant documentary filmmaking and documentary storytelling, especially around cause-oriented things. You're listening to Art on the Air with our guest today, filmmaker and co-founder of 12 Stars Media and of Who Docs? Rocky Walls on Lakeshore Public Media, 89.1 FM and on WVLP, 103.1 FM. And we actually physically moved. We bought a 140-year-old building in a downtown, like, Main Street, USA kind of space here in beautiful Noblesville, Indiana. And we are where I'm sitting right now upstairs. And we moved our team into here and we've been here ever since. I thought we saw a quote once when we were in Memphis, Tennessee, my business partner Zach and I, when we were contemplating the idea of continuing to grow the company and then build, build a building, build potentially a studio, we saw a little, like, sticker or a bumper sticker perhaps, I can't remember which, in Memphis that said, and it's from an architect, I think, or a designer somewhere on the East Coast, famous person, I can't remember their name, unfortunately, but it said, the greenest building is the one that already exists. And I thought, wow, that's so true. And we thought, well, instead of, like, chasing this idea that we just need to keep getting bigger and keep getting bigger and then build, you know, buy a big property somewhere and build something, why don't we look at something that exists in a community where we can really make a difference. And so that's what shifted us and we bought this building. And in 2018 we bought it and we moved into it in 2019, right before the pandemic. And since then, and we can dig into this a little bit if you are interested, but since then we've opened a family-owned and operated bakery and cafe on the first floor. So you talk about community, you know, it's like cheers down there. People call it cheers. People say it's their cheers. It's their cheers bar because they come in and, you know, it never fails any time you come into Debbie's Daughters, which is my mother-in-law's name, Debbie, Zach, my business partner, his mother was Debbie, and my wife's mother was Debbie. So their whole family sort of runs that. And people say, when I come into Debbie's Daughters, I always see at least one or two people that I know, and then you're having all these conversations. I tell people it's almost like we're living in this like Hallmark movie scenario where up on the second floor where, you know, sometimes people don't really know what's up there. It's not really a mystery, but, you know, we don't have like walk-in guests at a documentary film company. So up on the second floor, you know, we're making movies, like literally making movies up here. And then downstairs you've got this, you know, family-owned and operated like coffee shop bakery where they're just doing amazing things down there, and it's just constant people in and out that you get to see and get involved with. And so it's wonderful. And then, of course, WhoDocs is another extension of that, which we can talk more about whenever you're ready. But WhoDocs is another opportunity for us to basically say, let's double down, let's triple down on supporting local and our community, our community being, you know, in the WhoDocs sense, the whole state of Indiana, and how do we make sure that those stories are amplified and being told more abundantly. Tell us something about your projects that you've done, and then we'll move on to WhoDocs, which you're supporting filmmakers. Some of the topics that you have done with your company, documentaries and such, before we move on to WhoDocs. Yeah, yeah, thanks. Yeah, just like kind of a quick run-through, you know, we did Finding Hygge, which was international and a feature and was at several festivals around the world, everything from Sonoma Film Festival in California to a couple of Buddhist film festivals over on the other side of the world. And lots and lots of people have watched that. It's available now online on Amazon Prime and Tubi and other places. And people still, you know, we still get messages from people watching it several years later at this point. But when we were at a film festival, one of the programmers there referred to Finding Hygge as a survey doc. And he didn't mean it negatively, but I had never heard that term before, so it kind of struck me, and I sort of had to understand what it meant. But what it essentially meant was this is a documentary about a topic where we essentially went out and surveyed people, just asked them to tell us about what they, you know, what they thought about that particular topic. And it didn't necessarily follow a story or dive deeply into anybody's life. And again, I didn't feel bad about that, but it did strike a nerve with me, and I said the next film we make, I don't want it to be a survey doc. I want to go to the other end of that spectrum, and I really want to dive deeply into somebody's life and tell a story over a longer period of time. So we sort of waited to find the right person, and during the renovation of our upstairs office, I went to meet with a provider of Indiana-sourced hardwood, because I wanted to do Native timber hardwood floors in this office, and I couldn't find anybody that was doing that. Everybody wanted to talk me into getting, you know, tug-and-groove vinyl flooring or whatever. And I said, no, no, I'm adamant about this. Like, I really want to do, like, old-school, like, Native timber flooring in here. And finally I found this guy named Brian Presnell, who runs Indy Urban Hardwood in Indianapolis, and he started his business essentially because when he did work at the INA, he used to move artwork, and he was very involved with the INA at the time, Newfields. He witnessed, while they were taking some trees out to do a new parking lot or garage, I can't remember which, they were essentially just, like, tossing the trees away, throwing them away. And he sort of raised his voice and said, we need to do something with these trees. Like, these are perfectly good trees that we should do something with. And they listened, and they ended up, you know, making some furniture and some different things with these trees. And he essentially from there, that was a springboard for him to start this business in saving urban lumber and then allowing people to turn it into beautiful things. And when I met this guy for the first time, he was just the type of personality where my director of photography, Grant, and I went to meet him for the first time. When we both walked out the door, we looked at each other, and we were both thinking the same thing. We were thinking, we got to follow this guy around with a camera, because he is just, he has a new story every 20 seconds, and they all connect and intertwine, and he knows everybody in this city, and he's just, he's an interesting character. And so we asked him if we could follow him around, and long story short, too late, I know, we stuck around with him for about a year and a half, documenting everything from his day-to-day operations and saving some trees and turning them into lumber to building an art piece that went to the Chicago Architectural Biennial and was instrumental in Walter Hood winning the Genius Award. What is it called? The MacArthur Award. He didn't win the award for that art piece, but it was all leading up to the winning of this award. For him to be involved, for Brian to be involved in that guy's artwork, was just incredible. Those are some of the highs. And then you get to the lows of like, well, COVID happened during the filming, and Brian's mother passed away due to COVID during the filming. Then as a documentary filmmaker, you're faced with the question of like, is this part of the story, or is this something we leave alone? And because we were doing such an intimate look at Brian's life, it did become part of the story, and his dealings with his past trauma with his family came out in the film. And it's about 50 minutes, but it will take you for the emotional rollercoaster ride of your life, because you will be laughing hysterically one moment because of the story that Brian tells, to mauling your eyes out the next moment because both life and business and all of that, just tough stuff to navigate, especially during COVID. But yeah, it was incredible. So we released that in, I believe, 2019? No, no, no, of course not, because it was post-COVID. We released that in 2021. Sorry, my number's getting all messed up. So we released I'm the Prez, which is how he signs his artwork, in 2021, after the pandemic. And it was great. It was wonderful. We screened it at the CanCan. It was actually one of the first events that CanCan had since they were closed during COVID. CanCan's in Indianapolis, to give a little shout-out, our own independent arts cinema right in downtown Indy, at Windsor Place. It's a wonderful place to screen a film or to go see one. And so after I'm the Prez, we've done several shorts. We did a short called Toboggan Mouthtown, in which we followed four people here in Noblesville, Indiana, who built their own toboggan and took it to the U.S. Nationals in Camden, Maine, even though none of them had ever been down a hill on a toboggan before. So think cool runnings, but a little more Midwestern. And so we did that one in, I think, 2022. We also, in 2022, started our journey on a new ongoing docu-series called More Than Corn, where we document and put a spotlight on farmers here in Indiana who grow food for Hoosiers to eat and to serve in their restaurants here. And so we did a five-part series for More Than Corn in 2022, I believe. Yeah, it was all finished by 2022. And then we released it also as a feature film at Heartland in 2022. And then now, since then, in the last two years, we've continued that, and we've done a couple of new episodes of More Than Corn, and you can find that online, morethancorn.tv. We're constantly doing new and exciting work with helping to share the stories of farms in India. You're listening to Art on the Air, with our guest today, filmmaker and co-founder of Twelve Stars Media and of WhoDocs, Rocky Walls, on Lakeshore Public Media, 89.1 FM, and on WVLP, 103.1 FM. That gives you a little bit of... That's not every project that we've done in the last several years here, but everything from features to shorts to, you know, things that are very serious and important to things that are kind of silly and lighthearted. Well, and actually, that's why I contacted you, because speaking about eliciting strong emotions, not only by sound and colour, but the way you put together the short for Ash Blades, it was like the romance of that craft, the way you presented it, that led to me contacting you, because it was just so exquisitely beautiful that I just had to talk to you. Yeah, thank you so much. That is a piece that we're still very proud of to this day and feels almost like, gosh, in this digital world, things feel like they become history so fast. It really wasn't that long ago, but it was a while back that we did that with Eric. Did you have Eric as a guest on the show? Well, yes, he's going to be on the show. Oh, awesome. Amazing. We had to reschedule, but I'm looking forward to it. Yeah, listeners, be sure to find that one with Eric Eastman and Ash Blades, because he is just a treasure. His work is just immaculate. A cue of his lives, personally. They are just incredible to work with, and his art, his craft is just beautiful. And so, yes, to be able to document that in a very short time frame, maybe 10 minutes or so in that short film, to be able to document that was such a privilege. And I'm so glad that you mentioned it, because it's one that, yeah, I think that might have even preceded most of it. We might have done Finding Hugo before that, but, yeah, it was around that same time frame. Eric, actually, Eric and Brian Presnell know each other. That was another way that we connected and met with Brian at Find Me Pres. Brian and I have been talking as well. Good. Wonderful, wonderful. He is a hoot. You'll have a great episode with him, too. But Eric uses Brian's, well, not exclusively, but he uses some of the lumber, some of the wood that Brian sources for handles, for the knives, of course, which is wonderful. You know, I was going to say, some of the content that you have seems just made for, like, a local PBS. Have you approached them about airing your information? I say that because our radio show is on Northwest Indiana. It's called Lakeshore Public Media, which is both a PBS and NPR outlet. But it sounds like the type of thing you're doing is tailor-made for that local content. There's a safer public broadcast version of my answer, and then there's one that probably doesn't belong on the air. If we were in California, yeah, 100%. Like, you know, our local PBS affiliate would probably be well-funded, and they would have the resources, human resources, to build connections and talk to people like me and get that stuff onto their various platforms. I've not had a lot of luck in maintaining those relationships personally. But, yeah, I agree. I think that I've done, we've screened, or I guess I don't think you say screened. We've televised a few of our works with WFYI in Indianapolis before, but we don't have any sort of ongoing relationship or partnership. So I wish we did, yeah. I do wish we did. So with Zach, how did WhoDocs develop from 12 Stars Media? What was the jump to focus on Indiana independently filmed work? How did that come about? Yeah, I'm glad that you started the question by acknowledging my co-founder at 12 Stars Media, because he's also, you know, a co-founder with me in WhoDocs, and although you rarely will see him or certainly not get him on a podcast to be interviewed because he's more of the behind-the-scenes type, but he and I basically started having conversations during the pandemic and as we were sort of coming out of the pandemic. We had conversations around how difficult it was, having done it ourselves a few times, how difficult it was to get our work, these documentary films or even a short film, like the piece that we did for Ash Blades, like getting those things out in front of people, because we knew that there were people who would love to watch them. It's not like the films were terrible and nobody wanted to watch them. That wasn't the issue. It was more of a how do we bridge the gap? Because on one side you've got the people making really great content, whether it's us or another filmmaker, and on the other side you've got the people who would love to watch it if they knew that it existed. And so we, I think within a few months, came up with the idea, what if we just spun up a streaming service that was exclusively for Indiana-focused nonfiction movies and shows? Things that we know people probably would love to see more of. They'd love to watch documentaries about their communities, whether that's history or whether that's artists doing really cool things in their community, or whether it's social justice issues or racial justice issues or environmental advocacy issues. Or hidden treasures. Hidden treasures, yeah. I mean, the list goes on and on and on. Even within nonfiction, the list goes on and on and on of things that you might be interested in and watching if you only knew they existed, right? But finding it is just such a hassle. It's so difficult. And so with WhoDocs, we've put together a streaming service where Hoosiers subscribers can find all of those things curated in one place. It's a nonprofit organization, so it's powered by a nonprofit by the same name, WhoDocs, in which all the funds that we raise are split between paying licensing fees back to filmmakers so money stays within the filmmaking industry, and then splitting that with the cost of promoting and trying to get their work in front of viewers, which is something that oftentimes we can't, as filmmakers, do ourselves. It's difficult to spend that time and that money to get our work in front of people, and so WhoDocs helps to do that on their behalf. And it's worked really well. We're three years into it, and we have nearly 100 titles on the platform from filmmakers all across the state, and it's been working really, really well. In our last couple of minutes here, we want you to tell us about any future projects that you have coming on the pikes, but especially you have a film. And just briefly tell us a story about you. You were out in San Francisco and something happened that prompted you to do something to get into the fiction genre. Yeah, yeah. So, yeah, make that a short story. In San Francisco, we were, April of last year, a little over a year ago, there for a client project, and we had just finished filming a beautiful sunrise over the San Francisco Bay Area, and we were feeling pretty much invincible, and within 24 hours, we had been targeted and victimized for smash-and-grab looting and virtually all of our equipment was stolen. I was standing about 15 feet away from our vehicle when people smashed in the windows and took all of our stuff. And so we had to fly home. So not only did we lose all of that equipment, but we also had to essentially fly home with our tails between our legs, acknowledging that we can't even do the project that we came out here to film. And feeling pretty much devastated, I had to find something to turn my attention toward, and that something on this particular occasion ended up being a little bit of writing. And I thought, I'm just going to start writing a screenplay, which I've never done before, and I gave myself permission. In fact, I had every reason to believe that it would never even see the light of day. I didn't have any intention of writing something that we would actually produce. And of course, you know, as the irony and luck would have it, time has a way of turning things like that into something more substantial, and we did end up producing it. The film earned the title Dirty Laundry, which has its own little backstory that you'll find out about in the film. But it is a 90s coming-of-age story about two best friends who essentially get stuck in a laundromat under a truth-telling spell, and they have to fight their way through how to break the spell while also coming to grips with some of the things that they haven't been completely honest with each other about. And so we're super excited to share that story with folks. We filmed it with an entirely Indiana crew right here in Indianapolis, and almost exclusively Hoosier or Indiana staff. I'm sorry, cast. We had a couple people come over from Ohio, but all Midwestern cast. And the film will premiere this fall in October, so look for announcements on when you can see it. Best way to learn more about it is to check out dirtylaundry2024.com where you can learn a little bit more about the film and also sign up for the film's e-mail list, which we call the laundry list. Rocky, can you divulge one of the songs? What is the soundtrack for it like? So the soundtrack is an entirely custom score and some songs that we've licensed from independent songwriters for the film. And so not Don Henley's Dirty Laundry, which is what all of us have had stuck in our head all this time, but definitely some very 90s-sounding music for sure. Well, Rocky, this has been a real pleasure. That's Rocky Wall's 12 Stars Media, and you can see him at 12starsmedia.com. Dirty Laundry coming out in the fall, his venture away from documentary. Thank you so much for coming on Art of the Air and sharing your arts and producing journey. Sure, absolutely. Thanks for having me. Thank you. We'd like to thank our guests this week on Art of the Air, our weekly program covering the arts and arts events throughout Northwest Indiana and beyond. Art of the Air is heard Sunday at 7 p.m. on Lakeshore Public Media, 89.1 FM, also streaming live at lakeshorepublicmedia.org, and is available on Lakeshore Public Media's website as a podcast. Art of the Air is also heard Friday at 11 a.m. and Monday at 5 p.m. on WVLP, 103.1 FM, streaming live at wvlp.org. If you have a smart speaker like Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant, or Apple Siri, just tell it to play Art of the Air to hear the latest episode. Our spotlight interviews are heard every Wednesday on Lakeshore Public Media. Thanks to Tom Maloney, vice president of radio operation for Lakeshore Public Media, and Greg Kovach, WVLP's station manager. Our theme music is by Billy Foster with a vocal by Renee Foster. Art of the Air is supported by the Indiana Arts Commission Arts Project Grant, South Shore Arts, and the National Endowment for the Arts. We'd like to thank our current underwriters for Lakeshore Public Media, Macaulay Real Estate and Valparaiso, Ola Patrician, Senior Broker, and for WVLP, Walt Bredinger of Paragon Investments. So we may continue to bring you Art of the Air. We rely on you, our listeners and underwriters, for ongoing financial support. If you're looking to support Art of the Air, we have information on our website at breck.com slash aota, where you can find out how to become a supporter or underwriter of our program in whatever amount you are able. And like I say every week, don't give till it hurts. Give till it feels good, and you'll feel so good about supporting Art on the Air. If you're interested in being a guest or send us information about your arts, arts-related event or exhibit, please email us at aota at breck dot com. That's aota at breck, b-r-e-c-h dot com, or contact us through our Facebook page. Your hosts were Larry Breckner and Esther Golden, and we invite you back next week for another episode of Art on the Air. Aloha, everyone. Have a splendid week. Express yourself you art, and show the world your heart. Express yourself you art, and show the world your heart. You're in the know with Esther and Larry, Art on the Air today. They're in the know with Larry and Esther, Art on the Air our way. Express yourself you art, and show the world your heart. Express yourself you art, and show the world your heart. Express yourself you art, and show the world your heart.