838 Central Ave, Highland Park, IL 60035 847.433.8660
Our first time out the gate and Bitter Jester Creative landed not one, not two, but three separate nominations for the Chicago | Midwest Emmy® Awards last Tuesday night!
We were recognized for three productions in two categories:
1) Outstanding Achievement for Special Event Coverage - Edited and the BJC nominee is the 2011 Chicago Restaurant Pastry Competition!
2) Outstanding Achievement for Commercials - Single Spot and the BJC nominees are the Ravinia Festival Home Spot and the Ravinia Festival Street Spot!
The 2012 Chicago | Midwest Emmy® Awards Ceremony will be on Sunday, November 18 at the Alhambra Palace in downtown Chicago. Keep your fingers crossed!
If you have heard the hosts of WFMT, 98.7 FM in Chicago, talking about Bitter Jester Creative, then you already already know two things.
You know that Bitter Jester cares deeply about supporting the fine arts. You also know that Bitter Jester will put its artistic team of award-winning filmmakers to work for you, creating your family history LifeStory video.
A Bitter Jester LifeStory is a custom-produced, skillfully edited documentary that captures the essence of an individual’s or family’s life experiences. Recorded interviews of your loved ones preserve your family’s history in their own words, creating an everlasting visual heirloom to be passed from generation to generation.
A Bitter Jester LifeStory is not a dry, historical infomercial; it’s a moving piece of artwork. No two LifeStories are alike - they are as unique as each family. Collaborating with fellow legacy business, Inheriting Wisdom, Bitter Jester Creative excels at producing creative, compelling, and ever-lasting LifeStories for families as well as compelling and memorable corporate tribute videos.
Find out more about our Legacy LifeStory Video Production online, or contact Bitter Jester today! Or, if you have immediate questions, please call 847.433.8660 at any time.
According to The Foundation Center, 54-year-old a national nonprofit service organization, Fiscal Sponsorship "is a formal arrangement in which a 501(c)(3) public charity sponsors a project that may lack exempt status. This alternative to starting your own nonprofit allows you to seek grants and solicit tax-deductible donations under your sponsor's exempt status."
Bitter Jester Creative is very excited to announce that as of today, our work-in-progress documentary titled Pools of Light, about the the history of Angola and the establishment of an Angolan middle class through education, has been awarded Fiscal Sponsorship by the Board of Directors of Chicago Filmmakers (CF)! More information about CF is below.
According to their website, CF "provides fiscal sponsorship for select independent film and video makers who are soliciting funds from private foundations, government agencies, and individual donors for their noncommercial film or video project. CF is able to accept grants and/or contributions from sources which require a federal exempt tax status, i.e. a non-profit organizational status, on a filmmakers' behalf. For individual contributors, this arrangement allows for charitable contribution deductions on federal tax returns."
What this means for Bitter Jester and Pools of Light
Notable previous projects that have received Fiscal Sponsorship from CF include Howard Zinn: You Can't Be Neutral On A Moving Train (2004) by Deb Ellis and Dennis Mueller, Halsted Street, USA (1997) by David Simpson, Tiny and Ruby: Hell Divin' Women (1988) by Greta Schiller and Andrea Weiss, and Never Turning Back: The World of Peggy Lipschutz (2008) by Jerri Zbiral.
CF is a 36-year-old media arts organization that fosters the creation, appreciation and understanding of film and video as media for artistic and personal expression, as well as media of important social and community impact. The mission of CF is to provide an opportunity for artists to make films outside the mainstream marketplace, to distribute and exhibit this work, as well as to build audiences and to increase media attention for it. Recognizing the impact of mass media in contemporary society, it is additionally their goal to provide culturally diverse audiences with alternative images to those reflected in mainstream media and to broaden access to media education to include those typically left out of the process. For more information on Chicago Filmmakers, please click here.
The conclusion of the 5th Annual Late Nite HP Bitter Jester Battle of the Bands went off without a hitch on the 4th of July.
Since 2005, Bitter Jester has partnered with Late Nite HP to produce a battle of the bands in Highland Park, IL. Every Friday night in June, high school bands battle one another. A panel of judges declares a winner each Friday and the winning bands then move on to battle at the City of Highland Park's pre-fireworks concert on the 4th of July at Wolter's Field.
The Friday night winners each play a twenty-minute set on a professional outdoor sound stage and are once again judged by a panel. This time, however, the judges narrow the (usually five) bands down to the top two. The two finalists are announced and they each then play one single song for the gathered crowd. It's then up to the audience to determine the winning band by show of applause and cheering!
The winning band is awarded a $400 check from the City of Highland Park and the runner-up band is awarded a $200 check from the City. This year's winning band, The Burrows 4 from Deerfield, was also the co-winner of last year's battle. The runner-up band, The Aftershow from Buffalo Grove, was new to the battle this year.
Daniel Kullman's pictures from the event can be found by clicking here!
Bitter Jester Creative is so very excited to announce that no fewer than half a dozen of its recent productions have been recognized by the 2010 Telly Awards! Six 2010 Telly's were awarded to BJC in various categories including Short Documentary, Corporate Documentary, LifeStory Production and Not-for-Profit Documentary! Additionally, we are thrilled to say that our very first Silver Telly was awarded for our ongoing "Pools of Light" documentary. A Silver Telly is the highest possible honor in the Telly competition.
"The Emmy Awards of the Advertising World," The Telly Awards was founded in 1978 to honor excellence in local, regional, and cable TV commercials and programming, as well as non-broadcast productions.
CLICK HERE for the preview to our feature-length documentary about a university being built in central Angola, our first Silver Telly win and the previous winner of a Gold Communicator Award and a Platinum Hermes Award (also the highest honors in their respective competitions)!
More information on the specific projects that have been honored by this prestigious award will be coming soon.
We are once again very proud to announce that Bitter Jester was a distinguished recipient of three 2010 Communicator Awards for documentary film production!
The Communicator Awards is one of the leading international creative awards programs honoring creative excellence for communication professionals. Founded by communication professionals over a decade ago, The Communicator Awards is an annual competition honoring the best in advertising, corporate communications, public relations and identity work for print, video, interactive and audio.
CLICK HERE for the preview to our feature-length documentary about a university being built in central Angola, winner of a Gold Communicator Award - the highest honor in the competition! CLICK HERE to watch the 2008 short documentary entitled "Meet the Honorees" (produced for an annual dinner honoring outstanding high school students), also the winner of a Gold Communicator Award! And to watch the company overview we produced for the Park District of Highland Park that won a Silver Communicator Award, CLICK HERE!
We are proud to announce that Bitter Jester was a distinguished recipient of three 2010 Hermes Creative Awards for film production!
Founded fifteen years ago, the Hermes Creative Awards are administered and judged by the Association of Marketing & Communication Professionals. Judges are industry professionals who look for talent that exceeds a high standard of excellence and work that serves as a benchmark for the industry.
CLICK HERE for the preview to our feature-length documentary about a university being built in central Angola, winner of a Platinum Hermes Creative Award. CLICK HERE to watch the company overview we produced for the Park District of Highland Park, winner of a Gold Hermes Creative Award. And to watch excerpts from "On Falling. . ." the dance-for-the-camera film that also won a Gold Hermes Creative Award, CLICK HERE!
OTHER INFORMATION: "On Falling. . ." premiered to a sold-out audience at the Music Box theatre in Chicago on November 11, 2010.
After many months and hundreds of hours working behind-the-scenes, Mark Sheahen (BJC's CIO and Website Administrator) has finally launched the new BJC website into space! Well, onto the Internet, at least.
We've streamlined the site overall, focusing solely on HD Video Production and Digital Photography. Bitter Jester's sketch comedy troupe, The Comic Thread, has been moved to it's own site: www.ComicThread.com (also available via the global link at the top of the BJC page). We've added new content, improved the functionality, and done a lot of back-end changes to our database.
So, please take your time and enjoy watching our recent videos in an all new flash-player. This new feature enables you to watch higher quality, bigger presentation videos and you can watch them in full-screen mode now, which is great!
Likewise, the completely overhauled photo galleries now contain hundreds of images taken by Daniel Kullman. The new photo display is also state-of-the-art and much more user friendly! Plus, it's just plain cool looking.
This site is still a work-in-progress, so feel free to e-mail your thoughts and feedback our way!