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| 10/18/08 Self-Googling |
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| | Touching yourself is so 80s... nowadays the serious vanity-driven hipster googles themselves instead. You can check out our cover of the Divinyls video here. This video was featured on G4 TV\'s Attack of the Show as an epic failure for the day. What does that mean? We\'re not quite sure. |
| 09/18/08 Spinning Gold! |
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| | Spinning Rainbow is well on its way to hit one million views! We've even been featured in a YouTube news video that can be seen right here. What does a million views mean for a web video director? Not much, except for awesomeness. You can also check out the video here, on orenfilm. |
| 09/10/08 Out of Control Rainbows! |
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| | Another new music video... this one about how annoying Macs can be sometimes. Already featured by YouTube and slowly climbing. You gotta check it out if you're into being tricked by Internet videos. Watch it here! |
| 08/31/08 Secret Marketing Gig |
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| | So, for those of you that don't know, I have this full-time directing gig at a company which I will post about later this week. We're doing a viral-video marketing campaign (buzz-words of the year), and I've directed two of the videos. We basically put videos on YouTube with well-known YouTube personalities that will hopefully let people know about our video site, which is primarily targeted at teenagers.
So the first video that I've directed is finally up on YouTube here. It's the first part of three videos that will end on our site, take180.com. Check it out. |
| 08/18/08 Violence in Beijing! |
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| | Another day, another offensive video series. This one has been featured by a number of weird Internet video sites, including SpikedHumor.com, TheBikeBlog.com, JewishJournal.com, and even a little feature on the YouTube comedy page!
While we've offended a few people, the backlash is considered a failure... zero death threats and only a couple hateful comments.
If you're interested in a good shooting story (pun intended) ask me about how we managed to run around a college campus with a machine gun, on a tiny budget. |
| 07/16/08 Ugly Dog - Featured Everywhere! |
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| | Another video featured on YouTube to an impressive first day viewership of 130 thousand! And to add to that, the video was featured on the American Apparel blog, since Kara (the star) was coincidentally dressed in all American Apparel. Watch the video here or on YouTube... and your day will be 3 and a half minutes shorter than before you started. |
| 07/03/08 Seduction Tricks |
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| | A while ago I made a 6 episode cellphone series for a company called Fremantle Media... yes, the makers of American Idol. This series was called 'Tricks of Seduction' and I finally got around to posting it on orenfilm. All these videos are based on my previous orenfilms, which are basically all about camera and editing tricks. Unfortunately, since this series was created for cellphones, the movement had to be very limited and it led to somewhat undynamic camera work, in my opinion. Regardless, it's kind of fun, so check it out in my videos section. |
| 07/03/08 orenfilm goes HD! |
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| | Most of you will not care about this stuff at all, so feel free to ignore this posting.
*crickets*
So my videos have always been displayed in 480x270... well above YouTube's 320x240. But in the past 6 months YouTube has made some major changes and now are offering their videos in 640x480. So, I've updated my site to match. From now on all my new videos will be delivered in a much-crispier-than-youtube 640x360 resolution. And the old ones will be scaled up to fake 640x360. What does this mean for you? Only a tiny bit of totally subconscious happiness. Thanks for listening. |
| 06/19/08 Oh, Brother |
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| | My very talented 17-year-old brother, Leeav, just recorded a new song in the studio and I recorded him recording it. So check it out here! And feel free to record my recording. |
| 06/04/08 Polygamists Exposed! |
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| | Another comedic music videos from the lady that brought you Miriam & Shoshana. Check it out here! |
| 06/01/08 GR2 - Featured on YouTube |
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| | Gay Roommates 2 was featured in the Comedy Spotlight on YouTube yesterday. It's nice that they consistently promote our stuff.
This episode's promotion was particularly interesting, because I experimented with marketing it to Facebookers with various levels of success. Regardless, we managed to rack up 100,000 views in one day without any one prominently featuring the video besides ourselves. |
| 05/28/08 Gay Roommates - Episode 2 |
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| | The time almost none of you have been waiting for has arrived! A new episode of Gay Roommates has been made and you can watch it for free. Please leave us a comment on YouTube and all that stuff. We're going to see if we can get the LOGO network involved in this one through our friend and LOGO champion, Liam "Shoes" Sullivan. |
| 04/04/08 Miriam & Shoshana Win Award! |
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| | In lieu of any significant news, two funny occurrences regarding Miriam & Shoshana:
1) We received an award for 'Stupidest Secular Jewish Video' here.
2) Miriam & Shoshana was selected by someone I don't know to be played at his daughter's Bat-Mitzvah.
So we've got people on both sides.
Stay tuned for much more exciting news coming soon, as there're a lot of great projects I've been a part of in the past two months that haven't gotten much love on orenfilm.com, but soon will. |
| 02/21/08 Gay Roommates - Featured on YouTube |
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| | Ah... it's getting so easy to get my videos featured. I feel blessed by the web gods. Although there still hasn't been the holy grail of YouTube features... the front page.
Anyhow... life is good, videos are being seen, and buzz is being generated. Stay tuned. |
| 02/08/08 Daily Variety Mentions Me! |
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| | 'Daily Variety', arguably the most ubiquitous Hollywood publication, mentioned the Writer's Strike video and my today... which is cool. It's cool because they mentioned my video as one of the top 5 writer's strike videos made - among hundreds, I presume. It's also cool because I found out about it from someone that I will hopefully be working for soon.
I think the whole "saw your name in an article" bit is good for prospective employers. Unless, of course, it's listed in the obituaries.
Read the snippet that calls me out on having a vague video here. |
| 02/06/08 Celebrities Love 'Gay Roommates' |
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| | With my softest release of a new video yet, Gay Roommates seems to be picking up a little steam around the web. After a MySpace feature on Monday (where it garnished some 90,000 views) it finally went up on YouTube today.
Our first cool celebrity endorsement came from Saturday Night Live's Kristin Wiig, "Just sent this to many people... I LOVE IT and laughed so hard (:" Not quite as funny as her SNL sketches, but it does come across as sincere. |
| 01/28/08 Gaymates - orenfilm Exclusive |
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| | In an unprecedented move I've decided to release my latest "why did he make that" video, Gay Roommates, on orenfilm.com before anywhere else! MySpace should be featuring it tomorrow as part of their 2nd season of 'Roommates' publicity campaign.
In reality, of course, we're making fun of how bad that show is. But they love our parody, so, we all win out somehow.
Email blast to follow in two days when we're allowed to post this on YouTube.
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| 01/14/08 Modern Day Jesus does Mary Magda Lin |
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| | Well... the show does May Magda Lin... You can just call her Mary. She's played by G4 TV's infamous Olivia Munn. Check it out and leave a comment and consider how lucky you are to have so many years ahead of you before you're judged in heaven. Click here now for redemption. |
| 01/11/08 Inappropriate Yoga, Bitch! |
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| | A while ago Avi made a video called 'Inappropriate Yoga Guy' that was very popular on YouTube. I had nothing to do with it. I did, however, shoot his 2nd installment, pretentiously named 'Yoga, Bitch!' Check it out here and leave a comment. Aside from Avi, it features America's Next Top Model's Cassandra Jean... so... that's cool. |
| 12/07/07 Holy Hannukah - Featured on YouTube! |
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| | Yes, it's true. Hardcore Hannukah Dance is featured in the Comedy section of YouTube now! And will stay there through the weekend, which is cool. The double MySpace/YouTube feature is one of the holy grails of independent web video makers. Monty Python's got nothing on us now. |
| 12/04/07 Channukah Dance Featured on MySpace |
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| | So we got featured on MySpace again! And although that's really cool, they did make us remove the video from YouTube during the feature, which is a little sad. But, we think it's worth it. Thanks to Dian Oved over at MySpace for helping us out with this! Mir & Sho invading your space... cool. |
| 12/03/07 Channukah Dance Video Released |
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| | Miriam & Shoshana are back! In this holiday-specific video. Check it out, unless you think holiday happiness is not cool. |
| 11/21/07 WGA Strike Video on KNBC.com! |
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| | The local NBC affiliate, KNBC, just asked if they could air the Writer's Strike Video we made! Yes! Local fame... here we come! |
| 11/21/07 Split Screen Effect |
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| | So I have a deal with Fremantle Media to make a series of videos based on my silly video effects. Today, randomly, I shot an experiment to see if the pilot episode effect will work... an unusual split-screen. Here's what we came up with. Please disregard the lighting, dialog, sound, and production design. Thanks. :) |
| 11/14/07 WGA Strike Video Released |
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| | Today I uploaded a video to youtube about the Writer's Guild Strike. It was written by a guild member and stars Avi and Seth of a million other things I've done. So far the response has been excellent! Many people in Hollywood have already seen it and we've been contacted by quite a few of them. Is this the traction that will make orenfilm.com orenfilmS.com??? Maybe, maybe not. Either way, it's all fun. Check out the video here! And leave a comment, will ya? |
| 11/13/07 orenfilm Hacked! |
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| | Some time last night (11/12/2007) orenfilm was hacked. The hackers (or hacking-program, I suspect) re-routed all traffic from my site to some adult pay site. I think everything's fixed now, but in case you see anything weird or your computer telling you to download a bunch of things for my site, don't believe it. Sorry for the inconvenience. |
| 11/08/07 Mir & Sho Journalized |
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| | Miriam & Shoshana got their first print-media coverage today! Their photo (from the video) and a nice little article by Dikla Kadosh tells the story of the making of 'Miriam & Shoshana'. Read the article here and then feel free to shrug. |
| 11/06/07 Teaser Time |
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| | Want a flavor of Miriam & Shoshana's next music video? Check out this teaser. |
| 11/06/07 Spreading the Hate |
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| | You would not believe the number of 12 year old Neo-Natzis scouring the halls of MySpace. Miriam & Shoshana played to approximately 230,000 people today with amazingly offensive remarks. Please read here to get your socks knocked off by the responses.
And stay tuned for a Chanukkah Video teaser within a day or two. |
| 11/03/07 MS Feature coincides with Strike |
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| | On the same day that the Writer's Guild of America is scheduled to strike, MySpace is scheduled to feature the Miriam & Shoshana video. Coincidence? Yes.
With the Hanukkah song coming out early December we are really taking the Internet Jewish Holiday scene by storm... amist practically non-existent competition. |
| 10/22/07 Sparking Controversy |
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| | What seemed at first to be a tame YouTube video about two Jewish girls has turned into a video-inspiring battle in the Jewish world! Well, perhaps that's a bit of an exaggeration, but our very own 'Miriam & Shoshana' have prompted multiple video responses from angry Orthodox Jews across the world. Our favorite is from a Rabbi in Israel that is deeming the video banned by all Jews here.
All this fun controvery caused the Jewish Journal to write an article about us prompting yet more interest in the video. All in all, we learn yet again that any PR (even negative reviews) is good PR. Stay tuned for the Hannuka, Channukah, or Hanooka video! |
| 10/11/07 Featurific Video Day! |
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| | So... another successful "video day" for us. It's weird that these days even exist, but in the "New Media" landscape it's a common occurrence.
Today the "Miriam & Shoshana" video was featured on Ziddio.com, JewishJournal.com, JewTube.com, and Yideoz.com. It's also in the top 20 of all the Comedy categories.
And as an added bonus "Lone Wolf Episode 2" was featured on funnyordie.com!
What does all this mean? I still don't know. But it can't be bad, right? |
| 10/10/07 Hardcore Jewish Chicks |
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| | We launched the Jewish gangster rap music video, Miriam & Shoshana, on NowLive.com. Due to some compression issues and a Final Cut Pro crash, we got it up there about 5 minutes before the show (The Love Drop, the show that the video is promoting) ended. That being said, the video will probably be a better promotion for the show than vice-versa. Now we see how it does on YouTube. Will it have a huge Jewish niche appeal? Will it offend people? Will no one care? Soon we will find out. :) Check it out here and leave a comment! |
| 10/02/07 Lone Wolf - Episode 2 |
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| | The second episode of our Channel 101 show, The Lone Wolf, is up on orenfilm today. Unfortunately for the Lone Wolf, there was very good competition at Channel 101 in September and it did not make it back for a new episode. Plenty of excuses as to why abound... but for now we'll just be content knowing that there will be another Channel 101 submission from the orenfilm team (read: me) very soon. |
| 09/26/07 Oren in The LA Times |
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| | My first mention as a director in a major publication! Fine, it's actually my first mention as a producer... and it refers to my show as being about a "guy that hates his roommates"... even though it's a girl. So, yes, don't believe everything you read. But at least this is proof for my existence. Read it here! |
| 09/21/07 More Vids Featured on YouTube |
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| | It is somehow my week of YouTube. Three videos I shot plus my own channel have been featured in the past few days. Not only has Let Me Borrow That Top been featured and nearing a million views, my roommates Ilana and Sam's video, Keep it Dry was featured as well! I was the cinematographer on both of those... so... that's cool. |
| 09/19/07 Oren Kaplan - Rap Producer? |
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| | In an unusual turn of events I was asked to "lay some beats" for a rap song for the two hosts of the infamous radio show, 'The Love Drop'. And so I did. And now I'm directing the music video at the end of this month. Here's a little teaser we put together. Check it... before I wreck it. |
| 09/12/07 IHMR on the YouTube Charts! |
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| | It's been a VERY good day on YouTube today:
I posted a teaser for 'I Hate My Roommates' and it currently has over 14,000 views and 5 honors...
including the 8th most viewed comedy of the day.
Somehow this got YouTube to feature my channel (okaplan) in the comedy section... which resulted in me being the 35th most viewed director of the day. Wow. And it all started because Modern Day Jesus was featured yesterday.
Ebbs and flows... on to make more videos. |
| 09/12/07 MDJ Featured on YouTube! |
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| | Modern Day Jesus was featured on YouTube today! Being featured on YouTube is the mecca of all features, because the millions of people that visit YouTube everyday have a pretty good chance of seeing your video thumbnail pop up. It's pretty much the only way to distinguish yourself from the other 65,000 videos that are uploaded EVERY DAY.
We did get some interesting flack from the "red staters" on the content. Funny how in Souther California we managed to offend no one, but in the rest of the country we managed to get over 500 irate comments at the time of this posting... of course we also received well over 100,000 views. So... there is a bright side, as The Life of Brian teaches us. |
| 09/05/07 orenfilm RSS Feed |
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| | There's a new RSS Feed in town. It's called orenfilm.rss and it's more exciting than an AP Chemistry book. Link to it for all the latest updates on nothing too interesting really. |
| 09/04/07 A new video viewer at orenfilm |
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| | I just finished making my new video viewer. It allows you to randomly skip around videos. We have yet to see if that will prove distracting while you're watching the main video. Hmm... perhaps I'll add a 'hide' button? We shall see. In the meantime, just watch videos and enjoy. |
| 09/03/07 IHMR #3 is up on SuperDeluxe |
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| | Again, with no warning, the next episode of our SuperDeluxe show, I Hate My Roommates, is up on SuperDeluxe. I'm not quite sure why they don't tell us when it goes up, but it makes it very difficult to tell people about it. This is our final produced episode of 'I Hate My Roommates'. Please leave us a comment on SuperDeluxe.com by clicking on this news item's link. Perhaps the buzz will encourage them to commission some more episodes. :) |
| 08/30/07 Modern Day Jesus on YouTube |
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| | We premiered our 'Modern Day Jesus' series on YouTube today. It's getting a great response. Watch it on youtube here or a higher res version on orenfilm here! Either way, leave us a comment on YouTube. Thanks! |
| 08/30/07 New orenfilm site |
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| | I'm finally getting around to putting up a new website. Any feedback you guys have is greatly appreciated. Thanks! |
| 08/27/07 Lone Wolf on Ch. 101 Prime Time! |
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| | The show that Bennie Arthur (from I Hate My Roommates) and I made, 'Lone Wolf', was not only accepted into the Channel 101 screening, it took a "prime time" slot! This means that we get to make another episode that will screen at the next Channel 101 meeting, September 30th. Thanks for everyone that came to the screening. Please come again to the next one! |
| 08/16/07 IHMR Episode 2 |
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| | 'I Hate My Roommates' Episode 2 has been posted by SuperDeluxe. Not only that, but it was featured on both the main page and the 'Original Series' page... looks like quite the popular new kid in the schlock. |
| 08/03/07 On Tour with Keith Urban |
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| | So I just got back from going on tour with Keith Urban's 'The Whole Crazy World' Tour. I was shooting footage for his tour DVD. It was crazy. Tour buses, ridiculous fans, eating cheese in Wisconsin, partying with Michelle Branch. Just your run-of-the-mill tour experience. And no, Nicole Kidman was not there. She totally missed out. |
| 07/23/07 Jennifer Love Hewitt Interview |
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| | I met Jennifer Love Hewitt today. She was totally into me. I shot her and the rest of the cast of 'The Ghost Whisperer' for Living TV's website. They're the distributor of 'Ghost Whisperer' in the UK. All-in-all, my 6 minutes with her lived up to all my Party of Five expectations. |
| 07/20/07 'Honey Nut Shetbags' Commercial |
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| | My friend / 'boyfriend of my roommate' happens to be Kelly from the famous YouTube video shoes. He has a new video coming up for his single, 'Let Me Borrow That Top', and he put a preview teaser for it up on YouTube today. I made the cereal box. |
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