One of my videos got chosen for a film festival! Here's the story ...

My video of the smallest towns in Kansas got picked to be in the No Coast Film Festival on September 18, in Emporia, Kansas.

I can’t believe it either haha.

It wouldn’t have happened without my buddy Curt Rierson (WSUtv) encouraging me to submit it to the Tallgrass Film Festival.  There is a website to use to submit your film to a variety of festivals around the world and when I went on there to submit it to Tallgrass, I noticed the No Coast Film Festival up the road in Emporia.  I thought, what the heck, might as well submit it there too.

I haven’t heard back from Tallgrass and wasn’t expecting to hear back from No Coast either.  The NCCF is a festival of 88 short films (less than 30 minutes) that will play over 3 days (Sept 17-19) in the historic Emporia Granada Theater.  Mine will be playing on Saturday at 12:49pm as part of 10 films in the documentary category.  It is slated to go after a film about the struggles of a young garter snake and right before a film about pollution in Iran.

Needless to say, I will be out of my element.  But I am certainly honored to have been chosen to be part of the festival!

Most of the other 87 films being shown are by real filmmakers.  Me, on the other hand, filmed and edited everything on my phone.  A lot of these other films had a budget.  My budget was whatever gas money cost and one night in a shady hotel in the middle of Kansas.  I’m sure most of these filmmakers have their movies secured in a safe place to keep anything from happening to it.  In my wisdom, I purposely deleted the original off my phone to make room to film my summer road trip and had to download it off YouTube just to submit it to the festival for the final showing.

I tried really hard when I was working on this video and my main goal was to hope if someone from one of these small towns saw it, they would be appreciative.  I think that goal was attained.  However, I never imagined my face might be on the big screen for 24 minutes.  Not excited about THAT.  I think most people probably watch my videos on their phone or a laptop … alone.  I’m not sure what it will be like to watch it with a theater full of people expecting to be entertained. 

I plan to spend the entire weekend in Emporia taking in all aspects of the festival from the Friday night social/mixer with other filmmakers to the awards ceremony on Sunday night.  There is a (very) good chance this will be the only film festival I am ever part of, so I want to soak it all in.  I think I will try to document it and make a YouTube video of the experience.  I’m sure it will yield plenty of comedy at my expense.

If you want to know more about the festival check it out here: https://www.nocoastfilmfest.com/

And if you don’t have anything to do on September 18 at 12:49pm, I would appreciate you stopping by Emporia to take in the show and laughing loudly at anything remotely funny and giving it a standing ovation afterwards (just kidding).  After the documentaries are over, I will buy everyone a drink at the nearest watering hole!

Thanks again to the staff of the No Coast Film Festival for allowing a track coach with a passion for traveling into your world.  Proud and excited to be part of it!

Travel update - YouTube videos I'm planning on releasing in the coming months

Travel with a Wiseguy on YouTube

Since my last blog post I have released four videos: Ohio Ghost Towns Parts 1 and 2, Hiking to the Wichita State Plane Crash Site, and a drone video compilation from my trip on US Route 89.

It was a lot of fun to go back home to southern Ohio and explore with my brother some of the places where we grew up.  As a kid you really have no idea of the history around you and don’t appreciate it until much later in life.  I am hoping to do some more exploring the next time I’m “home”.

The video about the WSU plane crash site hike seemed to really connect with a lot of people.  Besides it being one of the more popular videos I’ve released, I’ve received a bunch of nice messages either as comments on the video or personal ones from people who’ve been to the site, planned on going, or didn’t even know it existed.  I’m glad I was able to do it and happy so many people found the video informative.

The drone footage from US Route 89 is just the first of several videos I will be releasing about my 1800 mile trek from Canada to Mexico.  I think it shows how spectacular some of the areas US 89 traverses, even though the video doesn’t do it justice from experiencing the real thing.

So, since you clicked on this blog, and have continued reading this far, you must be somewhat interested in what I am doing with these videos.  For those of you diehards (that I can probably count on one hand haha), here are a bunch of videos I have already filmed this summer and plan on releasing throughout the fall.  With my job getting busy, I won’t have as much time to travel in the next few months and had to get ahead of the game to keep my streak of releasing a new video each week.  Here are videos, in no particular order, that I hope to put out in the next 3-4 months …

--Individual US Route 89 videos on Montana, Wyoming, Idaho, Utah, and Arizona – similar to what I did for Route 66 last year.  Montana’s video is done and will be released Thursday (15 minutes long).

--In conjunction with the Wyoming and Utah videos, I’ll be releasing other videos that are “off shoots” from US 89 in those states.  For the Wyoming video, I’ll put links on the main video for a ghost town in the Grand Tetons and a hike I did in the southern part of the state.  For Utah, I explored (might have broken in) Little Hollywood in Kanab.  These videos will be different than my normal videos – more of a raw footage type thing.

--I’m going to put together a video of driving through both Bryce Canyon and Zion National Parks.

--I have two more Kansas ghost town videos (parts 5 and 6).

--On my road trip I explored lots of ghost towns along the way.  I am hoping to put together videos of them in Montana (2 videos), Utah (1 video), and Arizona (2 videos).

--I also took a day and explored some Colorado ghost towns after my hike to the WSU plane crash site.

--From way back to last year, when I road tripped on Route 66, I took photos of every town welcome sign I could find.  I thought this might be a unique video for fans of the Mother Road.

--I have one more Ohio ghost town video filmed.  Not sure how happy I was with it, but maybe when I start to edit it’ll come together.

--I filmed drone videos of the Kansas towns of Pratt (population 6,703) and Holton (population 3,237) much like I did for Wichita.  If I get motivated, I would like to release those.  I had a plan to do a whole bunch of cities I visited, but I would be very tired in the evenings and want to sleep instead of flying a drone around in the dark.  But I think the Pratt video will be pretty cool.

I have three other videos I would like to try and film this fall.  I have been thinking about a video about Wichita’s Union Terminal Station.  There is a lot of history there and you can explore everything in the area very easily.  As a racing fan, I was thinking it would be fun to go on a weekend of traveling to different small town dirt racetracks.  Maybe a 3 day weekend type thing if I can figure out the schedule.  The other video I want to do is the top-10 smallest towns in Oklahoma.  The one I did of Kansas was very enjoyable for me, and it is one of the most popular videos (and the longest) I’ve released.  In fact, I would like to do two states per year.  I could almost finish the project by the time I turn 70!

As for the YouTube channel, I’m right at 700 subscribers (need 1000 to monetize).  Last week it got over 3,800 views – which is the best week since I started it in the summer of 2020.

Anyways, there’s the “way too much info” update about my travels and YouTube channel.  Thanks for the support!