In January of 2006, I was wearing a pair of corduroy pants and a gray button up shirt. I know this because I had worn that outfit for 32 consecutive days. All I can say in my defense was, it was the final semester of my art school education and I was enacting an ill-conceived protest against societal norms. The important part of the story is this; in the back pocket of those pants was a notepad in which I had begun writing short film ideas and quotes. Towards the end of the pad, the following entry appears:

“A movie about two guys who run after Bush reinstates the draft.”

This grammatically challenged sentence was the catalyst to a life changing experience, even though the concept evolved into something less specific.

Today marks the one year anniversary of the True Studios website, and more importantly, the day our group returned from Big Bend National Park, Texas. Principle photography for our first feature film, On the Lam, wrapped on this day one year ago, and I for one wish to commemorate it.
This has been a long and wild ride, full of fun, frivolity and frustrations. We have seen the Great American West and the Great Columbus Slums. We have seen the ends of personal relationships once thought unbreakable. We have seen video files completely disappear from hard drives. We have seen broken cameras and the tears they invoke. We have seen incredible support from friends and family. We have seen one another develop into more critical and sophisticated artists. We have seen graduations. We have seen house purchases. We have seen drop outs and jobs lost. We have seen good and we have seen bad. We have seen each other naked, and we have seen it more than once.

I cannot begin to explain to the reader what this experience has meant to me as an individual, nor can I speak on behalf of the group. Suffice it to say, we have grown as young men together, often in spite of one another, but also through one another’s influences. We have grown from amateur student filmmakers with no money, to amateur filmmakers with no need for money. We have grown together as total morons.

I wish to thank Greg Kissner, Aaron Syler, Aaron Patterson, and Joe Rosenblum for their unwavering commitment to an idea that began in the smelly back pocket of an art school senior. This is no longer my movie, it is ours. These men know what it takes to get a job done (though it sometimes takes us a while) and I cannot wait until our premiere, where we will be able to celebrate our accomplishments and drink lots of beer.

If you believe in the power of independent cinema, and you don’t believe in the necessity of an impending war in Iran, please consider supporting True Studios by linking to our site, spreading our videos on the internet, or sending huge sums of money. Make checks payable to Awesome McGee, care of True Studios.

- Corey Aumiller and the True Studios Gang