Meteor Tower Films our new look and brand, combining TangentIdea Productions LLC and unitheo. I started unitheo in 2008 as an experiment, to explore expanding my business into filmmaking in the music and theater scene – and it’s been an exciting two years. On all counts, it’s been a success – I accomplished my goals for the experiment and enjoyed creating some moderately successful music video and art projects with some wonderfully creative people.

Meteor Tower Films is the application of what I learned from the unitheo experiment:

• We like producing for social media, and we do it well. Video content we created is among the most-watched original online entertainment coming out of Lancaster, gathering over 350,000 views in the last year and a half.
• We dominate in the 13-28 demographic. Working with musicians and artists gave us experience creating media that appeals to their fans in that demographic. We’re now working with advertisers and artists to help them both effectively and economically reach their audiences.
• Even businesses like our style. At the beginning, I semi-intentionally adopted a gritty, organic, hands-on approach to shooting and compositing style, instead of pursuing a soft, slick, corporate look. Young, internet-savvy audiences distrust over-produced corporateness. Instead of disdaining our youthful and slightly under-produced look, businesses have asked us specifically to do what we do to help them reach the young, internet-savvy demographic.
• We don’t do TV commercials. In our market, television ads are best for a demographic two decades older than who we reach. It’s a rapidly shrinking market here. And I will switch careers if I ever have to do a car dealership commercial to keep doors open.
• We won’t do animation. Our research shows that flashy motion graphics and animation generally distract and repel internet audiences. People, uniqueness, and actual content attract viewers and compel them to tell their friends.
• We’re not going away. I’ve watched several regional production companies flouder or actively lose money over the last couple of years. Our business income has consistently doubled over the last three years, including corporate work produced through unitheo’s parent company, TangentIdea Productions LLC. We now have some of the newest video gear in the area, several exciting partners, and some kickass whiskey-coffee.

Our office/studio for Meteor Tower is at 1148 Elizabeth Avenue, Lancaster. And by “our,” I mean Ryan Mast (producer/director/etc), Owen Byrne (director of photography), Hudson Van Ormer (costumer & gadgeteer), and occasionally Doug Hallman (systems designer & editor) and Justin Kuzma (intern/scapegoat/editor/minion).

Thank you to everyone who has helped me and my crew along the way – many friends for support, Jeremy at CI Records for creating On The Couch and the Texas In July music video with us, Lancaster Newspapers for generously giving us news coverage on our projects, Walter and Jonas at Progressive Galleries for letting Hudson and me show off our Twitter art experiments, PopStar Magazine for promoting our work with Racing Kites, Keith at AMQ Software for letting Justin & I work out of your office until we got our own place, the whole damn Creative House Of Lancaster, and many others.

Keep in touch! Follow @meteortower on Twitter for more news, or email me (ryan@meteortower.com) if you’d like to know more about what we do and what we’re doing.

Thanks,
Ryan