Check out Luke Pilgrim and Brad Kennedy of Sozo Bear Films ‘s Artwork

Today we’d like to introduce you to Luke Pilgrim and Brad Kennedy.

Luke and Brad, we’d love to hear your story and how you got to where you are today both personally and as an artist.
We (Luke & Brad) both grew up with a love for movies and filmmaking from a young age and in 2012, we met in film school at The University of North Georgia. We ended up working together on set a lot and noticed that we were always helping out on other student’s projects and that we had a similar work ethic and creative drive. So, in 2014, we wrote our first film together, “The Apology Service,” which became our senior capstone project. The school was impressed with the film and so upon graduation in 2015, the UNG Department of Visual Arts hired us to produce a promotional video, making them our first official clients as Sozo Bear Films. We set up an LLC and within three months we quit our other jobs and started working full time as filmmakers. We’re now in our fourth year of business and we produce commercials, music videos, and docu-promo films for clients around the state.

We’d love to hear more about your art. What do you do and why and what do you hope others will take away from your work?
Every day, we get to create art through our documentary promotional films, commercials, and music videos. Though each project type has a different style of filmmaking, they all focus on one thing… storytelling. Our goal is to always tell the best story with our films. That’s why we take time to get to know our docu-promo clients so that we can know the core of who their company is and share that through their video. And when we have to write scripts for our commercials or music videos, we make sure we take the time to get the story right. We are very detailed oriented when it comes to our projects, which often means we have our hands in all aspects of filmmaking.

Aside from our commercial work, we also produce our own original content. Each year since we started the business we have released an original short film and submitted to film festivals. Our films “The Apology Service,” “Sunnyside Drive,” and “The Amazing Anti-Fart Formula” have played in 27 film festivals so far and have won awards at the Macon Film Festival, Georgia Film Festival, Atlanta Comedy Film Festival, and Georgia Shorts Film Festival (Including Best Short Film & Best Director).

This year, our latest short film is actually the first episode to a larger project. We are producing a new series titled “Encounters.” Encounters is a sci-fi/horror short film anthology series akin to “The Twilight Zone” & “Black Mirror.” Each episode will explore different types of Encounters with Extraterrestrial Life through one unifying theme… Be Careful What You Wish For.

Though the series is about UFOs and ETs, we explore very human struggles in each episode: greed, fear, anxiety, selfishness… all the ingredients that make up the human condition. In short, the protagonists always get what they want, but at a terrible cost.

So, whether it’s a project for a client or an original film, we approach the filmmaking process with the same amount of passion and artful consideration.

Artists face many challenges, but what do you feel is the most pressing among them?
One of the biggest challenges facing artists today is also the biggest asset that artists have at their disposal. The internet. It’s a double-edged sword because, on the one hand, we have this amazing opportunity to distribute our work independently and build a grassroots fanbase. We can reach people literally anywhere in the world with our art. However, on the other hand, because everyone has this type of access, the market has become extremely saturated and the people you are trying to reach have become overwhelmed with options.

Do you have any events or exhibitions coming up? Where would one go to see more of your work? How can people support you and your artwork?
Our films can be seen online and in film festivals around the southeast. However, we also host our own film festival each year called “Sozo Bear Presents” A Night At The Movies.” It’s a red carpet event and a fun night of entertainment at The Holly Theater in historic downtown Dahlonega, GA. We showcase incredible short films by independent filmmakers from all over the world followed by a Q&A with the filmmakers themselves. The evening culminates with the premiere of our latest film. This year we premiered the pilot episode of “Encounters” and announced our crowdfunding campaign for the series. The crowdfunding has come to an end and we successfully raised $10,000 to produce the next two episodes of season one!

You can watch episode one online here: vimeo.com/sozobearfilms/encounters and one great way to show your support is to share the link with your friends. You can follow us on social media as well. We are @sozobearfilms on Facebook, Insta, and Twitter. And you can also subscribe to our YouTube channel so you don’t miss any of our videos we release. The pilot episode of “Encounters” is also on Facebook, so we’d love it if you could share the Facebook post with your friends as well!

Facebook Video Link: https://www.facebook.com/sozobearfilms/videos/2330646970591842/

Contact Info:

• Website: www.sozobearfilms.com
• Phone: 706-892-4689
• Email: [email protected]
• Instagram: instagram.com/sozobearfilms
• Facebook: facebook.com/sozobearfilms
• Twitter: twitter.com/sozobearfilms
• Other: youtube.com/sozobearfilms

Image Credit:
“Sozo Bear Presents: A Night At The Movies” photos taken by Mary Lee, “Encounters: Episode 1 Behind the Scenes” photos taken by Josiah Selvig

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