If you're one of the few people that remembers my old site Optimus Prime Films, I've had a feature running over there for six years now, where I keep track of every single film that I watch. Today I moved it onto the eRATicate site, so you can check it out at: http://eraticate.com/watched

Thanks for checking in!

4/25/6: If you're into the Myspace thing, I now have a presence there. Check it out here and sign up to be my friend.

7/15/5: Most of you reading this are probably coming from my new documentary column Truth Be Told. If so, welcome. Take a look around the site, we've got a lot of info about the making of my first film eRATicate. We also have some short films, music videos and a mock commercial in the XRATS Productions, all the stuff we've made since. If you get a chance send me an email and let me know what you think of the column and/or the films.

For those of you who've been here before; check out my new column.

6/20/5: Our feature length baby documentary, tenitively titled "The Turning Point" is coming along slowly, but surely. I'm a couple months into editing, with at least another six months or so post-production work to go. For now you can check out a trailer that I cut for it, so you can see a bit of the story and style of the future film.

Our short film Lucky Shoes was recently posted on IMDb. If you've got a chance, check out the film, then give it a rating and/or a review at IMDb.

4/11/5: The Ashland Film Festival went pretty well. We had two screenings of Lucky Shoes , both times it got a good reaction out of the crowd, with a lot of laughs. It's probably the only time I'll get to see the film with an audience, so I'm glad I got to do it in my home town. You can read an article that was in the paper about it here.

1/27/5: Good news! My short film Lucky Shoes was accepted to the Ashland Film Festival. The whole festival thing was so expensive for eRATicate, I decided to forgo it this round. Since it was free and my hometown fest I tried for Ashland, luckily it worked out. But you don't even have to come to Ashland to see it... you can view it in the XRATS section.

More good news! After two years of being on Triggerstreet, eRATicate finally made it into their festival. It's one of 50 films in competition. The top ten based off user reviews move onto the 2nd round, where they're judged by a panel of experts. Then the top four move into the final round with eight films chosen from the past two festivals. Those 12 films then are shown at a big wig festival (Sundance, Toronto) where the ultimate winner is chosen. eRATicate's got a long, long way to go. Wish us luck!

1/21/5: Just posted my latest project for viewing. Click here and you'll see my video for the Seattle band Blessed Light. Turned out pretty well I think. If you've got any comments I'd love to hear them. Email me.

If you want to buy a copy of eRATicate on DVD. (And who wouldn't?!) I just found out that it can be found on a copy of Best of Hypefest 2003. I gave them permission to do so over a year ago, but never heard a damn thing back about it... I just happened to find it on a search of eRATicate on google.

8/18/4: Check out the new section on the bottom right: XRATS Productions. You can learn about and watch more film projects done by the XRATS team. Also find out about projects that we have coming up.

The big news of late is that my family and I have moved out of Seattle. We wanted our son Ash to grow up in a smaller town and we also wanted to be closer to our families. So we decided to move to Ashland, OR. (The Ash - Ashland thing is a coincidence.) It's a cool small town with a very artsy heart. We'll miss Seattle and our friends, but we're very happy to be here. We hope to focus on true loves, Kristan is starting a photography business, while I'm going to try to focus solely on filmmaking, with us both trying to be home with our son as much as possible. Wish us luck!

6/8/4: The film got entered into the IMDb recently. I'd love a rating and/or review of the film posted by those of you who have seen it. Thanks!

5/4/4: For those of you who are interested, I've posted my latest short Lucky Shoes. It was made for an Adidas short film competition, the film had to be 30 sec to 3 min long. I got over ambitious with it, and had trouble keeping it within the 3 min length. It was conceived of, shot, edited and scored in about 10 days of work, so it's not everything I hoped, but I think it's pretty fun. Email me and let me know what you think! (It's about 9 Mb, so those of you with dial-up beware.)

2/27/4: A few new things are going on - eRATicate got invited to screen at the Filmjunkie Film Festival in San Fransisco. The amazing thing was I didn't even enter it.

For the few of you who may read this in time... we're having the Premiere Screening of my wife's short film "25 Cents" this Sunday the 29th, at 4pm, at the Rendevous Cafe, 2320 2nd Ave. There will also be an encore screening of eRATicate and the priemere of my mock-commercial for Shin Cup Soup.

The music video I made for my friends band Monostereo is done and can be viewed at their site.

On a sad note, the two rats that starred in eRATicate passed away a few months ago. It was a tough loss, as they were the coolest pair of rats we've ever had. On the upside we've got a new pair of rats, Salma and Adriana, that we love to death.

11/5/3: A website called Axe Horror Reviews has put up a very nice review for our film.

10/31/3: eRATicate premieres on Ifilm.com today. Click the "watch" link below to see it, please try to leave a review as well. We'd also love you to tell all your friends about it too, we want as many people as possible to see the film.

10/1/3: Cult Cuts Magazine put up their review of the film.

8/27/3: The film has been accepted into another festival! - Coney Island Short Film Festival

I also got around to writing another journal entry.

7/17/3: This is a first, I got into a festival that I didn't even know about till after the fact, REwind Video Fest. I hope the screening went well. In other news, eRATicate won an award at the Brainwash Fest, but I don't know what exactly.

7/8/3: Got into two more festivals - 20,000 Leagues Under the Industry & Port Townswend Film Festival. I've learned to enter the film into the smaller festivals, I'm getting a much higher acceptance rate.

7/2/3: Got accepted into another festival - Brainwash Film Festival.

6/10/3: Cool! Just got accepted to another film festival - HypeFest.

6/5/3: You can now buy your own copy of the film.

6/4/3: eRATicate's got another screening here in Seattle on June 20th, 7pm, at the Little Theater. Stick around, cause it's gonna be an Emma Jones double feature, the fabulous Inheritance is playing afterwards.

5/27/3: The SIFF showing went really well. The audience seemed to love the film. It was great to see it in my home town, with an impartial audience. Now, we have our fingers crossed that we win the Audience Choice award.

Found out this weekend that we got into another film festival. It's a pretty small one, but it's within driving distance of here, so Kristan and I plan on going. It's the da Vinci Film + Video Festival in Corvallis, OR.

Also, a few weeks back I was contacted by the guy running the Mini-Cinema Short Film Festival. Thanks to Tromadance, he was interested in screening eRATicate.

5/8/3:The SIFF screening details came out today, find them HERE. I hope to see you all there.

This is what SIFF programer, Amy Lillard, had to say about the film: "I am happy to report that eRATicate was one of the first films that I saw and completely enjoyed. It has been on my list from the get-go."

4/22/3: It's official, we're playing SIFF! Since it's the hometown fest, it's the one I most wanted to play. It's probably playing May 25th, so mark your calendars. I can't wait.

4/1/3: Haven't had any news in a while, unless you count getting rejected from about 10 festivals in a row, news. I guess this is gonna go in cycles, because eRATicate just got accepted into two more festivals; the Beg and Grovel Festival in Columbia, SC, and Light Plays Tricks Short Festival in Ontario, Canada.

2/26/3: Just found out that eRATicate won Best Comedy and Audience Choice at the U.S. Super-8 Festival. Sweet!!

2/14/3: Some bad news, got our first two film festival rejections; South by Southwest, we got notice that we were among their final choices, but then heard back a few days later saying, nope, sorry. We just got flat out rejected by the Tampere Film Festival. I knew it was coming, but I was getting cocky after the 3 for 3 start.

Good news though. I posted the film for the online festival at TriggerStreet.com. (This is a festival put on by Kevin Spacey's production company.) The film gets a lot of views this way. (Although I'm not too happy about the extremely small size it has to be viewed in.) The film's ranking has been hovering at about 70th, not too bad considering there's over 1200 entries and that it's been up less than a week. -- You too can view the film there, but you have to sign up first, which is free. (Unfortunately the way the site's set up you can't review it, unless it's recommended to you or you're an advanced user.)

2/5/3: Just got back from Tromadance, and what a crazy time I had. Look for the full report here.

1/28/3: We've already been accepted into two more festivals, the U.S. Super-8 Film Festival and the Texas Film Festival. So that makes eRATicate 3 for 3. Of course, I'm not sure if I'll hear back from any rejected festival, but so far so good. I'm not going to be able to travel to either of these, but hopefully I can get some kind of spy into them to let me know how they went. Exciting stuff is happening.

1/15/3: Our first festival acceptance! - Tromadance - It's not a big festival by any means, but it's put on by an independent studio that I really respect. I've got my plane tickets and I'm ready to go. It should be a hell of an experience, as I get to rub elbows with all the same people that are there for Sundance. I'm taking along the digi-cam and I'm going to document the entire trip. Look for a new special section when I get back.

We also have our first official review.

Thanks for visiting.

- Ross Williams