Gideon Kennedy and Marcus Rosentrater have written, directed, and produced award-winning short films, music videos, commercials, and feature films, screening worldwide since 2005.
Gideon C. Kennedy
Writer/Director
In his nearly twenty years of filmmaking, Gideon Kennedy has worked as a producer, researcher, writer, and director of documentaries, narratives, and all manner of stories in-between. As an Emmy-nominated archival producer, he has handled the research and clearances of archival elements for documentaries such as Dawn Porter’s “John Lewis: Good Trouble” and Margaret Brown’s “Descendant.”
He has provided initial resource surveys, project development, and full database creation and management, always striving for top-level research in historical and contemporary footage, photos, print, and audio. His duties as a researcher include tracking down hard-to-find media on antiquated formats in places as varied as academic archives and abandoned storage spaces.
Once found, he also handles transfers, often from the sole existing copies, with an eye towards preservation. In his role as an archival producer, he’s also responsible for cost analysis, fair use reviews, and negotiating rights with everyone from major footage houses and news services to individual creators and collectors, delivering on time and within budget. His work can be seen in films and television series appearing theatrically and on all the major streaming platforms.
His other film endeavors in the past include working as a festival programming director, a projectionist, a grant review panelist, and serving on numerous festival juries and selection committees. He has also died in urban legend, been worshiped by a fraternal organization of which he was not a part, and had a single-barrel scotch that he couldn’t afford named after him.
Marcus Rosentrater
Producer/Director
Marcus Rosentrater is a two-time Emmy award nominated producer, director, editor, and animator with two decades of experience working in the film and television industries. For Floyd County Productions he has produced four seasons of “Archer” (FX Networks), two seasons of “Marvel’s Hit-Monkey” (Hulu), along with a number of pilots.
As an independent filmmaker he has produced and directed a feature film and directed, edited or produced over a dozen short films. Marcus’s versatility as a producer extends from development, to delivery, to launch. He is involved in the early stages of production, working with writers and writers’ rooms to dial in character, story, and make suggestions that will help production. Whether it be on set, in a studio setting, or in the voiceover booth, he has directed performances of the principal cast.
With experience producing live action and animation, Marcus has overseen projects with a variety of scope from those with multi-year schedules, international teams, crews in the 100s, and budgets in the millions; down to zero budget films based completely off found footage, and just about everything in between. These projects have brought a wide range of post-production experience from delivering to network television, streaming services, VOD, major festivals, and direct distribution online.
Through all this he is no stranger to navigating the terrain between the ambitions of various directors, show runners, and writers and the realities posed by production, network requirements, talent availability, etc. This hard work has earned Marcus numerous awards, including an Emmy win as the Animation Director of “Archer”, as well as an Emmy nomination for “Outstanding Animated Program” as a producer.
What is a Climenole?
(KLEH-men-nuhl)
In “Gulliver’s Travels,” inhabitants of the flying island of Laputa are described as being so lost in their own thought that they cannot hold a conversation or avoid falling in a ditch unless periodically struck in the face by a dried pig bladder carried by one or two servants or, in their native language, “climenoles,” hired for the purpose.
“I observed here and there many in the habit of servants, with a blown bladder fastened like a flail to the end of a short stick, which they carried in their hands. In each bladder was a small quantity of dried pease, or little pebbles (as I was afterwards informed). With these bladders they now and then flapped the mouths and ears of those who stood near them, of which practice I could not then conceive the meaning; it seems, the minds of these people are so taken up with intense speculations, that they neither can speak, nor attend to the discourses of others, without being roused by some external taction upon the organs of speech and hearing; for which reason, those persons who are able to afford it always keep a flapper (the original is climenole) in their family, as one of their domestics, nor ever walk abroad or make visits without him. And the business of this officer is, when two or more persons are in company, gently to strike with his bladder the mouth of him who is to speak, and the right ear of him or them to whom the speaker addresseth himself. This flapper is likewise employed diligently to attend his master in his walks, and upon occasion to give him a soft flap on his eyes, because he is always so wrapped up in cogitation, that he is in manifest danger of falling down every precipice, and bouncing his head against every post, and in the streets, of justling others, or being justled himself into the kennel.”
– Jonathan Swift, “Gulliver’s Travels”