After 5 months of planning, 3 months of my site being under construction, and several years of living deep questions, processing, and immersing myself in a multitude of experiences, I’m excited to welcome you to my new website! This site is more than a new look, it embodies a deep change, both an arriving and a beginning. The short of it is that I am focusing my life and work on intimate entrepreneurial consulting, spiritual guidance, art, and writing. I will let those pages describe this in more detail, and in particular my first post in Live the Questions will illuminate a bit of the deeper processing I have been going through. For now, I just want to let this whole site speak for me as I have put so much heart, blood, sweat, and tears into it, so I invite you to explore, read, and share! (Be sure to check out the homepage to see the full design).

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In September I had the honor of coaching the talented and insightful Kristen Wheeler for her TEDx Boulder talk. If you don’t know her, one of the things I love about Kristen is she is contagiously joyful and energetic (she has a trampoline in her office that she jumps on when she has an epiphany or breakthrough, just to give you a picture). Kristen had a clear idea and heartbeat of what she wanted to offer and communicate in her talk and I helped her craft that into a succinct, well-organized, and emotionally impacting TEDx talk. The result was her talk being voted top 5 by the Boulder audience and a line of people after the event wanting to connect with her.

I absolutely enjoyed the process, particularly because Kristen was so open the entire time, and so I thought it might interesting to share my experience and insights. My approach to the talk was heavily influenced by my experience in screenwriting and film, which might seem odd to some. Of course, I also have other experiences that influence me – leadership training, speeches, group presentations, etc. But TED talks are you unique and more than anything, I find them to be a hybrid between a lecture, story telling, and acting.

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It’s an honor to introduce you my incredibly talented friend, musical composer, Brad Fowler. Recently Brad asked me if he could compose a series set to my poetry. Without hesitation, I said ‘yes!’ and gave him free range to do whatever his musical mind and heart wants. Of course, that’ll be a big project and it will likely be a while before this is composed and finished, but I will keep you updated.

Also, after listening to a handful of his compositions, I immediately asked him to score the short film I’m working on. Brad’s talent, his emotional, musical, and textural range lit me up, filled me with inspiration, and I knew I had to have him on board. It’s going to be magic, I feel it through and through.

Brad’s letting me post some of his work here. You’ll see what I mean about his talent and range. Be sure to listen to each to really be taken on an emotional, musical adventure.

Brad has a BA and MA in musical composition from Missouri Western State University and Truman State University, respectively. MWSU is where we met and where I studied music.

Dream Meditations for Orchestra

Pulse Meditation

May Music for Wind Ensemble (2:30-3:30 = WOW)

Two Laramie Sketches Landscape

I’ll be blogging more here in the near future and regularly, but wanted to give a quick update on other content that I’ve created over the last few months. First, let me be clear: I am NOT moving to LA:) That changed a few months ago. I’m staying put in Boulder and I’m looking forward to it. I have a lot of projects in store for the second half of this year.

Hot Samadhi! I just started blogging again over at My Samadhi is Hot with post entitled, “100 Days of Practice” that talks about a practice vow I’ve recently undertaken. Read about that here and subscribe to hear more about my process and experience over the 100 days.

Love is Under Me. As usual, I continue writing and posting poems on my poetry site, Love is Under Me. If you’re new to that site, you can start with reader’s favorite poems and you can subscribe to get updates.

New Film. I recently wrote and directed a short film for my good friend, Lindsey Wilkinson who did an amazing job editing the film. Her first time, which is so hard to believe. It was shot for a class she took and had to be 5 minutes or less. “Tension of Immanence”. Watch below:

Here’s a slideshow of behind-the-scene photos from “Love’s Invitation“. Photos by Hokai Sobol and Jason Digges. Watch the film here and read the poem, “Echoes of Your Heart“, that is heard at the end of the film.

(Featured in my short film, “Love’s Invitation“, winner of Best Screenplay. Read more of my poetry at Love is Under Me)

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Love’s Invitation from Ryan Oelke on Vimeo.

This weekend I shot my first short film with an amazing team of talented friends for the Boulder Shoot Out Festival. The film, “Love’s Invitation”, placed in the Top Ten and I won the award for Best Screenplay. I am so very honored and grateful to everyone on the team and everyone who gave feedback on the screenplay. A few quick notes about the film:

• It was shot in 24 hours!
• There was NO EDITING. You had to do “in-camera” editing, which basically means – shoot a scene, keep it or rewind the tape, shoot it again, move to the next scene!
• We had to use 5 out of 11 possible items in our film, which we didn’t find out until the start of the 24 hours.
• Had to be 7 minutes or less, including title and credits.
• We didn’t do any post on the audio except the music and the voiceover.

Even without mentioning those parameters, I love our film as is. I hope you do too.

Credits:

Written by Ryan Oelke

Directed by Ryan Oelke, Jason Digges

Cinematography by Jason Lange

Starring: Stuart Davis, Hokai Sobol

Cameos by Sharon Rebek, Ryan Oelke, Abby Bader

Music by Stuart Davis

Boom by Charles Gammill
Sound Design by Ryan Oelke
Production Assistants - Lindsey Wilkinson, Seth Harris
Titles and Credits by Abby Bader
Special Thanks to Chelsea Brady

This weekend the lovely film crew I worked with on Sex, God, Rock ‘n Roll will be shooting a short film for the Shootout Boulder Film Festival. I wrote a short script that stars Stuart Davis and Hokai Sobol. We’ll have to adapt it a little when the festival starts tomorrow at 6pm. They have a secret list of items that must be included in your film:) Thankfully, you get to choose 5 out of 11, so we’ll have some options at least.

Other details on the festival: you can only do in-camera editing, which really means NO editing. And that means you have to shoot every scene sequentially. Once you have the scene, you move on to the next. No going back to redo, no fixing it in post, no multiple takes. We have from 6pm on Friday to 6pm on Saturday to shoot a short film no longer than 7 minutes.

The awesome crew includes:

Directing: Jason Digges and I

Cinematography, In-Camera Editing: Jason Lange and Jason Digges

Production Assistant: Lindsey Wilkinson

Boom: Charles Gammill

I’m honored today to tell you that the Sex, God, Rock ‘n Roll website is now LIVE. You can see free clips of the first episode, and you can sign up for some amazing memberships and get immediate access to the first full episode. Sex, God, Rock ‘n Roll will air on national television, April 26 on HD Net.

It’s taken a lot of work to get here, but I’ll tell you, it’s been THE best experience of my life. I love the show and I love everyone I work with.

Here’s a little about my involvement in the first season:

Producer – “producer” in a general sense means, “makes shit happen”. And make it I did.

Segment Producer – I worked a lot with Stu on getting the different elements of the show in a flow for the live audience. The biggest part was creating and running the “live elements”. We had two HD televisions set up for the audience and we’d use these to show photos and videos that accompanied news jokes, as well as playing other segments and the music videos. Stu and I would work together to get the timing down of jokes with the live elements. Quite fun:)

Audio Engineer – I mixed everything you hear in the episodes except for the music, which was already produced and most likely mixed by the awesome, Alex Gibson. (I did mix some silly stuff we came up with on the fly, but you’ll know the difference:P) Also, the supreme audio geek, Mike Yach, was a huge help in my process of mixing.

Between now and next season, I hope to write some comedy sketches for the site, and in season 2 I’ll have the honor of helping write jokes for the show.

Zen Buddhist-indie rocker Stuart Davis is launching a new comedy series: Sex, God, Rock ‘n Roll. Season One of this ground-breaking tv show debuts April 26 on HDNet across the U.S. and Canada. Sex, God, Rock ‘n Roll is written, directed, and hosted by Stuart Davis, and features edgy humor from the open-hearted maniac. Each episode follows Stu performing stand up comedy, news, sketches, and his acclaimed music. A twisted mind and a sensitive soul, Davis has made a career out of parsing tricky topics, and Sex, God, Rock ‘n Roll finds this ‘Punk Monk’ at his multi-faceted best.

“We are excited to welcome Stuart Davis and Sex, God, Rock ‘n Roll to HDNet. Stuart is one of a kind, and we are thrilled he is on HDNet.”
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