Fresh Farm Films

I feel bad that I must write this. I don’t know why this person is doing this after all the years and hard work everyone has put into our projects. To have someone you trust do this to you makes you question humanity, but I have faith in people, and I will not let the actions of one bad apple destroy what we all have made.

We started Fresh Farm Films in 2018 and is a production company that filmed its projects throughout Portland Oregon and the Pacific NW.  For over 5 years we have had the pleasure of working with some awesome Actor/Crew from PDX! Thanks Guys!

We started out as some people who got together and filmed silly projects until the scripts got more ambitious.  We invited more people to work with us, and we started submitting the work from FFF to festivals and the like.

We were enjoying some modest success when one of the volunteers opened an Art collective and begged me to help him run it. No really, the guy begged! He marched into my office and demanded I help him in exchange for 20% of the revenue. I did it because he was my friend.

After that imploded, SDZ and I opened Red Stool Productions and put FFF on ice all because of this volunteer Brandon Lawrence. It’s out of simple civility that I will respect his request and not post his real name. However, he’s one of those guys who fancied himself in charge, or at least part of the main structure which according to all relevant parties he was not.

I let it slide because everyone was having fun and we were producing content and as long as he stayed civil to the Actors / Crew I didn’t see what harm it could do; boy was I wrong.

Without sounding my own horn, I will point out my contribution and his and just how the production company was set up. Before I go further, I need to explain the very simple corporate structure at Fresh Farm Films.  When we applied for our Ein# under our business name. Peter Grey was set up as President with SDZ set up as the only other officer of the company. So, in a sense Fresh Farm Films has 2 officers and for the sake of taxes all other participants are categorized as volunteers.

P. Grey and SDZ are the only people who are set up in the Corp structure and everyone else is a volunteer. We in no way mean to say that Volunteer is any worse or we are any better its just how we must set the production companies and continue maintaining our humble, fun and enterprising company.

FFF operated as a collective of ideas with the people who showed up on set for the various projects. Brandon was sure to be at every shoot and sometimes earlier to tell everyone who’s in charge. I normally do not tolerate such behavior and I did have several conversations with him about his attitude, but he obviously did not care.

The content at FFF was written, directed, and produced by Peter Grey and the team at Fresh Farm Films.

We set up the website, the IMDB stuff, Film Festival administration, paid all the leases and rent on the places I found, paid all the utility bills and all the boring stuff of business that Actors / Crew don’t like to do.

We started Fresh Farm Films and Red Stool Productions to work with people and produce content and maybe have some fun along the way. Everything was going well until I started finding out some things that our volunteer Brandon was up to.

To be clear all our projects should be available to the people who work on them for FREE!

Brandon started by joining with an Actor who will never be used by me again and helped him get our movie on a streaming service. That’s great, and I told him it was great in a text but what I didn’t know was all the money agreed upon went to him. He went behind all of our backs, lied to everyone who had anything to do with this film, and bragged about it later.

I should have known he would pull something after his father died and left him with over $1.2 million to spend.

That’s how he was able to go behind my back and make some questionable moves that show not only does he not know what he’s doing but he’s too proud to crack a book and learn.

Not only did he use his newfound wealth to open the ill-fated Farm arts and media center (link) Brandon was working on something so big and so evil it might as well come from an 80s movie!

This former Volunteer went out and claimed copyright over the feature length movie we completed and all of our hard work and is trying to claim it as his own, and he’s trying to make money off us as well. He even put our fun, little movie up on a website, but behind a $3 pay wall!

No one is going to pay $3 for our amateur project and he is adamant that he spent all of this money he needs to recoup his losses. What the hell is wrong with this guy??????????

What mister FORMER VOLUTEER doesn’t know is business and especially this business. The film belongs to everyone of us who spent out time and talents on its production and not so just one person can grab all the cash for his “losses”

I never saw our productions as a waste of time and I never would refer to them as “losses” I learned so much on every shoot and after over 5 years making films Ive learned a thing or two about a thing or two. Lessons I never would have learned if I never picked up a camera and put ads in Craigslist for Actors/Crew.

This volunteer had ideas, made incredible props, and we both had a love of movies but he didn’t put all the hours into setting up FFF business plan, Peter Grey and SDZ did.  So, I know things, like how to claim a business like this on the taxes or how to carry insurance on every shoot. Basic stuff but he doesn’t know so he makes it up as he goes.

Which is fine. In the face of this bad volunteer doing this I moved my office and added another company to my EIN and started Red Stool Productions, so I and any future Actor/Crew would no longer have to deal with the guy who liked to call me his partner.

We were never partners, he was a volunteer at my production company and will not be one in my new one.

To boost our production company, I did the work and created a website, registered both my company and did all the credits on IMDB, started registering for Film Festivals at Film Freeway, and manage the office bills and cold called Willamette Week, Portland Merc, PDX Pipeline all to boost awareness of our production company.

This guy had no interest in doing any of that, but still claims authority over our hard work.

Brandon vs. the entire CAST!!!!

I let all of it slide because after over 50 years on this planet I can say I have learned something about people. People change and sometimes that’s good but then some people don’t and maybe they should!

So, when the cast and crew kept asking me where they could find our project, I asked Brandon more about the streaming service he and Haily #3 set up without our knowledge, and his answer was less than encouraging. That led me to create a YouTube channel to put up our work so the Actors/Crew can direct people to it.

 Easy enough, until I was asked by another Actor at a different gig, that I was hired on to perform named Travis and I directed him to go to our YouTube channel and he could find Mortapillarz and all of the other projects we worked hard on.

Well Travis got back with me and said that no, that movie was not on that YouTube Chanell.

I went to You Tube and, low and behold, what did I see?

 A STRIKE has been filed against me and my channel. It turns out that Brandon wants to ENFORCE his copyright over our work.

Those who know me will be able to say that what I did next was classic PETE.

I pulled everything off my YouTube channel because even though it goes away in 90 days, this disgruntled volunteer has 2 more time to have my entire YouTube channel (which includes things done without him or his involvement) deleted forever!!!!!!!!

Sounds grim, but I do have both websites. I do my new stuff with RSP and protect my old stuff with FFF. Perfect!

So, for every Actor/Crew who worked with me and my partner SDZ to create these fun videos, you can view all of them in their entirety here at FreshFarmFilms.com.

I’ll even leave the comments open and please let me know if you want a specific clip and I’ll edit it out for you!

Until then I’ll work to resolve this bogus claim against my production company, and I’ll make sure everyone has free access to their hard work!

Thanks to everyone who worked on our projects at Fresh Farm Films, and we look forward to doing even more after my double hip surgery with Red Stool Productions!!!!!!!!

“You can’t cross the sea merely by standing and staring at the water”

• Rabindranath Tagore