“A silent house is a dead house.” Lucy Parsons
Bad Ass Madge Productions is an independent studio in Lansing, Michigan. We make short, funny, mean little films for people who are used to being talked over, public-service shorts, book trailers, sight gags, a podcast and a daily live show. Nothing here is precious. Everything here gets finished.
Eight seconds to ninety. PSAs, parodies and sight gags built to land in a feed, survive a paid-review queue, and be understood with the sound off. If the joke needs a paragraph of setup, it is not the joke.
A podcast, a daily live show, and campaign trailers that have to hold up in a press kit and in front of a lawyer. Written first, shot second. We do not fix a weak idea in the edit.
Script, shot list, sound design, cut, captions, thumbnails, and every delivery spec a platform asks for. You get the masters and the project files, not just an export and an invoice.
Chaotic television static, held just past the point of comfort. Then one hard cut (no crossfade, no easing) into still white light. Then the question.
No dialogue. Nobody's body on camera. No medication on screen, no numbers, no before-and-after. It runs as the front door of the Killing the Willpower Myth campaign.
Chaotic television static. A hard cut to still white light. One question. No dialogue, no medication on screen, no before-and-after, the whole argument in the length of a held breath.
A fire captain squares up to a wall of wildfire at night, reaches over her shoulder for her tool, and comes back with a pink plastic squirt gun. Card: Willpower was never enough.
Two identical red minivans meet on a leafy street, windows down, golden hour, shot like a luxury car ad. One driver starts a polite question. She does not get to finish it. A hardcover completes the sentence.
A 1920s silent-film super-cut in nine cards. A nosy party guest asks the question. Our protagonist answers with a cracker, a puff of smoke, and an exit. Ragtime piano, 18fps, one wet slap.
A dead-straight 1990s corporate how-to video teaching one skill: how to disappear into a cloud of sass and glitter when somebody asks about your body. Three tactical moves, demonstrated.
The campaign trailer for the book. Type, props and paper on a kitchen table. No stock footage of real people, no numbers, no medication on screen. Scripted shot by shot with a clean cut and a vertical cut alongside it.
The podcast. Season one is written, twelve episodes taking the book's argument out of the page and into a room where somebody can talk back.
A daily live show about spending less without being lectured at. Two people, one kitchen, a clock and a budget. Built for the stream, cut for the feed.
Madge is the loud one. She is the aunt who says the thing everyone else at the table is thinking and has decided to be polite about.
Bad Ass Madge Productions works with UNLIT Publishing. That means the studio is not chasing briefs to stay alive, it makes the campaign work for the books, the community and the shows it already has, and takes outside work when the outside work is interesting.
Practically: small crew, fast turnaround, written before shot, and a hard line about what we will not put on screen. No stock footage of real people standing in for somebody's illness. No numbers on a scale. No before-and-after. No claim a client cannot back up in writing.
Skip the form if you would rather.
[email protected]