History
Terrible Infant was conceived, developed, and assembled by Will Gish. As of 2019, he and Mike Sitnikov oversee the operations of the collective in a hands-on capacity, in essence producing all Terrible Infant projects in all stages of development, production, and post-production.
The founding members of Terrible Infant met at Loyola Marymount University in the fall of 2012, pursuing MFAs in film. Though each from a very different back ground, Danny (San Diego), Jack (Mississippi), Morten (Norway), and Will (New Jersey by way of New England) immediately found common ground in their love of movies, Japanese food, and irreverence.
The idea of creating a semi-formal group arose in 2014, after various creative collaborations between the core members. A meeting at Kanpai Japanese restaurant, in the shadow of LAX, was followed by emails, Google docs, and madcap brainstorming sessions. In spring 2015, with graduation looming, Danny, Jack, Morten, and Will decided to get serious, and put pen to paper to form concrete ideas. From this, Terrible Infant was born.
From summer 2015 until summer 2016, Terrible Infant members Will Gish, Danny Hogan, Mike Sitnikov, Jim Jacobi, and Chris Jones participated in Film Independent’s Incubator lab for young filmmakers. At the end of that year, Will and Danny were awarded a grant of $3500 to produce a pilot for Lost Angeles, a web series for which they developed a full season during the lab. The pilot was produced in August 2016 and shelved indefinitely when the collective realized the futility of having material with no means of distribution.
In the fall of 2017, Will attended the New Hampshire Film Festival. During meetings and through eavesdropping, he learned of new methods of financing, distribution, and production based on social media and other new and emerging forms of cinema and television. While in Portsmouth, NH, he spent several hours a day over the course of a three-day trip in a darkened corner of the local Starbucks, completely reconceptualizing Terrible Infant based on these new models, his own work as a social media admin for a very successful web publisher, and the obvious futility of trying to work the festival circuit without family money or other friendly connections.
The hours spent at the Portsmouth Starbucks turned into months of brainstorming. From this was born a massive vision for Terrible Infant version 2.0. Will quickly recruited his upstairs neighbor, co-worker, and all-around beast daddy Mike Sitnikov as his primary partner in this new vision of Terrible Infant. The two began producing web series in January 2018, launched their first Youtube channel in February, and by August 2019 were running three Youtube channels, a Facebook page, nine Instagram accounts, and had become brand ambassadors for Firework, with a backlog of hundreds of episodes of content spread across eight original series.
Terrible Infant was conceived, developed, and assembled by Will Gish. As of 2019, he and Mike Sitnikov oversee the operations of the collective in a hands-on capacity, in essence producing all Terrible Infant projects in all stages of development, production, and post-production.
The founding members of Terrible Infant met at Loyola Marymount University in the fall of 2012, pursuing MFAs in film. Though each from a very different back ground, Danny (San Diego), Jack (Mississippi), Morten (Norway), and Will (New Jersey by way of New England) immediately found common ground in their love of movies, Japanese food, and irreverence.
The idea of creating a semi-formal group arose in 2014, after various creative collaborations between the core members. A meeting at Kanpai Japanese restaurant, in the shadow of LAX, was followed by emails, Google docs, and madcap brainstorming sessions. In spring 2015, with graduation looming, Danny, Jack, Morten, and Will decided to get serious, and put pen to paper to form concrete ideas. From this, Terrible Infant was born.
From summer 2015 until summer 2016, Terrible Infant members Will Gish, Danny Hogan, Mike Sitnikov, Jim Jacobi, and Chris Jones participated in Film Independent’s Incubator lab for young filmmakers. At the end of that year, Will and Danny were awarded a grant of $3500 to produce a pilot for Lost Angeles, a web series for which they developed a full season during the lab. The pilot was produced in August 2016 and shelved indefinitely when the collective realized the futility of having material with no means of distribution.
In the fall of 2017, Will attended the New Hampshire Film Festival. During meetings and through eavesdropping, he learned of new methods of financing, distribution, and production based on social media and other new and emerging forms of cinema and television. While in Portsmouth, NH, he spent several hours a day over the course of a three-day trip in a darkened corner of the local Starbucks, completely reconceptualizing Terrible Infant based on these new models, his own work as a social media admin for a very successful web publisher, and the obvious futility of trying to work the festival circuit without family money or other friendly connections.
The hours spent at the Portsmouth Starbucks turned into months of brainstorming. From this was born a massive vision for Terrible Infant version 2.0. Will quickly recruited his upstairs neighbor, co-worker, and all-around beast daddy Mike Sitnikov as his primary partner in this new vision of Terrible Infant. The two began producing web series in January 2018, launched their first Youtube channel in February, and by August 2019 were running three Youtube channels, a Facebook page, nine Instagram accounts, and had become brand ambassadors for Firework, with a backlog of hundreds of episodes of content spread across eight original series.
