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Pair proves Hollywood-style work can be done in NEPA


Mark Dennebaum, Jr. left Scranton in 2004 to pursue a career in film and television production. Little did he know that within six years, he&rsquo;d be living his dream back at home.
As the president of 25/8 Productions, which was founded in West Scranton on August 1, 2010, Dennebaum has been able to produce Hollywood-quality commercials, music videos, political ads, and more from the comfort of his own home studio. Joined by his &ldquo;right-hand man&rdquo; Tim McDermott, the pair have combined their distinctive talents to bring their clients&rsquo; visions to life.
Dennebaum said he could trace his fascination with film back to age 7, when he first saw &ldquo;Revenge of the Nerds&rdquo; on HBO. After repeating some of the foul language to his mother and getting in serious trouble, he began to grasp the power of the screen.
&ldquo;I didn&rsquo;t understand how this thing that I was allowed to watch on television got me in so much trouble, so I think my fascination started there,&rdquo; Dennebaum recalled.
It wasn&rsquo;t long before he was walking around with a video camera at age 10, so by 2004, he was ready for film school. After spending two years in Orlando, Fla., while earning a bachelor&rsquo;s degree in film and television production, he later moved to Los Angeles, Calif. Dennebaum cut his teeth on high-profile television shows like &ldquo;Sons of Anarchy,&rdquo; &ldquo;24,&rdquo; &ldquo;Heroes,&rdquo; &ldquo;Scrubs,&rdquo; and work for DreamWorks Pictures.
While the projects were great, the people he met weren&rsquo;t the type he was used to back in Pennsylvania.
&ldquo;I couldn&rsquo;t go back to L.A. I loved everybody in the business; I just hated the people in the town. They were always judging. Scranton is great because I&rsquo;ve seen bar fights where someone gets knocked out, and then the guy who hit him buys him a drink,&rdquo; he said with a laugh.
&ldquo;For what we want to do, you don&rsquo;t have to be in Hollywood anymore to be Hollywood. We just want to do good work.&rdquo;
McDermott also recognized the power of film at a young age. Growing up on &ldquo;strange children&rsquo;s films&rdquo; and Nickelodeon, he discovered British comedy troupe Monty Python and asked his mother to see Python alumnus Terry Gilliam&rsquo;s 1998 film &ldquo;Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.&rdquo; 
Unaware of its adult content, his mother told him to read the Hunter S. Thompson&rsquo;s book on which it was based instead. He loved the book so much that he snuck a VHS copy into his house to watch the bizarre story come to life.
&ldquo;It was exactly how I imagined it. I was so amazed that I was watching what I had been imagining, so from that moment on I said, &lsquo;I want to do that,&rsquo;&rdquo; McDermott said.
He, too, starting making movies as a kid, ultimately graduating in 2008 from Temple University with a degree in film. His senior thesis, &ldquo;Call Waiting,&rdquo; won &ldquo;Best Undergraduate Feature&rdquo; that year and played at several art and film festivals.
While they had met briefly at a festival years before, McDermott began working with Dennebaum at a Wilkes-Barre-based production company. After being hired to work on a project together, the two bonded and eventually struck out on their own with 25/8 Productions.
Dennebaum stressed that &ldquo;99 percent&rdquo; of the projects they have taken on as a company were started because they had a personal stake or interest in their creation, always going &ldquo;that extra mile&rdquo; for clients.
&ldquo;We don&rsquo;t know how to do assembly line work. We care too much,&rdquo; Dennebaum said.
&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t think it&rsquo;s so much that 99 percent of the stuff we work on we have a personal interest in &ndash; it&rsquo;s just that we&rsquo;ve been given these projects from people who are so nice and so genuine that they&rsquo;re only projects that we can care about,&rdquo; McDermott added.
While it would appear to some that Dennebaum&rsquo;s love of director Michael Bay-style explosions and McDermott&rsquo;s passion for artistic styles like stop-motion animation might never mix, both agree that they have found &ldquo;a good balance&rdquo; in their work and are unafraid to challenge themselves by venturing outside their respective comfort zones.
&ldquo;I have the loftier ideas. Tim&rsquo;s the one who grabs the string on the balloon and pulls it back down,&rdquo; Dennebaum admitted.
&ldquo;Everything we do is a learning process. We choose to do things in which we have to learn something new,&rdquo; McDermott said.
The name &ldquo;25/8&rdquo; isn&rsquo;t an exaggeration of their dedication, either. In one of their latest ventures, a YouTube video called &ldquo;Scranton Masterpiece&rdquo; commissioned by a local group of artists, they spent over 80 hours working on the ambitious promotion for First Friday art walks. 
The 30 visual effects shots actually fooled many into believing that iconic buildings in downtown Scranton had been vandalized by the artists, and even its music was specifically recorded for the video.
Despite the amount of time and effort involved, they made the video free of charge because of their support for local art. Neither have directly attached their name to the piece either. Dennebaum said that he wants his clients to use them to find success, not other way around.
&ldquo;We&rsquo;re trying to stay ahead of the technology. We&rsquo;re trying to stay ahead of the curve. We&rsquo;re doing stuff that nobody else is doing, especially, considering the economic climate, for a really good price,&rdquo; he said.
&ldquo;You could have the world&rsquo;s greatest hammer, but that doesn&rsquo;t mean you know how to make a house. We have great equipment and the best software to make everything, but we&rsquo;re also pushing each other to make sure that the content is there and it&rsquo;s compelling,&rdquo; McDermott explained.
While stressful at times, it&rsquo;s clear that both men enjoy what they do and refuse to rest of the laurels of their previous endeavors. Whether producing a stop-motion commercial for Anthology New and Used Books - now called Pages and Places at Anthology - or a music video for Underground Saints, they do so with both infectious enthusiasm and local pride.
&ldquo;I feel really fortunate about the position that we&rsquo;re in and what we&rsquo;re doing. The future&rsquo;s only getting bigger,&rdquo; Dennebaum said.
&ldquo;I&rsquo;m a guy who came back here. Most people are trying to get out. I lived in Florida, I lived in California &ndash; no place felt like home. This did.&rdquo;

Pair proves Hollywood-style work can be done in NEPA Mark Denneb