PALCS Alumni Excel as Creative Professionals

We recently got the chance to speak with PALCS parent Amy Theorin and catch up on what her sons Kurtis, Kris, and Niklas are up to after graduating from PALCS. Kurtis graduated with the class of 2011 and participated in the Center for Performing and Fine Arts (CPFA) and University Scholars Program (USP) during his time at PALCS. His brothers Kris and Nik graduated last year, as members of the class of 2016 and both participated in USP as well.

At first hesitant to enroll her students at PALCS due to the non-traditional structure of the program, Amy loved the idea of small advanced classes geared towards gifted students. They first heard about PALCS and USP from a fellow student and decided to give it a try.

“We ended up loving the program – the teachers, the courses and the flexibility. Four years later, our two younger sons Nik and Kris also joined USP,” said Amy. It has been ten years since the Theorin family first enrolled at PALCS and Amy credits “the quality of teaching, the warm and loving environment and the creative freedom given to the USP students” as the reason they chose to stick with and graduate from PALCS.

Kurtis, Kris, and Nik had always taken an interest in filmmaking and writing. Being enrolled at PALCS allowed them to follow those interests and use them in class assignments. During their time at PALCS, they had the chance to create several films that USP still shows today. PALCS allowed the Theorin students to create their own schedules so that they could work on their school assignments while still being able to explore their passions and work on their own projects on the side.

“Kurtis always talks about how USP prepared him so well for college, because by the time he got there, he was so used to organizing his time independently, it was a seamless transition to the college format,” explains Kurtis’ mom.

A few years ago, the Theorin brothers decided to start a company called Something’s Awry Productions. They work with national companies and small businesses on achieving their marketing goals. They started creating short films and commercials, and because they each have different skills, they were able to assign roles within the company fairly easy. The oldest of the Theorin brothers, Kurtis, is the Creative Director and lead writer. Kris films, animates edits and does all the special effects and sound design. Nik writes most of their screenplays, while the Theorins mother, Amy, acts as producer running the projects and interacts with their clients.

They started working with the LEGO group several years ago; LEGO has now become one of their biggest clients. In the beginning, they were tasked with making commercials for their Marvel Super Heroes and DC Comics line of LEGO building sets. More recently, they were asked to create commercials for their Jurassic World and LEGO City lines. Then a few months ago the LEGO group was looking for someone to create a stop motion animated launch video for their new LEGO Yellow Submarine they are set to introduce in November.

They chose Something’s Awry Productions to create the commercial, which took about a month and a half to make. Amy and her sons worked with TribeSound Records to create the music and Actuality Films to draw the 2D animations, then combined them with Kris’ stop motion animation in the video. The Yellow Submarine video was launched with the press release about the upcoming set and gained worldwide attention. Now with over 2 million views on Facebook alone, it has been picked up and played by national and international media sites all over the world.

Something’s Awry Productions has also just been tasked with an exciting new project for Warner Brother Studios: a pilot episode of an online series for Warner Brothers, with further details to be disclosed in the future.

The Theorin family and Something’s Awry Productions hopes to continue to create commercials and short films, and someday maybe even a feature film! The Something’s Awry show reel is available here.

We would like to congratulate Amy and the Theorin family on their successful business and wonderful achievements, as well as thank them for speaking with us about their journey and business!