Base14

Hello and welcome to Base14. We are an award-winning multimedia design company currently located in West Lafayette, Indiana. Although we are still a young company, we already have a rich and interesting history. And that includes an explanation of how we got our unusual name.

We weren’t always called Base14. The company formed as a collaboration of creative vision between Tyler J. Kupferer and sister Alysha. The original name first appeared in the opening credits of the film “How Smoochy Got His Groove Back.” Tyler wanted to put in some clever opening credits and came up with “Kupferer Inc.” and “Basement Productions.” (Both kids working on the film were Kupferers and both were working in the Basement.) Irrevocably, the latter was the one that stuck.

Basement Productions was used for a good year or two. During that time projects were half-hazard and mostly made up on the spot as Tyler and friends tried to learn the elusive art of filmmaking. Still, the foundation was being laid for a passion for art and storytelling that would have long-lasting effects. By the end of High School, Basement Productions was starting to work on projects that could be taken half-way seriously, including our first animation.

As things began to get more serious, Tyler began to see the potential of the young media company. What he found, unfortunately, was a simple Google search of the name “Basement Productions” brought up three or four other companies and organizations that already were successful in one way or another. Not only was someone already using the name, several people were. Tyler decided he needed the company to be original and marketable in the future if need be, which meant he needed a unique name. But Basement Productions had already made an impression on the community, so it needed to be similar.

What Tyler decided was that he really liked the word “base” but “ment” could be dropped. For the time, “Productions” would be kept as well. From there Tyler needed to add more identity. In no specific order, he found two parallels to the word “base” that related to his past experiences.

First, the term “base” is used in mathematics as the number that is raised to various powers to generate the principal counting units of a number system. Decimals are base 10, for example, and hexadecimal is base 16. But “base” is also used in math to describe the number raised to the logarithm of a designated number in order to produce that designated number. (To you and me it’s the little number after the “log” part. You can see the link to this in the current nameplate with the 14 being smaller and lowered.) Tyler really liked the way it sounded when the words were followed by numbers. And since base 10 and base 16 systems seem to get all the attention, anything else would sound pretty unique.

Secondly Tyler had to decide which number. He thought of the old television show “Hogan’s Heroes” that he used to watch. In the show, all the characters live in a prisoner of war camp called “Salag 13.” “Stalag” is short for the word “Stammlager” which translated to English would be close to “base camp.” By combining the Base 10 saying with the Stalag 13 name, Tyler would get Base 13 Productions. It was close, but somehow 13 didn’t flow off the tongue just right. Also, he thought using the number 13 might give the company a dangerous or risky connotation. Tyler wanted it to sound more contemporary and stylistic. In a final thought, Tyler remembered his favorite number is 7, and twice seven is 14. It only takes one more number to go from 13 to 14, so it seemed appropriate.

All that was left was to Google the name, and fortunately the closest thing to the name Base14 Productions would be some font-related technical term. We like fonts, so that could be purported as some sort of basis for the name too. That was that, the company now had a new, cutting-edge name that still held some of the nostalgia of the old name.

The name “Base14 Productions” was used for three years and during that time, the company earned several honors and accolades. It branched out from strictly film production into other multimedia areas. New types of projects included animation, cartooning, web design, web development, interactive multimedia, print design and music mixing. Yes, things were certainly getting interesting for Base14 Productions.

Base14 Productions took it’s next big step with the release of the film “Biological Warfare Ain’t Easy: A Rightfield Movie.” This animated short won the company three first place awards and was well-received by local fans. Having now proven itself as a serious player in the amateur animation industry, the stage was set for even bigger and better things to come.
With a second animated short film in early stages and many other side projects keeping the company busy, Tyler decided it was time to bring together all the elements of Base14 Productions. He shortened the name to simply “Base14″ in an attempt to simplify and strengthen the identity of the company. Then, to accompany the “simpler, stronger” strategy, a new corporate website was created in Blog format. This allowed for news and production updates as well as the opportunity to debut a new comic series as well.

Hence you have the new Base14 website. We still have a long way to go and lots of work to get done along the way. But in this industry, with a healthy mix of excitement and curiosity, anything can happen.