Cinequest

We submitted to our 3rd film festival this week - Cinequest.

Cinequest takes place Feb. 27 - March 9, 2008 in San Jose, CA.

Altared Premiere

On Sat, Oct. 20th, approximately 70 people filled King Auditorium on the campus of UNCW, anxiously awaiting the first ever screening of the film Altared. The free screening was part of UNCW's Frugal Filmmaker series and involved a Q&A session afterwards with first time writer/director Kara Still. Throughout the film the audience laughed at the one liners, cringed at the medieval/voodoo references, bopped along to the fantastic soundtrack, and shuttered at the fight scenes.


The Q&A afterwards and the comment cards we received exhibited great feedback. People were amazed at the calibur of acting and the quality of the cinematography and sound in such a low budget film. Special kuddos went out to Aerli, Laurel, Mick, Virginia and Chris for their performances. The audience hated "the bad girl" Lucy and some even asked if Aerli was really like that. Nope not at all...she's just that great of an actor. They also found the "weird girl" Zoey (played by Virginia) to be a welcomed comic relief that came at precisely the right moment. Lots of comments were also made as to how great a job Chris did at letting his character Carl change from serious to a more playful character when introduced to Zoey. It showed the true nature of people being influenced by other people to behave a certain way and in this case people saw Carl behaving more like himself around Zoey than he did around his wife, Lucy.


Some questioned me about the autobiographical nature of the film. As most of you are aware, a lot of the film and characters are autobiographical but most of the situations created with the characters are not. The film is, however, meant to register familiar in some compacity with most people (male and female) that have had a serious relationship and then for some reason lost that relationship.


The audience did catch on to the color palette used in the film and questioned me, specifically about what the purple in the film meant. They loved the soundtrack and even wanted to know where they could get a copy of it. Overall, they thought it was one of the better independent films they had seen and was sure that this would be a "good calling card" for us.


All in all the screening was a tremendous success. Afterwards, the party moved back to my house for drinks and snacks. We had a fire going out back that burned until 3am when the last partygoer left. It was a good chance for all the cast and friends to celebrate a job well done and mingle. The investors were both in attendance and very pleased with what they saw. In fact, we've already started discussing our next film.

"Unofficial" Premiere in Wilmington

It's official...or rather "unofficial" that we will be holding a premiere screening of Altared in Wilmington. The screening is set for Saturday, Oct. 20th at 7:30pm. The film is part of UNCW's filmmaker series so it will screen at King Auditorium on the Campus of UNCW. Invitations and flyers were sent out via email, but if anyone is still lacking pertinent info or directions, please don't hesitate to contact me. And, of course, tell all your friends (as I'm sure you've already done). The auditorium holds 160, but make sure to come early to ensure you get a good seat. See you all there!

Slamdance

We've officially submitted to two festivals now, Sundance and Slamdance. Our hope is that if we don't make the cut at Sundance that we'll manage to make our way in to Slamdance. For those of you unaware of Slamdance, it's a festival that was designed to do what Sundance sought out to do in the beginning - find the unknown and introduce them to the world. Slamdance runs in January, the same time Sundance runs and while it has different venues than Sundance, they are all strategically located in Park City, Utah. Ergo, we can capitalize off the Sundance attendees since we'll be screening in the same town during the same time. So our fingers are crossed that we'll premiere the film at one of these two festivals...of course we have to wait until December to find out.