This is not entirely true, I was in films as an actor in both the 2007 edition and the 2008 edition of the Calgary International Film Festival. The movies were ‘No Sense’ and ‘Secret of the Nutcracker.’
But on September 29th I landed in Tampa Florida on my way to the beach town of Clearwater for the 2010 Clearwater Film Festival for my first festival as a filmmaker.
I show up at ‘Water’s Edge’, a swanky condo right on the water where I head up to the penthouse suite for the Opening Night Gala.
I had no idea what to expect of this fest since it’s the festival’s inaugural year. But showing up and being told to head on up to the penthouse suite, that’s a comforting start. In the elevator, this lady told me she really liked my film…nice! She was one of the panelists responsible for choosing which films get in.
We get to the top floor, I’m nervous because everyone’s well dressed and I don’t know anyone besides Ali and Kevin (who was acting as producer at the fest). But within about a minute, a guy comes up to us and introduces himself as Pietro D’Alessio, but I know this already because I was doing my homework by knowing who the judges, panelists, and organizers were, just in case I happened to run into them.
Pietro told us how much he liked the movie and he had a bunch of questions for us. This is outstanding, within 5 minutes of being at the party one of the judges has come up to us to tell us how much he likes our movie. Beauty. Great start. Pietro went on to being our biggest fan and biggest promoter the whole weekend. It was outstanding. I’d be getting a drink at the bar (free Stella incidentally (booyah!)) and I’d hear Pietro talking up our movie to someone else on the other side of the room. Then he’d bring over more people and introduce us.
So clutch. Accomplishment intros to other filmmakers from a judge of the festival. I thought it’d be tough to go up and talk to people and network and such but with Pietro the networking was done for us.
Before the end of the night 2 more judges came up to us and told us how much they liked the movie. The one judge, Tom Thompson thought I was out of my mind for taking on such a project. Out of my mind and ambitious were two things I was happy to embody.
As someone who’s trying to get into a business that’s nearly impossible to get into, not having respect as a filmmaker because of my age was something I was fully expecting to encounter at this festival, but having these judges talk up the movie was invaluable because as a result nobody was un-talk-to-able haha.
Another guy we chatted with was another young guy, a journalist from Tampa, Joe Belcastro, who was going to do a piece on the festival. We chatted about career changes from office jobs to creative jobs. Scary but cool. We talked about horror movies and other movies. I told him he should catch my movie if he can. He said he’d try. But he also said that if he wrote something, there was no guarantee that it would be positive. If he didn’t like it, he wasn’t going to lie. I’m still confident, possibly because the judges are filling my head with positive comments haha. But I tell him that anything written about it, positive or negative, would be a plus.
First night. Success. Compliments from judges. Possibly someone writing about the movie. Free Stella.
Next day. Head over to Clearwater Beach to a hotel to meet up with a couple of other filmmakers to do an interview with this lady Dawn Reese.
We then head over to the Clearwater Cinema Café (where my film will screen the next day) to catch a couple of short films and to meet up with Joe Belcastro to give him a screener of the movie in case he can’t make it to the screening the next day.
We then race back to the same hotel we were just at to go to a panel on packaging and the business of pre-development. Incidentally, we thought Clearwater was going to be a small town, it took a good 30 minutes to get from the café to the hotel.
The panel was very informative. So much stuff I had no idea about. I get the sense if and when I ever get to the point where I have a budget upwards of 50, 100, 200, 500k and have a big time actor interested, the stuff that Russell Hess and Nancy McBride will be very, very good to know.
LLC the movie. Private Placement Memorandums. Lawyers. Investors. Unit Production Managers. Distribution before filming. These types of things.
From there we go to the hotel restaurant and bar patio that’s right on the water with a bunch of people. Pietro, Nancy, a great guy who was a volunteer Marcos Baca, a blogger Christina, a director Justin Evans (check out the cool trailer for his movie A Lonely Place for Dying), Ali and Kevin.
We eat and chat about movies, the festival, and all sorts of stuff while watching the Florida sunset. Not bad. Not bad at all.
But all to soon, it’s back to business. Over to the Capitol Theatre to see a documentary by another Justin, Justin Hunt. A documentary called Absent, about the effect that absent fathers have on families, communities, and society. This movie had an interview with James Hetfield, the lead singer of Metallica. That guy’s impressive, very well spoken and very articulate (are those the same things haha). Anyways, very cool movie. Some crazy dude in the audience in the Q & A after the movie suggested sterilization as a solution for dealing with family issues. Haha what a nut.
After that Twenty Ten was playing. Twenty Ten is an Australian movie. The director and producer came to the festival as well. It felt like us, low-budget aussie movie, low-budget Canadian movie, it felt like we needed to support each other. The movie was cool. I liked it. It had some really naturalistic writing, some good acting, plus it’s tough not to fall in love with everyone who has an aussie accent.
Back to the hotel. We’ve got ‘the’ screening the next day. Got to be on my game tomorrow.
We show up to the screening in our nicest clothes. Me in my black suit (I brought it, I had to wear it to the screening), Ali in a very nice dress skirt. One problem. Not too many people showed up. Understandable, for several reasons: it was at 1pm on a Friday, but more importantly all the people at the parties we’d gone to where we were talking up the movie were filmmakers, and all the filmmakers were at the panel about distribution that was going on at the same time half way across town.
But I was still pumped because the people that were there really liked the movie, and plus, we got to see it again on the big screen, which is always sweet. It looked and sounded really great.
What I learned over the course of my days in Florida was that what was most important about this experience was networking, going to educational panels, and learning as much as I can from people that I would otherwise not have access to.
After we finished the screening and chatted with all the people that came to the show, we raced back to the hotel on the beach to catch the rest of the educational panel on distribution. The on-going theme of the weekend was the emphasis of staying on top of new media and internet based methods of distribution. Especially for indies, it’s important to utilize tools that internet and digital business can offer to make some money. Probably not huge money, but enough to keep indies going.
Then we stayed for the next panel called the Art of the Deal with two knowledgeable guys: Tom Thompson and Robert Sterett. These guys had some valuable insight based on their experiences twenty years in the biz being producers. I learned a lot more about distribution and film markets. Us and the aussies were there and so our films got talked about in terms of advice they had for us and what we could possibly get in terms of distribution. And having Pietro there was awesome because he would ask these guys questions pretty much on our behalf. I would be sitting there thinking …would that be a dumb question to ask…gah…I feel like I should know that …then Pietro would ask it pretty much for us and the aussies.
On to some more parties. Friday night, 4 parties…all at various places right on the beach. On the beach at a yacht club…At the beach bar at the Hilton. Beauty. Another guy I haven’t mentioned…Mike Rembis, the guy who set up the entire festival, he was around a lot the whole weekend. It was always great talking to him, he always had interesting stories about his experiences. He’s a writer/director/actor (these people that do multiple things, Justin Evans would call them slashers haha…nice) like me so he had some cool stories. He’d gone to Cannes and won a 24 hour film challenge. Very cool guy. Plus he put on the first festival that my film got into so automatically I’m a fan.
The coolest parts about these parties (aside from the free Stella of course) was hearing people’s stories and advice because almost everyone there has been doing this way longer than I have. Not just about the business of films and filmmaking but little things too. For instance Marcos has my exact same camera and editing software and all that stuff, so I learned so many little things about my camera that I didn’t know. Invaluable. Great night.
It was funny, we’re at all these beach front parties, but it’s dark…I’m like “I’m sensing there’s an AMAZING view here, but I can’t see it haha” I had been in florida three days and hadn’t been on the beach. Oh well, this was a business trip right.
Saturday. Awards day. Nice. Catered meal, gathering of movie buffs and awards. This was right up my alley.
The awards start up after everyone is fed. First award of the day: Best Supporting Actor. They announce everything in alphabetical order so the last one was John Webb. I’m like WHOA! John got nominated that’s sweet! And the winner is…John Webb WHOA!!!!! John just won!!! I’m thinking how pumped John’s going to be when we tell him. So I went up and accepted the award on his behalf. John obviously used his 7 minutes of screen time well. (I don’t know if it’s seven, but it’s not too much)
We pick up 4 more nominations in the next 20 minutes…
Best Supporting Actress for ALI!! I was really hoping she’d win that. Unfortunately she didn’t though.
Best Actor for me! That’s really cool. No win though. No big deal.
Best International Film. Sweet. No win though. Oh well, the Spanish movie that won was very good (and, I’m pretty sure, about a 100 times more expensive) .
Best Director for me! Haha if they only knew I was a shitty director that simply does a million takes. Just kidding…kind of…haha. Another loss but we’re still glowing from John’s win.
Then the big one: Best Triple Threat Filmmaker comes up. This is a biggie, because it’s one of the awards that if you win you’re movie gets replayed on Saturday night at the Capitol Theatre…(picture the plaza in Calgary plus a second level of seats): nomination…check…my hearts pumping. Winner: Me! YAY!!!! That was really really cool. Because from now on I get to call myself an award winning filmmaker!!
It completely legitimizes everything I done up to this point. Because I tell people I made a movie, they don’t know exactly what to think. Or if I have to tell people at a job interview how I can account for the last year and a half of my life I now get to say I was working on an award winning film. I am now an award winning filmmaker. That’s so so cool because as I said before, it’s so tough to get respect from people in the business if you haven’t done anything of note. But even more , it’s important to people who aren’t in the business, because now I seem much less like a bum who’s just been avoiding getting a ‘real job’.
I know this all seems very self-centered and self indulgent, and that I shouldn’t care what other people think. But I’ll tell you, it gets real tough having to tell people that you’ve made a movie, and they go “can I see it in theatres, or at blockbuster” ummm no, just because that’s not really how things work but normal people think along the lines of “if I can’t rent it or see it in theatres, it must not be good, it’s probably some home movie shit” but now I get to say, well I’ve been submitting to film festivals and I got into one…bing! Lightbulb turns on because everyone is aware that film festivals exist…”Really?” “Yeah, and it won a couple of awards too” Bam! I’ve just gone from being a bum in their eyes to being respectable all in two sentences. But I digress.
We phone John after the ceremony he’s sooooo pumped, and regretful that he wasn’t there with us. But getting the award is great consolation for him haha.
Now I’m pretty well on top of the world. My movie’s getting reshown at 7pm, the award guarantees a bigger crowd.
Phone calls are made, people are pumped, but there’s no time to doddle, we’ve got to rush over to Capitol theatre immediately.
Ali and Kevin ride with Pietro so that I can ride with Marcos so we can talk about camera business. Since he has the same camera and editing set up, he’s teaching me a few things on the go. For example, on my camera… 1 frame every 2 seconds = awesome shot where everything is super sped up.
At the Capitol theatre we get there just in time to catch a re-showing of a mini-feature by some film students from Jersey…The accents on these guys were outstanding. These guys were not so much Jersey Shore as they were Brooklyn-type guys that you might see in a bar fight. They certainly weren’t the artsy folk that you normally see at film festivals.
I chat with these guys afterwards about their movie, and they’re pumped to see mine because they saw that it won awards. These guys were outstanding to have in the crowd at the screening. Everything that I had initially written for people my age, the stuff that I thought was funny, these guys were howling at. All the Sharky stuff was a big hit with these fellas. Beauty. Because these guys were laughing, it let other people know it was cool to laugh at this stuff.
Watching with an audience is always interesting because until you’ve done it a few times, you have no idea how things are going. But I started to pick up on the times where people would literally not move in there seats for a certain period of time, then they’d relax a bit afterwards. Those parts where people don’t move, you know those are working, but you also need the, how shall I say…not down times…but peaks and valleys to allow the audience to stay with you.
I, of course, realized all of this after the screening of course once I knew that everyone dug the movie.
The movie has very little effect on me anymore, especially after talking it up so much the entire weekend it does very little to live up to the expectations I’m building up for others. But you could just feel the vibes in the room after the screening was done, like people had just been through a workout but were really pumped at the same time. It was as if the movie kind of came out of nowhere for them. I was getting these vibes, because people had so many questions that went along the lines of:
“how did you do that…how long did that take to film??”
“this was your first movie? What other festivals has it shown at so far?” “Uh, none,” “Really?? Well it won’t be the last”
“Who funded it?” “I did.” “You did??” “How much was the budget? “ “Let’s just say it’s extremely micro-budget”
And so on.
These comments were coming from all demographics as well. The Jersey boys, a group of 50 year old ladies, old people, young people, all sorts.
A festival volunteer came up to us afterwards and said she hadn’t been affected by a movie as much as that since the Departed (not bad company).
And again like the premiere in Calgary, I was getting a lot of “we really liked it…no seriously, we really really liked it…really.” And so if you thought it was shit, you’d say “I liked it” then you’d leave it at that. There be no need to add the “no, really, I’m serious, I really liked it,” adding that if you thought it was shit would just be malicious, and unnecessary. This is what leads me to believe that people actually liked it.
It was just so cool, to have everyone so pumped for us. It was a really good feeling to have. To the right in the photo we have (from left to right Marcos Baca, Justin Evans, Mike Rembis, slasher Jeff Rector (behind), Pietro D'Alessio, Acting Teacher Corinne Broskette, me, and Ali)
But the question remains…why then, if people liked it here in Calgary at our screening, and at two separate screenings in Florida, and it can win awards…How is is then, that it can get unanimously rejected from 30 other festivals (give or take a few)? How does that happen. What am I missing?
The thing that I was most worried about, the audio, never got brought up. The video had a bit of feedback such as the blacks in the color palette in some scenes were crushed (not too sure what this means yet) but I know that it’s something audiences don’t notice. But other than that, technical issues weren’t an issue for anyone I talked to. It wasn’t as polished as other films sure, but that’s part of its charm right ;)
Why then does it get rejected from everything, including the hometown Calgary International Film Festival? I don’t know. I let you guys know when I do. And don’t get me wrong, I’m not bitter about the process, I’m just a bit….befuddled. There’s something else going on but I don’t know what it is.
But overall I’m very happy…very very happy with how things turned out in Clearwater. It was a great time, and it gave a great look into how film festivals go down. Picture the episode of Entourage where they go to Sundance just on a smaller scale, and that’s what it was like. Panels, parties, movies, networking, hanging out in hot tubs with topless girls talking about waiting to get the offer from James Cameron to play Aquaman…you know, those sorts of things. That last one may have just been in Entourage…I’m not too sure though.
Hopefully this won’t be the last festival. Hopefully everyone thinks the way Joe Belcastro does…check out the link to his article on the festival. And hopefully my next post won’t take six months…
Joe Belcastro's article link:
http://www.examiner.com/movie-in-tampa-bay/hidden-gems-found-at-the-clearwater-film-festival
No comments:
Post a Comment