We have a rough cut for "We Had Plans," and we're not far from Picture Lock. Jordan did such an excellent job with pacing & hitting the emotional beats of the film. Peter & I shot very much for the edit, so a lot of the decision making left to do is just about how long to linger on certain reactions, and nuances like that. Kelsey & I are so excited about this and cannot wait to finalize the edit and get it off for color correction and sound design. Below is a photo of Jordan's timeline of the cut.
As for "Not Our Living Room," he'll be finishing the edit for it hopefully in the next 3 weeks. Our goal is to have both films complete by the end of the year, and to put out a teaser for each in December. We're aiming for festival submissions in January, as well as a Cast, Crew & Supporter premiere at the end of that month.
We'll keep you updated as we make more progress and plans! For now, we're just sending you a big CongestedCat thank you from the whole team because we simply could not be at this point without all of you!
As for what else has been going on with us since our last update:
Episode 5 of Kelsey screened at the Seattle Lesbian & Gay Film Festival Saturday, October 18th. We couldn't attend, but heard it got lots of laughs.
We also launched the Facebook & Twitter pages for our future feature film About A Donkey, written by Kelsey & to be directed by me. We got our first bit of feedback about the script from the BlueCat Screenplay Contest with this exciting sum-up: "The themes of growing older, mid-life depression, and generally figuring out one's adult life were poignant and relatable. The idea of using a donkey bought on a whim is a novel, whimsical and interesting one, and adds to the dark comedic tone of the piece. The concept is unique and speaks to the various struggles of finding one's identity and purpose."
I made my first feature, SUMMIT, for less than $25,000 and we made Kelsey (all 10 episodes) for under $6,000, a testament to our truly indie spirits and sense of resourcefulness. However, these shorts were our first opportunity, thanks to all of you, to pay our entire team and accomplish the production quality we planned for. So now it's a standard we aim to maintain with all our work moving forward, most notably this feature. It will require a BIGGER budget than anything we've worked with before because we don't just want to do everything by the book in terms of paying everyone well, attaining permits and going through unions, but also want to try to get "name" actors for a couple of the roles. Top tier festivals are part of the longterm plan. It's going to be a long, surely bumpy, road, but we're up for the challenge. We'll be sure to keep you updated on our progress with starting Development for this film as well, because we want to take you with us to our next creative endeavors.
Speaking of SUMMIT, for anyone who has taken an interest in it as a result of this campaign, I just wrote an update about its post-production status this week. Feel free to check it out on our blog: HERE.
Also, my latest short "Juice It" is exclusively available online as part of the FirstGlance Film Festival's Online Contest until November 8th. It costs $2 to register (with promo: fest), but that fee gives you access to watch all 16 films in the contest and vote, hopefully for mine, once per day until the 8th. The winner screens at their LA Festival next year & takes home the cash prize! I'm trying not to push it much considering I just ran this crowdfunding campaign, but I'd appreciate any support anyone can offer, even just sharing it. The film also screened at the Coney Island Film Festival last month & will screen at the HollyShorts Screening next month, and hopefully have a couple more screenings in NY next year before I put it publicly on Vimeo next summer.
Regarding my email from last month, if you haven't filled out your Incentive Survey yet and want to receive the rewards we promised, please be sure to get that to us before December 1st.
Lastly, Kelsey & I launched new sites for ourselves. Check them out: Mine & Hers. We'll be creating the Project pages for WHP & NOLR on the CongestedCat siteonce we put teasers out.
More updates to come!
-Christina