Short Films
'Juice It' has been accepted to the 2015 Queens World Film Festival! This is especially exciting because the film was shot in Queens. It will screen March 20th at 1pm at The Secret Theater, with the possibility of winning awards and an encore screening at the Museum of the Moving Image. Feel free to check out the QWFF site & the list of all the accepted films.
We can't wait to share this short with another audience!
Juice It came in 3rd place out of 16 films in FirstGlance Film Festival's Contest. Thanks everyone who voted & supported! We hope you enjoyed the film! We'll let you know when it's back online for viewing.
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
Christina's latest short film "Juice It," was selected to participate in FirstGlance Film Festival's Online Contest, marking this the temporary online premiere of the film! It's up against 14 other truly unique, creative and some excellent shorts.
We're honored to be included. If you want to watch the film and support us, register as a fan of the contest with the promo 'fest' and then pay the one-time fee of $2. It gives you access to the 15 films through November 8th. You can watch all the films an as many times as you want and vote once every 24 hours. The winner will screen at their prestigious festival in LA and win a cash prize!
We hope you like it & thanks for the support!
Three Saturdays ago "Juice It" premiered at the 14th annual Coney Island Film Festival. I was hoping to do this update earlier, but held off in hopes of getting copies of their professional photos from my screening and Q&A. Unfortunately, they haven't released them and may not anytime soon. So, in the meantime, I post this with my terribly out of focus camera phone pictures and will simply reshare it when the good ones go live! (BTW, there are some nice ones not of me, but of the festival overall on their Facebook page).
As for how the festival went, it was a ton of fun! The thing about public screenings is that, while they're of course what we live for as filmmakers and are incredibly exhilarating, they're painfully nerve-wracking (at least for me) when it's the first time a piece is being seen publicly, as was the case here. I was terrified no one would laugh. To my delight though, the screening was filled with non-stop laughs, and rumbling, belly laughs at that. Some jokes were missed because people were still laughing at the one before. It felt pretty amazing. What was nice to hear, though I feel bad admitting so, was that they weren't polite, equal opportunity laughers. Most of the films that screened with mine were exceptionally funny, funnier than mine even, and a few had way higher production values. They got just as much laughter from the room. It was an honor to screen with them. However, there was one that was pretty weak. I wont specify which, but it wasn't very well done and it dragged on a lot. It just wasn't quite hitting the comedic beats, and didn't know when to let an attempt at a running joke die. So, to hear the audience not laugh at that one, while did make me feel bad for that filmmaker, felt validating in the sincerity of their amusement over "Juice It." People may tell you "I liked it" or even "I loved it," and if you're lucky they'll specify details that stood out to them and why, or explain actual emotions it provoked in them. For the most part though, you never truly know if people are just being polite to your face. What you can gauge though is the energy in the room and, in the case of comedy, the laughter from the audience. I'll stop rambling now, but needless to say, it was a successful screening and made me feel great (even in spite of the annoying cold I had)!
As for what's next for "Juice it," well I'm eager to get it online for more people to see. I shot it over a year ago, and finished it about 9 months ago. I had hoped for a much earlier premiere for the film, especially considering it was a somewhat last minute project, shot in 2 days, on less than $500. My dream festival was the NBCU Short Film Festival (formally NBC Short Cuts), which happened in the early summer. It was a long-shot, of course, especially since my actors were non-union and no one involved was commercially known. However, I took a shot and set up my submissions to allow for that to be the potential premiere; and it was rejected. At the end of the day, I'm glad the premiere was at Coney Island because they were so welcoming and warm, the audience reaction was priceless, and the festival just has such character (we watched my film on bleachers in a rusted old sideshow). But since I was crossing my fingers for an NBC premiere, two local festivals I could have submitted to last year, I've only just submitted to this month. So it'll be a while before the film is public on vimeo; I'm thinking by the Spring.
HOWEVER, with that said, there has been some other good news for the film. One being that it was invited to screen in LA at the HollyShorts Screening Series late this month or next (they're still settling on a date for me). And more timely, it was chosen to participate in FirstGlance Film Festival's Online Shorts Contest, which launches tomorrow! The contest is hosted by itsashort.com. The way it works is that people register for the site for $2 and they can watch "Juice It" and the other 14 shorts in the contest as many times as they'd like for a month. The film that gets the most votes will screen at their 15th annual festival in LA, and the filmmaker gets a prize valuing $2,500 on top of an additional TBD cash prize (a percentage of the $2 fee everyone pays) based on how many daily votes they get. What's really cool about this is that over 90,000 people have participated in watching the films in past years, so I'll have increased exposure. What's not so cool is that the cash prize is not based on total votes, but daily votes, meaning it resets everyday. So if I want to win, I have to nag everyone I know to not just vote once but vote once a day for 30 days straight. I'm just not inclined to do that. However, please brace yourself for a lot of tweets from me about it for the next month (starting tomorrow). No worries, I wont be nearly as annoying as during my crowdfunding campaigns ;)
But in all honesty, if you enjoy the film and have the time and desire to be super supportive, a vote a day or every other day or once a week would be greatly appreciated. Regardless, I hope you're able to watch it during the contest. Or if not, see it at a festival; or worst case, see it when it goes live on the CongestedCat site in the Spring.
I can't wait to share it with more people & get further feedback. Thanks for reading & supporting!
-Christina
