I just got notification that Tooth Fairy got into its fourth festival! It's great fun getting congratulations notes from festivals. The Utopia Film Festival runs Oct 19-25 in Greenbelt, Maryland.
Susan Ee
www.feraldream.com
Some of the news that got missed during my break from the blog is that my film, TOOTH FAIRY, got accepted into three film festivals: Tacoma Film Festival, Independents Film Festival in Tampa, and Chicago International REEL Shorts Festival. It will also be playing on local cable TV stations in Tacoma and Tampa. Yeah!
Most of the fests said they had a record breaking number of entries this year. The Chicago International REEL Shorts Fest had over 900 entries. I'm especially excited because TOOTH FAIRY cost $250, and was shot with a crew of 3 including me. :-) The other short films I've seen cost $2,000-$10,000, with a crew of 25-30.
I just got the details on the Tacoma Film Festival. TOOTH FAIRY will be shown on Sat. Oct 3rd at noon at Grand Cinema under the category of family shorts. It's a little dark for a "family" film, but it does star a cute kid and the music is upbeat and fun, so I guess that was enough to make it a family film. The Sat. showtime is especially good because the festival runs from the 1st through the 8th, and my film is showing on the one party weekend the festival covers. The festival organizers are especially supportive of the filmmakers and will try to provide accommodations for us. :-) So I think I'll go.
Susan Ee
www.feraldream.com
NYT has an article today on a new micro-fundraising company for artists called Kickstarter. For now, it's better than Indiegogo because they don't charge a fee. On the other hand, you can only get on their site via invitation until they pass their beta stage.
Susan Ee
www.feraldream.com
The WGA announced in their annual report that there were 2,929 slots this year for their members writing for TV in one year ranging from 2007-2008. They made a total of $427.5 million. There were 1,716 slots for films and they made a total of $361 million.
So the average TV writer made about $149,000 last year, and the average hollywood film writer made about $210,000. Not bad for doing something you love. Of course, the averages are misleading since a small number of those writers are making serious bank while the rest are making a much smaller amount. Still, it's not a bad deal if you can get one of the 4,163 hollywood writing jobs that paid last year. Note that WGA West has 8,000 members--so only 50% of them got official paying gigs last year.
Susan Ee
www.feraldream.com
I love that scientists are pondering the most optimal way to beat back a zombie attack. Their conclusion is that you have to deal with them quickly and aggressively, otherwise, civilization will collapse.
Duh. Why didn't they just ask writers and filmmakers? Or teenagers? Don't they know that we've spent an embarrassing amount of time thinking about this? :-)
Susan Ee
www.feraldream.com
I'm not sure how I feel about the showing last night. I had 7 generous friends with me so I was buffered in a cocoon of friendly support. But it's a little horrifying to see a film in a theater that I hadn't polished, repolished, then polished again. I've been on other 48 hour projects, but this was the first one where I was the writer/director so I felt a lot more responsible for the end product. It helped a lot that my friends and the audience were great.
We had an unintentional funny moment in the film where one of the scenes had my voice on it saying "CUT!" :-)
Needless to say, we didn't have a lot of time for editing. We had a few dramatic moments in making the film that sucked up time. One of them was when an actresses did a no-show. She didn't even return calls, just simply didn't show up. So we scrambled all morning and half the afternoon trying to find a replacement. We got lucky and found a great actress, Corrie (Flores?), who came in at the last minute and saved us. Turned out she had starred in another 48 hour film that showed last night as well!
Another incident was that I had written an S&M scene (not too graphic) which was supposed to explain some stuff that the main character had misinterpreted. But it turned out that one of the team producers had morals and didn't want the S&M scene. Who would have thought? A producer with morals? It's a whacky world, my friends. So we changed it. But on Sunday, when I saw the footage, it was a total mass of confusion. The new scene didn't fit the story. So we had to come up with a new new scene and reshoot it on Sunday afternoon. Then we turned in the finished movie that night at 7:30PM. That was quite an intense weekend.
I'm pretty sure that by the end of this week, I'll remember last weekend as having been a blast. But for now, I'm still feeling a teeny bit raw over it...
Susan Ee
www.feraldream.com
Totally nervous. I'm getting ready to go to the screening of the 48-hour films that were shot this past weekend. I was invited onto one of those teams and ended up being writer/director. I have yet to see the full movie, yet I invited a bunch of people on the theory that it would be more fun to see it with my friends. So now, I'm nervous.
We found out our genre and other elements on Friday night, and turned in a finished film on Sunday night. Much drama happened in between, not all of it in front of the camera. :-)
If you're near San Jose tonight, come check out what filmmakers can do in 48 hours. My film is called THE RESCUER. It's playing at Camera 12 Cinemas, 201 South 2nd St., San Jose at 9:30 PM. If you like it, I encourage you to vote for it. If you don't like it, you're welcome to give me a hard time about it. :-)
I'm off to have dinner with a bunch of friends before we go see the films. Wish me luck!
Susan Ee
www.feraldream.com
I stopped posting to my blog when something shocking and personal happened, and I didn't know whether it was right to post it for the world to read or not. On the one hand, a woman cutting herself off from her friends and committing suicide in a rented attic seemed deeply private. On the other hand, no one knowing about her life and death just seemed wrong. It bothered me that no one would use the word “suicide” and that people suddenly only talked about her in a circular way, as if tacitly suggesting that she never existed.
I ended up not posting about it. But then I couldn't really pretend it didn't happen and post about happy events. Hence the long break from my blog.
She was a beautiful person and a
beautiful writer.
[--EDIT NOTE: There used to be a paragraph here that described what she was like and my fond memories of her. But her family has requested that I delete it. Everything I deleted for them from the original post is indicated by --DELETED--. For ruminations on why I agreed and my feelings about this, see Jane Doe's Suicide Post--]
No one seems to know what happened. [-- DELETED--] had a brief memorial service for her but I heard that it turned into a discussion of people wondering what happened.
I did a search for her on the net. There's a mention of her publication in a respected literary magazine, and her name is listed as a volunteer on [--DELETED--]. And that's it. No obituary or any mention of her existence. It's sad to think that this is the most any of you will know about her. She was one of those special people worth knowing...
Susan Ee
www.feraldream.com
