Film Festival - 1st Place!

[redfalcon]

Hey Y'all

The film I produced, "Not Dead Yet", world premiered last week at the Rhode Island Film Festival. And, we tied for 1st for Best Feature! They screened about 50 features, so it was an amazing honor. The folks at the festival were great, and really behind us.

The local paper reviewed it the day before it played, and gave it 3 out of 4 stars.

Check out the website and trailer at notdeadyetthefilm.com if you have time.

18 months of very hard work, but it's starting to pay off.

We made the movie for 200K, and won over some films with multi-million dollar budgets.

We're also opening the Baltimore Women's Film Festival on October 23rd. Another big honor.

BTW - The film we tied with, "Fifty Dead Men Walking", features Ben Kingsley and Rose McGowan and was made for 17 million. It's a very good movie. Kind of an Irish "The Departed".

[koolpenguin89]

Kind of an Irish "The Departed"

Lol, The Departed was pretty damn irish to begin with. It had Dropkick Murpheys as its theme song. Anyways, very cool about first place. What kind of camera did you shoot with? Did you direct? How many in the crew?

Dylan

[redfalcon]

It was shot with an EX1, Letus, and Nikon primes.

I produced, ran the set, shot 2nd camera, did re-edits, colored and mastered, wrote and performed the title song, lots of stuff.

Production crew of 25-30, depending on the day.

"Fifty Dead Men Walking" takes place in Belfast. Thick accents, but a cool movie.

[1]

CONGRATULATIONS!!!!

That's WAY COOL, and great to see your hard work being appreciated.
With a win like this, I'm sure the flick will go FAR!!!

Looking forward to catching it on the telly some day~!

[Halsu]

CONGRATULATIONS!!!!

That's WAY COOL, and great to see your hard work being appreciated.
With a win like this, I'm sure the flick will go FAR!!!

Looking forward to catching it on the telly some day~!

What he said. Way to go!!

[rhervag]

Bravo !

[SilverStr]

Hey Y'all

The film I produced, "Not Dead Yet", world premiered last week at the Rhode Island Film Festival. And, we tied for 1st for Best Feature!

Congrats. It is always good to get validation from your peers and audience of a fine job, well done. I haven't seen the film, but if the trailer is any indication, I can see why it did so well against multimillion dollar films.

Again, congrats.

[LOGOS PATHOS ETHOS]

DUDE, the trailer loooks pretty neat and the story seriously is engaging and interesting

keep up the good work :-) !

[mrblofish]

congrats...and WOW...good luck.....looking forward to seeing this...

[Mr. Mingo]

Dude, you got to work with Seymour Cassel that's awesome!

Congratulations on winning and a job well done.

Would love to hear some details about the making of this. Do you have a blog or any other write up?

[redfalcon]

Yeah, all of Seymour's scenes were shot in my house. I have a "men's lounge" with leather chairs just for the guys to sit around and smoke cigars. I bought Seymour a nice box of cigars and gave him my chair while he was here. Made him a double espresso every day at 2pm.

We shot about 80 hours of behind the scenes footage too. Our old website had a blog while we were shooting. Anything about the making of you'd like to know in particular? I'd be happy to share.

[Mr. Mingo]

Yeah, all of Seymour's scenes were shot in my house. I have a "men's lounge" with leather chairs just for the guys to sit around and smoke cigars. I bought Seymour a nice box of cigars and gave him my chair while he was here. Made him a double espresso every day at 2pm.

Ha, that's great. Sounds like a fun guy to work with.

Anything about the making of you'd like to know in particular? I'd be happy to share.

Really I'm curious about everything, but to narrow it down I would love to hear how you raised money for a project like this, and how you went about getting such qualified actors like Seymour Cassell.

[redfalcon]

Well, in this case the movie was funded by two people, and that was in place when I came on board in the very beginning. So....

As far as getting the actors, Seymour Cassel had worked with one of our main actresses on a short-lived TV show here in Portland, and they remained friends. She called him up, and he said he'd love to do it for her.

David Ogden Stiers, who was in MASH and The Dead Zone, is actually a resident of Oregon. My wife suggested he would be great in the movie. So, I sent the script and an offer to his agent. A week later, he called me on my cell phone and basically said he was retired. I told him that the production was all local Oregon people and that we wanted to do something special. I talked with him for about 45 minutes and at the end he said, "OK, I'll do it."

Both Seymour and David only worked for four days each. When they were on the set, they were treated like royalty and we focused only on their scenes. Their professionalism rubbed off instantly on everyone, and the whole crew rose to the challenge.

Jill Andre plays the old lady in the film, and she was found by placing an ad in an LA casting call company that posts the requested parts online.

The rest of the cast and crew was all local from Portland. Most filmmakers here know each other, so a lot had worked with each other before.

As a producer, you try to make sure everyone is working as a team. But there are a lot of little things you can do to really bring people together. I rented a bowling alley for an evening right before we shot the movie, so everyone could cut loose and have some fun. I had t-shirts, hats, and hoodies with the film logo on it and gave them out to the entire cast and crew on day one of production. We held a huge wrap party at my house a few days after production wrapped. Things like that mean everything to a crew.

The other thing is, even if you are doing a small movie, you'd be surprised how many actors are interested in small stuff. I got Ben Affleck to read the script, Alan Alda, Eric Stoltz, and a few others. They turned it down, but they did consider it. You have to ask, or no one will ever say yes.

[dWyZaK]

Interesting stuff, thanks for the insights Falcon.

[Dana Love]

Great trailer, and a huge win. Congratulations!!

[Mr. Mingo]

Thats some great info, thank you. I really like your idea of making hoodies and shirts with a logo for the film. Sounds like you know what you're doing, how long have you been producing?

You have to ask, or no one will ever say yes.

Point taken.

[redfalcon]

Producing just came naturally. I direct, shoot, edit, and finish as well, so knowing what I expected out of a producer in those jobs helped.

I produced probably 6 shorts before this. This is my first feature as a producer.