Prejudice and Pride

So for the past two years, I haven’t entered many screenplay contests. This is a calculated shift in my approach to my career. My scripts were placing highly but the results weren’t moving the needle on my career. I made an exception for my latest short script and tried a new contest, Cinequest because it is attached to an awesome festival.

I’m pleased to announce it has made the semifinals (Top 50) and is in the running for the finals. Here’s hoping! This is the next short I intend to make.

Suspended Poster

Trailer is live on the Suspended page here.

The team has been working very hard during these bizarre times to complete post-production on Suspended. I’m amazed at how everything came together in the end, with the score, an original song, and sound design and editing working under a tight deadline to make its first festival submission.

Update: we’re in our first festival, the Art of Recovery Film Festival in Florida. Happy to be part of a festival that does good in the world.

And the latest version of the poster is now done:

Gib!

Friday we filmed the intro (under the titles) shot for Suspended. It was my first exterior night shoot.

DP Robert tests the gib. Almost time!
Grip Farsh running the crane, 1st AC Ashley checking focus, me hovering, and Kelly on screen. Sunset happening off-camera!
fly, camera, fly!

BTS Suspended

The BTS photos are up on the Suspended page in the menu. Huge thank you to Brandy Fabian, makeup artist. Here’s the one shot I took of Brandy in action.

Suspended

We wrapped principal photography on Suspended this past Sunday. It was both thrilling and exhausting. While filming at the school on Saturday, the AC wasn’t working properly and the principals, 16 extras, and the hardy crew were cooking for hours on end. From that low, came the high of doing my first car scene, which was fraught with the usual difficulty, and then the most emotional scenes of the movie, probably inappropriately saved for last (due to location reasons, not my innate insanity).

Everyone did a fabulous job. I couldn’t have done it without a single one of them. My producer Leslie Ben Hamilton, who was always ready to jump in and tackle any task, my DP, Robert Matthews Wynne, who contributed many great ideas and herculean efforts in tiny spaces, my script supervisor Susan Henson, who saved me more than once, and my amazing actors, who surprised me every scene with their wonderful ideas, ability to turn on a dime, and sheer tenacity in the face of AC issues and overtime.

I was far too busy concentrating on the tasks at hand to take many BTS photos. My fabulous makeup artist, Brandy Fabian, took hundreds, but I don’t yet have access to them. So stay tuned for more!

Directorial Debut!