Ryan's feature horror-thriller script, "Red Harvest," is a quarter-finalist in the Cinequest Screenplay Competition! Top 20 semi-finalists will be announced in early January.
Logline: Shipwrecked on a small island, a policewoman and her husband are tested with the discovery that they're also being pursued.
We'll be crowdfunding the film in February 2017 and going into production in March!
And we premiered four from last year!
Ryan's "FedUp" premiered online in March. Christina and Kelsey's "We Had Plans" and "Not Our Living Room" premiered online over the summer after successful festival runs. Christina's "Hello" isn't yet online as it's still on the festival circuit, but will premiere online next month!
We finished our pilot, "Two Gays & a Girl," and it's set for a March 20th VOD release! We also have a screening or two coming up in the new year!
We kicked off Year 4 of IndieWorks with a bigger team, at a bigger venue, and it has been better than ever at supporting & highlighting local indie filmmakers each month!
Check out the monthly Recaps from this year, including last month's screening.
And we hope you'll join us on December 13th for our community forum on how artists can organize against the normalization of hate. MORE INFO & RSVP.
We revamped our website, including updating our individual bio photos. Check it out at www.CongestedCat.com.
Last night we wrapped production on my new short film, "Arm Bar."
Logline: A young, aspiring MMA fighter visits her local boxing gym to settle a dispute with the owner.
The screenplay for "Arm Bar" came to fruition in the first few months of our CongestedCat writing group. Christina Raia, Kelsey Rauber, and I, had all been talking about how we wanted to meet once a week to keep the creative, right side of our brain's in motion. I knew I wanted to move into pre-production on a new short, but I didn't know which would be the right script to move forward with. I initially wanted to tackle one of my other short stories, "Magic Mountain," with DoP Peter Westervelt, but it proved to be a bit too ambitious for the time. After Christina and Kelsey gave me their thoughts on Arm Bar, I knew it was the one. I was soon after introduced to Jeanette Sears at one of our IndieWorks events and knew she would be a great fit to DP the film. I loved the fact that we had representation and inclusivity not only in front of, but behind the camera as well.
Christina expressed her interest in producing the project and we immediately moved into pre-production, which proved to be a lot to take on. At first, the plan was to crowdfund on Seed&Spark, but after talking with Christina, we decided it'd be best to fund this one out-of-pocket. She helped me solidify the budget and we realized it would be attainable. Still, we made the decision to shoot promotional and behind the scenes videos to draw some attention to the project before moving into principal photography. You can watch the promo here:
Casting the project was a bumpy road, but when I auditioned Latresa Baker is when it all really started to come together. She walked into that room prepared and ready to take the role that was rightfully hers. The training process was one one of the aspects of pre-pro that I was most scared about. We bounced around from class, to individual trainer, to fight choreographer, and I was worried that all the different types of blocking and direction would make it more confusing than helpful. In the end, Latresa absorbed all the information like a sponge and we created a simple, cohesive, and hopefully exciting fight that I can't wait to share with you all.
In hindsight, everything about this project was almost just as ambitious as Magic Mountain. FedUp was the last short I directed over two years ago... a six-and-a-half minute short in my apartment with a small cast and crew. Arm Bar is a fifteen page screenplay that takes place in a boxing gym with a decent-sized supporting cast, extras, and fight scene choreography. It was a lot to take on, but with the help of Christina, Jeanette, AD Matt Gershowitz, and the rest of the amazing cast and crew that I am so grateful to have had the opportunity to work with... we did it.
Check out some raw stills from what we shot below:
See BTS photos from the day:
I really can't thank my cast and crew enough. They were all my rock, and helped me keep it together in the production's most heightened points of anxiety. Can't wait to collaborate with these wonderful people again in the future.
Some of the cast and crew after we wrapped production on the film.
-Ryan
Christina & Kelsey have a (somewhat meandering) chat about how "About a Donkey" came to be.
Feature film about a couple, their 3 adult children and a donkey. From the creative team behind 'Kelsey' the web series. Currently in Pre-Production. Production in Spring 2017.
Like on Facebook: facebook.com/aboutadonkey/.
Follow on Twitter: twitter.com/AboutADonkey.
Last Tuesday was the November edition of IndieWorks! Due to the weather, it being 2 days before Thanksgiving and only 2 weeks after the terrifying and devastating election results, we expected a smaller crowd. Thankfully, we still had 40 people in house for our screening of 5 shorts. And even more thankfully, we were able to enjoy an evening of celebrating expression and local filmmaking/filmmakers even amongst such uncertainty. The first half of the lineup was a series of animated films (the third mixed with live-action in documentary form), and all addressed trauma or anxiety but with resolutions of hope. The second half was more lighthearted with fun genre twists and turns. Some lovely conversations came out of the lineup. We hope connections were made, as well!
We'd just like to say thank you to everyone who came out to support the filmmakers and spend the evening with us & them. (We hope you'll join us again on December 13th, where we'll take a break from our usual screenings to have a filmmaker focused forum on how artists can use our reach and creative content to organize against the normalization of hate.)
The Films of the night:
Trauma (Directed & Written by Brett Moody)
Matt, an ageless male in a spacesuit, wakens on the floor of a massive, pitch-black cavern. He is lost, and a meter on his suit warns him that he is running out of oxygen.
Bloop (Directed & Written by Joshua Planz)
A visual poem depicting the last three years of internal thoughts.
Suffering is the Easy Part (Directed by Jaime Ekkens)
A short, partially animated documentary about trauma, trauma's aftermath, depression and the healing process.
The Suitor (Directed & Written by Alvaro Congosto)
October 30th, 1938. During Orson Welles' infamous radio broadcast of War of the Worlds, a lonely man tries to bond with a panicked young woman as they fearfully wait for the end of the world together.
Mantis (Directed by Christian LaMorte, Written by Dylan Gantz)
A young man and a young woman watch TV together.
Watch our Q&A Recap (shot & edited by Kimberly Drew Whiten). *Please know there are some film spoilers - feel free to look for an opportunity to catch the films at a festival or computer screen near you & then come back to watch!
At the end of the evening, we announced our winning filmmakers for both Audience Choice Award & Silver Whiskers Award. The Audience Choice Award is voted upon by all those in attendance, and the Silver Whiskers Award is judged by the CongestedCat Team based on a system rating 8 categories of Story, Dialogue/Writing, Direction, Acting, Cinematography, Sound, Editing, and Production Value. The Silver Whiskers winner goes on to screen again at our end of year Best of Fest screening next April.
The Silver Whiskers winner also receives $50 towards a crowdfunding campaign onSeedandSpark.com should they use the platform and a free Social Media audit ($200 value) from4MileCircus. And both winners received a free 2016 subscription to Bright Ideas Magazine.
For the November 2016 lineup, our winning films were:
Audience Choice Award: "Mantis"
Silver Whiskers Award: "The Suitor"
Watch the audience winner and trailer for the Silver Whiskers winner below:
