IndieWorks: September Series Recap

If you missed this past Wednesday's IndieWorks, it was a blast! This month we featured six webseries by six local NYC filmmakers and had the largest turnout for IndieWorks thus far, with over 100 guests throughout the night!  Thanks to all who joined us for the fun!
 

The awards go to...

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 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. It goes on to screen at our end of the year Best of Fest event.

For the September 2013 lineup, our winning filmmakers were:
    Audience Choice Award:  "Concrete Jungle" Animated/Directed by Steven Cartoccio.

    Silver Whiskers Award:  "Anthology" Directed by Ashley Denise.

 

Both filmmakers will be featured in our upcoming "IndieWorks: Insider Series", a video series we are featuring on our blog, in which we get to know each filmmaker and learn about their creative processes, insight on the industry, upcoming projects, and more! It's another way for us to further our commitment to getting local New York City filmmakers connected to their local community. 

Next Month - 2 nights of films!

Next month at IndieWorks,  we're hosting two nights of short films. The first will be October 2nd for another batch of local shorts, and the second night will be October 30th, specifically featuring films themed for Horror and the like in the spirit of Halloween! 

'Kelsey, the webseries' Premiered!

At the end of the event, we premiered our upcoming webseries "Kelsey". It wasn't quite the finished product, since we're polishing the sound mix, but we were really happy to share what we've been working on this Summer with our friends (you all)! You'll notice some cast/crew members in the photos above being very much like their character counter-parts. 

For the first episode of that love child of ours premiering online this upcoming week, check out  www.kelseytheseries.com on Tuesday to be redirected t the blip channel!

 

-Chris

Pre-production Sneak Peek Video

Hello wonderful backers, 

Just updating to share a fun new behind the scenes video we put together that chronicles all our big moments in pre-production leading up to our first day of shooting. It includes some never before seen footage from table reads and auditions! We decided to wait to release it until reaching 2,000 Likes on Facebook, and today we reached that goal! Now we're pushing to hit 3,000. We hope you enjoy the video!

Behind the scenes of all the fun moments we had in pre-production, including never before seen table reads, rehearsals & bloopers. Featuring Footage from: Previously shared videos: Kickstarter Pitch: https://vimeo.com/41451085 Pre-production promo: https://vimeo.com/41451334 Meet Lauren: https://vimeo.com/41554587 Meet Ricardo: https://vimeo.com/42101303 Meet Emma: https://vimeo.com/42504894 Meet Ryan: https://vimeo.com/43061683 Questions with Cast 1: https://vimeo.com/43480906 Meet Rob: https://vimeo.com/46153774 Questions with Cast 2: https://vimeo.com/47657260 Exclusive Footage only to be found on DVD in entirety: -All 5 actor auditions -Kickstarter Scene read -1st full table read (before final script revision) -Car rehearsal

We're also putting together another behind the scenes video that includes footage from production! That's something we'll be sharing early next year after we release our teasers & trailer this Fall & Winter. 

In other news, we don't have a final cut just yet because Matt, my editor, and I have been going back and forth making a lot of little tweaks. But I'm feeling confident that we should have picture lock (outside of a couple exterior inserts we're getting in January) by the end of this month! The sound mix has started scene by scene, my composer has sent some awesome score samples, and my graphic designer is working on a new title logo! Progress is definitely being made. We hope we'll have more visuals to show you before the end of the year. 

Our first festival deadline is in April of next year. So we're working hard to make sure we can have a completely finished & polished cut a couple months in advance for a cast, crew & backer premiere and for at least 1 audience test screening! Needless to say, December-March will be super busy for the Summit team. 

In the meantime though, I'll try to keep the updates and inside info fresh & interesting because I truly appreciate your continued support throughout the progress of this film. Thank you again for everything! 

We aim to release our first teaser for the film on October 28th, so stay tuned for that! 

Best,

Christina 

Source: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/christ...

IndieWorks: Insider Series w/ Felix Thompson

Part of our effort for IndieWorks is to help indie filmmakers outside of our monthly screenings. Each month we're bringing our winning filmmakers to chat with IndieWorks host Lauren A. Kennedy for a bi-monthly series titled "IndieWorks: Insider Series".

EPISODE 2

Last month, our Silver Whiskers award was given to Felix Thompson's submission, "The Third One This Week". The film has gained some attention worldwide and has been deemed a Vimeo Staff Pick, with nearly 30k views at the time of this update. It's a beautiful four minute short film that we're sure you're going to enjoy if you haven't checked it out already.

We invited Felix to speak with us this month to get to know a bit about his background, what contributes to his work, and his team over at Buffalo Picture House

For more information on Felix and his team, check out:
http://buffalopicturehouse.com
Twitter: @buffalopictures
Vimeo: https://vimeo.com/buffalopictures

 

Source: https://vimeo.com/73101788

Kelsey, the webseries

It's taken a while for us to update about "Kelsey" but I figure today is a good day because we have a lot of exciting news! We wrapped production on the 1st season on July 29th! We shot all 10 episodes in 15 shooting days; the average episode length is 7 minutes. We released our promo trailer for the series 2 weeks ago on our Vimeo channel and it has gotten 2,383 full plays as of this evening!

 

 

Promo trailer for our web series "Kelsey" premiering on KelseyTheSeries.com & Blip on September 10th! Like it on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Kelseytheseries Follow on Twitter: https://twitter.com/KelseyTheSeries

The trailer has also been uploaded to our Facebook page and has received 51 Likes and who knows how many plays! Our trailer was featured this week on both OneMoreLesbian.com & AfterEllen.com, and got really awesome comments like "Kelsey looks pretty funny and awkward. Right up my alley!" & "I'm game for some Kelsey. Bring it on." Unfortunately, the majority of comments were about how much lead actress Nichole Yannetty looks like Maya Rudolph. But hey, at least they're all engaging with the trailer! I'm sure those kinds of comments will increase as our numbers increase. But hopefully, with each episode, that'll become less of a focal point and the comments will be more about how hilarious and talented Nichole is, and how enjoyable the show is as a whole!   

We put the trailer on Youtube yesterday and the numbers & likes are still modest, but sure to rise this week. There are more exciting press features and news to announce this week as well!  

We have picture lock on the first 3 episodes & we finally nailed down our theme song. We're sure to make more progress in the next couple weeks and simply cannot wait to premiere the 1st episode on September 10th! So be sure to tune in on KelseyTheSeries.com (site still in construction). And Like the series on Facebook & Follow on Twitter for updates everday on our post-producton progress and inside info when episodes air! 

 -Christina 

 

 

Behind the Scenes of Shooting 'Juice It'

I decided to take my experience trying a 7-day juice cleanse with my boyfriend and turn it into an absurd comedy, casting Nichole Yannetty (of our upcoming webseries 'Kelsey') and Ricardo Manigat from Summit, with a few of the people who helped shoot 'Kelsey,' and on literally no budget. It was a ton of fun & I'm excited to jump into post with this short.