IndieWorks: September Recap

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Last Tuesday was the September edition of IndieWorks! And it was our annual web series month, where we screen episodes from local series. We screened 6 episodes total and had over 40 people in house. Smaller crowd than usual, but considering the rainy evening, it was quite an impressive turnout! Web series month is always a special one because it's nice getting to meet characters we could tune into over and over again. And web series in general tend to be comedy leaning, so it was an overall fun night filled with a lot of laughs. Unfortunately, one of our filmmakers had to cut out before their Q&A, but otherwise the night was a real success with thoughtful discussions and lots of mingling!

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 do hope you enjoyed all the webisodes and the opportunity to network with other filmmakers and film enthusiasts. We know some connections were made! AND we hope you'll join us again for our Halloween Special on October 24th! 

See photos from the evening:

The Series of the night:

Pair of Normals (Created (written & directed) by Jason Hood)
Iris, an anxious Youtube psychic fresh out of a mental hospital, and Betty, a destitute college dropout who makes ASMR videos, meet and bond when they are dragged to a vlogger meetup. When they meet again in a chance encounter after both their lives have worsened significantly, Iris offers Betty a place to stay.

You Only Die Once (Created (written & directed) by Amanda B. Goodman)
A 6 episode modern horror comedy web series that tells the story of three life long best friends and vampire hunters from Astoria Queens as they face the biggest threat to their family yet.

Modern Aliens (Written & Directed by Jordan Jaffe, Produced by Samantha Slater)
The documentary periodical comedy series dedicated to unearthing alien influence in modern society. 

[Blank] My Life (Created & Written by Alex Spieth, Directed by Benjamin Viertel)
In episode 5 of season 2, Susan realizes rape culture isn't that far from home.

Seeking Sublet (Created (written & directed) by Katie Tibaldi)
A new comedy web series about two roommates in search of the perfect third roommate in New York City. Think you've had bad roommates? Tune in. Commiserating begins here.

Keep Me Posted (Created (written & directed) by Hillary Berkowitz)
WA biting look at the impact of texting and social media on our closest relationships.  

Watch our Q&A Recap (shot & edited by Kimberly Drew Whiten). The perk of web series month is that the episodes can be watched online NOW to offer context to the Q&A! Find most on Youtube!

 

The award goes to...

At the end of the evening, we announced our winning filmmaker of the Audience Choice Award. We've realized from past years that web series episodes always feel a bit confusing alongside all standalone films at Best of Fest, so we decided moving forward that at our specialty months we'll just award one audience-selected winner all the monetary prizes. The winner receives $50 towards a crowdfunding campaign on SeedandSpark.com should they use the platform and a free Social Media audit ($200 value) from 4MileCircus. 

For the September 2017 lineup, our winning series was:
    Audience Choice Award:  "Modern Aliens"

Join us next month for our Halloween edition on the 25th! 

DAMN Film Series Recap

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This past Tuesday night, we screened Arm Bar at the DAMN Film Series! It was a fun night filled with some really enjoyable films.

We also had a friend tag along named Ricardo, but not the Ricardo from the film. He's a friend of Latresa's and we absolutely appreciated his support!

DAMN doesn't do Q&A's or leave time for mingling, but the film got a great response from the crowd; and after the screening, we headed to a nearby bar with a few of the content creators. Discussions were had and memories were made.

Here are a few pictures from the night:

*UPDATE 11/29/17

Latresa went on to win Best Performance at the series!

damn win.jpg

 

- Ryan

Horrible Imaginings Film Festival

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This past weekend, "Night In" screened at the Horrible Imaginings Film Festival. "Hello" screened last year and a few people emailed me to tell me how much they loved the short. So when I got in again this year, I knew I wanted to attend! Thanks to my job at Seed&Spark and the festival director enthusiastically agreeing to offer the Crowdfunding class I teach, I was able to attend the entire festival. Of the 60ish shorts, I saw 45! And I saw 4 out of the 5 in competition features. Every screening had at least 40 people in the audience, most had more. The films were all excellent. I have truly never seen better overall programming, especially at a horror festival. So much thought was put into the thematic blocks. And while I typically can't stand sitting through 10+ shorts in a row, I easily did that with these lineups because they were so engaging, fun, and thought provoking. The production quality and storytelling quality were high all around. And thankfully, unlike so many non-women-specific genre fests I've been to, there was no exploitative violence against women! That's always a worry (that often comes true) when sitting through horror lineups. My only issue is that not one of the 5 features was directed by a woman OR person of color. I know they had to work with their submissions, but considering I found the features to be the weak spot (only 2 out of 4 I saw were solid) of otherwise excellent programming, it's frustrating that they couldn't be more inclusive with them. The LGBT block feature (the strongest feature and a real show of commitment to inclusion), for instance, was not a submission but a recommendation by co-sponsors The Two Gay Geeks; so it's unclear to me why they accepted 2 mediocre (all-white and very male dominated, btw) features instead of inviting a deserving woman-directed (ideally WOC-directed) film, even if out of competition. All of that said, the shorts were wonderfully diverse and I truly loved getting to be part of the festival. I don't usually comment on the programming of a fest because I usually have negative opinions best kept to myself. But in this case, because it was so close to perfect, I had to bring this up. I hope next year is as well done but just more inclusive on the feature front! And I know Miguel Rodriguez, the festival director, will pay attention to that. He's truly a wonderful human being who has such energy and puts his whole heart into this fest. It really shows. It's one of the only festivals I've been to with no tech issues and was always on time. Miguel makes every filmmaker feel seen and appreciated. And he's just so genuine and thoughtful. He puts on a great show! And the way the community comes out to support is really inspiring and exciting.

As for my actual screening. I was in a fun block called Dark Wish Fulfillment. It had 10 shorts total and was the biggest Q&A with the highest filmmaker turnout -- 8/10 were there. We had over 60 people in the audience. Unfortunately, with such a big group in the Q&A and very little time for each film, I didn't really get to talk about my film - which was disappointing. I think being so short and in the middle of the lineup made us a bit overshadowed. But I was honored to be in such excellent company. And people did come over after to say they loved the twist. And it got HUGE laughs at all the right moments, so that was fun to watch with an audience. Overall, I'm grateful to have screened in this beautiful venue as part of such a great fest. And on top of that, I got to spend 2 days hanging out with fellow filmmaker friend Kim Garland (who recently moved from NY to LA) because her excellent short, "Body Image," also screened -- in the block before mine! I definitely hope to attend again next year!