The Derby City Film Festival in Louisville has wrapped up and we won't know until tomorrow if Sebrina Siegel won the best actress award that she was up for. But whether she wins or not, I am thrilled that she was recognized for her great work.
REMAINDERED cast members Todd Reynolds and Lisa Stewart showed up, as did our assistant director Rachel Nunn and our graphic artist Brian Bolin (Sebrina was sent on a business trip at the last minute). It was great that they had the opportunity to finally see the film with an audience (of about 100 people)...and I was really glad we had the chance to get together again for the first time since the film wrapped
The audience seemed to really enjoy the screening of our movie. But I didn't. All I saw were the projection and sound problems. Up until that moment, I thought most of the short films that we were up against had terrible sound and strange color composition...but then I discovered it wasn't the films that were at fault, it was the lousy projection and sound system in the theatre.
That said, I saw some really terrific short films...my favorites included the Polish short documentary CHARCOAL BURNERS, Nate Morguelan's nasty little thriller K, Max Rosen's very "Monk"-ish MARBLE RYE, Mathew Maney's incredibly slick METH, Pardis Parker's hilarious TWO MEN, TWO COWS, TWO GUNS, and KNIFE, a remarkably accomplished five-minute film written and directed by 14-year-old Matthew Rivera. There were a lot of directors, DPs, and editors at the festival who could learn a lot from Matthew...and you can count me among them.
I only saw one of the feature length movies, and even though the lighting was horrendous (the DP had no clue what he was doing), the camera work was inept, the editing was clumsy, and the sound was awful (I'll give them the benefit of the doubt on that one), the movie worked despite it all thanks to a clever script and surprisingly good actors...proving that production value, cool camera work and slick editing mean nothing if your script sucks and your actors can't act. But if you have a strong script, and good actors, all the rest doesn't really matter, you'll get caught up in characters anyway.