One of Three Hundred Fifty

Look what I got the other day...

Dear Kathy,

Thank you for entering the competition for the 2014 Athens International Film and Video Festival. This year we had 1,171 films submitted.  I am pleased to tell you that your film,  "I Love Bagels", has been chosen for this year's festival. 

The entries for the "local" filmmakers were prescreened and judged by an outside prescreener, who thus has no potential conflict of interest regarding the entries.  

We'll be sending out later this week full information regarding screening formats, deadlines to receive exhibition copies, and other pertinent information.

Congratulations!

Sincerely,

Ruth Bradley, Director

Athens Int'l Film and Video Festival

Athens, Ohio

How about that...a real film festival.  I can check that one off the list.  

In case you missed all the other 'I Love Bagels' photos...

Couple little things ...
My classmate David was shooting his film a few weeks ago during some bad-ish weather.  He couldn't get his car started so he called AAA because that's the kind of thing you call AAA for.  They were sorry but they weren't 'going to be able to get to him today.'

Then the poor guy had an ambulance in his film.  He rented an ambulance and driver (seems weird but I guess you can do that) and it couldn't get up the hill to the location.

Until next month...

Producer Tasks

I just made some soft pretzels.

I'm producing my classmate Cory's film where there is a house fire in the last scene*.    So, when he asked me to make smoke bombs (producer** of a student film has a varied job description) I put it on my 'to do' list.  That was until I realized the smoke bombs*** were for an interior scene....in someone's house!  A house that someone, in good faith, lent him for his film.  I asked him if he had told/asked her if lighting smoke bombs in her house would be OK and yadayada, we're now using a safe, controllable fog machine.

Then, we're housing one of the actors in the apartment of a classmate who is shooting in Ukraine at the moment.  I went over to spiff up the place and make the bed with the sheets I'd just bought (after all, I am the producer) but of course, there was no key.   Why was I not surprised?

The words 'probably' and 'I assume so' are used far to often.

So that's what I'm up to these days as an MFA film student.

*That bit of info shouldn't ruin it for you since earlier in the film the woman puts a frozen pizza in the oven while it's still in the box
**I wonder if Judd Apatow ever had to make smoke bombs for his director
***my smoke bombs are a combination of postassium nitrate and sugar and I used them in my 'I Love Bagels' film (all exterior) where even with an inch of aluminum between the bombs and the ironing board I was using, the ironing board caught fire.