FIRST TIME I WAS IN TEXAS....

BY POSTING THIS, I AM MAKING IT
THE LAST ONE THAT I RECEIVE

 

Dear Matt, Thank you for submitting Homeschool Reunion to the 2015 Austin Film Festival. More than ever before, selecting the films for this year’s program has been an extremely difficult task. We enjoyed and admired more films this year than we were able to include.  Regretfully, we must inform you that your film was not chosen to screen at the Festival this year. We know how much work goes into making a film, taking it from the kernel of an idea to a fully realized visual story.  We understand the sacrifices every filmmaker endures, and we sincerely thank you for sharing your art with us. Programming a film festival not only involves discovering the best films but also considering and selecting which films will be the best fit for our particular audience. Every year, the Film Department loves more films than we could ever possibly fit into our schedule.   Our screening team watched and evaluated each film at least twice, so please know your film received fair and careful consideration.  Of course, judging art is inherently subjective.  Your film did not fit our program this year, but that does not mean it won’t find a home at another festival. This industry demands persistence.  Each film is a stepping stone to the next film; each rejection is just another challenge.   We still hope you can attend this year’s Festival, which will take place October 29-November 5. If you’re interested in participating, we’d love to have you. The Film Department and the staff at Austin Film Festival wish you all the best in your future endeavors, and we hope you will send us your next film. This is what a form letter looks like, kids. Obviously, I have to take this at face value and assume all the information is true.  Which, hey, I don't have any specific reason not to, but I'd be lying if I said this wasn't disheartening.  We haven't been accepted into any flesh-and-blood festivals yet, and that, mixed with the money spent (and really, the fact that my current job and paycheck are coming to an end in a week), have me nervous. But Jonny said something very apropos and true: You don't land the first audition. Or the second, or often third, fourth or fifth. Or tenth. But you eventually book a job. Now, I immediately jump to "but you might be right for certain roles and wrong for others or there might be somebody a different body type or brown eyes and that's the reason you wouldn't book an acting gig.  A film is exactly the same thing every place you send it, so it can't try out for multiple roles to be right for them." But that's not true. Every festival is going to have different specifications, different themes, different levels of bureaucracy, different mandates, et cetera, so your movie is actually a blonde-haired, blue-eyed thirty-something guy trying out for places that might only want or need a green-eyed 18-year-old Indian girl. (It's worth noting here that even if I'm the only one who reads this blog, just writing it really helps me come to grips with the fears, frustrations, and other alliterations that come over me either alone at night or mid-day when I get one of these letters that "confirm" that all my friends are simply being "nice" about  the movie.) The first time I was in Texas, it was in Austin. That's one of the things about applying to these festivals that was exciting: in the same way that I wanted to attend Carnegie Mellon because I had spent a "Sleeping Bag Weekend" there to audition and see what the college experience was like, I want to get into the Austin Film Festival and Sundance because I've been to Austin for South By Southwest and I went to Sundance last year because... I.. wanted... to.  Since I have the great memories of those places, I can easily imagine myself in those places again and the emotional memory that comes with it, as opposed to, say, BendFilm in Oregon which could, for all I know, be a tick-infested woodsy affair that I might dislike.  Austin was great. It was a really funky, artsy scene, there were live bands playing everywhere (I went for the music, not the film fest), I saw Stone Temple Pilots, a sadly-as-yet-undiscovered-by-me Black Rebel Motorcycle Club as well as Street Sweeper Social Club and a bunch of small bands whose albums I picked up whilst there.  The town was small and cozy, and it was a blast! (It didn't hurt that I was there with a girl I was crazy about.) I would LOVE to go back and experience the film festival there, especially with my film in it! The SECOND time I was in Texas, incidentally, was last January, when I went to the small town of Tyler to see a theatre company (APEX 20) perform my stage mystery "Nevermore." It was a thrill I'll never forget - having people I'd never met performing words I had written years before in multitudinous Starbucks around Los Angeles. Another fantastic trip. So it would have been nice to have the reason to go back a THIRD time be that I had directed a film that was playing there. Kinda like stepping stones: Enjoy the place, have my writing performed there, have a film I directed play there. Then, of course, I would have to buy a house, I guess is the next step.... (Never gonna happen, by the way.) But, hey: as much as the "Sleeping Bag Weekend" made Carnegie Mellon my number one school choice, and when I wasn't accepted there, I was crushed, I WAS accepted into NYU. And that place was perfect for me. Better than Carnegie Mellon? I actually think so. I don't have much to compare the two, but going to New York for theatre training was hugely important for me as an artist and person in a way that going to school in Pittsburgh could never be. And while film festivals are different than schools, in that you can be accepted to more than one of them, perhaps the festivals we DO get accepted into are far more "right" for us and we're saving money and time by skipping what wouldn't have been the right venue. (That's what you'd call a "glass half full" post.") All that being said,..... "To tell you the truth, I haven't even thought about it, not for a second have I dwelled on the fact that the show's over! I don't, uh, I don't, uh, think about it, I try NOT to think about it and therefore I, you know, DON'T, because that's a very healthy way to deal with something that is very -- ultimately, not that important in the long run. Its not, not, uh, not important at all, you know, for me."   -Allan Pearl, WAITING FOR GUFFMAN

FIRST IRISH "NO"

OK, NOW I'M GETTING DISCOURAGED

     I suppose it's a little ridiculous, since I have fourteen Festivals I haven't heard from and of the seven I HAVE heard from, I was accepted into two, but again, I consider online Festivals to be a different animal.  BUT I just got a rejection letter from the Kerry Film Festival in Ireland.

    Now, could I have ATTENDED it had I gotten in?  Probably not, but that's not the point. With every "no thank you" letter I get, I start to wonder if any of the people I know who've seen the movie would have said anything as positive about it if somebody else had made it. I don't think anyone is lying to me, but I feel like I'm kinda cradled in the safe warmth of a small circle of people who all have the same feature of "Know and Like Matt" so they may all have the same criteria, which may be totally different from the criteria of the people watching the movie at these Festivals have I gone on a long enough run-on sentence and do I sound crazy and paranoid yet?

    Incidentally, I AM working on other things. I feel like this blog can be read as the slow ramblings of a man who has created one short project and has attached all his hopes and dreams to it and if it doesn't make him successful, he'll get bitter and give up.

   AND THAT'S EXACTLY WHAT THIS IS!!!!

   No, no, no.  I've actually been directing THIS IS OUR YOUTH by Kenneth Lonergan for the North Hollywood Fringe Festival.... well, I'm not sure the North Hollywood Fringe Festival exists, actually.... but they have a website and supposedly it starts join October, just before we open.  So: yay?  But it's been a great experience. Most of the shows I've been doing have been comedies - mostly broad comedies (y'know: comedies with ladies in them. Badumbum.). But TIOY is very different - very real, done in near realtime. I was actually scared I would screw it up, which is why I pushed so hard to get the job directing it. (Oh, and I'm not producing this one, either! It's the second major directing gig I get paid for that I'm not fiscally responsible for!! ... "For which I am not fiscally responsible."... whichever.)

   And I'm starting an acting class in October! It's been discussed many MANY times in the past, but now's the time. Almost chickened out early, as I researched other acting classes online, found one that looked very similar to what I would do, and offered to work FOR them. I was invited to a free audit of a class and realized: "Oh, Jesus, I can so do this." The teacher and the students were talented and able, but already I was sure I could do at LEAST as good a job.  Great feeling, actually! Except that now I really have no more excuses. So, here comes HIGH STAKES ACTING WORKSHOP with Matt Ritchey and Rebecca Lane!

   Beki has been one of my best friends for YEARS and we used to moderate a Shakespeare Workshop together at Theatre West for a couple of years as well. We work quite well together and had considered starting up a class "for fun and profit" before the Summer, and now that I was hell-bent on doing it, I figured I should definitely keep that promise. The hope (and expectation) is that things go well, we get extra people interested, and we start a few new classes next year. That will be amazing!!!

   Especially when I have to hand her the reigns to go solo one weekend because HOMESCHOOL REUNION was accepted into Sundance!!!!!!!




...full circle... craziness showing again... finishes post... The end.

FIRST TRAILER

HOMESCHOOL REUNION
TRAILER

 

FIRST... um... MORE REFUSALS.

(This "First" thing is going to be increasingly hard to keep up...)

IT GETS REAL...

     I've been very lucky. HOMESCHOOL REUNION got accepted twice before I got my first refusal. That's a great feeling. Also, I've been lucky enough to have had a great response from people I respect. But because I am who I am (and I'm sure many of you know what I mean by this), once I started getting the "no, thank yous," a bit of negative judgement starts creeping in. No matter how much you respect the people who have said nice things, "perhaps," you think, "the people who are refusing the movie in festivals 'know more' or are 'seeing through' this charade called 'I am a director.'"

    Which is balgona, of course, but you know what they say about us artistic types.  ... No, not that.  I mean about the insecurity. I've gotten a lot of great feedback about the movie, but in just a few days I got rejected by the LOS ANGELES LEFT OFF FESTIVAL and QUEEN CITY FESTIVAL in Baltimore - which is a shame, since I wanted it to play in the town where much of my family is.  Because, really, I want to use festivals as an excuse to travel. Especially to Ireland. Where I shall meet my wife. (DO YOU HEAR ME, KERRY FILM FESTIVAL!? MAKE THIS HAPPEN!)

     Where was I?  Right:

     I started out as an actor, and the very first thing people will tell you (hopefully after "you're really good!" or "hurrah!") is "it's a hard life," "you'll need to have two jobs," "you won't make money." This is similar to the responses for all artistic endeavors, I imagine.  Which sucks, because I don't believe that anymore.  Well, no, I DO, and that's what I'm trying to change. I highly doubt that anyone has ever consistently told a person "Ooo, have you thought about NOT being a fireman? I mean, that's a hard job and you can't make a living." But what if they did? What if tons of people habitually told people year after year that getting a job as a fireman would be really hard? I'll bet that fewer people would get jobs as firemen.  Seriously.   I know, I know, there's the LOGIC of "firemen are necessary and needed everywhere" and that's "not true" for artists. But that's not the point. The point is that if you tell someone for ten plus years that something is going to be hard, they believe you, and make things hard for themselves.  We live in a society that doesn't value art. Oh, it values SOME art, but only the kind that is marketed correctly.

     My point is that yes, rejection is a big part of being an actor and of being an artist, but if we weren't REMINDED of it so damn often, would we maybe start out at least a little more optimistic and steeled against rejection? If HOMESCHOOL doesn't get into a single film festival, am I going to stop directing?  Hell no. So it shouldn't actually matter to me whether we get into any festivals or not. I'll just move on and do the next thing anyway.

     But, yeah, that's not the case. I do care. I WANT to have the festival experience of having a project out there. I WANT it to lead to new contacts and more work. I WANT people to laugh or say "Awww" and have a positive reaction. Hell, I want people to be offended, as long as they have a reaction to it that isn't a rash or contagious.

     We're supposed to find out about five festivals in the next month: KERRY FILM FESTIVAL in Ireland, NEW YORK NO LIMITS in NYC, CARMEL INTERNATIONAL in Carmel, CA (for which I need to make a BluRay and how so I do that?), BEND FILM in Oregon, and AUSTIN FILM FEST in Texas.  (I didn't submit to SXSW - see earlier posts.) Any one of those would be fantastic. Austin is an amazing city, Carmel is supposed to be beautiful (and it's a road trip instead of a flight), New York is a no-brainer, Oregon would be fun and don't even get me started on Ireland.....  that would cost like way more and it's in late October, but wow that would be amazing.

     Three out of thirty is nothing. If we make it into five I'll be happy.

FIRST REFUSAL

DON'T CALL THEM "REJECTIONS"

     If you've done the research and really understood how political Film Festivals can be and the number of variables there are, it's easier to deal with not getting accepted. Big places like to deal with people who they've worked with before or big names, some festivals wind up with a "theme," some just have too many submissions and your movie got in after they'd programmed all of the slots... In fact, the reasons are so varied, that not getting into a Festival isn't necessarily a Rejection of the work so much as your film not "fitting" that year or in that particular Fest.

     I bring this up, of course, because we just got our first refusal - from LIFT-OFF LOS ANGELES FESTIVAL - one of a series of "LIFT-OFF" Festivals around the world. If this was the very first place to get back to us, I'd maybe be taking it hard, but I'm pretty okay with the movie, so I'm chalking this up to "Millions of movies, specific criteria, fifty slots" kind of thing. They sent a well-worded form email being generally supportive, and you could always pay for specific feedback if you wanted it, but no.

     And call it schadenfreude or even thinking too much, but I watched AMERICAN MOVIE again today and wow..... wow. There's a lot to be impressed by in that movie and a lot to pity. Most of all, keeping that passionate energy and drive and determination will get anything completed - as long as you're working with supportive people and, honestly, know what you're doing in terms of telling  story. Mark Borchardt is a guy who really knew how to shoot film and frame some shots, but in terms of storytelling, he's a mess. But who cares? The fact is, he talked a great game, and was ultimately really supportive of people (unless that was part of the great game, but I doubt it).

     I've been thinking about what to do next, in terms of shooting a film. Between some small ideas and some big ideas, I found that I'm not passionate enough about anything yet. I have more than enough on my plate right now with two short plays and directing "This Is Our Youth" for the NoHo Fringe in October, but I always want to have the answer to "what are you working on?"

     "Getting sleep" is the current answer.

FIRST DISCOURAGING FESTIVAL RULE!!

SXSW AND "I AM NOT A TECH GUY"

     Well, this is frustrating...

     Just upgraded my vimeo account ($60 a year) to have a streaming password-protected copy of the movie online - this was mainly because Jonny had "Streaming and Downloadable Copy of The Movie" as a Kickstarter award, but I discovered that South By Southwest only accepts films that are streaming on vimeo. So, cool! No more Film Freeway or Withoutabox for this one, I can go directly to the source!

     So I looked at all of the info for submissions (the usual $40 for short films, have the vimeo streamer available, they'll set aside hotel rooms for you if you get it - not pay for them, mind you, that kind of thing) and then I took a look at how SXSW accepts films to be shown at the festival.

     It's called DCP or Digital Cinema Package. This is a very specific package which gives your film the best resolution possible in 2K or 4K by upgrading everything, even if it wasn't necessarily shot in 2 or 4K. It requires downloading a free program (so that's alright), and then basically being a technical wizard going through forty thousand steps transforming the movie into TIFF images, then to JPEG 2000s before getting original audio source files into a Surround format--

     That's when I stopped watching the "How To" video. I even found a way to do this on FCPX, but considering how much technical work this requires (and files that I may not even have), I may just have to skip the whole festival. Part of me thinks this is ridiculous and I should never give up  chance to get into a festival, and the other part of me thinks that in the middle of doing all this work, I'll find out I don't even have enough space on my external hard drive and I'll wind up getting screwed anyway.

     A quick chat with my buddy Chris Hill (professional awesome editor guy) sent me to easydcp.com while he told me, "Yeah, it'll probably cost around $3000-$6000 for a DCP."  After telling him about this workaround I found online, his immediate reaction was "chances are it won't work well and will be unusable." And knowing my technical expertise, that sounds about right. The other option is buying a DaVinci Resolve plug-in (also for a few grand) that apparently has an "Easy DCP" button.  BUTTON.  Like, press a button, get a coffee, DCP ready.  Worth buying with a group of filmmakers is my thought....

     So, this is annoying. Obviously, I can't complain too much - if this is the way movies are headed and some festivals have certain technical aspects, so be it, but I know my limits. I've taught myself a lot of technical things over the last few years, but I'm a storyteller, not a tech guy. That's why my initial toe-dip into the world of becoming an AE (which I did because I thought I was going to get married.... long story...), was simply a toe-dip: I can shuffle footage around to tell an interesting story, but I'm not into the gear, file formats, etc. Which also means that I shouldn't kick myself when I don't know or understand technical stuff and can't just "do it all myself."  I'm just not that guy. Which is okay.

     But if anybody wants to buy me a full-on DaVinci Resolve and ten years of access to AfterEffects and Photoshop, I won't be sad.

FIRST.... um... ok SECOND ACCEPTANCE!

TWO DOWN!

    DEPTH OF FIELD is another monthly online film festival!  That's two in two days! Good start! A quick look at the website actually makes it seem pretty low-budget and a little, shall we say, "Scammy." It's a REALLY poorly designed 90's-style website with scrolling graphics and some poorly produced Vimeo videos of a woman on a green screen "news-type" background with "newsy" music explaining the rules and regs and how the festival is linked to World Wide Motion Pictures Corp in Huntington Beach, CA who may offer to distribute the movie.

     Obviously, this is a lower tier festival, touting that "unlike other film festivals that play your movie in a theatre where only the cast and crew might see it, we put it on the web and market it to our large email list of interested viewers!"   ......yeah, well, honestly, I'd rather see my movie alone in a theatre. That guarantees that it has, y'know, played in a theatre. Nice that you promise that no, really, you've got people watching on the internet, but I have no way of knowing.

     BUT! I'm not trying to be negative, just wary. Online monthly Festivals could very well simply take anything that came with a poster so they can fill up on content. And of course, while the two festivals have their own judges, they, too, have Audience Awards.

     In theory, Audience Awards are great. It's like People's Choice Awards: the idea that the consumer likes your work is most important. But ONLINE Audience Awards?  Not so much. Because most of the movies aren't streaming so that they can be in contention for other festivals, so if they win an Audience Award, it's simply because they've arranged for tons of friends, family, or multiple email addresses to vote sight-unseen. Which is a ludicrous reason to win an award, unless it's for "Organizing A Blind Committee."

     But whatever. We're in two festivals, we have two laurels, and now we sit back and wait to see which PHYSICAL Festivals we get into!!

     Do I have a Wish List?  Of course.

     "Anything" is a good start, but I'm actually pretty sure we'll get into at least two or three of the 26 or 28 to which we've applied. (I mean, two MORE!) So as far as Dream Scenario?

     Sundance, obviously. Not just because of name recognition, but because I had SUCH a great time going last year! (Slam dance for same reason.)
   
     Kerry or UK Film Fests, as I want a reason to go to London or Ireland.

     Victoria Film Festival, as I want a reason to go to Canada.

     SXSW or Austin Film Festival because I had a blast in Austin a few years back for the music festival.

     North Hollywood Cineast, as it's close to a lot of my friends and would be a great way to get a large group to see the movie in a theatre.

     Something in Baltimore, New York, or Pittsburgh. Just so I can head back home and see family and friends - and the movie!

     And Carmel Valley, as I want to go up and hang out in wine country.

     But really, I'll be very happy with any place: New Hampshire, Colorado, Oregon, North Carolina, any of the places we applied.  Traveling and seeing the movie in Festivals wasn't at all the reason we made it, but it's a nice icing.


ADDENDUM 8/10/15!

     We just went from "Official Selection" to "Official Nomination"!  Which, I guess, means we weren't nominated for anything before? Just selected? Selected for what? To be nominated? Is this like a teaser trailer for a teaser to a trailer?  Confused.

     Regardless! Always nice to have a little something extra.