Austin Film Festival Recap

The day Stomp! Shout! Scream! premiered at the Austin Film Festival, I got an email from the Deep Ellum Film Festival that the film had been accepted to screen there. The festival is November 17-23, 2005. Check the website for the exact schedule in the next week.

Totaling up the festival submissions, Stomp! Shout! Scream! is 0 for 10 outside of Texas and 2 for 2 inside the Lone Star State.

To recap the Austin Film Festival, here’s my film maker blog from the AFF web site:

AFF Sun 10/16
Hello. Jay Edwards here to ramble about Stomp! Shout! Scream! and the Austin Film Festival. First I'll have to thank everyone at the festival, especially Chris Holland, for liking my film and offering to host its world premiere. Thanks for reading.

AFF Tue 10/18
I think I'm ready for this world premiere. Between now and Saturday, here's my schedule:
Wednesday: drive 14 hours, Atlanta to Austin.
Thursday: get interviewed at 5:00 AM on the Austin NBC morning show, sleep all day, and try to not get too drunk that night.
Friday: Juggle friends and family flying into town and try to sound like I belong on the "Comedy Writing for TV" panel at 1:45 PM. Oh, and show Stomp! Shout! Scream! to strangers for the first time ever at 10:00 PM. And try to not get too drunk afterward.
Saturday: Attempt to show up on time for the Writing Sci-Fi/Horror Panel at 10:45 AM.
After that, I think I'm done for a while and I can hide in dark movie theaters and watch movies.

AFF Thur 10/20
I'm in an awkward place. Somewhere between "5:00 AM TV interview" and "able to check into hotel." It's just after "14 hours in a car yesterday" and "no sleep." My delirium turns to elation when Stomp! Shout! Scream! gets its first review.

From the Austin Chronicle:
Edwards' loving homage to the short-lived beach-party-by-way-of-horror-film genre of the mid-Sixties does it better than American International Pictures ever did, with canny nods along the way to Them, Jaws, The Horror of Party Beach, and Roger Corman's own B-movie update Humanoids From the Deep. The arrival of an all-girl garage rock band in the quaint seaside community of Merriville Island coincides with a sudden rash of sandy mayhem that may be the result of the dreaded skunk-ape, which leaves behind a hideous odor to match its rampant carnage. On the trail of the beast are a trio of semicompetent cops ("It just don't make no sense – what kind of a homicidal maniac would do something like this?") and the requisite smart guy from the local college, who's final utterances remind us to forget about the skies, already, what we really need to be watching are the tides. It's nearly as much fun as an episode of Hullabaloo, snappy bouffants, earnest braniacs, hippy-hippy-shake, and all.

AFF Sat 10/22
The Stomp! Shout! Scream! premiere screening went pretty well last night.

Chris Holland from the festival and I both felt a sellout was coming from the way folks were talking, but the theater was about just 60% full. That's a little disappointing at first, but then I realized that was just due to our expectations. Promoting a film on the festival circuit is a marathon, not a one-time thing. There will be plenty of opportunities to get the film seen.

The film got lots of laughter throughout and a really nice reception from moviegoers afterward. Thanks to everyone who came out to see it. I personally went right out and guzzled beer with family and friends until the bars closed at 2 AM. That made it a little hard to get out to the panels this morning, but I made it. Now I'll nap and plan out some movie watching for the rest of my time in Austin.

AFF Tue 10/25
Unfortunately, I will not be at the screening tonight. The cartoon sweat shop demanded my presence back in Atlanta. Chris and the festival have concocted a little something in my absence. It's way funnier that I'd be at the screening.

Stomp! Shout! Scream! has gotten some scathingly bad reviews on the AFF web site. It's upsetting at first, of course. And I hate that it might affect attendance at the festival. But if EVERYONE liked the movie, it would be a total failure. I'm not trying to make "E.T." here. If you don't get it in the first 10 minutes, then, yeah, you'll probably hate it and that's fine with me. I know there's an audience out there that does get it.

sound mix, color correction for Premiere in Austin

Just in case you haven’t heard:  Stomp! Shout! Scream! will have its world premiere on October 21, 2005 as part of the Austin Film Festival and Screenwriters Conference.  Visit the festival website for tickets and screening info.

Another part of film making is trying to get people to come see your film.  Newspapers and other press outlets are the best resource for letting people know the details.  It makes me feel like a pimp, selling my product, but I spent the last week working on press releases, credit lists, a “statement of the director”, formatting news articles, etc., to put in the first official press kit.  All that stuff is on the Media page on stompshoutscream.com.

Post-production on the film took a couple of major leaps forward this week.  It’s at this stage that you go to the experts and hope they can perform those miracles you always hear about.  Director of Photography Evan Lieberman and I supervised the final color correction in Cinefilm’s Spirit transfer suite. Due to the usual time and money constraints of indie film making, we had to shoot several scenes at the wrong time of day.  Colorist Ron Anderson worked his magic and fixed all the problem scenes, plus greatly improved several scenes that were already looking good.  Now Stomp! Shout! Scream! looks absolutely fantastic.  I can’t say enough about Evan, the extremely talented crew he put together, and Ron’s expertise that combined to get this film looking as good as it does.

Michael and Juan at Soapbox Studios put in a Herculean effort over the weekend to finish the sound mix for the movie.  Once again, there’s nothing like going to the experts and getting them to work their magic.  Everyone involved in the sound mix commented about how we picked one of the hardest possible locations to get quality sound—- the beach, at night.  One long dialog scene has waves, a generator, and RF interference competing with the actor’s lines.  Michael was able to EQ the voices just right and make the scene, and the whole movie, sound better than I would have ever imagined.

Maybe they’re just being nice, but everyone who has helped on the film says that it was great fun to work on.  I started this whole project to have fun with the creative people I know, not because I wanted more work.

Principle photography started one year ago this week. I never thought it would take this long or be this hard, but seeing the color-corrected images finally married up to a pristine sound mix sure feels good. I am really, really looking forward to Austin.

Here's 3 shots taken from Day One of shooting, one year ago today.

Toofy Film Festival, sound mixing, World Premiere

Stomp! Shout! Scream! had its first public showing as a work-in-progress at the Toofy Film Festival last weekend. The audience laughed in all the right places and had nothing but positive comments after wards. It was a great learning experience and quite a thrill to see the film on a big screen for the first time. I could see (and hear) that there’s still work to be done, but the film is close to being complete.

Leading up to the screening, Juan and Tony at Soapbox Studios worked very, very hard to get the audio ship-shape, including a session from 6 pm to 3 am Wednesday, after working a full shift at their day jobs. It’s incredible what professional studio speakers reveal. What I thought was a pretty strong mix coming out of Final Cut turns out to have endless, irritating flaws. No matter how good the location sound is—and this film’s is damn good—once you start cutting it up, you introduce all kinds of problems. In locations like a working garage or a public beach or even in a controlled environment like a warehouse office, sound recordings are just going to be different on different takes. There’s no way to avoid extensive labor when it comes to getting a pristine sound mix. I’m sure the film’s sound will be great, it’s just a much longer run than Juan or I anticipated.

Part of the process of mixing is bringing in the actors to re-read the lines that can’t be used from the location recordings. Its called automatic dialog replacement (ADR), but that’s a misnomer because it is anything but automatic. The actors and Juan did a super job, making something that’s completely disjointed look and sound seamless. The best part was adding in screams of terror. All the actresses have incredible horror screams, but for a distant scream on the beach I put Tony in the booth to perform his best girl scream. It’s awesome.

Saving the best news for last, Stomp! Shout! Scream! will have it’s world premiere as part of the Austin Film Festival and Screenwriters Conference. This is a great honor for me and for everyone associated with the production. The film will screen twice during the week-long festival with the premiere on Friday, October 21 (exact time and location TBA). This is the deadline I’ve been waiting for. In the next month Stomp! Shout! Scream! can finally be put to bed, production-wise.