When the production company I belong to, Gorilla with a Mustache Films, won the grand prize with our movie Joint Effort part of the prize was to have free entry into the next year's competition. Even though we've all been exhausted working on our comedy feature film, One Hell of an Angel, we decided we had to take advantage of the free entry and compete again this year.
The competition, formerly "The National Film Challenge" re-branded itself this year (probably because it's an international competition and the title is a little confusing) and is now called "The 4 Points Film Project." Our team created a short film in just one weekend with some new faces on set. We had the talented and ruggedly handsome Paul Anderson as our cinematographer, Lisa Styles our awesome Canadian Producer friend who we met at the Cannes film festival came down just to help us with this production, Michael Valentino came on board to help with editing, and Eruch Kimball was our fabulous composer. After a rocky start and a completely unexpected last minute script change, we set off to make a film pretty much by improv. Luckily our actors are good at that. While we didn't win any of the awards this year, we were chosen in the top 20 in the world, so not too shabby. Here it is: The Perfect Spot.
http://youtu.be/CFB0xVCeafo
You pretty much have a year to show your film on the film festival circuit. Most festivals won't let you release your film to the public before it screens at their festival and most don't want movies more than a year old. So a year is about all the time you have for that. Why? It's hard enough getting people to attend a film festival, but they keep attendance up by giving cinephiles something different than the mainstream, something new and fresh, and something exclusive.
My Toxic Backyard has had a great run. It's been accepted to 9 different film festivals and even won best film at one of them, which makes this year a great success. Whenever possible a filmmaker should attend the festivals where their film is screening. I've chronicled my experiences at the Thin Line Film Festival (plus a video here) and on the Southern Circuit (and a radio interview.) I couldn't make it to the Greenpoint Film Festival but, I was able to send my associate producer, writer and editor Jaime Byrd to accept our award there.
Here is a run down of all the festivals and awards My Toxic Backyard has garnered in the past year:
Winner: Best Documentary Feature, Greenpoint Film Festival
Winner: Best Film, Mountain Express Best of WNC 2014
Nominated: 4 Emmys Including:
Best Documentary: Katie Damien, Jaime Byrd, Michael Klatt, Bob Peck
Best Cinematography: (Non-news Photography) Katie Damien
Best Editing: Jaime Byrd, Katie Damien
Best Audio Post: Bob Peck, Jaime Byrd, Katie Damien
Official Selection: Southern Circuit
Official Selection: Thin Line Film Festival
Official Selection: Twin Rivers Film Festival
Official Selection: Reel and Meal
Official Selection: Utopia Film Festival
Official Selection: River's Edge Film Festival
Official Selection: Wild Goose Festival
Official Selection: Compress Fest (trailer)
Official Selection: AAAC Creative Sector Summit
