See my Indie, Comedy, Feature Film on the Big Screen!

September 13th at 7pm 

at the

Fine Arts Theater, 36 Biltmore Avenue, Asheville, NC 28801

Get your tickets here (be sure to select the 13th) Order Tickets Online Now

more info at: www.fineartstheatre.com

A demon with an existential crisis and an angel with PTSD team up to save the career of a washed-up rocker.
Demon, Kyle, is a stabber on the third level of hell. He knows his business. But when he starts wondering about the nature of life and death, his superiors shut him up and send him to the "Angel in Training Program."
Angel, Mezudio, has been around a very long time-so long that he developed PTSD and goes catatonic at the sight of blood. Relegated to feeding parking meters and cleaning up dog poop, Mezudio is afraid to trying anything new, but his boss has other ideas. Mezudio is charged with training the stabber, Kyle to be a good angel and earn his wings...or at least stop stabbing everyone.

Katie Damien is an Asheville based award winning Writer, Director, Photographer, and Producer. Support local film making, get your tickets today!
Tickets $10 and are available at the Fine Arts Theatre box office, or online here

Hope Trailer

homewardboundwnc.org

Trailer for the short film "Hope." Based on a true story. When a widow with mental illness attempts suicide, she survives only to find herself homeless and unable to reconnect with her son. After a year of living in a shelter with no hope of overcoming her situation, she has a chance encounter that changes her life.

Hope Poster

The one and only Robert Klein, local graphics guru, designed not only this awesome poster, but the opening titles for the movie.  I found him on Instagram, if you like graphic design, cool photos of Asheville and stop motion animation check out his feed: https://www.instagram.com/kleindigital/

Hope Production Stills

We just wrapped production on the short film "Hope" for Homeward Bound.  The cast and crew have been beyond amazing!  I can't believe how smoothly everything went, from the cat who stuck out her scenes like a champ and even turned to the camera like she had been trained to do that, to the volunteers who showed up to be extras, to the cast who gave me goosebumps more than once, to the crew who worked with speed and precision.  I loved this shoot! 

Hope Behind the Scenes

These are some fantastic behind the scenes photos shot by my awesome set photographer Ben Aviv.

One Hell of an Angel Production Stills

 

Tickets Please Poster

Thanks to Matt Shepard for this awesome poster design!

Tickets Please

Tickets Please was another whirlwind weekend of filmmaking fun for the 48 Hour Film Project.  My and crew cast rocked it!  We had so much fun on this shoot and made a great little film.

Trailer for the short film "Tickets Please." When an assistant forgets to procure tickets to a sold out show for her boss, she enlists the help of her sister to get the tickets by any means necessary or lose her job and be forced to move back in with their parents.

Ghost Image

I had such a great cast and crew for this short, thriller, horror film "Ghost Image."  Rebecca Morris is the best!  She worked so hard throughout the shoot and turned in a brilliant performance.  Penny Munroe was the perfect ghost, what a pro.  Greg Hugins was my brilliant DP and brought with him a dream team of a crew.  I don't like watching horror films nearly as much as I like making them!

An except from the award-winning short film "Ghost Image." When a ghostly apparition shows up in a photographer’s work, she’ll have to find a way to eliminate all cameras from her life or risk losing it to the thing that haunts her.

Ghost Image Behind the Scenes

Thanks to Ben Avivi my set photographer for these great stills!

Drone

As I write this, my drone is long gone.  I crashed it gloriously over the ocean in Paradise (not on purpose, but what a way to go.)  Before it's untimely demise, I managed to get some amazing footage.  Here are the highlights from a trip to Florida, complete with beatific beaches and marshland in the shrinking wilds of that state's undeveloped countryside.

Florida from the Sky from Katie Damien on Vimeo.

Biltmore Estate Commercial Work

I was lucky enough to score a gig with the Biltmore Estate!  I made a few how-to style videos and this behind-the-scenes look at the spring garden design.


Sketch by Travis the head gardener at Biltmore Estate.  I had such a blast shooting at the estate all day!

Blue Hair and Dreams

I've always wanted blue hair.  When my age was still in the single digits and I loved cartoons and super heroes and thought about changing my name to something exotic like Evangeline, I also wanted tattoos and blue hair.  My parents, possessing a combination of great wisdom and a desire to never stifle a dream, always told me that when I became an adult I could do whatever I wanted.  I could stay up all night, eat cake and ice cream for breakfast, I could watch cartoons all day long and get tattoos all over my body.  I would go to bed dreaming of the day I would become an adult.  I would tell my young self not to forget about all the amazing things I wanted to do as a grownup.  I began making lists of my dreams.  The lists have evolved over time.  I traded dreams of castles for dreams of tiny houses, instead of wanting horses I wanted movies.  But some dreams I have not grown out of.  Blue hair was one of them. 

If you have a long standing dream, one that time has not eroded, take hold of it and go for it.  Make a whole list of them, big and small, revisit the list, add to it, cross things off, change your mind, and live your dreams.  You have the power to change your whole life at any given moment.  Never forget that.

Before and after.

Homeward Bound PSA

Ring Flash Photography

Ring flashes are generally used for macro photography, so you can get light on a subject shooting with the lens very close.  But many fashion and portrait photographers use them because of the awesome look you get, especially the reflection in the eyes.  When it was time to update my head shots with my awesome blue hair, I made myself a ring flash out of LED Christmas lights.  The lights were wrapped around each other in a ring and suspended on a stand around the lens of my camera.  Then I grabbed my roommates who happened to be passing by and shot them as well.  I gotta say, I'm really happy with the results.

Local Filmmakers Screening

I had a short excerpt from "One Hell of an Angel" screen at the Fine Arts Theater along with other local filmmaker's work.  It was a wonderful evening!  The audience was fantastic and they laughed at all the right places.  It was a good piece to tease the movie with.  Right now I'm slowing collecting the last of our digital FX from our awesome FX guru.  Our composer is about to send me the rough score to listen to and our Foley artist is working on getting all the sound FX we need created.  Once all these elements are completed and added to the cut, it will go off to our sound designer and hopefully we'll manage to get some color correction in there. Then we can call the movie finished!

Picture Locked

We are officially picture locked! This is a huge milestone for "One Hell of an Angel."  This means there will be no more cutting of the image part of the film. Now our sound work, music and digital FX can move forward. Cheers everyone!

Bicycle Commuting

I bike to work for my health and the health of the environment. I do it to get one more car off the road, to give someone else a good parking space. I save time because I no longer need to go to the gym and I never have to sit in bad traffic. I also save money on gas and wear and tear on my car. I feel sharper when I arrive to work in the morning and more relaxed when I arrive home at the end of the day. I burn so many calories I can pretty much eat whatever I want. I bike for all these reasons, but the one I look forward to the most is getting to see sights like this on my ride.

It's true I was recently hit by a truck, my hip was fractured in four places and it was a long road to recovery, but I'm so happy to be back on a bike. If you're thinking about commuting on a bike, give it a try.  It's so worth it.

PSAs

I do a lot of public service announcements (PSAs.)  I love making them.  I usually get to be creative and the organizations are all non-profits that are championing a good cause.  I get to help them and that's just good for the soul.  Recently I've been doing a lot of stop motion animation.  Below is a PSA I made for the Asheville Humane Society for a fundraising event they're having.


I've been doing PSAs for Homeward Bound for years now and soon I'll be releasing their 3rd PSA. I'm very excited to share this one that focuses on veteran homelessness.  I got to work with Greg Hudgins as Cinematographer.  He was so great to work with and the footage looks amazing!  Brian Alexander was invaluable on set, as always.  Our actors were all top notch, but I have to give special thanks to our lead Allen T. Law who not only turned in brilliant performances, but he did them in freezing rain and through some pretty adverse conditions.

We couldn't afford to shoot at the airport.  It was $3000 just to have the insurance we would need for 1 hour! So we used a blue screen in my living room coupled with some stock footage.

Brian and I got to play doctors!  FYI: Stethoscopes are fun to play with and the human body makes a bunch of strange noises.

The war scene shots were the most complex and expensive.  I didn't keep the gas mask shot in the PSA because it didn't work in end.  It was hard to let it go because it took so much to make it happen, but that's the nature of storytelling through film.  If it doesn't work, it doesn't work.

We shot in a torrent of rain from a hurricane.  Yes, a hurricane.  Everyone was soaked to the bone and shaking with cold.  I think it gave us all a new perspective on what people who don't have a home and shelter have to go through.