Film Threat Review

Did I mention we won Audience Choice Award for Best Feature at the 2011 Staten Island Film Festival? I know, we've been out of touch, haven't we??? ...sigh....

Great review from the folks at Film Threat! Take a look.

http://www.filmthreat.com/reviews/39833/

Hope to see you in October, right back where it started, in New Mexico, at the Santa Fe Independent Film Fest. We have our fingers crossed.

DR

And the Winner is....

Desert Rain wins the Audience Choice Best Feature Award at the 2011 Staten Island Film Festival!!! We're hoping (and believing) the next stop for DR is back where it all started, in Albuquerque, at the 2011 Albuquerque Film Festival.

Stay tuned here for details, but for latest DR news please follow us on twitter @ www.twitter.com/desertrainmovie or "like us" on Facebook.

Thanks!

OMG!!!

It's been forever! Since the last post, the film is kind of done (is it ever?), has premiered at the 2011 Cinequest Film Festival (we had a blast!), and will make its NY premiere this coming Thursday, June 9, at 10pm, at the 2011 Staten Island Film Festival! We're nominated for 3 awards at the SIFF, including Best Picture! Nuts! Needless to say, we're excited about our festival run and we're sure there will be more festivals to come, before DR finds its final home in the world of indie film distribution.

With that said, here's a press release we've just sent out and hoping to get picked up by a local (nyc) publication. We'll post a link if and when it happens, but consider this an exclusive!!!


FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

Desert Rain: How to make a feature film with a 5-person crew

Brooklyn, New York, June 6, 2011 – “I will never do it again,” says first-time feature director, Steve Loff, laughingly. “There were only five of us, some days four, and it wasn’t like we eliminated ALL that goes into a feature film. We eliminated some things, but we still needed camera, sound, costumes, props, dressings, light manipulation (the filmmakers used “only one light, sporadically”), craft service, and continuity, amongst other things. You know, all those things you need when making a movie. I had to have actors slate the shots sometimes because no one was free to do it. It was exhausting and at times, just ridiculous. But we got it done.”

Desert Rain will make its New York Premiere at the 2011 Staten Island Film Festival on Thursday, June 9, at 10pm. The film tells the story of a young couple desperate to get out of their small town and chase their dreams to Los Angeles, but every decision they make takes them further from their goal. The style of shooting was “run and gun,” mostly handheld, with little to no lighting. Principal photography was completed in a brisk 10 days. “We filmed ten out of eleven days, and I think I put the camera on the tripod less than a handful of times. We were always ready to shoot. My shooting background is in documentary, so shooting handheld on a moments notice is something I’m used to, and it was definitely part of the aesthetic for DR.”

Actors would often come to set hair, makeup, and wardrobe ready. “We’d collect wardrobe items, especially for Dan and Skye, as we went. They would bring stuff to wear, and we would hold it for the duration of the shoot,” says Angelica Morrow, Producer and de facto Costume Designer. Angelica has also worked in the costume department on a number of indie features in New York. “The saving grace was Steve’s decision to shoot mostly in sequence. That made continuity on costume a little easier. Most times we’d shoot the wardrobe, then be done with it.”

Desert Rain is probably the most ambitious micro-budget film you will ever see. With a multitude of characters and locations, along with fights, crashes, hold ups, and more, it’s pretty incredible to think the film was made with 5 crew members, no permits, no insurance, and “less than $10K to get it in the can,” according to Steve Loff. “We cast Daniel Van Hart and Angelica’s sister, Alexandria Morrow, as our leads and they had a friend who would play a part, and that friend had a friend, and so on. I was willing to work with anyone, professional and non-professional alike. All I wanted was a willingness to do the work and a faith in what we were doing, and I felt like we got it from the actors each and every time.” Locations were often secured on a moments notice. “Working small leaves you flexible. We’d often cruise around, looking for a location and when we’d find something we liked, we would simply ask for permission to shoot. We had no money to offer in most cases. We paid fifty dollars for ONE location - that was our entire cost for location fees! I’m not really sure how we pulled it off most times, but we did. I guess you could say it’s the lure of the cinema. People were excited to be a part of the process and see it up close.”

Steve doesn’t think he could have pulled this off in New York City, his hometown. “Shooting in Albuquerque was so free and liberating. I just felt like we could do whatever we wanted, whenever we wanted. It was wide open, and no one ever bothered us. We had a few close calls, but we made every day on schedule.”

He offered some thoughts for others looking to emulate the shooting technique. “The attitude was ‘by any means necessary.’ I HAD to make a film, so I found a way around the usual protocol. In a lot of ways, I feel like we ran into Albuquerque and stole our movie, and everyday we fed off of that energy. It was guerilla filmmaking to the core. We just had to get it done, and nothing would stop us.”

“Make sure you have a great team. Angelica and Ryan Pearson (Producer), Miles Vedder, our sound mixer, all of the actors, all of us believed in what we were doing and worked our butts off. Everyone was up for anything. And I think the hard work, along with the blind faith in the unusual process, shows up on the screen. The film is small but it has a big heart and its own style.”

The film does have heart and style, and the end product that is Desert Rain is up for 3 awards at this year’s festival, including Best Picture. The premiere is June 9th at the St. George Theatre, with an encore presentation on Friday, June 10th, also at St. George Theatre. For more info please visit the Staten Island Film Festival website at www.sifilmfestival.org.

What the...

Ok, if you look down the list of posts you can see we're way behind schedule here. Still no completed film, and it's early summer, NOT early spring!!! Lol!!! Needless to say, I'm not posting projected dates anymore on this blog...but I will project this - the completed work which resulted from our fun time in the desert heat is imminent. And there's no need to put a date on something imminent.

Desert Rain is coming!!! Stay tuned...

Radio Silence

I don't know why I titled the post as such, but I'm going with my gut on that one. So yeah, nine months after wrapping principal photography and three months after re-shoots we're still editing. Still! But hey, that's the process. Sometimes life gets in the way, sometimes you have to take jobs to pay bills, and sometimes the creative mojo just ain't pumpin' at a rate conducive to cutting feature films. It's all good.

I'm updating today because tomorrow ends a very productive week on the final cut. We're halfway home as of tomorrow, and that's after one intensive week of fine tuning. By this time next week I hope to be making final tweaks and prepping for the pass off to sound and color - those guys have been waiting patiently. I'm so happy with the state of the film at this point I'm almost giddy...almost. Still some hangups, but I'm sure after sound and score and color I'll be quite the happy camper and we'll all have a little movie to be proud of.

Stay tuned and keep it here for updates. You can also check out the website - www.desertrainthemovie.com....the twitter page - desertrainmovie is our user name....or join our ranks on Facebook.

Chop, chop, chop!!!!!!!!!!! (That's the sound of the film being cut. It doesn't REALLY sound like that.)

Indie Film Finance Conference , NYC, April 17-18

They selected me for a panel on micro-budge filmmaking. Also showing select clips from the film in an effort to raise finishing funds. Check it out.

www.iffpc.com

We're THIS close!!!

Missing Links

After 6 weeks of intense, fine cutting of the movie, last weekend we spent 3 days back in Albuquerque shooting added scenes and pickups to complete the film. As the movie became more clear through the editing, I decided to add a slew of scenes, which equal 12 screen minutes or script pages, roughly, in an effort to solidify the story. I knew I would be missing something after attempting to shoot a feature in 10 days, and if you follow the blog you know I did NOT like the idea of additional shooting, but I had no choice. We've come this far and the additional scenes really make a difference and we were efficient enough to get them cut into the film for our Los Angeles Film Festival submission, which went out this past Friday, March 5th.

Along with the shooting of new scenes, we spent time re-recording dialogue, due to sound issues, mostly, and adding dialogue to help restructure scenes and story. This was all sound work, most of which we were able to do ourselves at our home in Rio Rancho. It was a real "no frills" ADR session. For the most part it worked just fine. The key for us in shooting additional days and recording ADR was keeping the cost down. We did. Traveling cast and crew (all 5 of us :), shooting 3 days, a week of ADR and editing, equipment, etc., cost us less than the $2500 we had budgeted. The savings will go to a much needed sound mix. Sound mix and color correct are the last frontiers in making the film really pop.

The funds for those technicalities as well as any other funds needed may come via the NYC Indie Film Funding Conference which is being organized by B.K. Copsky and runs in New York on the 26th and 27th of March. Desert Rain is one of a handful of films selected for this 1st annual event. We will screen our 80 minute rough cut in front of a room of execs with the ability to help us finance the remainder of post-production. Needless to say we're excited about this opportunity and feel the movie is ready to be seen by such a group.

We're really happy with where the film is at. It has a flow to it that viewers will respond to, and Dan and Skye are characters an audience will root for. I think the story and pacing are 95% there - another week of fine cutting before the conference will be the final touch.

With all that said, DR should be ready for Spring, as scheduled. Stay tuned here for any and all screenings and premieres. We're confident, with the latest cut, that news of multiple screenings throughout the country will be coming in the very near future.

Thanks for following and if you haven't checked out our website already, please do - www.desertrainthemovie.com.