Marcia Goetsch’s animated short Garden of Eden will screen at the Shawna Shea Spring Short Film Festival online next Saturday, October 10th, 2020 on Vimeo: https://vimeo.com/ondemand/ssffcovidblocktwo. Tickets are available now for pre-order. Watch on iOS, Android, Apple TV, Roku, and Chromecast. There are a lot of terrific short films screening in the block so if you’d like to have some fun in this 2020, hope you’ll take a break from the year and come watch.
Three of our films: Food of the Gods, The Clock, Garden of Eden were selected by the Seattle True Independent Film Festival! We have truly won the Seattle lottery! Or the Seattle trifecta at least. The screening is understandably delayed due to COVID-19 and the wildfires in the Pacific Northwest. Our heart goes out to our family in the area. But that does not diminish our enthusiasm and we are hard at work on new projects!
I am so delighted to have contributed the art for the cover of Daniel Williman’s and Karen Corsano’s new book to be published later this year: The World Chronicle of Guillaume De Nangis, A Manuscript’s Journey from Saint-Denis to St. Pancras. It is a captivating journey that I have been hearing tales from over the several years of its making.
Marcia Goetsch’s experimental animation Garden of Eden has been selected for the SSFF Spring Shorts Film Festival at Nick’s in Worcester, MA! It was extremely competitive with twice as many submissions as last year so it is a real honor to be selected. As the present situation in the world persists, they are not exactly sure when they will be holding the festival. They are still planning on holding a live event at Nick’s in Worcester. They will not be streaming their festival online. But they will hold their live event when it is safe for everyone.
Exciting news! Marcia Goetsch’s animated super short The Clock about a ditzy woman who bungles her way has been selected for Austin Micro Short Film Festival in Texas. This is an annual event on the Film Festival Circuit that showcases short films under six minutes (6:00) in length. Founded by author and retired filmmaker Mikel Fair, who worked on location in the Film and Television industry from 1999-2015, this festival screens international independent films of all genres at the Alamo Drafthouse Cinema Lakeline theater in a fast-paced “back to back” format projected in HD 1080p. We are thrilled! #AustinMicroShortFilmFestival
Davidson Calfee Wins Best Actor for Cold At Stormy Weather Horror Fest! Mary Ferrara was nominated for Best Actress, Edward Wright was nominated for Best Director and Cold was nominated for Best Short! Congratulations and Well Done! Take a view but Beware the Unloved.
Two Award Nominations for Weekend Getaway
Jenn Dlugos & Andrea Henry have been nominated for Outstanding Female Filmmaker and Frederick Fairbanks has been nominated for Best Actor for Weekend Getaway at Stormy Weather Horror Fest. W00t!
Weekend Getaway has been selected for the Medusa Underground Film Festival. If you think your getaway weekend didn’t go according to plan, you are not alone.
Scan has been selected for seven film festivals: Royal Wolf Film Awards, End of Days Film Festival, Urban Actions Showcase, Shiver International Film Festival, Another Hole In the Head, Pensacola Comic Con, Independent Film Festival Boston. Please join us at a state of mind near you!
Cold has been nominated for Best Drama Ensemble at the 2018 KaPow Intergalactic Film Festival. KaPow IFF will be held September 28 - October 4, 2018, at the Laemmle’s NoHo 7 Theatres in North Hollywood, California. Accolades for the fine acting by Mary Ferrara, Davidson Calfee, Bradley Rhodes, Charlie Hatton and the director Edward Wright. Well done!
Cold has been selected for The 5th Annual FANtastic Horror Film Festival October 26-28 in San Diego, CA. For three days, San Diego will be the Horror Capital of the United States and we plan to be horribly there. Join us if you dare!
Cold has been selected for the Shawna Shea Film Festival and will be screening Thursday, October 4th 4:30PM at Starlite Gallery in Southbridge, MA. If you are in New England for the fall foliage and want to get your dark on, then stop on by and watch our film.
Cold has won six awards at the February 2018 Mindfield Albuquerque Bi-Monthly Competition. Bronze Awards for Best Short Film, Best Director (Edward Angus Wright), Best Actor (Mary Ferrara), Best Editing (Marcia Goetsch), Best Cinematography (Edward Angus Wright) and Best Original Score. Congratulations!
Cold wins a Silver Award in the December 2017 semi-annual Spotlight Horror Film Awards. Congratulations to the dedication and hard work of the talented cast and crew that made this film into the honored film it became. Very grateful for Spotlight Horror for this fine award. This was a multi-year journey and well worth it! Good luck taking it far and wide.
The Adjustment Technicians wins a Silver Award for Best Short Film in the December 2017 bi-monthly competition at Mindfield Film Festival - Albuquerque. Congratulations to the creativity and hard work of the cast and crew in this film led by director Melvin Cartagena. Looking forward to the annual film festival August 25th - 26th 2018 at the Guild Cinema in Albuquerque.
Cold has been nominated for Best Editing by Independent Horror Movie Awards. Cudos to editor Marcia Goetsch and the cast and crew of this thrilling film by director Edward Wright.
Fantastic review for Mary Ferrara in COLD from 13Horror.com: “There was something extremely endearing about this film and a lot of that was down to the superb Mary Ferrara and her on-screen chemistry with Davidson Calfee, Mary Ferrara was actually superb and earned herself a round of applause here at the 13Horror.com office.”
Scan is now officially completed in post: animation, editing, music score, sound mixing and color grading and mastering all done! Congratulations to the terrific cast and crew who made this film possible and hats off to Melvin Cartagena the director of this sci-fi super short. We are submitting to film festivals.
The Adjustment Technicians has been nominated for eight CLAW Awards at the Terror Film Festival: Best Cinematographer(Edward Wright), Best Director of Photography(Edward Wright), Best Motion Picture Editing(Marcia Goetsch), Best Original Music Score(Marcia Goetsch), Best Science Fiction Short Film, Best Special Effects(Scott C Miller), Best Short Film Screenplay(Melvin Cartagena), and Best Sound Design(Marcia Goetsch). Congratulations to the people who are being recognized for their work in making this award-winning film.
Cold wins Officially Groovy Film Award from Planet 9 Film Festival: “Extreme emotional horror. Black and white in a triad. A good eerie film.”
Scan, Mel Cartagena’s new super-short in the sci-fi genre, is coming along nicely in post. Soon you too can see a power that alienates confront a fear that blinds. The fight will happen within! Poster designed by Mel Cartagena.
Get ready for Season 2 by watching Season 1 of Magicland on Seeka.TV! Catch up on the latest carny Skink with Conductor Bob.
Magicland has been selected by Sony Pictures LA Web Fest this April 28-30 and has been nominated for four awards: Outstanding Comedy Series, Outstanding Actor (Frederick Fairbanks), Outstanding Actress (Mary Ferrara), and Outstanding Cinematography (Tim Labonte). Here’s hoping!
Weekend Getaway is now available online. This horror comedy short by Jenn Dlugos and Andrea Henry was fun to make and is fun to watch. If you think your office job is oppressive you’ll appreciate just how much worse it can get!
And that’s a wrap for Mel Cartagena’s new sci-fi super short Scan! Shot entirely at The Hearing Room in Lowell, MA a great place for art and music events. Cast and crew were amazing and what a warm welcoming environment and group of people. Scan is now officially in post-production with the first assembly just out the door.
So what’s better for our sci-fi short than being selected for the Boston Sci-Fi Film Festival!! An 11-day cinematic event held at the historic Somerville Theatre from February 10th to the 20th. The 2017 edition marks its 42nd anniversary as the oldest genre fest in America. And we will be there! Hope you will too.
We are infinitely exhilarated to announce that The Adjustment Technicians has been selected for the Cosmic Film Festival February 7-8, 2017 in Orlando, Florida. The festival showcases at the AMC Cineplex Universal City Walk and features panels and workshops with industry experts and red carpet events with celebrity guests. Will we see you at the Awards Show & After Dinner Party with a Cosmic Masquerade Theme? Congratulations to the cast and crew of this cosmic short.
Bwwwwwaaahaaaa!!! — Weekend Getaway has been selected for the Shawna Shea Film Festival November 10, 2016. Congratulations to the outstanding cast and crew that made this terrific horror comedy short. Thank you so much Skip Shea for the honor and can’t wait to see the festival.
Taboo has been nominated for the Jose Sarria Memorial Award for Best Drama Short Film at San Antonio QFest. We are humbled and honored to be invited to such distinction. So proud of the talented cast and crew that went into making this moment possible and to the festival program directors for welcoming our film with such recognition. Hurray, hurray, hurray!!
Congratulations to Jocelyn Padilla the star of Taboo for her two award nominations at San Antonio QFest: the Marsha P Johnson Memorial Award for Best Portrayal of an LBGT Minority and the Barbara Gittings Memorial Award for Best Female Performance. Brava!!
We are thrilled to announce that The Adjustment Technicians has won a merit award for WRPN Short Tight & Loose Film Competition. Kudos to the fantastic work by the cast and crew who made this short sci-fi film. Check out ours and many other independent films at WRPN.TV.
Rosebud Studios and Seven Times Productions invite you to attend the online screening of Taboo at the Great Lakes International Film Festival September 22-October 1, 2016!
Dorothy, a nightclub singer of color in the 1930’s, is torn between her husband manager, Charles and her white lover Howard. A love that’s taboo. Charles’ suspicions mount leading to a shocking confrontation.
A short film noir.
Please come watch and if you like what you see, please give us your vote!
Grab your seats, get ready to ride, Texas here we come, October 13-16, Taboo is screening at San Antonio QFest!! It doesn’t get better than this for our awesome cast and crew! Looking at plane tickets now. You too! I knew it! See you there!
Rosebud Studios is proud to announce that our horror comedy short film Weekend Getaway has been selected to screen at the 401 Film Fest in Warwick, Rhode Island! It will be screening in Showcase 3 at the Artic Playhouse October 22nd 7:30PM. We are PSYCHed and will be HORRORified if we don’t see you there! What a TERRORible cast and crew went into the making of this film with some real things to SCREAM about! We can see you LAUGHing already!
We are exhilarated and delighted to tell you that Taboo has been selected for the Cinema Systers Film Festival in Paducah, Kentucky September 9-11. What a testament to the cast and crew who put their heart and soul into this film. It really is a humbling feeling to have the appreciation of the film festival for our work. We would so love to see you at Maiden Alley Cinema.
Taboo has been selected for Gender Reel and will screen in Minneapolis at the Trylon Microcinema 3258 Minnehaha Ave on October 13th! Free cookies and coffee will be served! The cast and crew, proud and thrilled, hope you will drop in.
CASTING CALL FOR NEW WEB SERIES.
NON-PAYING, NON UNION.
SATURDAY, JULY 16 11 AM - 1 PM
Community College of Rhode Island, Warwick Campus, Round Building, enter through the double doors and follow signs to designated room.
CASTING FOR:
BAILEY: mid-20s; hipster; tomboyish/femme; Boston accent
ASHLEY: early 20’s; girl next door; feminine; Southern accent
BOB: early 30’s or older; flirtatious with a serious side; one of Bailey’s best friends; Boston accent
MEGAN: late 20’s; Ashley’s older sister; critical of Ashley but means well; Southern accent
MARK: late 20’s-early 30’s; Megan’s husband; businessman (travels a lot); Southern accent
TRISTA: mid-late 20’s; Bailey’s best friend; spunky; Boston accent
LEE: mid-late 20’s; Trista’s husband; laid back; Boston accent
PAT: late 30’s; Ashley’s best friend; offers advice and guidance to Ashley; Southern accent
CHRIS: early-mid 30’s; Ashley’s boyfriend; banker; serious; Southern accent
WILLIAM: 45-55 ish; Bailey’s dad; a gentle soul and a silver fox; Boston accent
AMY: mid-20’s; Bailey’s girlfriend; a realist in every situation; Boston accent
EXTRAS: those with speaking lines will need to have either Boston or Southern accents; we will be looking for between 10-15 extras
Please prepare a contemporary monologue, 2 minutes or less. Readings from the provided script will also take place.
Please email head shots, resume and demo reel (if available) to:
itsjustcoffee7x@gmail.com to set up an audition time and also indicate the part or parts you wish to read for.
We’ve been working hard on a poster for The Adjustment Technicians. Let us know what you think!
We are thrilled to announce that Taboo has been selected for the Springfield LGBT Film Festival May 22-26 in Springfield, Massachusetts. The competition was incredible with over 500 films submitted this year. Congratulations to the outstanding cast and crew who made this short film noir into such a beautiful film. What an exciting and gratifying ride. Hope to see many of you actors and filmmakers at the event. Good show!
Shooting begins Saturday on Melvin Cartagena’s new short Sci-Fi film The Adjustment Technicians. When a job seeker doesn’t get responses, adjustments must be made. The production brings together old faces and new. The research was fun. New gear was acquired. The checklists are done. The weather looks fine. A new season has begun. Camera. Sound. Action!
Feeling oppressed at the office? Looking for a weekend getaway? Rosebud Studios presents Weekend Getaway a short horror-comedy by filmmakers Jenn Dlugos and Andrea Henry starring Frederick Fairbanks and Brad Rhodes.
As I work on the audio for Weekend Getaway I have found Jay Rose’s book
Audio Post Production for Film and Video
invaluable. I am an editor not a sound engineer so I love that he explains the concepts based on analog hardware in a way that I understand. Most other books cookbooks are focused on music production so his focus on film production is incredibly awesome. I work through the EQ, dynamics, reverb, pitch shifts, and other effects for the sound correction of our horror-comedy Weekend Getaway with confidence. He describes the underlying concepts so well that I manipulate the plugins in Avid Pro Tools far better than I ever have in the past. Highly recommend his approach!
Some big career news for Vasilios Asimakos in LA: After countless submissions and followup auditions/meetings, he was offered representation by four different agencies. After some deliberation with his friends and his own judgment, he made a decision! The well-reputed Angel City Talent has offered to represent him both theatrically and commercially, and he has accepted! He is super excited and eager to turn the page and begin living the next productive chapter of his acting career.
Magicland Halloween Episode, Taboo, Cold and Weekend Getaway the last three as rough cuts were on the big screen - er big sheet - at the Fright Film Fest this Halloween. Attendants included Major Nelson & Jeannie, Dorothy & The Scarecrow missing his er brain, Ghostbusters, Tatoo, Kittie, Jason, Hippies, Tim Ber ad Lay Ber, The Doctor and a host of other trick-or-treaters. Vikki Rush and Mike Rush created the frightful film encounter that Kate King and Dale Saccoccio hosted in the All Hallows Eve festivities featuring eyeball martinis, grape leaf fingers, date cockroaches, and many other terrible dilectables. A horrible time was enjoyed by all.
Very excited to announce that Taboo, written and directed by Jennifer Grossman is shooting over the next three days in Rhode Island! Starring Jocelyn Padilla as a nightclub singer who finds herself in a tumultuous love triangle in the 1930’s and shot by DP Ed Wright on his pimped up Panasonic GH4 rig. Film noir, lighting and shadows, smoking and drinking, maybe just a touch here and there. I tip my hat to the cast and crew.
So the film is done and it’s time to submit to film festivals, but which ones? What I need is a film festival strategy! I look around and find Film Festival Secrets: A Handbook For Independent Filmmakers. The basic idea it recommends is to compile a tiered spreadsheet of the festivals I want to submit to.
There are four tiers. My top tier I have the premiere film festivals: Sundance, Aspen and Palm Springs. My second tier is the Oscar short films qualifying film festivals. This year there were 19 qualifying film festivals. To qualify for the Oscars I need to be selected and win a qualifying award for the festival. These festivals vary widely in what they are looking for and they have professional festival programmers overseeing the selection process so they are looking for something different. I can dream can’t I? My third tier is the well established well run festivals that are not qualifying. My fourth and final tier is the new festivals without a track record and the established film festivals that have had a hard time in the last few years. I want to include the festivals that I can drive to and the festivals that sound cool and the festivals in places I’d like to visit with a focus on those that might have a mission in line with my film. Deciding whether a particular festival is third or fourth tier is really hard.
With my now too long list of potential festivals I put all the event dates into a calendar and spreadsheet with submission deadlines, premiere requirements and exhibition formats. I can see there are conflicts. Sometimes two or more festivals are held at the same time. I choose which to postpone to next year and prioritize those with conflicting premiere requirements. Also I can’t afford to have my film made into every possible exhibition format. So I settle on BluRay and DCP and postpone those requiring HDCAM or DigiBeta. I consult with my family schedule and resolve the family conflicts. My list is now much shorter.
I submit to the first few in the top three tiers with looming submission deadlines via Withoutabox, FilmFreeway or the festival’s website and off I go! Into the spreadsheet I enter the fees, the tracking ID and the notification dates. I have my strategy! Now I need to make those BluRays and DCPs!
In the last week I visited New Orleans, a city filled to the brim with artists and musicians, I attended a moving memorial for my friend’s mother, a well known artist who recently passed away, and I enjoyed a delicious dinner with two artists hosted by my neighbor who herself is also an artist. Listening to these artists I realized that art has a different meaning for the artists who create it than it does for the audience who will eventually be the judge of its value and worth. Artists are entangled by the creating itself. Caught up in a web of this idea, this medium, this tecnique, this story, or is it that idea, that medium, that tecnique, that story?
Breathe. It will be fine. It will work out. It will come together. It is art.
I am hard at work editing COLD. But before I begin cutting I find it invaluable to create an editing script. In case you are not familiar with editing scripts I find them helpful for understanding what clips I have available when I am cutting. Since shoot schedules are not in scene order it is easy to become lost as to what you have where.
My workflow starts with the usual log and transfer of all the clips into Final Cut Pro X, adding Camera Name, Reel, Scene, Take and Camera Angle information for each clip. I add keywords for the Talent in each clip. I have separate events for each Daily with folders for Audio, Reels, Scenes, Shots, Synced, Talent and Video. These folders contain smart folders which collect and organize the clips. I synchronize the video and audio using the Synchronize Clips feature in FCPX and add Scene, Take and Camera Angle information and Talent keywords for the synchronized clips too.
Now I export all the clip information into a spreadsheet with Producers Best Friend, a great little App from Intelligent Assistant. I add columns for Shot and Daily and sort the worksheet by Scene, Shot, Daily and Take so I can see my clips in script order.
I annotate a PDF of the final draft of the script using the free app Skim. For each clip I add a vertical line in the script indicating what the clip covers, and I add a note indicating a shot description, which daily it came from, the shot number and the available takes. I color code this so that it is clear when there are different dailies available. The process of doing this forces me to view the clips in the order of the script. I am really getting a sense of the film as a whole.
Now I can sit down with the director and go over all the clips.
The last pickup shots are done! COLD has wrapped! Thanks to the cast and crew who worked for up to two years on this psychological thriller by Ed Wright. We turn our attention now to post production starting with a terrific poster by Vikki Rush.
A running joke in my family is my love for reading a book for this, that or the other. When I want to try something, I usually start with finding some book about it and reading along as I try to do it. My husband says if he sees me reading a book about brain surgery he is leaving! So here is a list of books that I find valuable as I learn to make films, in case you find them valuable too.
The list is roughly in the order I use them in making a film: from screenwriting to submitting a film to film festivals.