East Lansing Film Festival

I just received word that my film was accepted into the East Lansing Film Festival in November. I have no information on the screenings, other than it will be on Sunday, November 13, 2011.

Info can be found here.

Reflections after the final screening

The film screened, as part of Split Pillow's Chicago360 v.5 documentary series, for the last time this weekend. Although I wasn't able to be there for the final screen, I do sincerely believe that those who saw it at Lincoln Hall were both educated and entertained (I call it the "spoonful of sugar" approach to documentary filmmaking).

Now to be honest, no one ever thinks their film is done, or perfect. There's always something you would change or do differently. I worried that I was too gentle on my cast, took too soft of a position on the issue of how best to deal with the Asian carp "invasion" and essentially downplayed the inherent dramatic conflict of this story. Partly because I internalized some early feedback on the final rough cut, which may not have been the healthiest for my psyche (in hindsight of course). And partly because the short format didn't leave me with much room to delve a bit more into the characters and their positions. I was holding on to that as the lights dimmed, the crowd settled and the result of nearly 1 year of labor on my part flickered and danced across the big silver screen.

I probably didn't exhale until the first round of laughter. Good thing that was around 0:45 seconds in!

One thing I was able to do this weekend, was watch about an hour of Jon Stewart's Rally To Restore Sanity on cable. (Thanks neighbors for letting me dog sit and enjoy your bountiful TV.) The feedback I got on an early cut, was that my point of view for the film came across in the end (good) and that it was essentially "this carp issue really isn't that big of a deal" (rut-ro?) so I have been obsessing over that in my mind for weeks. Now watching Jon Stewart lambaste the media for being inflammatory fear-mongers, I realized that's exactly the thesis of my film. It's not "hey, this isn't a big deal so let's not worry," but rather "hey, these fish are here, it's our fault, that's very real. but let's not panic and hype and scare to the point that we're paralyzed. cause if we do, then the terrorists win."

Thank you Jon Stewart for helping me crystalize that.

Home, Sweet Home

Back in LA with trusty drives in hand. The bad news is that DP and I were booked on the last flight out of O'Hare and the worse news is that flight was delayed for about 2 hours. The flight between LAX and ORD might possibly be a tesseract into a special circle of hell designed to torment weary filmmakers. I was so exhausted, so ready to be in my bed, so missing my kitty that I decided to pass the time reviewing footage on the plane and mucking around with my new copy of Final Cut Pro. How or why I was unable to sleep I will probably never know...

So now I am home. Coffee mug in hand, kitty purring beside me. Need a spine adjustment, I think.

I am ready to reflect on what I learned during filming. Not ready to start the exhausting process of reviewing and logging footage. Not just yet.

Production Photos

If you want to see stills from production, click this.

The Kindness of Strangers

Shooting is going pretty well so far. I hired a great sound recordist who can back up as DP which is serendipitous, since we just found out we are getting the opportunity to shoot the city, lake and waterways from a helicopter (yay, yay, yay!), and my DP is convinced that the laws of physics dicate such a machine should not remain aloft and therefore refuses to get into it (boo, boo, boo!)

But to each his own, right? Of course, the helicopter ride takes the cake for being the flashiest example of the kindness of strangers, but we have been treated like royalty all week (ok, royalty who has to lug their own film equipment themselves), but I feel like a princess nonetheless.

The crew has been given access to shoot from the bows of a Wendella sightseeing boat, in the belly of the Field Museum, a bustling kitchen at the Palmer House Hilton, on a barge moving up the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal - through the electric fish barrier, and now, the helicopter. It's truly amazing to me again, how passionate folks are about this issue, and now how generous folks are with their time and resources.

I could make an entire doc exclusively starring each one of my amazing cast members!

Is "casting" a dirty word?

As I'm finalizing the list of folks who I will interview on-camera for the film, the word "cast" keeps coming up. Lots of documentaries refer to their subjects as cast, although its connotations are a bit naughty since they hint at something deliberate rather than something organic. We all know that reality TV shows are cast according to a bit of a formula, the sexpot, the serious one, the loose cannon, etc... Of course for my documentary the Asian carp and the city of Chicago are my subjects so for lack of a better word, the people that I've enlisted to speak on-camera about the carp and the city are cast members.

I have only phone-interviewed these people, and they all seem lovely, helpful, knowledgeable and will hopefully help present this issue from all sides. And please, please let there not be a loose cannon in the bunch!

Now that you are intrigued - for the sake of privacy, the fact that all of the cast might not make it into the final film (for time or story), and a bit of suspense - I am keeping the cast under wraps, for now.

Why LOST, Why?

I just found out that after 7 years of loyal "what's down the hatch?"-ing and "who is kate going to end up with?"-ing, and "what the heck is that island, anyway?"-ing, that the series finale of LOST that everyone in the free world is waiting to see, is airing on the weekend smack in the middle of my principal photography.

How, in any space-time continuum, is that fair?