Festival submissions and more

I submitted "Survival Record" and "Silence" to the Ivy Film Festival. Since it's ostensibly for undergraduate and graduate filmmakers, this will hopefully cut out the "Hollywood indie" shorts that are shot with $50-100k budgets on 35mm with name actors. Might be up against some NYU grad students who spend almost as much, though.

I'm submitting my three major films from this year to Cannes, also. "Survival Record," "Silence," and "The Discarded Body" will all be sent to France tomorrow. I doubt they'll accept anything, but you never know.

My next film is going to occupy most of my summer. It's set in the Philippines at the end of World War II and follows a soldier who is left behind by the retreating Imperial Japanese Army. Estimated length is 20 minutes. My aesthetic goal for this film is extreme restraint - no music, mostly a single 25mm lens, and very little dialogue. I noticed on some of my earlier films that the small screen (computer or television) was affecting my framing and editing in the sense that it was too close, too fast for the large screen. I'm going to try to work on this project as if it were a feature that was intended for projection in a theatre, not viewing at home. I modified my Bolex H16M to Super 16 and I will shoot on Plus-X negative. Both of these changes will ideally avoid the amateurish small-screen look.