Folks, we're going to Filmapalooza!
Eric here, and I'm so pumped to announce that our entry into this year's Minneapolis 48 Hour Film Project, "Keeping Up with the Cloneses," has been awarded several honors, including Best Sound Design, Best Writing for Marcus Mann's script, Best Actress for Debra Berger's performance, Audience Favorite for our screening group, and BEST FILM overrall! That's right, errbody, we did pretty good this year!
The 48HFP took place the weekend of June 6-8. At 6:30pm Friday Night, Marcus, Andrew, and I hit the Crooked Pint in downtown Minneapolis along with the other 67 teams to draw our genres and get our required elements. We then dashed down to our location, a lovely old house in South Minnie, and started brainstorming! It didn't go well. After two hours our only decent idea had been offered by Marcus who said, "so she's a government cloner, okay?"
A few hours after that, we had a fantastic script, Andrew and Sam Johnson (our Cinematographer (he also shot Boxing with God)) were shotlisting, and our actresses were all lined up to begin shooting in the morning!
Saturday was a long day. We began bright and early, bleary-eyed and un-showered. I sat upstairs editing the footage as it came in, while Andrew directed the action below, and Marcus kept everyone on-track by playing Assistant Director. Our great friend Craig Larson (the titular character in Boxing with God) recorded audio, Sam Johnson ran the BlackMagic Pocket, and we all had the pleasure of working with Katie Vannelli again! Keep an eye out for her in the lead role of the upcoming Meanwhile at the Citadel of Superheroes...! We were also lucky enough to experience the acting talent of Debra Berger for the first time, a relatively new friend of the Jackets who we've been dying to work with!
Despite some last-minute, late-night rewrites, we managed to finish shooting around 1am Sunday morning, catch some Zs, and finish up the edit on Sunday. It was a race against the clock as we rendered the final file, hopped in the car, took some liberties with some Speed Limit signs, and handed the film in with minutes to spare!
The following Wednesday, June 18, "Keeping Up with the Cloneses" debuted in front of a large audience at the Riverview Theatre along with several other films in our screening group. The reaction was spectacular and the following Tuesday we were floored to find out we had made it to the Best Of Fest screening on Thursday, the 26th!
Although Marcus wasn't able to attend (he'd scampered off to Ohio just days before) it was a fantastic night of great movies and bated breath! We swept every award we were nominated for (Best Sound Design, Best Actress, and Best Writing) and were thrilled to receive the Audience Favorite award for our screening group. After "Cloneses" closed the screening portion of the night, the big moment arrived. We all held our collective breath as they counted off the runners-up awards, and we could not believe it when "Keeping Up with the Cloneses" was announced as Best Film of the 2014 Minneapolis 48 Hour Film Project. Simply amazing.
Overall, this year's 48 was a challenging one. We pushed ourselves to make a movie the likes of which we've never done before, and ultimately we were rewarded for the effort. We couldn't have done it without our dedicated supporters, amazing crew, and freakishly talented actresses. From myself, Andrew, and the not-so-distant Marcus, we'd like to thank everyone who saw our weird little movie. I'll be posting it online ASAP, so check back here over the weekend!
Left to Right: Debra Berger, Eric Carlson, Andrew Neill, Katie Vannelli, and Craig Larson
Now on to the worldwide competition.... See you at Filmapalooza 2015!
Overwhelmed,
Eric