THIRD TIME AROUND - Lovecraft Film Festival - Day Two By Derek M. Koch on Oct 11, 2003

I didn’t know I could hold my breath that long.

Nestled right in the middle of ‘Shorts Block One’ was Casonetto’s Last Song, and it went over fairly well.

I hadn’t watched the movie in about a week-and-a-half, and in that time, I somehow magnified in my own head all the perceived problems with the movie. I imagined the sound as being a LOT worse than it actually was. I imagined the glitches that crept up as being GLITCHES. And I managed to have a mini-nightmare in which the festival director went in and “fixed” my movie by changing the sound mix by just upping the volume and re-doing the credits as 8-bit style graphics with a red background.

Fortunately, the movie played as is, without any of the preceding problems.

I got to the festival around 5:30-ish today. I had to skip the earlier-in-the-day seminar/workshop they had with Lovecraft scholar and author S.T. Joshi as well as some other folk since I had to, you know, put in an appearance at my job and all (but I’ll make sure to hit that next year – apparently my movie got mentioned at some point during the panel discussion), but I planned on getting in a full night’s worth. Unlike the night before, I wasn’t alone this time. My Best Destiny partners and collaborators on Casonetto’s Last Song Aaron Lucchesi and Joel Albrecht both met me outside the theatre, and my actors Brian Jones and Matt Ludwick also showed up. It was nice to see them again and hearing them say something other than one of the lines from the movie as that’s ALL I’d heard them say for the past month or so while editing the movie.

Because the previous night’s trailer for it looked so good, I decided to catch THE SHUNNED HOUSE, and over all, it was all right. The movie itself combined three of Lovecraft’s stories into one film (and did it a HELL of a lot better than Necronomicon which is also scheduled at the festival), and while it might have dragged a LITTLE long, it was still a good movie. I enjoyed it.

After the movie, I ran into David Jackson, or lead from ‘Casonetto’s…’ Took some pictures and caught up with each other while killing a few minutes between shows.

And then it was on to ‘Shorts Block One.’

The best shorts were already shown the previous night, so there’s really not much to say other than that I REALLY like ‘The Imperfect Solution.’

Casonetto’s… seemed to play pretty well. There was a little bit of chuckling over one roughly-edited bit of dialogue, but over all, I think people dug it. Hell, it got some applause, and not all the shorts shown can claim that.

’The Imperfect Solution’ played immediately after my short, and while I like this movie a lot, I had to step out of the theatre for a moment and catch my breath.

All sorts of were going through my head, most of them over-dramatic-but-really-small-in-retrospect-rants, but mostly I was glad it was over.

And that people liked it.

THAT’S what making movies was about for me right then, my friends. Telling stories, telling good stories, to people, and having them like it.

I snuck in and caught the end of ‘The Imperfect Solution’ and finished up ‘Shorts Block One,’ spending most of the time distracted because I was thinking about what kind of short I could make and submit for NEXT year’s festival.

It’s so late right now, I’m not going to spend a lot of time posting any of the pics I took last night. I needs me my sleep because tomorrow’s going to be an even busier and longer day with shows starting at 2:00 and running until midnight again . . .

It’s a good thing I really enjoy this, eh?