THIRD TIME AROUND - Lovecraft Film Festival - Last Day By Derek M. Koch on Oct 13, 2003

It’s all done . . .

The fourth day of the festival was a full bag of emotions for me . . . I was able to catch the other ‘Shorts Blocks’ that I missed, and I was grateful for that and all, but, you know . . . this is the first time in my three years attending this festival that I REALLY didn’t want it to end.

Well, maybe I don’t really mind the spending-most-of-the-afternoon-and-evening-at-the-theatre-watching-movies part, but I will miss the people. I was able to spend more time this year talking with the different filmmakers and artists, and I learned a lot. I’m going to miss that in the weeks to come as I get back into my regularly-scheduled life.

Of the shorts shown, some of my favorites included Rick Tillman’s Pickman’s Model and The Thing on the Doorstep directed by Eric Morgret.

In both cases, the stories serving as the inspiration for these adaptations were tapped as film fodder by more than one filmmaking group (there were two Pickman’s Models and two movies based on The Thing on the Doorstep this year), but in the case of these two films, they really rose above most of the other shorts.

Pickmans’ Model was adapted as a period piece, and director Tillman did took inspiration from fellow filmmaker Christian Matzke’s website Propping Up the Mythos to add the sense of realism the film needed.

The Thing on the Doorstep was modernized, and in this case, it worked well. The direction was the element that made this movie stand out, and, as with Rick Tillman, I’m looking forward to what these filmmakers do next.

I sat in on a Q&A session with filmmaker Bryan Moore and actor Jack Donner about their screened short film Cool Air. This short was filmed in 1998, and Moore decided to shoot on 16mm film.

Other than realizing that Jack Donner is a heckuva nice guy, what I picked up most from this session was how lucky we are to be able to shoot on video. The amount of money Moore dropped on this half-hour short was . . . well . . . in the end about $35,000, which still isn’t a whole lot in the grand scheme of filmmaking and all, but . . . man . . . $35,000 . . . given the kinds of movies I make right now, do you realize how many things I could shoot with that kind of money?

To be fair, though, Cool Air is considered a “classic” in the Lovecraft film circle, and its reputation is well-deserved.

When it was time to leave, I said my good-bye’s and made me way out of the theatre. This year’s festival was over . . .

And while I was sad to be leaving some of the friends I’ve met here behind, there was one over-riding thought that kept running through my mind on the way home . . .

What can I make for next year’s festival?

(Rather than peppering this THIRD TIME AROUND installment with all sorts of pictures and such, I think I'd rather post this link - Derek M. Koch's H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival Picture Gallery - and let people check out the photos for themselves.)