So, after the big incident, I skipped 2 days of SXSW. It was a little bit because I just wasn't feeling like going downtown, but I also had some other film-related things to do. Friday was my first day on set as field producer and director for Omiro Films. We film 3 shorts a week, all related to laws in Texas. An industry friend of mine usually does this job, but while she's out of the country directing a play, I'm filling her shoes. Its a big job, but I'm glad to expand my directing and producing resume beyond TurtleDove. We had just enough time after my shoot to grab some dinner before we headed to a readthru for a film Duncan and I are both acting in. We had planned to go to a midnight moving afterwards, but downtown was CRAZY. Our readthru was just north of the maddness, so we had to drive through it to get back to our usual parking spot and just the sheer volume of people walking around on the streets made us think twice about seeing a movie downtown that late at night.
Saturday, however, made up for the two previous days. That morning, we had a breakfast meeting with a producer who donated to our Seed & Spark campaign. As per the incentive she claimed, we will be serving as her private production house for a short film script she has written, so, we met about that. The meeting was very productive and Richelle was an absolute delight. After 9 days of south by, we were already newly invigorated to get started on some scripts, but this meeting boosted our spirits even more. Stay tuned for more news on that!
After our meeting with her, we went to see "Space Station 76," a highly stylized film about people living in space. It was just the kind of thing both Duncan and I enjoy. I think it was one of the best films I saw in the festival! Matt Bomer, in particular, was so charming on screen. Along with the well thought out casting choices, I particularly liked the design of the film. It was set in a time period that never actually existed and never will. It was "the future" but also clearly designed with 1970's influence. After the film, the director said a few words and opened it up to a Q&A where he explained that the 70's influence came from his experience growing up in the 70's, which I found very interesting. Sci-fi is just totally my thing and I loved every minute of it. Although there were some slow parts, it just felt like real life in a totally not real situation. Great juxtaposition.
Immediately following "Space Station 76" we headed over to "The Doug Benson Movie Interruption" screening. He and several other well-known comedians who were in town for SXSW gave us their live commentary on "Big Trouble in Little China" which was absolutely hilarious. Not only was the concept of the event genius, it was housed at the Alamo Drafthouse, so we were in a very casual setting in which we could eat and drink our beers with these comedians like we were just hanging out on our own living room. Although I had never seen the film before, I still thought their commentary was hilarious and am so glad we ended up going.
After the Movie Interruption, we decided to make up for the past few days and make the day a triple header. We headed over to the Vimeo Theatre to see the winner of the Episodic category, a new HBO show, "Silicon Valley." It had all the newest funniest people in it, including Martin Starr (a comedic actor that's had my heart since "Freaks and Geeks") and it was pretty fun. The premise is that a group of guys who all live together in silicon valley are all tech nerds working to develop the "next big thing" in app development or some niche in the internet that hasn't be claimed yet. They showed us the first two episodes. I thought it was fun and interesting, but I'm still on the fence about whether I'll DVR it to continue watching. I probably will, because, hey, I love Television, but I don't know if I would have started watching it in the first place had it not been for this screening.
So that was my final Saturday at SXSW. Stay tuned for one more blog on my post-mortem of the whole festival. I'll be discussing what it felt like to be there as a local among thousands of people who are not and how I feel about the festival in general after attending the film portion this year. Happy reading! xoxo
