Cinéfest Sudbury Dispatch #3: THE VOLUNTEER World Premiere!!

Finally!! The premiere of THE VOLUNTEER! It's hard to believe that two years after shooting and three years after writing the story, we finally unveiled it to our first public audience!

It was weird standing outside the theatre and hearing the ushers directing customers - "You're here for The Volunteer? Number Four to your right."

It was like, "Really? But... you don't even know us!"

The experience was nerve-wracking but rewarding and my mind went back to this horrific experience by now-revered director, Wes Anderson, on the first screening of his first movie, BOTTLE ROCKET (1996). Unlike poor Wes, most of our audience stuck around to the end and gave us a nice hand.

Managing Director Patrick O'Hearn was, once again, wonderful in facilitating a great Q&A where everybody got to get up in front and say some words about their role and experience rehearsing and shooting. Amazingly, nobody said the words, "It turned me off filmmaking forever." A few key cast members were missing - Theodore Bouloukos and Cheryl Lee - we missed you!

Finally, we leave you with the kind words of a woman who raised her hand during the Q&A:

"I don't really have a question; I just wanted to say you guys knocked it out of the park! It was beautiful and wonderful and I want to watch everything you make."

UPDATE:
Andrew Cherry, Dave Walpole, and I went to the gala that evening (there's a gala every evening, free booze and food! Live music! What's not to like?) and there we got the real heart of the Cinéfest experience. We were recognized and people were coming up to us, to take pictures with us, telling us they loved our movie! It was fantastic and weird!

The demographic at Cinéfest skews 60yrs+ and many of them had been dedicated Cinéfest-goers for 26 years, since the beginning. A number of people told us they watch easily 30 or more films over the nine-day festival. One woman told me, "We're a town of workers, and we really appreciate the work you guys do to make films." There's a reason why Cinéfest bills itself "the people's festival". The folks here are hard-core cinephiles who not only appreciate the art, but the enormous amount of WORK that goes into making that art.

Seeing RED!

Well, friends, it's been awhile since we've posted but that does not mean we've been resting on our so-called "laurels".

Since we (well, really, YOU) hit our fundraising goal at the end of May, we've been busy locking locations, wrangling camera, lenses, crew, and all the other pieces necessary to make an awesome movie!

The most exciting thing we've done so far is to take the RED ONE digital film camera for a test drive. For those of you who don't know, the RED ONE is a professional film industry camera that has been used to shoot masterpieces like The Social Network (skip to 0:54 mark to get to RED footage).

We packed in a full 16-hour day with a nearly full crew: 2 sound guys (boom + mixer), 3 camera guys, (Cinematographer, 1st Assistant Camera, 2nd Assistant Camera).

Here's our director Jon peering into the monitor of the RED ONE. On the monitor and in the background you will see Ken standing in a river, in Elmira ON.

What you can't see is that Ken mucked around in that water for about an hour and was thoroughly soaked by the end of it. When we came out of the river, a young guy wearing a camouflage mesh-back hat and a Three Wolf Moon t-shirt saw us, laughed, and said:

"You're not from around here, are you? I wouldn't step into that water unless I was wearin' hip-waders. You're gonna be glowing in the dark tonight!"

Apparently nobody thought to tell Ken that there was a chemical plant spill across the street some years ago and that nobody but foolish outsiders go swimming in that water. Awesome. Noting the panic on Ken's face, he added hastily, "You'll be fine, though... I'm sure."

Later on in the day we shot at our favourite location at Roadside Farm outside Wellesley, ON. Beautiful, filmic, friendly farmers, and lots of space and privacy.


Here's a sample screen grab from our day featuring Andrew Cherry.

(We've posted this image despite the fact that our DP, Chris Schneider, is not completely happy with his lighting in this shot. C'mon, Schnitz - it's looks pretty amazing for an ungraded test shot).

So - we learned a lot and are super super grateful for our crew for volunteering a FULL day with us. Shout outs to:

Sound: 
Luke Bennett (www.theredcarpetstudio.com)
Ian Reynolds

Camera:
Cole Bennett (www.colebennett.com)
Andrew Musselman (www.eclinmedia.com)
Christopher Schneider (imdb.com profile)

Y'all rock.