It seems almost inconceivable that the first wedding of the year I’m actually shooting for my own company, that I’ll have to edit, is finally coming up this weekend… and it’s nearly freaking June!! People aren’t kidding when they say the market is drying up for wedding vendors. Looks like everyone and their mother is trying to cut costs by having relatives with little crappy HD cameras shoot their wedding or hiring a video student with no equipment to do it just because Chip will do it for $100. Not just anyone can shoot a wedding, you know. Believe me when I say that. When I worked for Starshowz, the majority of the edits I had to turn around weren’t weddings I shot, and let’s just say you never realize how truly good you are until you see how someone can royally screw the dog essentially doing the same job on a “professional level”. One guy in particular comes to mind… and now another… and there’s a third one…. Memory lane is occasionally paved with a slick coat of doggy dooky.

 

But with that said, I’m still not starving by any means, and I hope that my new partnership with DSP Fotographie (no I’m not spelling that wrong) yields a vast amount of rewards. I met with Meghan and her partner Dmitriy last week, and they’re charming as hell with a wealth of talent to match. I look forward to seeing how this collaboration works out.

 

 

Also, in the world of film, there’s cause for celebration! Purple Heart’s Final Beat has been accepted into its fifth film festival! This June, my short film about the reality facing returning American veterans will be screened as part of the Detroit Windsor International Film Festival, and it marks the first time that the film will be shown theatrically outside the US! I am so excited and I can’t wait for the day to come. But in the meantime I’m faced with the added pressure of either getting a passport or an extended license. It seems that my lax approach to the subject – okay, I’ll just call it what it is: apathy – has caught up with me and I’ll have to get cracking on getting my birth certificate. I’m still at a loss to explain how the hell I lost it. On my second – and last – trip to Canada as a booze-craving 19 year old, I put the certificate in a copy of Welcome to the Monkey House by Kurt Vonnegut and figured it would stay there. Damn gremlins…

 

 

And our final bit of news for the week: In a surprise to end them all, The Haywire Effect will be screened theatrically this October as part of Connie Mangilin’s Mitten Movie Project. That night, a vote will be tallied to see if the crowd would be in favor of seeing the Best of the 2011 MMP shorts reviewed the following January. It’s going to be interesting to see how a webisode of a movie review plays to a packed house full of nerds.

 

In the effort to make sure that it plays as well as possible, I have begun revising the original episode with new jokes and all new narration. I was never truly satisfied with my original efforts and now that the episode will be screened, it’s given me the opportunity to complete it more to my liking. However, just because I’ve already started work on it doesn’t mean you’ll be seeing it any time soon. I have no intention of posting the “director’s cut” online until after the Mitten Movie Project screens it, so if you want to see it first, you’ll have to attend!!