Tales from the Premiere

Spirit’s Requiem premiered yesterday to critical acclaim, which is to say that my mom liked it.

You want I should be serious? Alrighty then. It was a cold night, but inside the library conference room of Webster University things were heating up (okay, I swear, I’ll be serious now).The first order of business was to get the movie ready for viewing, which turned out to be much harder than imagined. The DVD wouldn’t play on the Blu-Ray player, so we tried playing it on the computer only to find that there were severe issues with the frame rate. Things were looking bad. If the movie didn’t work then what would we do? Act out the thing in front of the audience? Stage plays aren’t my thing, so we tried hooking up my laptop – which the DVD played perfectly on earlier that day – only to find that my laptop didn’t want to interface with the projector. Ain’t technology grand?

And then I hit upon an idea. You know my motto: if it doesn’t work then try it again.* I popped the DVD back into the conference room computer and tried playing it on that one media player that’s symbolized by a traffic cone. You know the one. THAT one. It worked, crisis averted, at least until the audience realized that there would be no cake.

Yes, there was in fact an audience. Most of the cast and crew showed up along with their friends and family. No uninvited guests allowed, for i’twas a private screening. People began filtering in just before 6pm, passing through a battalion of well armed bouncers prepared to prevent any unwelcome guests from entering.

The show started fashionably late at 6:30pm and ended shortly before 7:20pm to a big round of applause, followed promptly by cookies and hot apple cider.

What did people like? Pretty much everything, I didn’t hear a bad thing said. Granted, this might have been due to them wanting to be nice to the filmmaker, but I sensed some genuine-uity in their words.

The acting. All of our actors put on superb performances. As many independent  filmmakers (see here for a definition of independent) know it is extremely difficult to find good actors, especially in a Midwestern town far, far removed from LA or New York. It was a combination of luck and good casting decisions that brought us this talented cast.

The music. I know, I know, I’ve praised Jonathan Peros’ score so many times that you’re probably rolling your eyes. Don’t roll them. In fact, gouge them out of your sockets so that you can devote all of your sensory attention to listening to his music once you get the chance. Also: cut out your tongue, chop off your nose, and take an anesthetic. On that lovely note…

The fact that it’s a freaking G rated movie (or maybe PG, depending on how you view that single scene of violence). You heard that right folks, Spirit’s Requiem is very mostly child appropriate. I don’t think the audience, or at least those not a part of the production team, were expecting a bunch of college aged guys to have made this sort of movie.

The visuals. Many comments were made about the pretty scenery, which was made even prettier by the lighting. It just goes to show you that restricting ourselves to less than 2 hours of filming in the evenings was totally worth it (and almost no artificial lighting!). One person even asked how we filmed the campfire scene, which was lit only with real fire. That scene was our Barry Lyndon experiment, except we didn’t have NASA on our side.

What happens next? Keep an eye on the website for more news regarding upcoming screenings and Internet availability. For now, feel free to watch the trailer again. You know you want to.

*That is not actually my motto.