'Prince Of Broadway' Wins top Honor At LAFF
Well, it looks like I'll have to get over my digital video snobbery and dive in head first into the rapidly filling pool of DV-produced feature-length films.
Of course I'm being facetious, but it'll help if you read THIS POST first to make sense of my first sentence!
I say that I'll have to get passed my DV snobbery because the film I mentioned in the above post, Prince Of Broadway, won the coveted Target Filmmaker Award, which is the top narrative feature prize at the 2008 Los Angeles Film Festival. Congrats to the director, Sean Baker! I was already interested in seeing the film, and this award win certainly moves it a few notches higher on my list of anticipated films, although I'm guessing it may not get a theatrical run until early next year. As far as I know, it is still without a distributor, but with a win like this, along with many others that are likely to come, I'm hopeful someone will pick it up - maybe IFC Films :o)
indieWIRE interviewed Sean Baker a few days ago. Here's a snippet:
indieWIRE: Please elaborate on your approach to making the film...
SEAN BAKER: Financial constraints dictated that this feature be shot on HD instead of film. I am comfortable shooting HD myself plus it allowed us to have minimal equipment on set. I intentionally complied a skeleton crew so that the non-professionals acting in the film wouldn't be intimidated by a large group of people. It was key that the crew be a comfortable, close knit family in which everyone could contribute ideas and actors had the room to experiment freely. I feel that dialogue always sounds the most natural when an actor has not memorized it. So, improvisation was not only encouraged but necessary because the shooting script was complete in plot only.... a beat sheet was given to the actors and dialogue was intentionally left out of the script so that we could develop it on set.
Sounds very much like my approach to filmmaking. You can read the entire interview HERE.
See the film's trailer HERE.
Read indieWIRE blogger Matt Dentler's review of the film HERE, where he calls it a "must see."
Coolio! Another one to add to my growing list -- Medicine For Melancholy, Ballast, A Good Day To Be Black And Sexy, Prince of Broadway and a few others.
Prince of Broadway is a damn good film. Wasn't upset at all to lose 50,000 dollars to these guys!
=)
Albertine - The list keeps growing doesn't it. Let's hope this isn't just a fluke year.
Barry - thanks for dropping by again! Looking forward to seeing both films and others. Although $50,000 is a nice chunk of change. I don't know if I'd be as understanding!