Raising the Bar

[Regina Guy and a mysterious stranger at the premiere of the Chris LaMartina's local indie horror "President's Day" at The Charles Theater.]

It was the best of times. It was the worst of times. It was the last three weeks of February.

Well, you already know about most of the bad stuff, if not all of it. These days, pretty much the bad stuff is related to my job-job, and the good stuff is related to filmmaking. So I suppose that should be telling me something. Only a few more days left at the job-job, so the bad stuff should, in theory, be going away, except for that pesky bit about, you know, not having a job. And needing to find new digs.

So let's talk about the good stuff. Something I am really happy about is that I got to see TWO great local indies back to back recently, Chris LaMartina's horror "President's Day," at the Charles last Monday (President's Day :) ), and a (not so) rough cut of Stratatek Studios drama, "Heaven Burns," at Towson this Monday. I really enjoyed both, and if you have the chance to see them I highly recommend that you do.

I love seeing what other local people are doing, but I'll tell you, if you go in there blind (not having seen a sneak peek somehow from someone who had a copy of a screener) sometimes you find yourself thinking of diplomatic things to say in case it sucked and you run into the filmmaker at the afterparty. Not a problem this month! I'll be honest with you, filmmakers, like any other artists, judge themselves against each other, and anyone who tells you that they don't is a liar. So, yea, sometimes it is painful (in certain cases even excruciating), but at least as a filmmaker you can come out of the theater feeling good about yourself. I am sure there are filmmakers that have seen my movie and it wasn't their cup of tea, and they felt better about themselves. It is unavoidable. There will always be people that do what you do better than you do it, and those who don't do it as well. What you do with your opinions of other people's work, in my opinion, is what determines your own karmic future. One thing is universal - even if it is a very, very bad movie - a lot of hard work went into it, and anyone who has made a movie knows this.

What is very cool at the moment is that in the short 2+ years that I have been in the midst of all this, I think that the quality of Baltimore indies has gone WAY up. Seeing films like, "Heaven Burns," and, "President's Day," makes me feel that the bar has been raised, and I have noticed that less of the crappy stuff has been getting as far as a big screen. That may sound harsh, but I have seen some VERY bad vanity pieces that should never have made it past the filmmaker's family living room, and in some cases I even spent $10 to do so. And that just pisses me off.

It is less than a week until we start filming the new Zinnia Films horror short, "Lamplight," and I am so excited about it. Writer/Director Jason Koch is meticulous AND the real deal special effects guy. I am probably not going to even be able to watch half of the finished movie because the gore will ring so true. The cast, the crew, the script, the locations, the SFX, even the soundtrack, everything about this production is really strong and I know the final product is going to be outstanding. And Jason and his business partner/Director of Photography David Morley have been doing this stuff for a living for years now, and they are all about the turnaround time. No waiting for three years to see the movie!

Ugh, have to go do some work-work now, I have a lot of loose ends to tie up in my final hours. March is almost completely tied up for me, between working on, "Lamplight with Jason & Dave, and finishing up, "The Rosens," with Steve Yeager. After that I guess I better concentrate on finding a job-job again. I see a lot of pasta dinners in my future.