Late Summer Flowers

Somehow all these flowers keep holding on around town. The leaves are starting to fall, though I am not sure from where since all the trees are green. I keep thinking that soon the flowers will be gone, but they seem to hold on and on. It seems as though the seasons change very quickly and the moment that I stop looking a the flowers I am sure that the leaves will suddenly change. It never seems to come gradually. In October we will be going to visit family in Asheville and I hope that the leaves have changed by then.

My mom is visiting this weekend. We picked her up at the airport today: me, my husband, my grandmother, and my daughter. Quite a welcome, huh? We are excited she is her and I may not be posting much until she leaves next Tuesday. I have been so busy this week that I did not get a Flip'n Friday edited. Hopefully, next week I will be able to edit a trailer for Drowning Slowly. 

A Weekend of Organization

It still feels very much like summer here even though it is August. Lot's of rain and everything is green. Yet, it is hot, Hot, HOT! And I hear the rain has probably stopped for the time being so it will somehow be getting even hotter.

We have had a busy day with an impromptu visit to Ikea. For the past month or so I have been looking for shelves to put up in our living room to organize all of our piles that have been accumulating. When we struck out at Lowe's yesterday I was pretty frustrated. So this morning over breakfast my husband and I decided to head down to Charlotte so we can be down with the shelves. We were in and out of Ikea in forty-five minutes and got everything we needed without dealing with the stress of the crowds. Now, our living room has been transformed. It's amazing what some wall shelves can do! I will take pictures once I have organized them enough to be picture worthy.

On Tuesday we are going to Vermont for the annual UFVA conference. My film, Drowning Slowly, is playing on Wednesday. I will do my best to continue to post this week, but it may be slightly sporadic.

The Cool Down

We have finally had some rain, which cooled down our high 90s weather. Thank goodness. Today I am hoping to make it downtown to visit one of my students art exhibits. My daughter is fast asleep so we will leave whenever she wakes up.

It gives me the time to listen to some of Tift Merritt's radio show The Spark (check out the archive, pretty impressive roster). She has a great interview with Darren Jessee, whom is a wonderful musician and person. He has great comments on the creative process. I met him once, years ago, when I was working at a coffee shop in Chapel Hill. He came in a lot and I never saw him only heard about from the other barista. It was a hot day when he came in and I had the door open and I had my back to the door. I turned around and he was just standing there, at the register, and I almost lost my balance and sputtered out, "Darren Jessee..." He smiled and I gave him his coffee. I was so embarrassed, but he was nice about it.

My film Drowning Slowly is named after a Ben Folds Five Song and it closes with a Hotel Lights song. Darren Jessee was the most famous person we approached about using a song and he was the most awesome about it and didn't try to fleece us for money (that we did not have, we made the movie for $3000). So check out the interview and his two albums: Hotel Lights and Firecracker People.

Photos from the Past: Drowning Slowly

I have been trying to organize all of my photos and negatives into some cohesive storage system. In the past photo albums have not been successful; mostly because they don't have a place for negatives, but also the labeling that they require makes the task seem monumental.

My organizing turns into more of an opportunity to peruse photographs. Recently, I found these publicity photos for Drowning Slowly a narrative feature that I finished about a year ago. Though it didn't show it a lot of festivals it did win Best Narrative Feature at the Ava Gardner Film Festival last November. These stills were never used so I thought I would share some of them here.

The actors shown here are Akasha Fielding (top) and Kendel Colbie Scott (bottom).

Wordless Wednesday: Kendel (as Emaline) at Dinner

{Music to accompany photographs}

Publicity Pains

One of the hardest part of filmmaking for me is marketing my work when I have finished the film. Luckily, the last film that I used was about a photographer and I was able to use the stills we shot for the film as publicity for the film. The character photographed flowers as shown above. Now, I am considering how to create publicity for my newest documentary and have been looking back at what I did in the past for inspiration.