Show Me Your Shorts

March 31, 2009 • 6:37 pm

By Lavinia DeCastro

I’ve been trying to post this all day, but due to technical difficulties, could only do it now!

I had the pleasure of spending Saturday night surrounded by talented Philadelphia filmmakers at the second Show Us Your Shorts event at the Marbar in University City.

For those of you not familiar with the event – organized by the lovely folks at Project Twenty1 and First Glance film festivals – it is a night that combines networking, screenings and environmentalism. 

Filmmakers in attendance brought a short film to be screened and paid a mere $2 for a color-coded glow stick – purple for filmmakers, blue for animators, orange for musicians, green for actors, etc… 

I attended the event with Steve Janas and Jesper Olson, of Reel Stuff Entertainment and we brought the trailer of our film The Tolltaker (The film was written, produced and directed by Steve and I served as co-producer and animation director)

After the screenings, the lights were dimmed in observance of Earth Hour and the glow networking began.

Several of the attendees live-tweeted from the event and looked for teammates for the upcoming Project Twenty 1 competition, in which teams have 21 days to produce a short film.

A couple of hours later, the audience picked their favorite short – “I’m Paying for It” by Mark Mackner. This very amusing short told the story of a Craig’s List blind date from hell and Mackner went home with a couple of souvenirs and a week’s worth of bragging rights.  

Other films screened included:

“Too Short to be a Man,” from Tom Sims
“Duly Noted” from Justin Muchons & Chris Kapcia.
“Passions of the Christ” from Doug Seidel & Justice Productions
“Who Killed Dolly?” from Kevin Novinski
“Anemone”from Red Orange Morning’s  Cyndi Ocava
“Moody Blues” from Vickie M. Feldman
“8:18″ from Matt Perdie & Alan Fenstermaker 
“The Deader the Better” from James Rolphe
“JaGLfaB Trailer” from C. Thaddeus Banks

I had my own favorites:

Alan Fenstermaker’s “Fresh Girl” music video was probably among the best produced shorts there. Even though I didn’t actually like the song, the video was a pleasure to watch.

“The Chrononauts” by Nick Martorelli was a time-traveling tale has a good blend of humor and some impressive VFX.

A crowd favorite was the “Angry Video Game Nerd Episode 46:  Mario 3″ from James Rolfe. I’ll never look at Super Mario 3, one of my childhood favorites, the same way again.

My favorite was the “Twilight Parody” from “Riff Chick” Emily K. I loved it so much I devoted a whole post to it.

Hosted by the lovely Dawn Harvey, this event proves that the Philadelphia Film Festival/CineFest is not the only game in town.