Movies You Made: “Expiration Date”
Received an email from GITS reader Noah Puhl telling me about his short film “Expiration Date” which will be in competition at the upcoming LA United Film Festival:
Hey Scott —
Thanks so much, I appreciate it. I’m excited about the LA United Film Festival — it’s been voted one of the “25 Coolest Film Festivals” by MovieMaker Magazine.
There’s a wonderfully eclectic selection of films playing there (more info here. Honestly, the best part of getting into a festival is the shiny pass they give you that enables you to go live, eat, breath film for 6 days, watching 3–4 movies a day. I’ve done the festival thing before, and I always leave inspired and fired up to attack my own stuff.
I’m part of the “Relationships” block of shorts that plays Monday, May 3rd, starting at 5:15 pm. There’s four shorts and it’s totally free. Here are the other films I play with:
La Tangente (The Tangent) — 12 min
Expiration Date — 12 min
Alice & Huck — 15 min
Hide — 20 min
They’re doing both Jury Awards and an Audience Award — so anybody who saw the film on GITS, lives in LA, and likes it should come out and vote for it! The competition is tough this year, there’s a lot of great films out there. So if any GITS readers are looking for something FREE and fun to do, they should come out to the screening on Monday May 3rd at 5:15pm at the Los Feliz 3. I’m debuting a new and improved cut of the film for the festival, and there’ll be a Q&A after the screening. The actors from the film, Kaitlin Ferrell and Joe Hendrix, will be in attendance at the screening as well.
Here’s some info on the festival itself, which is in its 4th year in LA, although it has a bunch of sister film festivals around the country and the world: San Francisco, New York, Tulsa (started 7 years ago), Chicago, and London. Their focus is on screening “humorous, touching and provocative films.”
ABOUT THE UNITED FILM FESTIVALS:
The United Film Festivals, bringing art and creativity together to create a united film community. The festival’s focus is to bring together talented filmmakers from diverse backgrounds, thus creating a “United” showcase of creative energy and talent. This is a film festival for everyone, a place where art and community converge.
A Tulsa native filmmaker, Jason Connell and his production company Connell Creations founded Tulsa United Film Festival 7 years ago. Now living in Hollywood, Connell has expanded the United Film Festivals into Los Angeles & New York in 2007 and has added San Francisco, Chicago & London in 2009. With this growth the rich tradition of screening humorous, touching and sometimes provocative films is reaching even more people than ever. This is one film festival you won’t want to miss!
In addition to creating the United Film Festivals in 2009 Connell Produced & Distributed the touching documentary “The Rock-afire Explosion”, about a small-town disc jockey, a struggling inventor, and an animatronic rock band from the 80’s. In 2007 he Produced & Directed his first feature length film “Strictly Background”, the heartfelt documentary about 10 movie extras trying to make it in Hollywood. The film won 6 film festival awards and was released in 2008.
In terms of myself, I graduated from Brown University in 2007 with a BA in Literary Arts. While I was there I was lucky enough to study under screenwriter Erin Cressida Wilson (Secretary, Fur, Chloe), and directed the feature documentary, Mission to Matrimony. I hail from Swampscott, MA, and moved out to Los Angeles in late 2007 to pursue a career in film and television. Currently, I work for two television producers (Skot Bright and Sascha Penn), write spec pilots, features, and make short films in my spare time. My goal for this year is to land a manager.
Right now, I’m writing a spec TV pilot that I’m planning to direct, and have a Californication spec done that I’m sending out to representation and entering in contests.
p.s. Susan Bridges did a nice blog post on the film back in March which was originally inspired through posting it on GITS, where she found it. Her posting built some momentum for the film, and that in turn helped push me to enter it in festivals — so I’ve gotta give you props for originally putting some steam behind it!
Then a follow-up email from Noah:
Had a thought. Feel free to totally shoot this idea down, but might it be a worthwhile idea to post both cuts from vimeo (orig and alternate) and try to get a dialogue going in the comments about which cut people think works better? Or which elements are good/bad in one, and worth keeping? Maybe that’s totally selfish on my part for feedback :-), but it could be good for me before I turn in my festival cut. One argument in favor of this idea is that a few months back when you first posted about my film, it was the Original Cut — and a lot of people watched that cut. So perhaps this would give people a chance to see a different thing, but still enjoy the basic things they liked about it in the first place (if they liked it!).
Hey, any way we can help, I’m down with that. So GITS readers, here are both of Noah’s cuts of his short film.
The original cut of “Expiration Date”:
The alternate cut of “Expiration Date”:
If you have any advice per each of the cuts, please post in comments.
And for those of you in L.A., remember the time and place:
Monday May 3rd at 5:15pm at the Los Feliz 3 (1822 N. Vermont). For more info re the theater, go here.
Congratulations, Noah, and best of luck!