Updates

On a chilly but sunny morning, frozen fingers tapping away, I find myself thinking about what a six months it has been.

Six months ago, we shot a short film called 'Gun Barista', a zomedy about coffee and zombies. We made it for a few reasons, mostly to give us something to grind our teeth on before setting out to shoot Relentless. It was a good practice for using the Canon 5D Mk II we were going to shoot our feature on, see what it was good with and what we had to work around more.

For this, it was a big success. We learned a lot about the camera, and things we would have to pay more attention to, we got used to working together again, as it had been some years since our last film. Irene really brought the magic with the make up, and so far the most common comment I get about the film is 'Who did the make up? It was fantastic!' I guess people really don't read the credits.

Since late January, Gun Barista has been available to watch on Youtube, and has taken a little over a thousand hits. Last Sunday it had its first real public screening at the Katoomba Short Film Festival. It was great watching it with an audience, seeing where they laughed, seeing if they get the jokes and the gags. And they did! More than planned even!

I still didn't expect the phone call a few days later telling me they'd changed the schedule to include Gun Barista in the next two screenings, mostly due to the hit it was with the audience that day.

And I can definitely say I didn't expect to win the best local film last night at the KSFF closing night. But we did.

I had gone to that initial screening last week with mixed emotions, wondering if I would actually care so much about seeing Gun Barista, now that I have our fearture Relentless loaded into my editing suite that we were a week past wrapping on. Just going through the 20 or so minutes I have edited together, and the rushes, Gun Barista seems pretty dated to how it would look if we shot it now. But then, Relentless is going to be like that and I'm just hoping no one else notices too much difference between what we were shooting at the start, and how much better it got by the end of the shoot.

But it was great being there in the audience watching Gun Barista. While making movies you find fun and entertaining is rewarding, hearing a room full of people reacting to your film is incredible. I'm failing here as a writer to explain just how it does indeed feel. But I'm very happy about how it was taken on by everyone, and seeing it connect with an audience is inspiring. It is a reminder that I am indeed on the right track, and is a good motivater for me to get stuck into editing Relentless.

I can only imagine how it is going to feel sitting in an audience watching this film.