Thanks to all cast & crew. I really hope it all went well at the screening tonight.

A core member of our team is stuck in Japan. Does this portend the end to echoplanar’s 48hr hopes? FEEL THE FEAR.

On Saturday, quarantine offices at Narita and two other international airports began using more temperature-measuring devices to detect passengers with a fever. So far no passengers at the three airports have been intercepted by quarantine officers. Japan’s international airports began using the devices in 2003 after the SARS outbreak in China the previous year.

PS. It’s in San Francisco. Or was, before it flew off to Hong Kong.

UPDATE: I’ve been told it’s a spider attack rather than swine flu that’s causing the quarantine situation.

Our screening information for the 2009 48 Hour Film Festival (Boston). Are we still Echoplanar? Yes, yes we are.

Group E, Screening on Thursday, May 7th, at 7pm
Battleground State, Dave Poole
Echoplanar, Nathanael Hevelone
FRED-TV, Pauline McGrath
Harvard Square Scriptwriters, Andrew Hall
High School in The Throp, Jason Bonneau
In The Car Media, Dan Stevens
LTJFilms, Daniel Lee White
Moose Films, David Canfield
Team Bait Shop/Burt Wood, Andrew Osborne
Weston Cats, Ted Garland
WinCAM Wonders, Stephen Gay

Once more? This will make six years straight for Team Echoplanar in the Boston 48 Hour Film Competition. But 2009 is special in that since I’m no longer in Boston it’ll be our first bicoastal production. Or, maybe we’ll make use of the aeroports between here and there I’ll come into town the morning of. I’m not sure if taking the red-eye is best use of available energy or if shooting in both locations then remote editing is the way to go. We’ve got a month or so to decide.

Congratulations!

Your team, “ECHOPLANAR“, is officially registered for the Boston 48 Hour Film Project scheduled to begin May 1, 2009.

So there it is. Additonally, I believe we’ve opted to be in the PG-13 category this time round so keep your HIGHLY PERVY suggestions for next year, Palo Alto residents.

It was a good first week, both for me at the new job and the quasify diaspora out there in the real world. The hetero-normative half of Team Echoplanar is getting hitched, and JP passed her quals with (I quote) ‘the highest recorded score in UT history’. I finally signed a lease here bringing a timely end to my homelessness experiment and so was relaxed enough to spend the rest of the morning on the shoreline playing tourist. Which, for all practical purposes, I am. Some new (snap)shots in my San Francisco set.

Thanks to the cast (Christopher Player, Nathanael Hevelone, VK, Le Nguyen, Khoa Nguyen, Julie Kong, Troy Turick, Mai-Khuyen Nguyen & Allison Stevens); and crew (Allison Stevens who produced, Nathanael Hevelone who directed and Christopher Player who did foley work & assistant editing; also to the others who worked tirelessly on this but prefer their anonymity). Lastly, we’re extremely grateful to the musicians – Mediafriend and Action Set.

I’m just back from the screening and post-screening celebration for our new short, “It’s OK to Be Afraid”. Overall I’m more or less pleased with how it went. The reception wasn’t wildly enthusiastic, trending towards individual level bewilderment which is just about what we expected. Now we’ll wait and see what happens – I’m not particularly holding my breath for any of the general awards.

I’ve had this feeling the last couple of years that the films we make aren’t really appropriate for the 48 Hour venue yet we keep coming back to do them – there’s something about the intensity of the process that’s wholly captivating, even if our end product doesn’t fit into the SNL-lite mode that seems to be normative. Regardless, I’m happy with what we showed from a visual, technical & audio perspective and am more than happy to discuss the plot as I understand it with anyone who cares to. I’ll post the film before I leave tomorrow night – please check back if you’re interested in seeing it.

One side note – I just wanted to say that Ben Guaraldi is a good and decent man who went well out of his way to accommodate us by getting us in tonight on very short notice. Many, many thanks to him. Also thanks to everyone who came out and that one dude we don’t know who voted for us.

We’ve officially switched our screening for “It’s OK to Be Afraid” to 7pm, Tuesday the 8th. Buy your tickets here! Ancillary benefit to switching- Michelle Barbera and We’re Making a Movie (of The Guts and the Glory fame) is now in our group. Collateral downside- we’re no longer grouped with our Open Screen ?????? Jeff Stern and Stand Up Mandy. Actually know that I’ve checked they switched to Group G on 4/15 anyway – that’ll be worth seeing.

I’m really looking forward to seeing whoever can make it out tomorrow. Vote early, vote often, vote without regard towards future political endeavors!!

For the legions waiting with baited breath, we submitted Echoplanar’s 2008 Boston Film Project entry, “It’s OK to Be Afraid”, ridiculously ahead of schedule today. More details will be forthcoming posts sometime after a) I get some sleep and b) the Kansas/Memphis game tomorrow. The screening is still scheduled for Thursday at 7:00, I’m still unsuccessfully trying to change it.

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