The other night, my cousin's movie company, Unfiltered Entertainment, Inc., premiered their first feature length film, Declaration of Independents. You can see the trailer here on Youtube, as well as a short, Manna for the Damned, with it's trailer as well. They did pretty well, if I do say so myself. I wish I could point you some where to actually see it, but you'll have to hit the right film festivals, I'm afraid.

I'm no expert in filmmaking, but I've seen enough indie films (mostly vampire flicks) to be frightened by that section of Blockbuster. Usually independent films suffer from what my cousin (rightly) refers to as being too close to the subject matter -- you fall in love with what you have and are unwilling to cut it out. The "fifteen minute" idea, as one of his business partners called it -- "a good idea for a fifteen minute short, stretched a little, then a little more, until you've got ninety minutes." And that's absolutely accurate. Being acutely aware of the weaknesses of their medium, Unfiltered did a good job of avoiding it. Declaration manages not to drag, and while the trailer does highlight many of the funny bits, they actually tend to be the lead-in jokes for the scenes. Unlike so many trailers, the real jokes, the funniest ones, are omitted from the trailer. And I still think the voiceover was fantastic. Manna was also pretty good. It was pretty funny, a good short, though it left off at the end (which, I suppose isn't surprising for a short). It'd be kind of an interesting idea to take all the way out to its conclusion, so I have to hope that we'll see a feature-length take on it, actually. I think we'd end up with something along the lines of Idle Hands, which I really enjoyed, so I'm in favor of it.

So good job, Unfiltered Entertainment, it was a spectacular premiere. I hope the next big one will be the one for my cousin's movie, and that Ambition will be ready for it.

Labels: life, movies

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