Screamfest 2009

Hey Team,

If you want a kick ass Horror Film Festival in the heart of Hollywood, you've gotta check out Screamfest LA! (www.screamfestla.com).

Naturally I love them because they selected my short film "Rations" for screening on a beautiful 45 foot screen in the Mann's Chinese complex, but it's not just that. Everyone who runs the festival, from it's founder Rachel Belofsky, to her main crew of terror-ness, Megan and Andrew, all the way down to each and every volunteer... everyone was great. They love films, they love horror films, and they love filmmakers. Even though I only had a short, I was treated great, included in all the activities and had a total blast.

So if you've got a movie, enter away, and if not, get on down and see some horror!

Publicity

So making movies isn't all about making movies. Lately I've been working a lot on publicity. (thus this Blog and newly designed websites and things like that). I admit, the publicity part isn't the most fun, after all it's making movies that I love doing. But still, it would be cool to expand the realm of movies that I am making, so thus...publicity.

so check out the new(ish) www.craigofilm.com, and enjoy the stuff there.

But on a fun note, there is a new theme up at www.Filmaka.com called "smoke and mirrors", so we are going to try to make something for that. Might as well increase our chances of getting into the final round, right?

Gotta get to work.

Craigo

Filmmaking and Blogging are like Honey and Cherries.

So team, welcome to the first entry in my filmmaking blog. I thought about calling it "Craig Ouellette's Sing-A-Long Filmmaking Blog" in honor of that other popular blog we've all seen, but figured, even though I like to sing karaoke, we'll save that for the mic someplace.

What's it like being an independent filmmaker in Hollywood?

I can only answer that question by telling you about what I do and what I'm working on with friends and co-workers. I'm lucky enough to know a bunch of very good actors and actresses, make-up folks, composers, stunt people and other filmmakers, and we try to turn out movies on a regular basis. Sometimes for contests, sometimes just for the hell of it. After all, if you want to be a filmmaker, I say "make movies". Don't talk about it, don't sell how good you are at it. Just do it. Make movies and let your movies speak for themselves (sometimes in ways you never expect).

Hopefully this will all be insightful and amusing, that's my goal anyway. So let me know how I'm doing and please watch the films we've done or talk about here and let me know how we're doing there. You can see a bunch of them at www.trespassingonthelot.com, directed by my buddy Brendon Fong and myself.

As for now, its' 3:08am and I need to get to bed so I can get up and write my webseries/feature script for "When Zombies Attack!".

Talk soon
Craigo