Woke up this morning and headed back downtown to the AMC theater for a full day’s worth of screenings.

I had a chance to see a romance drama feature titled, Second Chance, which follows a father seeking joint custody of his child. This was definitely one of the better independent black romance films I had seen a while… the production quality was good, the script was unique with occasional hints of comedy, and the actors certainly did it justice. Our screening followed directly after the Second Chance talk back.

Watching your own video on “the big screen” is a trip. This was the first time I had seen Revolution at that size, and it definitely felt much different than the video I had edited in my bedroom a few months ago. After the screening, during the “talk back” I had a chance to explain the process of making our video and answer some audience questions. I actually had a chance to talk with the facilitator the night before, at length, so I felt like she knew how to ask all the right questions. She also made it a point to let everyone know that our video was more than just a music video repeatedly stated that it was “deep”… glad it wasn’t just “cool”

One audience member asked if I had ever considered casting children in any of our videos. When we were planning the video, we wanted to have the class made up of actual high schoolers, but felt that we wouldn’t be able to get them to stay at a shoot all day and be patient… especially if we couldn’t pay them. So now she’s got me thinking about how we could cast 10 - 20 high schoolers for our next shoot. Sure, people do it all the time, but it’s not as easy for me to do it if I can’t just include them in a mass text message… “Please come to our shoot today… and bring high schoolers with you!” She and some other 40+ audience members spoke with me afterwards, and it was so rewarding to hear them say that they felt like we were speaking directly to them with out video. One of them even asked

A mockumentary, titled How To Build A Rapper screened right after our video. I won’t bother to give the break down, but if you like rap music and you like comedy, check it out.

After leaving the theater, I did some more interviews with the TV and documentary crews here. The first interview was a longer interview with BigTv1.com. The host was real cool, and she had been outside doing interviews all day, but still had great energy. I’m really impressed with their production setup too… they had scheduled me in ahead of time (last night at that) and everything. I walked over to the filmmakers lounge right after that and did an interview for the documentary on the AZ Black Film Showcase. Again, the host was real cool, but she kept having trouble pronouncing my last name… she finally got it though after a few takes… I’m curious to see how all these interviews come out, so stay tuned for some video clips… I’ll get them up here eventually.

The awards ceremony is tonight, so we’ll see if we can get our first award at our first festival!

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