Local Indies

Austin filmmaker James Christopher is directing Twitchy Dolphin Flix's new movie 3 References. Check Slackerwood for his updates as the production continues.

We at Twitchy Dolphin are about to start our new feature film, 3 References. It's our eighth project since we started the company and like every project, we like to start out the new film with a bang. Shortly before production officially began, we held our third Twitchy Palooza. Twitchy Palooza is a concert event that we throw to highlight some of the artists that so generously donate their music to our flicks. The event also served as the DVD launch for the award-winning film Look At Me Again.

Folks braved the nasty rain to see some great acts. 3 References cast member Lauren Hayes made her singer-songwriter debut and wowed the crowd with her beautiful voice. Brandon Whitlan, whose music appeared in the recently premiered Turkey Day, took the mic next with a darker palate of tunes. Long time contributor Clif Haley (actor, cowriter of the musical short Phantom Tragedy) sang the theme song from Funny Books ("Bad Guys Running"), some original tunes and then blew the doors off with Def Leppard's "Pour Some Sugar on Me."

The name of James Christopher's and Chris Copple's production company couldn't sound pretentious. Christopher and Copple were halfway through production on their first feature-length film Littlefield when, after a night of beer drinking, the name Twitchy Dolphin Flix surfaced and was chosen.

Christopher is now the company's president and writer/director, and Copple the creative director and director of photography. From their first feature-length film Funny Books to the company's upcoming eighth film 3 References, their business partnership is going strong.

The unlikely duo met as radio-television-film students at The University of Texas at Austin. Christopher had enrolled at UT after spending seven years in the U.S. Army. He and Copple shared disinterest in their summer digital documentary class, which led to their collaboration on the short film Strike Team Archangel, an adaptation of Christopher's 26-page script. Over the 2.5 days of filming the short Strike Team Archangel, Christopher said he and Copple realized they worked well together.

By Carrie Hoover

In last month's Ready, Set, Fund, Debbie Cerda gave a quick shout-out to a local project that's currently funding on Kickstarter. This week, the final countdown is on to contribute to All That Remains, a dramatic feature from Austin writer/director Marko Slavnic. If you aren't familiar with Kickstarter, the entire contribution goal must be met by the set deadline or the project receives none of the pledged funding. As I type, the filmmakers are probably busy handing out high-fives: All That Remains reached its fundraising goal on Monday morning with three days to spare,. However, future audience members can still contribute -- the final deadline is Thursday, May 10, at 12:59 am.

A successful short film director, two of Slavnic's shorts have screened at SXSW (Table 7 and Grey) and the grand prizewinner of the 2010 Nikon Film Festival (Chicken VS Penguin). His Nikon winnings cleared the path for him to shoot a large portion of All That Remains in Europe last fall. Armed with a two-man crew, two actors and no permits, he shot everything guerilla style (but that's a secret), which allowed him access to locations other indie directors can only salivate over. The Kickstarter cash will fund the remainder of principal photography, post-production, marketing and festival fees.

The Hill Country Film Festival programming this year included a number of blocks of short films, and on Saturday morning I decided to watch some shorts. After a quick breakfast (yay for having my own kitchen there), I zipped over to the Stagecoach Theater in plenty of time for the morning shorts program.

The main reason I picked this shorts program was because it included the Austin film The Man Who Never Cried. Debbie has been raving about this film for ages -- she visited the set and reviewed the film -- and I was pleased to have the chance to finally watch it myself. Filmmaker Bradley Jackson and producers Russell Groves and Andrew Lee were at the screening (pictured above, if a bit tiny).

The Man Who Never Cried is a sweet, sweetly funny tale about  -- well, the title says it all. Ralph (Kier O'Donnell) has never been able to shed a tear. Now he works as a clown and tries to make people laugh instead. But when his father dies, he feels like it is high time he learned to cry like everyone else. The storyline may sound a little silly, but it's beautifully done with an expert cast led by O'Donnell and Jess Weixler.

One of the perks available to members of the Austin Film Society is the quarterly Member Mixer, which is a great way to meet other film enthusiasts and filmmakers. At a mixer I attended in 2008, I met local filmmakers Ben and Rachel Moody of Blue Goggles Films.

At that time, they were working on an original web miniseries called Prologue, compelling short films that chronicled the moments before a zombie outbreak. The miniseries was designed to lead into a full web series of Epilogue.tv to follow survivors of the zombie apocalypse in their struggle to survive. Ben Moody developed the concept long before AMC's series The Walking Dead was filmed, and Epilogue.tv included a social networking component with a fun game of pitting zombies against survivors and interactive community forums. Unfortunately, further development of Epilogue.tv was abandoned, but you can still join and engage on the website and view Prologue online.

Fast forward to 2012, and Blue Goggle Films is on another filmmaking adventure. Since December 2011, their small local film crew has been making a short live-action film every month centered around the latest hot gaming trends, including Mass Effect and Skyrim. My personal favorite, A Very Arkham City Christmas, takes place on Christmas Eve with two of the Penguin's not so bright henchmen attempting to enjoy the holidays together within Arkham City prison. Watch A Very Arkham City Christmas here.

The 2012 Los Angeles Film Festival will run June 14-24, 2012, and included in the schedule are more than a few movies with ties to Austin or Texas. As Matthew Odam points out in his Tuesday post on Austin Movie Blog, the feature films Saturday Morning Massacre and Magic Mike are both in the lineup. Magic Mike is a Steven Soderbergh film starring Austin actor Matthew McConaughey.

Saturday Morning Massacre was directed by former Austinite Spencer Parsons and was shot locally. Cast members include Jonny Mars and Paul Gordon from The Happy Poet, Heather Kafka and Chris Doubek from Lovers of Hate and veteran character actor Sonny Carl Davis (The Whole Shootin' Match, Bernie). It's a horror movie that references a popular 70s cartoon about crime-fighting teens in a van with a dog.

Here are some more films with Austin/Texas connections scheduled to show during this year's fest:

• Big Easy Express, dir. Emmett Malloy -- This documentary follows a cross-country train concert tour by Mumford & Sons, Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros, and Old Crow Medicine Show. The tour includes a stop in our fair city!
• Gayby, dir. Jonathan Lisecki -- I caught this one at SXSW (my review) and loved it. Austinite Clay Liford served as cinematographer on this comedy about best friends who want to have a baby together.
• It's a Disaster (pictured at top) --  A comedy from UT alum Todd Berger about a brunching group of folks so self-involved that they might miss the impending end times. Berger's film is having its world premiere at the festival.

The 2012 Cine Las Americas International Film Festival kicked off Tuesday night and runs through the weekend. This year's program includes four short films made in Texas -- in the fest's Hecho en Tejas category, naturally.

Two of the Texas shorts were also part of the City of Austin's "Faces of Austin 2012" project. All four films will show at Alamo Drafthouse on South Lamar over the weekend.

Sam Lerma's Lilia was produced in San Antonio. The film, which premiered at the 2011 Los Angeles Latino International Film Festival, focuses on a family after the father loses his job. How will he care for 5-year-old Lilia? This short screens before Hombre y tierra on Saturday, April 28 at 1:45 pm. Producer Ralph Lopez and actress Lauren Montemayor will be there.

In Open Your Eyes, an 11-year-old goes on a journey of self-reflection. Director Adolfo R. Mora will be in attendance when this short plays on Sunday, April 29 at 11 am (before In the Shadow, another Texas-shot feature).

Through Juan A. Izaguirre's Para Vivir, the viewer is shown a day in the life of Joel, a thirtysomething undocumented immigrant. Joel ended up in Austin because he has cancer and did not have access to medications in Mexico.

Saturday was my first full day at Dallas International Film Festival. I started it with a perfect breakfast at my fancy hotel. This is the only place in Texas apart from the Steeping Room -- possibly the only other place in this country -- where I've had hot tea properly prepared. They put tea leaves in a teapot and brought it to the table, instead of giving me a tea bag and some lukewarm water in a container meant for cream. (Even the best Austin coffeehouses and restaurants do this, I am sorry to say.) I also had nice crispy bacon and steel-cut oatmeal with caramelized apples, much better than I can make myself.

I know, you don't want to hear about my breakfast, so let's talk about the movies. I walked over to the Angelika Film Center for my first film, or rather, collection of films.

Shorts 1 Program

The Shorts 1 Program at Dallas IFF included seven films, all of which were entertaining -- not a slow film or dud in the lot. Many of them had Texas connections, too.

• Playtime (Spielzeit)-- An amusing short that shifts from subject to subject around a German town, including a standout sequence with a child in a cemetery. I understood the plot structure a lot better when Houston filmmaker Lucas Mireles explained that this short was a re-imagination of Billy Wilder's 1930 film People on Sunday.
• Another Bullet Dodged -- This film is about the biggest jerk in the universe. I'll say no more.

"Ready, Set, Fund," is a column about crowdfunding and related fundraising endeavors for Austin and Texas independent film projects.

While volunteering a few years ago at SCARE for a CURE, a local nonprofit interactive haunted adventure, I was impressed by the talent, dedication and enthusiasm brought to our team by students from The Art Institute of Austin (AI). The culmination of countless hours from initial concept to the final production of their art design, have contributed significantly to the continued success of SCARE.

Several of the AI students I befriended through the SCARE community project have taken on other creative endeavors, most notably AI's Eric Stewart and Anton Curley's documentary project, Nemesis Rising, which has followed local multimedia performance troupe The Intergalactic Nemesis on their national tour. Producer Stewart has another potential film project should it reach its funding goal, the documentary A Force In Nature (seen above), which is six years in the making and over 80% complete. AI instructor and filmmaker Hayden Yates is producing, directing, and has handled most of the cinematography which focuses on octogenarian Icelandic sculptor Jóhann Eyfells who set up his studio in Fredericksburg, Texas in 2003. The remaining filming will be done in Iceland in June with post-production in Austin including editing by Vishwanand Shetti and Ian Candler.

Find out more about other local film projects seeking funding -- including Jonny Mars' America's Parking Lot, which debuted at SXSW Film Festival last month -- after the jump:

I hadn't been to the Dallas International Film Festival since 2007, the fest's inaugural year, when it was AFI Dallas and I roomed with Kim Voynar, both of us covering the event for Cinematical. Five years later and I'm back in Dallas to see Austin and Texas movies for Slackerwood.

I had a late start leaving Austin Friday morning -- in fact it was Friday afternoon by the time I got onto I-35. If you know me, this is not surprising. I told myself that the first film I wanted to see, at 4:30 pm, would also screen Saturday and it would be okay if I missed it, but then I remembered hearing the press office closed at 4 pm and I was paranoid that I wouldn't be able to get my credentials. Aw, hell. I floored it (which for granny-driver me means woo, 7 miles an hour above the speed limit) all the way up I-35 and pulled my car in front of the press office at 3:30 pm.

The press office was next to my hotel, and my plan was to grab my badge, check in at the hotel, not bother dropping off luggage, and jump back in the car to speed to the Magnolia Theatre by 4:30. I'd picked the official fest hotel (the Palomar) because even though it was pricey, it was across the street from one of the venues (the Angelika), and I figured that made it worthwhile. I'm not an experienced Dallas driver.