Vibe, Energy, Aesthetic

by Deepak Chopra…actually Us

We’ve never read a Deepak Chopra book, although we get the good bits from our Facebook News Feeds (it’s very en trend now).  “I’m not religious, but I am spiritual.”  Shut the F up.

The aesthetic choices we make, and the energy of the spaces we pick create a certain VIBE.  These are the important elements that set the LES Film Festival apart.  Where most film festivals believe that identifying with a location and packing screening rooms is enough, we take a different approach.  We want to have a unique style/brand that separates us from the generic, run of the mill festivals.  Something that is more human, personal, fun, less corporate, and more approachable.

All of our screenings are Bring Your Own Booze, lively, and fun.  We want our audience and filmmakers to not feel intimidated when they buy their ticket and to not feel intimidated when they walk in the space.  We want everyone to feel like a valuable guest at our party.  Good Choices.  Good Energy.  Good Vibe.

Every Detail Matters

We take great care with all of our marketing materials and any other information pertaining to us.  Every detail from colors to font to images to verbage are all conscious choices.  Every detail matters.  The words and images we use in talking about ourselves are our first impression, and we hope to represent ourselves as accurately as possible.

For LES Film Festival 2011, we thought it was important for people to be a bit “familiar” with who we were before the festival began.  We pounded the pavement in the neighborhood, hung up flyers,  talked with folks, and posted videos of ourselves talking about the fest online.  We tried to make our presence known as much as possible and took the reigns in doing this for ourselves.

Now for friends…

Tony Castle & Damon Cardasis

Roxy Hunt & Shannon Walker

T-Rox

Tony Castle and Roxy Hunt (affectionately known as T-Rox).

Damon met Tony and Roxy of BFD Productions at their mutual day jobs.  After T-Rox attended Damon and Shannon’s show, VICKY AND LYSANDER, the conversation of working together arose and teaming up made sense.

Tony and Roxy are a talented filmmaking duo who run BFD Productions, a company that produces videos, graphic design, and film events such as the The Vail Film Festival, Vimeo Offline, and their original brainchild, The BFD Film Festival that they created back in college.

To be honest, when we first thought of the idea of a festival catering specifically to filmmakers like ourselves, filmmakers with little to no budgets, it felt as if we had just jumped off a very tall TALL cliff.  Tony and Roxy helped us in ways we couldn’t have imagined.  Together, we all focused in on how best we wanted the festival to be represented and how we wanted it to look and feel.  They built our fabulous website, created marketing materials, helped program the films, and became our fellow festival directors. Between the four of us we do absolutely everything.  EVERYTHING! (more on this in the next post…)

The Day Job, Forging Ahead and Why Working With Good People Makes it Easier

Like most “artists” we have had to hold down day jobs to make ends meet.  In a lot of ways this can suck, and you find yourself practicing a lot of self motivation in front of the mirror.  The fact is, it is exhausting to work all day at your job only to start work on what you’re passionate about in the evening.  It’s tiring and draining and you find yourself resenting your friends who are completely content working behind a desk at an insurance agency, but you need to pull yourself out of this!!!

Yes, they have dental insurance and their company matches their 401K, and YES once a year they get a beautiful sheet cake served in the conference room with Bonnie from Accounting leading the “Happy Birthday,”  but so what!!!  She IS captain of an adult  acapella group and sings a fun rendition of “UMBRELLA,” but still… SO WHAT!!!  You can either bitch about what you don’t have, or you can just keep going.  One foot in front of the other.

Most days after working… work on the festival begins. This can involve anything from meetings with potential sponsors or partners, to submission screenings, to making short films of our own.  That is why it is important to work with people that you love spending countless hours with. How lucky we are to work with people we love and respect.  This is what gets you through it.  Being able to laugh most of the time and entertain one another while making work is THE BEST!  When you are pulling 14-16 hour days, working weekends and days off, you want to do it with people that you TRUST and enjoy being around!  It makes the work fly by!

Friends And Business

We’ve learned how important it is to work with people you have fun with, people who listen, value your input, do not get defensive, politely tell you you’re wrong, and most importantly get the job DONE.  Our friendship with Tony and Roxy grew substantially from just working together and being able to rely on one another.  But this is not always the case.  A lot of people have the best of intentions, but at the end of the day are not willing to interrupt their social lives in order to do what needs to get done.  This can ruin a friendship.

Tread carefully, choose working relationships wisely, think everything through, stay positive, have some whiskey, chase the whiskey with beer, and most importantly… PUT IN THE WORK.

Sincerely,

Damon and Shannon

lesfilmfestival.com