We are totally stoked that DVS has been named an official selection of the 2014 Phoenix Comicon Film Festival!
Our film will screen on Saturday, June 7th at 10:45 am – a fantastic show time at this internationally well-known convention. Last year, over 55,000 people flooded into the Phoenix Convention Center to soak up genre entertainment, comic book icons, panels on everything from sci-fi/fantasy books to cosplay and one of the biggest and most amazing Zombie Walks EVER! This year, in the middle of all that fab goodness, there’ll be our lil’ movie, Dead Votes Society.
Come join us and see Dead Votes on the Big Screen in Phoenix!
We were delighted to read that San Francisco, the site of Another Hole in the Head Film Festival, was heading for a high of 70 degrees this weekend. So we mailed off our exhibition copy of DVS and packed our bags, we’re off to the somewhat more sunny big city.
Angie has been laboring over the color correction for the film. As usual, she is learning, doing, learning some more and trying again, separated only by the lengthy data processing required by our elderly Mac Mini (hours and hours) and hair-pulling when she watches it and realizes its not quite what she was trying for. Deep admiration for the ever hard-working Madame Producer.
This copy is a Blue Ray disc, per the festivals request. It makes such a difference!
Looking forward to seeing friends and maybe some new fans at the New People Cinema in SF’s Japantown this Sunday.
If you see us after the filmmaker Q and A, come up and say hi. Or the even hipper, “Viva los Zombies!”
We’ll know our exact screening date and time soon. We hope our friends and fans in the Bay City area will check out our premiere screening outside The Grand Canyon State.
Thanks for all the support of our cast, crew and fans. We absolutely could not do this without you and may we just say, “Viva los Zombies!”
We’re proud to announce that “Dead Votes Society” is an official selection of the 3rd Annual Tucson Terrorfest. DVS will screen at 8pm on Friday, Oct 18th at
The Screening Room, 127 E. Congress Street, Tucson.
We’ll be on the same program as “Dead Meat Walking: A Zombie Walk Documentary”, which explores the explosion of Zombie Walk events – from 6 people to over 15,000 at one even event. Looks like a great match for us and we’d love to see you and all fans of the Shambling Undead at this one time screening.
There’ll be Q and A with the filmmakers. We’re bringing a few rare and collectible DVS posters ($10) and t-shirts ($15 – only 7 left – 4 large and 3 XL!)
“Dead Votes Society” cast and crew members will be at the historic Elks Opera House on Saturday, Oct 5th.
Rare and collectible t-shirts and posters will be for sale in the lobby of the theater with a chance to get items autographed and talk to the cast.
We want to show off our little “zom com” and the great pool of talent we have here in Prescott. All funds raised with t-shirt and poster sales will go to film festival submission fees.
(Angie, our good friend the Reverend Dave Chontos, and Andrew at the step and repeat wall of the 4th Annual Prescott Film Festival)
The past three weeks have been a blur. We not only prepped our exhibition copy of the Dead Votes Society but acted as department head volunteers at the Prescott Film Festival. By the time the festival was underway, we had to remind each other to do the fun stuff filmmakers get to do: sign the poster, hang out with other filmmakers, get our picture taken with people who enjoyed the film. We had a great time at the first film festival Dead Votes Society was accepted to. More on that later.
In the process, we learned a lot. Stuff like…never get so focused on the big picture that you neglect to make posters and post cards of your film in time to distribute them around the festival. Always take the time to review the projection of your film with the tech crew, even when it is part of a package of other shorts, and check in with the screening host to make sure everyone’s on the same sheet of music.
The purest pleasure of the whole thing was sitting in large audiences to hear the laughter. It not only makes you feel good, but you start to understand the movie better.
We learned that a larger audience gives you a better idea of how well the comedy is working and where the comic beats are for the audience. Watch a comedy with three friends and you get laughter from only what those three people find funny.
At our world premiere in the Yavapai College Performing Arts Center, on July 24,2013, we had over 400 people in the audience. They laughed long and hard. Maybe hearing lots of people laughing near you puts you in a laughing state of mind? Maybe a larger audience gives you different people who laugh at different things? Doesn’t matter! The laughs were big and genuine and we were happy to hear them all.
At the second screening, on July 28th – in the smaller Yavapai College SNW Community Theatre – the room sat 200 and they were sending out for extra chairs as the lights went down and people kept trying to get in.
Both times, there was a nice Q and A afterwards and a chance to share the stage with Prescott filmmakers Holly Rillovick, Ryan Moser, Greg Smolarz, Sam Coodley, Ken Gregg, as well as festival MVP Forrest Sandefer (three movies in competition, either as director or DP!)
All in all, a great first festival experience. Now, we do a little more prep, upload the screener to Withoutabox and start offering our little zom-com to festivals for the coming year. Viva los zombies!
This Wednesday, July 24, 2013 will mark the World Premiere of Dead Votes Society at Yavapai College Performing Arts Center during “Prescott on the Big Screen,” the 4th Annual Prescott Film Festival showcase of locally made cinema.
Since we started pre-production in September 2012, we’ve worked towards this date. Spent thousands of dollars. Worked very, very late. Got up early the next day to squeeze in some more before day job began. Sunday night, we showed it to our cast and crew in the lounge at Taj Mahal Restaurant. They broke up laughing and that wasn’t too surprising. What was surprising were the waitstaff from the dining room crowding in the door way to watch the film and laughing, laughing. Also surprising, when we showed the film a second time for cast who had to show up late, it actually got bigger laughs from the people who’d already seen it once.
As a comedy writer, that’s wonderful. You can see Dead Votes Society Wednesday night at 6pm in the YCPAC or Sunday, July 28th at 4pm in Yavapai College’s Building #19.
But, if you could do me favor, go to the World Premiere. Not only will you get to see it before most anyone else in the world has seen it and enjoy some great laughs, but they’ll be handing out ballots as you come in the door for the Audience Choice Awards.
Please do consider us for your vote. Some laughter might come in handy these days. And we’ve got just the zombies for the job. Viva los Zombies!
Tickets are now on sale for Prescott Film Festival’s “Prescott on the Big Screen” – over 2 hours of short independent films shot here in Everybody’s Hometown – which includes, “Dead Votes Society.”
This is the world premiere of “Dead Votes Society” and, while we’re glad to see it up on the Big Screen , there’s an awful lot of seats in the Yavapai College Performing Arts Center. We aim to fill ’em up with fans of Prescott, comedy and zombie flicks. And we need your help to do that.
Tell your friends. Tell your neighbors. Tell that hip check-out lady at Albertson’s. We all could use a good laugh in Prescott these days and “Dead Votes Society” is probably the funniest zombie movie ever made in Yavapai County. We’re not 100% on that, but we’re pretty sure.
Call 928-458-7209 (Monday through Friday 9am-5pm) to get your tickets and support Prescott’s growing independent film community. That’s a mere $10 for 6 Prescott-made movies and you’ll avoid the long lines on the day of the show.
That’s right! This year’s Prescott Film Festivalwill feature two screenings of “Dead Votes Society,” the hilarious and chilling new zombie comedy shot in Prescott, AZ.
The “Dead Votes Society” World Premiere happens Wednesday, July 24th, starting at 6pm, at the Yavapai College Performing Arts Center. “Dead Votes Society” is part of “Prescott on the Big Screen,” a showcase of independent short films shot right here in Everybody’s Hometown. We’ll have Q and A with the film makers afterwards and a chance to meet the cast and crew.
On Sunday, July 28st, there’ll be a second, more intimate screening, starting at 4pm, in SNW Community Theatre (Yavapai College’s Building #19). Tickets for both can be purchased at the Yavapai College Performing Arts Center box office.
So, mark your calendars and we’ll see you at the Prescott Film Festival!
Years ago, back when Angie, Christian Smith and I were part of Coyote Radio Theater, we scored this Big Gig – playing the Orpheum Theatre in Flagstaff. We knew we needed a great poster for this gig.
And for that, we needed some very good photos. There weren’t that many great photographers in Prescott back then.
He was this fantastic photographer who did the big league stuff – swanky shoots for catalogues, bands, etc. His studio is on the top floor of the old Masonic Temple – the ceremonial room, in fact, with thick carpet, richly ornamented ceiling, scads of cutting edge equipment, design forward furnishings, etc. I mean, if there ever was a Bond Villain who was a photographer for Paris Vogue, his lair would look a lot like this.
So, out of our league. But, it never hurts to ask. So, we did. And he said yes. We had a great shoot with the various wonderful oddball voice actors who were going to bring these radio theatre characters to life. Chris really took in that odd energy and found ways to get it in the photo. Our performers really opened up to the camera and we got some of the best photos we ever had of the group.
Here it is, years later, we’re making our first Crest Top movie, “The Dead Votes Society,” a satire about politics in Arizona, adapted by Angie, Christian and I from the original radio sketch.
Angie, as these things usually happen, HAD AN IDEA. “What if on the movie poster we had this grave and the hand of a zombie is coming up out of the grave and its making that “V for Victory” sign with its zombie fingers and we superimpose the title of the movie, “Dead Votes Society” with the V in Votes being the zombie fingers making the V for Victory sign?
Once again, we needed a really excellent photographer – since this poster will be seen at film festivals all over this great land of ours. By great good fortune, Chris Marchetti contacted us about the same time and offered his help on this project. Angie is excitedly telling our good friend, graphic designerTres Ikner about our luck working with Chris Marchetti again. He says, “I love that image. Who’s doing your poster design to go along with that image?” Angie shrugs. Tres taps his own chest and nods knowingly. Holy cats, we know the coolest people.
So, we leap into action. As producer, Angie recruits one of our zombie actors, the very expressive Cason Murphy, to be our Zombie Hand Model.
Production Designer Penelope Davis develops a two by two shallow box that can have sod laid across the top, a slit made in the grass and a tube run up at an angle for Cason to extend his hand up through the sod. Then, Penelope puts together a zombie distressed fashion shirt and jacket sleeve, which, in combination with her application of the zombie make-up designed by Ridge Gallagher, make for a hand that looks like its coming back from the grave with something to say.
As director, I managed to find damn near the last piece of sod in Arizona. Who knew they stopped making it in winter? The folks at Evergreen Turf in Chandler, AZ were incredibly helpful with this bizarre request.
It all came together on Saturday, in that fantastical loft at the top of the Masonic Temple. Once again, it was a pleasure to watch Chris Marchetti work – his intuition with the shot is only matched by his patience as we figured out how to get an image that was at once easy to read, funny and maybe a little profound in its own silly way.
By the end of the shoot, Angie was standing next to Chris and shouting suggestions to the unseen Cason under the sod box.
“Do a sleepy V . . . do a happy V . . . do an angry V . . . ” And Cason’s zombie hand would change right in front of us as Chris clicked away.
By the time we got to “Do a Sexy V!” we knew we had it. Can’t wait to get the images to Tres for the movie poster.
