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10/17/07 An update is long overdue, so here
it goes: Schattenkind won two awards at the
2007 Indy Horror Film Festival: Best Short Film, and Best Visual Effects! The film is now available online at the
iTunes Store as part of their Halloween short film promotion! 9/9/06 More festivals and a cool
screening--- "Schattenkind" has been
accepted to the Phoenix International Horror and Sci-Fi Festival and the
Calgary International Film Festival! Both festivals take place in October
(which looks to be a good month for this film) In addition, "Schattenkind"
will screen at CinemaLounge, a monthly event put on by Film Independent. The
film will show on October 19th as part of the Halloween-themed event. Please
check back for more details about these screenings... 8/28/06 Two festivals, one nomination--- Schattenkind has been selected to
screen at the Temecula Valley International Film and Music Festival, as well
as at Shockerfest (in Modesto, CA), where it has been nominated as Best Short
Horror Film! For more information about the
festivals, access the websites at: Temecula http://www.tviff.com/ 6/30/06 Amidst an excellent selection of films, Schattenkind was a
"runner-up" at the BAFTA/LA Student Awards. For more information,
here are two articles (nearly identical) about "Schattenkind" being
recognized at the event: Young Director Casts 'Shadow' - USC Public
Relations Newsroom Shadow Success - USC School of
Cinema-Television Press Release Also, here are pictures from the screening: http://www.baftala.org/newgal/view_album.php?set_albumName=Student2006 6/13/06 Schattenkind has been selected as one of 6 finalists for the British
Academy of Film and Television Arts/Los Angeles Student Film Awards.
This is a competition amongst student films submitted from ten Los Angeles
film schools. 5/19/06 The First Look Screenings went extremely well last month. Thank you to
all in attendance! There were some palpable gasps and many hearty laughs
during the screening! I received a lot of positive feedback about the film
and I'm plowing through revisions on the feature length script, "Haus of Fun" . In the meantime, I'm taking off
to Taiwan for a few weeks to work on classmate Charlene Wang's USC thesis
film. There will be a whole new round of horror film festivals going on in LA
and around the country come October, so keep your fingers crossed and your
eyes open... 4/18/06 Many have seen "Schattenkind" and wished that the movie had
been longer (it clocks in around 12 minutes... a guideline at USC). Well, the
script has been written for a feature length film based on Schattenkind,
titled "Haus of Fun". Click on this link for
more information. In other news, USC's First Look Film Festival begins tonight at the
Director's Guild of America Theater. There will be a wide variety of films
showing over the next three nights, and they will all be shown again on
Saturday. Make reservations now if you haven't already! Call (213) 740-1153
for tickets. 3/20/06 More good news--Schattenkind has been accepted to the Chicago Horror
Film Festival! It will show at 8:20 PM on Friday April 28th. The screenings
begins at 6PM and go until midnight. If you are in Chicago, check it out
because tickets are only $6. Access the website to get more info: http://www.chicagohorrorfest.com/ If you want to see the film in LA, please reserve your seats for USC's
First Look Film Festival now! Call this number to get your tickets: (213)
740-1153 The screening costs nothing so you can pick up your reserved tickets at
the box office before the screening on Thursday, April 20th. I hope to see
you there. 2/28/06 Schattenkind has been selected to screen at the Dead by Dawn Film
Festival in Scotland, UK! The festival appears to be sold out already (before
the official selections were even announced), so in case you happen to be in
Scotland April 20th-23rd, it may be tough to get tickets. Our film is a part of the "Cutting Edge" shorts competition
for emerging filmmakers. An award will be presented to the best film, as
voted by the audience. For more information about this film festival, click here. 2/9/06 The exclusive website-only TEASER TRAILER has been added. Click here to view it. 1/26/06 BIG NEWS - DVDs have arrived! It has taken quite a few months but I
wanted to make sure that everything was perfect before we start distributing
copies to cast, crew, friends, and family. I'll start sending out the DVDs as soon as I get a chance. In other news , last night we screened the film at the Dolby
Laboratories in San Francisco. It is a beautiful facility and we were
incredibly lucky to be able to show the film in such a perfect screening
environment. As would be expected, the sound was awesome (and loud!). There was a great turnout and a lot of familiar faces for me (SF is my
hometown). Thanks to everyone who attended the screening and special thanks
to Tom Bruchs at Dolby for setting up and running the evening so perfectly. We have a lot of pictures to put online, and I'll add another post when
that is complete. 1/19/06 The dates for USC's First Look have been set: "Schattenkind"
will show at the Director's Guild of America Theater the evening of Thursday,
April 20th, 2006. It will play again at USC's Norris Theatre on Saturday,
April 22nd in the afternoon. Both screenings are free and I will post more
updates soon. In other, non-"Schattenkind" news, you can now view the
trailers for two USC films on which I was the cinematographer. Here are the
links: Look for these films to premiere later this year. 12/20/05 Our next showing will take place at the Dolby Laboraties in San
Francisco on January 25th, 2006. Plans for the evening may include a
reception and a behind-the-scenes slideshow. It is a rather smal theater so
seating is limited and by invitation only. In other news, "Schattenkind" will be included in USC's First
Look Film Festival in April. The festival takes place at the Director's Guild
of America theater, and all films will be shown for a second time at USC's
Norris Theater. Over the next couple of months I'll be involved in developing
the program for the event and coordinating the details. In addition to the screenings, "Schattenkind" will be put on
a compilation DVD of other USC films to be distributed at the festival and to
industry professionals. That's all the news for now... more to come soon. 11/15/05 "Schattenkind" screened at USC the other night with an
excellent selection of graduate thesis films. Here was the lineup: "Geek Willy and the Last House Party" - Nic de Armendi "Yard Sale" - Brad Barber "Schattenkind" "Antebody" - Jim Gleason "Love Letter" - Trent Jones The evening was hosted by USC faculty member Mary Beth Fielder and
attended by cast, crew, friends, and a few members of the industry. Here a few pictures from the screening. Plans are in the works to show the film in San Francisco on January
25th, 2006. Dolby Laboratories is kindly offering to let us screen at their
facility. Please check back for more updates regarding this screening. 10/17/05 On November 11th, "Schattenkind"
will be shown at the University of Southern California in Norris Theater. The
screening starts at 8PM and the film will be third in a series of four
graduate thesis films. The other films represent a wide variety of genres, so
we look forward to a night of interesting and entertaining movies. There is
no admission charge and seats are first come-first serve. The event is still being planned, but
I am hoping there will be time for a reception afterwards on or near campus. For more info regarding the
screening, please contact me at jesse@whydoyouhide.net
and check back soon for more updates. 9/24/05 "Schattenkind" premiered at
Shriekfest tonight to a nearly full theater at Raleigh Studios. It was preceded
by some excellent horror and thriller films and the audience appeared really
geared up for our showing (or at least, I was). It seemed as if the viewers
became very involved in the film, and a generous round of applause followed
the credits. In attendance were a good number of crew members and three out
of the five actors in the film, who were finally able to see the result of
their hard work. It's crazy to think that we shot this film eleven months ago
and everyone had to wait patiently for all that time to see it. Now that I can finally relax for a
second, I can start going through the steps to get this film into other
festivals. Although this screening was a little nerve-racking, it's really
fun to share a film with an audience made up of people involved with the project
as well as strangers watching with fresh eyes. It may just be the most
satisfying part of this whole project, and it makes all the difficulties
encountered in production seem to disappear into the past. Enough for now. More to come soon... 9/23/05 It's finally finished. The film has
been printed and is "in the can"... if you need evidence, check this out . Soon we'll begin making DVD copies for everyone involved in the
project, and then we'll start submitting to more film festivals. Check back
soon for more news. 9/21/05 Our first official screening is fast approaching and everything is
falling into place. I'll be picking up the final print of the film today
which technically means that we are FINISHED. Now, there is still a lot of
work to do, including making DVD copies and submitting to festivals, but as
far as the creative and technical aspects of the film go, there is nothing
left to do! Now we get to sit back and (hopefully) relax as we get to show
everyone what we've accomplished. I'll update the site shortly after the
screening, so check back soon. By the way, the film is now up on the Internet Movie Database. They
currently have all the information for cast and crew but it takes a while for
them to add all the credits to the page.
8/25/05 "She is here"... Schattenkind
will premiere at The Los Angeles International Shriekfest Film Festival in
Hollywood, CA, September 24th, 2005 at 6PM!This is the first official screening
of Schattenkind! Advanced tickets can be bought online for $7 at http://www.shriekfest.com (I assume this
film will be shown in a group with about 3-4 others). Here is the
location:Raleigh Studios (Chaplin Theatre), 5300 Melrose, Hollywood, CA. If you can't attend this screening,
don't worry! There will be others... 8/4/05 - The musical score is
currently being engineered and we've started ADR sessions (automated dialogue
replacement) with our actors. Our final sound mixing date is in early
September, so between now and then we have to finish all our sound design.
More to come soon... 7/31/05 - It's been quite a few
months since it happened, but we are officially picture-locked (translation:
we're done editing). Now we're finishing up the sound design and musical
score. After that's done, we'll mix the sound and begin striking prints to
color correct the film. We're definitely in the final stages of this film! In
other news, our very own composer, Darrell
Raby was selected as a finalist in the highly prestigious Turner Classic
Movies Young Film Composer competition. We'll find out if he wins later this
week. Good luck Darrell! Stay tuned for more updates, which will
hopefully come at a much more rapid pace now. 3/23/05 - Our editors are cutting
away furiously...You want some more pictures (from pickups)? I've got them
for you. Click here. In other news, recently I was lucky
enough to be the cinematographer on a short film entered into a 48 hour film
festival. The festival, "Instant Films", gives filmmakers a chance
to create a movie from scratch in slightly under, you guessed, two days.
If you'd like to see the film, follow this link and click
on "My Feral Lady". 3/6/05 - Last week we shot a few
pickups and we're looking to work in the new footage soon. I'll be posting a
brand new set of production pictures shortly. Our goal is to be picture locked
around the end of March! Then the sound work goes into full swing... 1/15/05 - School's back in session
and we're back in the editing room. We're currently on cut #3 and it's
looking good. In other news, I have now compiled
all the pictures from the shoot and they are finally online. Click here for more photos. 12/13/04 - I know I've been lazy
about updating the site, but not much has happened until very recently. First
of all, we have an official "first cut" of the film. I'm going to
start showing it to people to get their opinions and see if it all makes
sense. Our editors have worked very hard and so far the film is looking
really good.Secondly, our wrap party took place this last Saturday night...
there was a good showing by the cast and crew, and hopefully somebody has
some pictures because I was too busy playing foosball to take any myself. If
I get some photos, you know where to find them.And finally, this film has
already received some press! The article appeared in the Pepperdine newspaper
yesterday and outlines Brett Davidson's experience with the film and as a
Pepperdine alum. Click
here to view the article, *but please be aware*:
there are some plot spoilers in the third paragraph. So if you haven't seen
the film yet (and that means everyone except me and the editors), do us a
favor and just skip right over that little section so as not to ruin the
viewing experience. Let's hope this is just the beginning of the
"buzz". And that's all the news for now. USC
is officially on winter break so we're all going to take a nice long vacation
and get back to work in January. During that time, I'm going to try to upload
some more pictures (including production stills which I just dropped off at
the lab today), so check back soon! 11/11/04 - Today our editors began
digitizing all our footage (about 14,000 feet = 2.5 hours). Soon we'll have
all our sound synched with picture and we can begin the nitty-gritty of
cutting this movie together. It's nice to be able to sit back and
relax a little after production. There is still a lot of work to be done in
the months to come, but nothing compares to the amazing amount of work we put
in every day for the entire month before the shoot. At this point I can only
imagine what it will be like to work on a feature film with a schedule ten
times as long! THAT'S A WRAP10/29/04 - DAY SEVEN -
Last night we finished our shooting around 8PM and it feels great to be done.
After packing our truck and taking down the cabin, people headed to a bar in
Santa Monica to "unwind". I couldn't believe the energy everyone
had. While everyone was out on the dance floor I was falling asleep in my
beer. Thanks to everyone for a great shoot! Now we're moving on to
post-production... let the editing begin. And of course, I took some pictures. I'll be posting more photos
online soon. 10/27/04 - DAY SIX - Today was great.
We accomplished a lot of our special effects shots and performed quite a few
stunts. Now we only have one scene left to shoot (with a few pick ups from
other scenes as well). I took a lot of pictures today. Check them out. 10/26/04 - DAY FIVE - We can finally
see some light at the end of the tunnel as our last two days approach. Still,
there's a lot to be done in the last 24 hours (total) of filming. I took some more pictures today, but
at this point I can only post so many without spoiling the movie! Here they are. 10/25/04 - DAY FOUR - Today was our
most productive day in many respects. We shot a ton of film, we covered many
pages, and we finally pushed past the halfway mark! We continue to shoot at
Culver Studios as we will for the rest of the shoot. Despite being indoors,
the rain still haunts us... the freeways were awful this morning due to
accidents and spills. More rain is predicted tomorrow, so who knows what it
has in store (Power outages? Floods?) Am I being overly pessimistic? I know why you've read this far...
you want to see MORE PICTURES. 10/23/04 - Pictures are up from day
three! Click here to view them.10/22/04
- DAY THREE - This was our first day at Culver Studios, and it was nice to be
indoors, dry, and warm! I have a ton of pictures which I'll post soon. We had
a wide variety of shots, including a major stunt rig involving levitating an
actor off the ground 2 feet from the catwalk high above the floor. We also
finally built our cabin interior and set it up for maximum creep-factor. We still have a lot left to do in the
next few days, so check back for updates and the pictures I've promised. 10/20/04 - DAY TWO - Wow. It rained
last night and it rained hard. We knew it was going to be difficult, but I
had no idea that we would be drenched from 6:00PM to 4:30AM (the rain stopped
for our last shot). It was an incredibly tough night, but our crew was
awesome and we got all the shots we needed. We had people out there that were
completely soaked for hours and hours, but everyone worked hard from start to
finish.At points in the night it was hard not to laugh at our bad luck. For
instance, we finally had a shot set up in which billowing smoke would cross
the frame for atmosphere. So we set up a fogger on the right side. We turn it
on, and the wind blows it the wrong way. So we set up another fogger on the
left side. By now the wind has shifted in the other direction. So we resort
to the obvious... run both foggers at once. And can you guess what happened?
The wind blew both streams of fog in the wrong directions. It seemed like
some supernatural phenomenon you'd expect at the Mystery Spot... we couldn't
believe our eyes. Nonetheless, we got the shot and many
others. Good thing it's a horror film because the rain can only enhance the
atmosphere! By the way, here is a picture of our cabin
as it was being assembled. 10/18/04 - DAY ONE - Overall things
went very well! Miraculously it did not rain, however we had what seemed like
hurricane-force winds throughout the day. By the time the sun went down it
was absolutely freezing, and the dust and wind didn't help. We fought through
the conditions and got a lot of great stuff. I'll put up more photos soon,
but here are a few to start. 10/17/04 - Tomorrow is Monday--our
first day of principal photography! We're all ready to go, except for some
strange reason it's started to rain in LA after 6 months without a drop.
We'll deal with that when we get to our location, but it may be a couple of
wet days for all of us. In other news, we've done all we can
to build the pieces of our cabin, which we'll assemble Tuesday night. Here
are some pictures from the build. 10/15/04 - Today we continued to
build our set and we also had our final rehearsal. We're in the home stretch
now (of pre-production) and it's hard to believe after months of planning
that we'll be shooting in three days. When I get a chance I'll post some
pictures from building, rehearsals, meetings, etc. (it's about time), so
check back soon! 10/14/04 - We had our camera test
this evening and it went EXTREMELY well. This included makeup and wardrobe
tests to see how it will all look on the film stock we've chosen. I'd write
in more detail but by doing so I'd give away certain secrets of the film.We
have also been confirmed to shoot at Culver Studios! This is a huge bonus for
us, since we'll get to shoot on a professional movie lot. Tomorrow we resume building our
cabin... and Monday is our first day of principal shooting! More to come... 10/10/04 - Today was quite a
significant day for our little film. Although we didn't roll any film, we did
capture quite a lot of video footage that will be displayed in the film. So
technically we've started shooting! We also drove back out to Lancaster
to try to find a good spot for the first scene of the movie. Does this look like Texas? 10/7/04 - As the last three minutes
tick off this day (11:57PM), I've been thinking about how far this film has
come in the past few weeks. It's exponential how much is accomplished from
one day to the next. As is evidenced by the time (11:58PM now... I type
slowly), there are going to be some LATE nights in the next few weeks. BUT,
all this hard work on the part of everyone involved is paid off by tangible
accomplishments--most notably WE HAVE THE GREENLIGHT from USC, meaning we've gone through all the steps necessary with
the school. Now we just have to go out and shoot a movie. Okay, it's midnight
and we start building our cabin in 9 hours, followed by our first rehearsal.
Then the next day there's an important football game I must attend. At the
risk of offending anyone, I won't say who I'm rooting for. That's all for now. Good night world.
10/3/04 - Time to get serious. We
start shooting in 2 WEEKS. Everything is in good shape now. We have a cast,
locations, camera, film, crew (for the most part), and we almost have the
official USC "greenlight".In the coming week we're going to start
rehearsing, building our cabin, and taking care of all the other fun and
glamorous jobs like renting trucks, lights, and portable toilets! Ah, this is
the life... By the way, lots of people are having
trouble pronouncing the title of this film. This seems to be a problem if
you're telling a friend "I hear there's this great new film being
produced called... well, I can't say it, but it's great". Here's a
lesson: Say "shot" as in "bartender, one more SHOT for my
friend here"--then say "en" as in the letter N--now finish up
with "kind" is in "kindling". Got it? Shot-N-kind. Now go
tell your friends (by the way, this means "Shadow Kid"). 9/20/04 - Crew bios and pictures are
up! If you'd like to know who is involved in the project, click here. 9/18/04 - Casting is almost done!
Many excellent actors have auditioned for the five roles in the film and
final decisions will be made very soon. I have just added the artwork section. Stephanie B. Keane, also a USC
graduate film student, has prepared a few pictures inspired by the script.
Thank you Stephanie! 9/11/04 - Welcome to the
"Schattenkind" website! These pages are still under construction,
but keep coming back as more content is added. Soon I'll have crew bios and
pictures up. For now, click on The Legend link
for a bit of a teaser about the film. I'll try to update the news section at
least once a week so please visit often. If you'd like to contact me, please
send me an email at schattenkind@verizon.net.
We're planning to begin shooting on the 18th of October and we should be done
by Halloween. Post-production will begin shortly after that and will carry us
all the way through next summer. The plan is to be done with this film in
August 2005! - Jesse Eisenhardt, Director Copyright
2006 - Jesse Eisenhardt |
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