We arrived on Tuesday, April 20th, and our screening was Wednesday night. We stayed in a tiny hotel with an odd stench, but luckily only saw 1 spider. Muskogee is an interesting town. It's very small but seems kind of spread out, where you can't really walk the town, you still have to drive everywhere. The only way you would know how many people live in the town is if you go to the one bar in town, Max's Garage. On a Friday, there was maybe 100-150 people, and I'm sure that was everyone.
Our Wednesday night screening was quaint. Even though there weren't that many people, they were definitely captive, which lead to a great Q&A afterwards - my longest to date. It was reassuring to hear the compliments and general intelligent questions about the film. They were really paying attention!
We didn't realize until Thursday that most all of the "big" narrative films were scheduled to screen Friday and Saturday. The documentaries were scheduled earlier in the week. This meant that most (probably 80%) of the filmmakers weren't arriving until Thursday night! Sure enough, the festival got hoppin, and we made a ton of great friends, and saw many promising films.
Unfortunately, of all the new friends we made, none of them were at our Wednesday night screening, and all of them wanted to see DADDY I DO. So in a final rush, my producer and I petitioned to the festival organizers to have a second screening of DADDY I DO.
Saturday was the last day for screenings, and of course the schedule was all booked up. The only option was for us to screen after the final film, which ended at midnight!
We jumped on the opportunity and gathered enough of an audience to make our midnight screening worth it. We even bought pizza for everyone assuming that they'd been watching films all day and haven't had time to eat. Every person there ate pizza. I think they liked that!
We showed DADDY I DO for our new filmmaker friends, and despite some technical errors (the dvd skipped in the middle which caused a 5 minute intermission, which actually was good because everyone was able to talk about the film), it was a GREAT screening! Right up there with San Diego IndieFest (which was our loudest and most laughs screening) and Idyllwild International Festival of Cinema (which was a largest screening). What I loved about this Bare Bones midnight screening was everyone was talking to each other during it, so they would see something in the film and then turn to their neighbor and say "I can't believe that", and stuff like that... I LOVED it because that's what I do when I watch a film. I like to make it an experience with who I'm watching it with. I don't think it's wrong to talk during films if you're talking ABOUT the film. I think that's a compliment!
All in all, Bare Bones was amazing. I'm most thankful for the people we met. We've all stayed in close (online) contact since then, and we're all actively helping the other go to more festivals and giving suggestions on marketing and getting your film out there. Everyone was so selfless and just wanted to help each other. It was amazing.
On Sunday, April 25th (my producer's birthday) was the Awards Ceremony. I didn't know what to expect because the film we were up against had their entire cast and crew there, and they had a HUGE screening (far bigger than ours), and it was also an important subject matter.
We heard our name called, and like usual, the acceptance speech was a blur. I do remember giving credit to our competition though and everyone gave a round of applause for their work as well. I said something along the lines of "it's important to have filmmakers that want to improve the world and make positive changes"... something like that... I think I said it better though (haha, hopefully!).
Here are some of the pix from Bare Bones:
That's Harlad Williams (Rocketman!), me, Ford Austin (Filmmaker), and my producer!
Oscar Ray (the Festival organizer), my producer, Aki Aleong (Actor and Director), and me on the red carpet before the ceremony!
All of the award winners get together for a group photo. Basically everyone in this photo is a new good friend of mine. I'm so grateful to have met all of them (on such an intimate level that only an uber-small town can give you!).
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