“The Urgent Phone Call” at the ThirdACTion Film Festival

The ThirdAction Film Festival accepted “The Urgent Phone Call.”

https://www.thirdactionfilmfest.ca/taff-program

 Screening

It isn’t part of the live presentations. It is available on their Video on Demand Package, so you can watch it from there.

https://www.thirdactionfilmfest.ca/event-details/invisible-battles-stories-of-aging-ageism-resilience-video-on-demand-package

You may find some of the other films interesting too.

I wrote the script and produced the film, but I didn’t direct or edit it. This is the first film I’ve done where I didn’t direct and edit.

Genesis of the Film

I wrote the script in response to a challenge to the members of the Calgary Society of Independent Filmmaker’s Older Filmmakers’ Club. https://csif.org/clubs/ The goal of the challenge was to write a script for a short film set in one location with two or three characters. The limit was intended to produce a script that would be easy to shoot.

The story was inspired by a phone call I got one day. I felt I handled the situation well, but afterwards I thought about how it could have gone differently.

In writing the script, my hope was to encourage other members of the Older Filmmakers’ Club to start their own projects. I didn’t feel I physically up to the work I would need to do to make it happen. The positive feedback from a table read hosted by the Older Filmmakers’ Club, and Sher Dahl’s offer to direct convinced me to produce the film.

Thoughts

My experience making this film was very different from my previous films. That was largely because I wasn’t as actively involved. It reminded me again how all the many decisions you make during the various phases of production could easily be different. Little decisions can influence how the audience experiences the story.

For a long time I’ve wanted to make a longer project, but I find that a daunting task. I am leaning more toward the shorter, small format. I don’t want to pour a lot of my energy on a project I’ll never complete. I want to make films that work on several different levels. I think “The Urgent Phone Call” does accomplish that to some degree.

This post is a mirror from my main blog http://www.dynamiclethargyfilms.ca/blog