Promote Podcast

Friday, July 9, 2010

The busy time of year

In the past few years, July has signified the production of our most famous short film series, The Missing Bank Card. These films are specifically shot for the Land of Lincoln Credit Untion's 21 Film Project. This contest is specifically catered to showcase and award short films produced with the Land of Lincoln tagline "bank on learning more".

The best 20 films that meet the specific criteria are shown at an extravigant awards show in August. In 2008 and 2009 we have shown and achieved awards for The Missing Bank Card 1 and 2: (The revenge of Steven Douglas), but we did not get "Best in Show" which also awards money. This year, we hope to change that.

The Missing Bank Card 3: The Demise of Abraham Lincoln has been in production for a couple days now, and so far it's even more ambitious than the last two films combined. Probably 75% of the film will be shot on a green screen with multiple cameras, lots more special effects, and more characters introduced. Of course, when you finish a trilogy, you have to outdo your other films by a given margin.

I also have a feeling that this will be our last year at this contest, whether we win or not. It's tiresome to continue producing short films that can only be used at for the LLCU film project, and the fatigue that shows during these productions is very evident.

The one thing that keeps us going, to finish the trilogy, is the fact that our films have historically been the crowd favorite. If you go to the 21 Film Project web site, you see our film featured on that page even though ours did not win Best in Show. The film that won 1st place last year is all the way at the bottom of the list of last years winners. That's telling you something.

Both films, especially last years film, garnered a lot of crowd appreciation and applause. This year, the producers of the film contest were excited when they learned that we were going to finish up the trilogy, and they even gave us a little lee-way on the timing of the film so that we could use some time to put in an epilogue explaining the previous film without counting against our overall time. So, this is it. Sink or swim. Win or go home. Boxers or briefs. It's now or never.

Here's a few teaser screenshots of the production so far: