Audio: Escaping, Embracing Rural America in BFE

Update: Audio link fixed.

Life in a small town is nothing like what you’ve heard from cityfolk. BFE director Shawn Telford knows that because he grew up in one and lead actress Kelsey Packwood learned because she starred in the film and got to know the same small towns seedy side. Both sat down with us and our media partners from WSRQ to discuss the film, which premiered this week at the Sarasota Film Festival.

The Business of Creativity: Filmmaker Panel on Balancing Budget and Artistry

This morning, SRQ Media Group held the Show Me the Money panel featuring six filmmakers and investors—Mark Famiglio, Marty Hurwitz, Rob Sterrett, Shawn Telford, John Stuart Wildman, and Victor Young—hosted by Jeanne Corcoran, director of the Sarasota County Film and Entertainment Office, about raising money to finance independent film.

SRQ hosting film financing panel

Show me the money! It’s more than a classic movie line for many of the filmmakers in town for the Sarasota Film Festival. Now investors and artists alike are invited to a special panel hosted by SRQ Media Group in our Pineapple Avenue offices on Wednesday, April 9. How do filmmakers connect with investors? How do producers know where to devote their time, talent and treasure? We seek to answer those questions and more.

Doors open at 10:30am and the panel will start at 11am. Brunch is provided at this free event. Our offices are locates at 331 S. Pineapple Ave., Sarasota, just south of Ringling Boulevard.

Jeanne Corcoran, director of the Sarasota County Film and Entertainment Office, will moderate this panel of producers, directors, agents and experts on the challenging world of show business. Panelists include:

Mark Famiglio, co-founder and president of the Sarasota Film Festival and co­founder and CEO of Copytalk, a revolutionary voice to text data integration service based in Sarasota.

Shawn Telford, director of BFE, a feature-length independent film hosting its world premiere at the Sarasota Film Festival financed partially using the crowd-sourcing capabilities of Kickstarter.

Martin Hurwitz, founder of Conceptioneering and a former Hollywood agent who ran his own firm and previously represented talent through the William Morris Agency.

Victor Young, producer at Media and Management Global and CEO of V. Young Enterprises. He is currently attached to Stratosphere, a movie currently in production.

Rob Sterrett, associate producer of Chu and Blossom, a feature film screening this year at the Sarasota Film Festival. He has been a freelance producer for 22 years.

John Stuart Wildman, director of The Ladies of the House, which screened at this year’s Sarasota Film Festival. Wildman is senior publicist for the Film Society at Lincoln Center.

BFE director Shawn Telford escaped from a small town, then returned to make a movie

Urban legend and rural myth alike send the message that the world of drugs and sex and violence and pain was developed within the dark alleys of the big city. Whether the message is reinforced with the moral derision of suspicious schoolmarms or lionized by club kids who view celebrate the great urban underbelly, most anyone who grew up in a small town knows this message is crap. Teenagers in the sticks do drugs, sleep with one another and engage in the same vices as city kids, and sometimes do so with greater regularity simply for lack of better ways to spend their time.

Shawn Telford in Post Falls, Idaho.

Filmmaker Shawn Telford knows this. He spend his teen years in Post Falls, Idaho and knows plenty about the lack of options there for teens on a Friday night. He also knows how hard it can be to escape, to get away from a place that, for all its dangers, shortcomings and lack of opportunities, remains your home. So why did he go back to make a movie in his hometown? And can Post Falls ironically provide him with his big break? After BFE premieres at this year’s Sarasota Film Festival, he may learn the answer to the second question. As for his answers to the first, check out what he told SRQ Backlot by heading below the fold.