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Behind the Scenes, Sarasota Film Festival, SFF Events

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

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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. Continue reading The Business of Creativity: Filmmaker Panel on Balancing Budget and Artistry →

Behind the Scenes

The Bigger Picture

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2014 marks a big year for SRQ Backlot.

This website for three years now has provided all the behind-the-scenes news on the happenings of the Sarasota Film Festival, including the stars, screenings and celebrations that bring Hollywood to our doorstep every year. And we will continue providing the best coverage bar none of this exciting event.

In those three years, though, we and the rest of the cinema-loving world have seen the accelerated growth of an entire film industry and filmmaking community within Southwest Florida. Ringling College of Art and Design each year attracts a slew of stars and industry professions to teach film majors secrets of the trade. Movies like Spring Breakers and Free Ride have chosen the Sarasota area as a backdrop for major parts of the film. The Sarasota County Film and Entertainment Office continuously expands its role in assisting both filmmakers and investors to find success on the Suncoast.

SRQ Media Group, of course, has followed the excitement along the way. Whether through posts on our popular newsletter SRQ Daily or in the pages of SRQ Magazine, we have recorded the evolution of an industry. But the coverage has never been concentrated in a single location for our readers both to zero in on those film-related stories or to absorb the bigger picture of cinema’s impact on the Suncoast.

Since its debut, SRQ Backlot has seen more than 50,000 hits from readers anxious to see not only the stars visiting the region but to spot the locals engaging with the film world. As of today, this site will cover all aspects of the filmmaking industry and its presence in paradise. Whether that means tracking the success of computer animators who graduate from Ringling to create Oscar-winning films, keeping up with the efforts of Jeanne Corcoran’s team as they attract TV crews here or the creation of important cinema by Sarasota filmmakers, count on us to give you the news you need.

And still count on Backlot to provide you the best live coverage of every development with the Sarasota Film Festival. We’ll be there in March when the full list of programming is released and will continue to provide you access to the filmmakers, celebrities and industry heavyweights who come here each year.

Stay tuned.

Behind the Scenes, Movies, Sarasota Film Festival, SRQ Staff

Today’s The Day

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Backlot readers,

The Sarasota Film Festival starts today, and nobody is more revved up about that than the team at SRQ Backlot, SRQ Media Group’s dedicated film festival blog. We hope you will come here throughout the 11-day event (it runs April 5-14) to see what’s happening throughout the event.

We will be interviewing filmmakers about their films, publishing photographs from all the parties and keeping you up to date on the major happenings of the festival.

I would like to also encourage you to tell us what you see at the festival this year. If you have an opinion you want to share, click on our films tab and leave a comment on that film’s page. If you see a post on a party you attended, comment on the post and let us know anything excited we may have missed.

And know, this blog stands year-round. We like to think this is a resource not just for Southwest Florida cinephiles to keep up with the festival in real time, but a means for them to tell the world what is happening here in Sarasota. This blog is visited by independent film professionals and movie lovers from all around the world. It is an important platform for us, but also a soapbox for you.

Enjoy the festival. Enjoy the Backlot. Tell us what you see. And now, let’s have some fun during Sarasota’s most star-studded week.

 

Jacob Ogles

SRQ Media Group

Senior Editor and Editor of Digital Products

Behind the Scenes, Movies, Sarasota Film Festival

From the Ladies Room

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Sarasota Yacht Club; Cinema Tropicale

Talking with the filmmakers from; In the Grove

Dantev Gallagher, director,  and  Hannah Logan, producer

I saw both these filmmakers as I was about to exit the ladies room at the Sarasota Yacht Club.  We started talking about our short films.  We shared a theater together with the SRQ Shorts theirs In the Grove and mine A Lot in Common, which I helped produce. On a whim, the ladies agreed it would be fun to do an interview in from the ladies room. They both are young and beautiful and by the end of the interview are not only finishing each other sentences but answering the questions at the same time with the same answer!

 Where are you from?

We are both from Sarasota. We went to school together and know each other for about fifteen years or so.

How do you think your film has been received?

Dantev: I think it was received really well. I met a lot of people who have seen it and I couldn’t believe it. I thought maybe only families of the people in the SRQ shorts would have seen it, but a lot of people have come up to me and they liked it.

As a producer, what do you think the most challenging aspect of the filmmaking process was?

Hannah: I think the most challenging part was there was so much we wanted to get in and we only had four days. We had maybe two and a half weeks of pre-production to do it so; it was really a quick time. Dantev had a really distinct vision of what she wanted to do and we only had about four days.

Dantev: We had about five dogs on set at all times, with a dog wrangler and all. So Hannah was in charge of that.

It was such an interesting film to me. The film prior, Devil In Me, was a very dark film as well. Is Missy your lead actress here?

 Dantev:  Yes, both actresses are here and  honestly we all grew up together. Wewere in the young filmmakers showcase in high school called Spoons and everybody that I worked with was in it actually. So I wanted to come back one day as a real filmmaker.

And here you are! How many years later was that?

Dantev: Um, let’s see, I did it….

Hannah: Five

Dantev: Yeah, five.

What do you accredit your career to?

Dantev: Absolutely my friends. They are so talented and so hard working and caring, just good people. There are a lot of people in the industry who are climbing a ladder and will step on people just to get where they want to get.

 Yeah, they are called social climbers.

Dantev: Yes, and there are really a lot of really great people and those are the people I want to work with and the people I remember. My friends are definitely on that list.

What does your future hold?

Dantev: I don’t know. I am a video blogger, that’s how I make my living. We are traveling to California; we’re going to document the whole road trip so I’ll be there for a month filming my experience.

What’s going to make your road trip different from others who do the same?

Hannah: I think it’s our friends. We have really great friends.

Are they all from Sarasota?

Hannah: No, we have friends from all over the country that we will be staying with and who will be showing us their towns.

 Is it a documentary or reality show?

Dantev: I film everyday of my life so this will just be part of that. It’s basically a reality show.

Hannah: If you put it all into one, then it would be like a documentary, depends what you do with it.

Have you entered your short into any other festivals?

Dantev: This is the very first one. We edited it to the very last minute.

What are you plans for it?

Dantev: We want to enter it into a few other ones.

 Which specific ones?

Dantev: I want to do cities I know and specifically short film festivals. I know I want to enter into California and New York, maybe some smaller ones where I can meet some upcoming filmmakers.