Sarasota Film Festival recap

Sunday night / 10:45 pm

All I can do at the moment is detail a few high points...but I promise to go into more detail soon about the whole film festival experience. I'm just exhausted. My Team and I gave it everything we had these last coupla weeks...and we walked away with an all-time box office record for most screenings sold out in the history of the Sarasota Film Festival. The last Sold Out screening today at 2:00 pm had an additional 45 people in the Rush line desperately trying to get in to see Beautiful Noise...which is another record the SFF folks told me about. What an unbelievable response...

The audience was amazing today. I have never sat through a movie where people break into applause after a song - in this case Jay & Danielle's ballad - "Lonely Hearts"...penned by their castmate Doug Frasure. It did happen at the first screening last weekend 'cause the theatre was filled with cast & crew and our families and friends. But today it was a packed house filled with 'civilians'...people who are not connected to the production in any way. It was off the hook amazing. They even applauded the credits!

Then the Q&A went on for a long time after the lights came back up. Lots of questions about how was I able to make such a film here in Sarasota...and also how in the world did I find Danielle, Kimber, Jay and Chris? Everyone reacted strongly to the announcement that we're filming the Beautiful Noise prequel and sequel back-to-back this fall in Sarasota...and they all wanted to know when the DVD would be available.

To leverage the incredible momentum we've generated coming out of the SFF, I've decided to allow additional screenings of BN for worthy Suncoast charitable causes in the next few weeks. There are a lot of frustrated moviegoers who tried unsuccessfully to see our film, so it makes sense to keep the ball rolling and use the excitement to raise $'s for local charities. More on this new development later this week...

Meanwhile, it's back to the beach and the gym to recharge the batteries, get my tan together and get back into great shape mentally and physically. I need to be ready for the tremendous travel and promotional schedule ahead that will be followed by long days of prepping the shooting schedules for BN 2 "Serenade" and BN 3 "Heartlight" later this year. After the special showcases this month here in Sarasota, our next film festival is in Dayton, Ohio May 20-22...then we hit the road to other US film fests and then on to Ireland and probably the UK early this summer.

I'll never forget these last 10 days at the SFF. Sarasota came out in droves to support Beautiful Noise. I'm only too happy to return their embrace by expanding the scope of our company, Midnight Pass Productions, and keep making indie feature films right here on the Suncoast.

ST