Party and Press

Vanessa from the Traverse City Record Eagle called to talk about Michigan Movie Makers, she is doing a story about regional production. Check out Sunday’s paper (07-31-11), we’ll probably post a link.

The M3 meet and mix at the Traverse City Film Festival was a hit with the visiting filmmakers and media folks. Andrea Maio and David Marek got the ball rolling, Andy MacFarlane set up the wine and food and Dan Kelly jammed the postcards. The duo Saldaje (Melonie Steffes and Shaun Anchak) provided incidental gypsy music.

All the planned structure just fell away once the event got going. Dan Kelly (that’s me) had intended to host an audience interaction with Andrea’s friend Heather Courtney, director of “Where Soldiers Come From” and three of the UP dudes from the film – Dominic, Matt (Bodi) and Cole. I had also wanted to show a few of the favs from M33M.

First, my fault for not showing up early enough to figure out the DVD player and monitor – non function. Second, I really should have brought my small PA and microphone to overcome the hub bub of the crowd. Though I walked the room and personally invited folks to join in, no one came over to our corner except Rich Brauer who wondered why we didn’t invite folks to join in. The crowd thickened and the social vibe jammed. The meeting components really needed a little invasive amplification to be viable. We could have just gone for a full on party from the start and dropped any pretense at structure, as I suggested in the flurry of  planning emails with Andy and Andrea. I confess the collision of conflicting agendas put me in a tizzy. I didn’t even print any michiganmoviemaker.com postcards to pass around! So that’s how it ended up – meeting components jettisoned and full on party.  I don’t know whether M3 got any traction out of it, but it WAS fun.

Here’s an excerpt of the conversation about “Where Soldiers Come From”. Heather had graciously provided me with a DVD that day and I watched it spellbound in Oryana’s parking lot. Highly recommend!