Premiere! Super Human Anxiety
The official premiere of Super Human Anxiety was amazing, the elevator was the surprise star 🙂
WOW, WHAT A NIGHT!
We had the incredible opportunity to premiere “Super Human Anxiety” at this year’s LA Shorts International Film Festival. This is an Oscar Qualifying film festival which means it’s very prestigious to be accepted. (yay us!)
The screening took place in Downtown Los Angeles at the Regal LA Live – the same theater we held our festival premiere “Pioneers in Skirts” back in 2019! It was amazing to be home again at this theater and to get reacquainted with film festivals after “Pioneers in Skirts” ended up having a lot of its festival screenings online due to the pandemic.
It has been a few years since I’ve been on the festival circuit with a film, so I had to stretch those muscles again. This time around, though, instead of post cards and flyers, I was showing a QR Code on my phone and encouraging people to follow us on Instagram.
Thanks to our impact campaign experience with “Pioneers in Skirts,” Lea-Ann & I knew exactly how to prep for audiences to ‘take action’ after watching the film. “Super Human Anxiety” was made to help raise awareness to anxiety and mental health support, so it’s important that once the audience is engaged in the topic, that we can empower them with an action to take. We worked tirelessly for weeks leading up to the screening to have impact elements ready to go, including Impact Partner tools like this one. (thank you Give an Hour!)
The screening itself was just magical. Many from our Los Angeles area team attended and was able to see their hard work on the big screen. Our two lead actresses received so many compliments on their performances, yet the biggest star of the night was our elevator!
After the movie screened, there was a Q&A with the directors of the films in our time slot. I stepped up in front of the screen and spoke about the process of building the elevator as well as creating all the practical effects. While making the film, it was important to me to have many of the effects done practically so Whitney’s experience could feel more real to the audience. A cup actually breaks. The floor actually dents. The wall actually crumbles. This feels more real than just creating it in VFX because audiences are keen now to real versus VFX. Of course, there are plenty of amazing VFX shots in our film, but I wanted to set the tone with real practical effects first.
I even heard people in the audience gasp as Whitney broke and dented things around her – it worked!
Post Screening Q&A
I’m eternally grateful to this team. We applauded and laughed for each other while the film played. The crew cheered when my company logo came across the screen which made me giggle with an “aww shucks.” I was mixed with pure joy and at the same time sadness because I knew a lot of our team was missing. I wish they were there to experience this fun, celebratory moment.
My hope is to have plenty more opportunities to see and celebrate our work on the big screen.
A good friend of mine once told me that I “willed this film” into existence. It’s true. It was all of me for so long. Applying to grants, speaking with mental health professionals, trying to figure out how to actually build an elevator that we could then break, and finding a team that would be willing to go with me on the journey.
One thing I spoke about in the Q&A was trust. The team trusted me to see this through and make all of their hard work come across in the final film. They trusted me to know exactly how the film should be edited together, and how sound design would help sell the story.
And it worked! I can honestly say I love how it all turned out.
We now wait on more festival acceptances.
The festival season starts up again in the fall – just in time for us to work on a new film. Yep – I’m going through this journey all over again. This time, though, I know exactly who will be along for the ride!
SNAPSHOTS FROM THE NIGHT!
