LA Film Prize 2016 All Access Coverage Part I

The Louisiana Film Prize, now in its fifth year, is a short-film festival in Shreveport, Louisiana that awards $50,000 to the festival’s top film as determined by audience votes and a panelist of judges. Taken as a whole the films this year represent a drastic leap forward in technical achievement and ambition, compared to the short films that the festival has screened in past years.

Chalk drawing by Matthew Yerby

The cast and crew involved in making this year’s slate of shorts have also worked on projects like Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Deepwater Horizon, The Magnificent Seven (2016), The Avengers, I Saw the Light, Godzilla, The Avengers,  Harry Potter, Salem, The Wire, Pride & Prejuidice, and All the King’s Men (2006).

For The nsavides Podcast coverage, I interviewed many of the filmmakers, actors, and crew members who worked on some of the films at this year’s festival.

I did over 4 hours of interviews at the festival, a new record for the podcast. Each interview is interesting in its own way and is shorter than my typical interviews, which means you get to hear more ideas per hour.

In case you don’t have the time to go through all of my festival coverage though, I have broken them up into 3 parts.

Part I

It starts with last year’s winner and includes some of the people who have worked with him or who have worked on a number of other festival shorts.

Below is a list of people involved in this episode:

• Alexander Jeffery, director/producer – Memoir
• J.C. Doler, director/writer/producer & Taylor Bracewell, director of photography/writer/producer – Hangman
• Tamzin Merchant, director/writer/producer & Cam Owen, actor/writer/producer – American Pride
• Joel Froome, director of photography – Memoir, American Pride, The Verses
• Jency Griffin Hogan, director/actor/producer – The Verses
• Christine Chen, director/writer/producer & Diana Rose, actor – Ya Albi
• James Crawford, producer & Tyler Corie, producer – Native

Listen to Part I

Part II

This episode is focused on craftsmanship. We hear from some effects artists, a director of photography, a costumer, a production sound mixer, and more filmmakers. Plus we hear from the actors who won best actor and best actress for LA Film Prize 2016.

Interviews in Part II:

• Iddo Goldberg, director/writer/producer, Joe Doyle, actor, & Garrett Kruithof, actor – St. Jude’s Crossing
• Calvin O’Neal Jr., director/writer/actor/editor/producer – Cookie Jar
• James Going, visual effects supervisor/musician – The Importance of Sex Education
• Jeremy Spring, director of photography – The Fallen
• Nathaniel Caauwe, visual effects artist – Memoir, Native
• Kent Ohler, production sound mixer – Native
• Frances Watson, actor – The Importance of Sex Education
• Susan Davis, costume designer – The Verses
• Tanesha Morris, director/writer – Ruthless: A Hip Hopera
• Travis Bible, director/writer/producer & Kemerton Hargrove, actor/producer – The 30 Year Deal

You can listen to Part II by clicking here.

Part III

This episode features some of the more thought-provoking interviews or ones that really resonate with me for one reason or another. It also includes an interview with the winner of LA Film Prize 2016.

A couple of people in that episode say nice things about podcasting, so the subtitle for that episode  is, “Hooray for Podcasting!”

Interviews in Part III:

• McGhee Monteith, director/writer/actor – He Could’ve Gone Pro
• Travis Champagne – director/writer – Native
• Tommy G. Kendrick, actor/writer/producer & Keith Rushing, actor/writer/producer – Somewhere Between Heaven And Hell
• Frank Spiro, director/writer/producer – Apocalypse Later
• Paul Peterson, writer/actor/producer – Memoir
• Robert Casiello, actor/writer – The Verses
• Austin Alward, director – Memorial Drive
• Corey Landis, actor – The Man from Mars
• Kyle Kleinecke, director/writer – The Root Cellar
• Eva Contis, director/writer/editor – The Stand
• Sabrina Adsit – producer of Louisiana Film Prize
• Jonnie Stepleton, director/writer/producer – The Man from Mars

Part III also includes my concluding thoughts about the interviews and my experiences at LA Film Prize.

You can listen to Part III by clicking here.

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