I’m happy to announce that Elephant Run District’s next film The Save will be screening at two upcoming festivals.

It will have its premiere at the Chain NYC Film Festival on Friday, Aug. 14 at 8 p.m. in the Comedy block. 312 West 36th Street, 3rd floor. This is my fourth film project screening at the Chain. They put on a great festival! Tickets and more info here.

And it will screen at the Richmond International Film Festival on Saturday, Sept. 26 at 4:30 p.m. in the Narrative Shorts block. Movieland Theater 2, 1301 N. Arthur Ashe Blvd. This screening will use a DCP file and 5.1 stereo sound. Tickets and more info here.

The inspiration for the film came from a news story that ended tragically. Without giving things away, I thought about how someone desperately wanting to fix his marriage might go to such an extreme and how might it end differently than it did in real life.

As you can see from the trailer, we had a great team working in front of and behind the camera. This was the project where I learned to look at the monitor to see what the camera sees, rather than looking at the actors live performance. I was wedging myself next to the camera and getting under the foot of Alejandro Medina, the director of photography. He kindly insisted I plant myself in front of the monitor instead.

Aimee, who worked so hard on several production roles, took this picture. I love it because you can see the crew hard at work with the actors in place. Shauna Blaize is off to the left giving an eye line for Francis Mateo. You can see him both on the monitor looking at her and back to the right in the plaid shirt.