 THE BOX RE-EDIT IS COMPLETE! - Writer/Director Pete Bauer finally took on the task of performing a re-edit of The Box in an attempt to tighten the story. Bauer had always been bothered with the length of the original release. He stated: "At the time when it was completed, I put it together the way I intended, but I felt it was too long. I was too close to the project to view it objectively, so I called it a wrap and moved on. My mindset with the re-edit was to cut absolutely everything that wasn't 100% critical to the story. No fluff. No excessive character development beyond what is required for the story to move forward. Granted, that was my goal the first time, but my perception of the definition of "required" has changed the farther I got away from the film. My goal was to cut it down by 30 minutes... I got almost half way there. I was able to remove over 12 minutes from the film, mostly from the first half of the film and reshuffled some scenes around to shorten the time it takes the info to get relayed and for better impact of the character arcs. I will say that this re-edited mix moves much faster and improves it quite a bit. And subsequent screenings have been extremely positive." Bauer intends to redistribute this tightened version of the film to cast and crew as well as submit it to other film festivals. THE BOX GARNERS ANOTHER POSITIVE REVIEW! - The Box has garnered another positive review from one of my favorite review sites at Cold Fusion Reviews including comments such as "The Box demonstrates... dramatic visual storytelling". Nathan Shumate's humorous style to reviewing is very refreshing. Check out the review here. THE BOX SUBMITTED TO FESTS NATIONALLY! - The Box has been submitted to many fests across the country. As more and more microcinema filmmakers take advantage of utilizing the new, high-quality digital video options, the competition on the festival circuit continues to increase. We'll keep informed of at which fests The Box ends up screening. THE BOX DVDS ON SALE FOR UNDER $10! - Local Talent Productions is happy to announce the second run of the DVDs for their critically acclaimed DV feature The Box are now available for $10.00 (+ S&H). The project which one critic called "Some of the best filmmaking I've seen on the micro level" is a drama about a girl who accidentally brings home a box of genetically engineered contagion into her stormy home life. You can order your copy today by heading over to our Local Talent Store for more info!  THE BOX - Synopsis - Fate plays a hand as a child accidentally brings home a box of genetically engineered contagion into her stormy home life.
Production Notes:  The screening for The Box was a lot of fun. The audience was very enthused and the feedback was all positive. A special treat was to have lead actors Samantha Grahn, John Hill and supporting actor Josh Fortin on hand to see the premiere. John Hill was the lead in another festival entry in a short film called Entering Wendy. Since John was not able to make the premiere, this was his first chance to see the project on the big screen and was impressed to see it in the best possible environment. Plus, our Local Talent groupies, Jeff and Janice Strand, were also on hand to show their support. We jokingly told them that, by attending both the premiere and the festival, they have shown their dedication to the project and are no longer required to attend future public screenings. I have a feeling they'll keep supporting us anyway! We were using the Tambay festival to learn about the festival experience to maximize our efforts going forward. We learned about promotional material, schmoozing both strangers and other filmmakers to attend the screening, getting quality feedback and networking like crazy. Overall it was a great experience. We look forward to taking our new found knowledge and aggressively attacking the festival landscape. Bauer has already submitted the film to three other fests... but we'll have more on that later. 03/15/04 - THE BOX FESTIVAL SCREENING ANNOUNCED! - The official screening time for The Box at the TamBay Film & Video Festival has been announced. The festival screening will at the Channelside Theaters in downtown Tampa on Sunday, April 25th at 1:45 p.m. Local Talent Productions is very happy to have recieved such a great time slot at the fest. Many of the cast and crew plan on attending, so stop by and support us at the festival! 03/14/04 - THE BOX DVD NOW ON SALE! - Local Talent Productions is proud to announce their critically acclaimed DV feature The Box is now on sale! The DVD includes the feature film and bonus material! The project which one critic called "Some of the best filmmaking I've seen on the micro level" is a drama about a girl who accidentally brings home a box of genetically engineered contagion into her stormy home life. You can order your copy today by heading over to our Local Talent Store for more info! 02/10/04 - THE BOX PREMIERE A HUGE SUCCESS! - After two years of hard work and passionate effort, we finally held our premiere showing of The Box to a packed house and enthusiastic crowd! It was a tremendous success. The event, held on Monday, February 9th at 7:00 p.m. at the Clearwater Cinema Cafe, offered a display of props, storyboards and script pages. Every seat was filled at the 100 seat theater. The audience, full of cast members, crew, family and friends, all had a great time. 02/05/04 - THE BOX HITS THE FESTIVAL CIRCUIT! - In the first step toward showcasing THE BOX around the country, Local Talent Productions latest DV feature starts the festival trek at the local TamBay Video and Film Festival from April 23 - 25, 2004 in downtown Tampa! We'll have exact date/times for the showing soon! 02/03/04 - THE BOX PREMIERE ANNOUNCED! - We've secured a venue for the long-awaited premiere of THE BOX at the Clearwater Cinema Cafe on Monday, February 9th at 7:00 p.m.! Doors open at 6:00 p.m. and admission is free! You can check out the details HERE! 01/07/04 - THE BOX DVD NEARS COMPLETION! - We're putting the final touches on the DVD for THE BOX. Once completed, we'll be sending it to get duplicated and ready for sale! Yipee! 01/07/04 - THE BOX PREMIERE IN THE WORKS! - Once the DVD is completed we will be holding a premiere party for cast, crew and friends. We're currently checking out locations in the Tampa Bay area and hope to have solidified a location soon. 12/20/03 - THE BOX EDIT IS COMPLETE! We've finished the edit in time to enter it into some local festivals. It was a long and hard process to get everything completed in time, but we did it! Its been a great learning experience. I know more about editing and post-audio work than I ever had before. The next learning curve? Marketing! We're working on getting the DVD completed and approriate Press Kits as well. We've also added a large batch of new behind-the-scenes pics to the website... everything from the audition process through shootting. Just click on the BTS PICS link! 11/13/03 - All efforts are focused on completing post-production by Thanksgiving. Bauer has scheduled audio dubbing time with lead actress Samantha Grahn in the days prior to Thanksgiving with the intent that the project will be completed before the national holiday. Just a few weeks ago John Hill (seen below) visited Local Talent to dub over his lines. In the meantime, we continue recording and adding sound effects and scoring to the film.  John Hill sits at Pete's editing station dubbing lines for THE BOX. 10/24/03 - The actors have been stopping by to re-dub some dialogue for The Box. Dan Doyle, who plays Dante in the project, stopped by last week with the camera (he's also one of the Executive Producers) and he dubbed some critical lines such as "Yes sir. I was about to... yes sir." Brilliant stuff. And last night Mike Rembis stopped by to dub two of his lines. We also shared our love of writing and exchanged story and writing ideas. It was nice to see Mike... it'd been over six months since he wrapped up his principle shooting on the project. I'm hoping to get John Hill down from Orlando to dub a couple of his lines. He's been under the weather a bit lately, so this may get bumped until next week. Samantha, DC and I have a couple of lines to dub and then we just need sound effects and a soundtrack to finish up the project. Speaking of sound effects, this weekend I'm planning to record some home made sound effects. I had purchased the Indiana Jones trilogy DVDs yesterday and I have always been impressed with how Spielberg uses sound in his films. Especially the Indiana Jones trilogy. And, on the bonus DVD they have extensive information on how they made the films, including an entire section on how they created the sound effects for the films. For example, the sound of the ark being opened is the sound designers toilet lid being pulled off, or the rock rolling down the cave is the sound of a Honda Civic wagon in neutral moving down a gravel road, etc. And those famous punching sounds? Baseball bats against piles of leather jackets. So, I'll see what sound trickery I can create this weekend for The Box. Of course, I'll keep you in the loop as I go... part of the fun of making this project for me is sharing the details of the process. 10/09/03 - We continue down the post-production path on The Box! I recently purchased Adobe Premiere Pro, which is a very nice editing package. It's allowed me to make some framing corrections and color corrections very easily. It should make the post-production process go much smoother. Also, I'm collecting/recording sound effects to fill out the film... ambiant sounds, specific sound effects such as silencer gunshot, air pressure door, etc. 09/15/03 - Re-edit of THE BOX is almost completed. Only two scenes left to re-edit. We can then refocus our efforts on finalizing the sound effects, dubbing and soundtrack. Then we can finally have a premiere party! So, the light at the end of the tunnel appears to be the sun and not an on-coming train, as I had originally suspected. 06/30/03 - All secondary shooting is completed for THE BOX. We even blew up a mouse! Well, not really, but it looks like it. Now that all of the shooting is officially done, its amazing how much of a weight has been lifted from our shoulders. Now, we get to finalize post-production. 03/10/03 - Principle shooting for THE BOX is completed. There are still some minor shots that are needed (close ups of VCRs, TVs, etc. as well as exterior shots of the Hotel, Lab, etc.). It's great to have reachedt this milestone! 10/16/02 - As of Wednesday, October 16th, The Box officially began production. Shooting continued on Friday and Saturday. A total of 14 scenes were shot, but there's plenty more to do, so we will be picking up the pace. Shooting is also scheduled for this upcoming Thursday, Friday, Saturday and potentially Sunday morning. MANY local actors came out for the auditions and deciding on the cast was a very difficult decision. However, we are pleased with the cast and hope to include as many of those who auditioned into the production as possible. 09/10/02 - Auditions are finally announced! The Auditions will consist solely of actors reading Sides from the script. No monologues are necessary. We are casting a variety of characters, ages 8 to 80! You can read more about the characters in our Character Breakdowns section. If you'd like to audition, please email us your headshot and resume and we'll send you the link to the Sides that will be used for the audition, directions and more. We look forward to seeing you there! 06/13/02 - Well, 1264 shots later, the storyboards for The Box are complete. It took a little longer than I had hoped, but I'm happy with the results. I'm no great artist, but I'm able to flesh out the ideas rambling around in my head and onto a piece of paper to see if it all makes sense. It's a great experience to storyboard a story you're very passionate about. It's great to turn those simple words on the page into a suspenseful series of shots. You can check out the script to storyboarding process... it's pretty cool. I've also been interviewing some people who are interested in helping out on the shoot. I've also got a commitment from Kyme Godfrey to be one of my producers. 11/20/01 - The next project I was planning on shooting was the action/thriller Mute. But, as that script evolves, I realized that, in order to do it justice, Mute would need a bigger budget than I would have available to me for the first DV feature. So, The Box was chosen out of the many I've written because it's a good thriller, yet it revolves around the lives of only a few people. Considering the limitations one faces when trying to shoot a no to low-budget feature, a small cast with minimal locations are important. Plus, add the fact that the story has great suspensful moments... well they were all deciding factors in choosing this script. I really like this story. I love the characters and the way the box of contagion effects their lives. I'm very anxious to hear the script read out loud by real actors. It'll be the first time I've had a script reading of one of my feature scripts. I hope to learn a lot from hearing it out loud and getting feedback from the actors. Critical Assessment - We will be sending the project to festivals and for critical assessment. We'll post ALL of the reviews, good and bad, right here!
Hard Facts - STATUS: 100% Complete.
© Pete Bauer 2000-2005
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