Wednesday, January 28, 2009

Benefit Screening in Waco


Our FIRST OFFICIAL Scholarship benefit screening will be in Waco this Saturday (01/31/09) benefitting the Fellowship of Christian Athletes and the Six Man, Texas Scholarship Fund.  The screening is at the WISD Playhouse Theater at 201 N. Jack Kultgen Expressway, Waco, TX, 76704.  It is at 12:30 pm this Saturday (Super-Bowl Saturday).  A little reality check before the hype of the Super bowl.

Please attend and show your support for the Six Man community.  There will be tee shirts for sale as well and we will probably give away a DVD or two of the film.  There will also be a few surprise guests.  There are no lawns to mow this time of year so drop by for a good time and a worthy cause!     

Sunday, December 14, 2008

AUDIENCES LOVE US

WELL - THEY DO:



We recently outscored all other entrants in the IndieFest Competition at the Santa Fe Film Festival.  In fact, we had almost double the number of votes as all the other entrants combined.  A huge THANK YOU to everyone who visited, voted and helped.  As a result of the competition we are hoping to have a distribution deal with IndieFlix early next year and FINALLY have DVDs to sell to the public.  

In addition, we are scheduling our first official Scholarship Screening to raise funds for the Dru Barber Memorial Scholarship Fund.  The date is January 31st, the Saturday before Super Bowl Sunday at a theater in Waco, Texas.  So invite everyone you know to raise funds for a worthy cause.  Details will follow soon.

Again, thanks to everyone who helped - ALAN
 
  

Monday, November 24, 2008

People's Choice Award at the Rockport Film Festival!!

I think this graphic just about says it all!




Sunday, October 5, 2008

AUSTIN FILM FESTIVAL

After a bit of a dry spell, we learned that we will finally be screening "Six Man, Texas" in our hometown of Austin, Texas. From the latest Press Release:

"AUSTIN, TEXAS - September 24th, 2008 - The 'poignant and haunting' documentary Six Man, Texas will celebrate it's Austin Premiere at the upcoming Austin Film Festival. Screenings are scheduled for 5:30 pm Sunday, October 19th at the Alamo Drafthouse LakeCreek and at 7 pm Thursday, October 23rd at the Arbor Theater. The film captures the struggle of rural communities to keep their small schools open and to keep playing their unique six-man version of football. A team of Austin Filmmakers, created by the collaboration of NEVERTOOLATE Films and Visual Vagos, spent over 7 years chronicling small Texas towns and a heart-wrenching Cinderella championship season.

'We are excited to be screening during the prestigious Austin Film Festival,' said Alan Barber, producer and director of Six Man, Texas. 'We know Austin's diverse and vital film community will connect with our story, and we feel like we are finally coming home.' "

As we sent our acceptance confirmation and information to the Austin Film Festival we were notified that we had also been accepted to the Rockport Film Festival in early November. Couple that with a few 'invites to submit - fee waived' from other festivals and it feels like a fall roll for our little film. Additionally, we will be working through a rep to get our film in front of acquisition execs at the American Film Market in LA during November.

Soooo - will we make the playoffs? Check our website for additional screenings and stay tuned!

Saturday, August 9, 2008

NEVER KNOW

YOU NEVER KNOW where connections might lead. Although the Gloria film Festival was not a big event for our film (truth be told, it was mostly filmmakers, critics and a few aspiring writers), the Screenwriting Seminars I attended were quite helpful. They addressed STRUCTURE which I have never understood in a simple way, until now. Rob Tobin lays out a simple formula that can be at least a starting point if not the whole story on traditional screenwriting/storytelling structure.

In addition, I made a few filmmaker contacts who might help move some of our stories along from our Pow Wow. I discussed with Rob before I left Salt Lake that we were seeking distribution and he indicated he would talk to some folks he knew in LA. Then, out of the blue this morning, I get an email from Rob, who has also written a book called "The Screenwriting Formula". Copied below is the text of Rob's email

"Hey, Heather:

How’s my favorite redhead (sort of)? I just returned from the Gloria Film Festival in Utah where I gave a couple of lectures on screenwriting. I was treated extremely well by exec director Wayne Lee, and I saw some great films.

The film that impressed me the most was an absolutely BRILLIANT 71 minute documentary called "Six Man Texas" which looks at the phenomenon of disappearing small towns in Texas through the filter of six-man high school football. It's an amazing film and if any of you have the ability to help the film's producers sell/distribute that film, contact me at scripts@earthlink.net and I'll put you in touch with them. I get absolutely nothing out of this except the satisfaction of seeing an extremely worthy film reaching an audience.

Unrelated to this great little film, I'm also looking for funds and distribution for one of my own award-winning scripts, "The Life and Times of Lesbian Alien Opera Singers." I have more than a dozen independent film producers actively interested in the script but none have been able to come up with the full funding needed to produce it. The script and an executive summary are available upon request, with a budget of $10 million (the film can actually be shot for as little as $2 million below the line). I also have a Canadian company offering to fund half the budget in matching funds (in the form of government tax incentives, rebates, etc. -- I'm Canadian), and a European bank that has sent me a LOI (Letter of Interest) stating they're willing to supply 50% of a $10-$20 million budget in matching funds.

Thanks and good writing/filmmaking to all of you!

Rob Tobin
scripts@earthlink.net"

So you never know where things might lead. Heather has replied to Rob and wants to see a screener, so come Monday one more Six Man, Texas screener is headed to LA. Feed the beast and maybe either desire or indigestion will spit something good back our way.

YOU NEVER KNOW - ALAN

Tuesday, July 8, 2008

NEXT PREMIERE!

WE ARE HAPPY to announce that our next Premiere of the film will be at the Gloria Film Festival (http://www.gloriafilmfest.org/) on August 2nd at 4:30 pm. We are so happy to have a second premiere within a few months of the World Premiere at AFI Dallas. Go to the Gloria Film Festival website and check it out or make a comment if you have seen the film. AND, if you are anywhere in the Salt Lake City area that weekend PLEEEEEZE attend the screening and cheer loudly. Maybe we will throw out footballs again!!

Wednesday, July 2, 2008

OUR BEST SCREENING

A PRIMER - "How to have fun AND find your audience"

Sometimes it is the smallest of coincidences, sometimes big breaks, sometimes who you know, sometimes a network right under your nose and sometimes it is a hot day in August. Hell, it is always a hot day in August in Texas.

One hot Friday evening in August 2005, on the opening weekend of football season, my film team and I jumped from High School stadium to High School stadium in Austin to ask fans attending their local games if they had heard of Six Man Football. Our intention was to create an opening sequence for the film "Six Man, Texas", showing how most football fans had not heard of Six Man football even in Texas, where Six Man is bigger than anywhere else. We also knew UT was opening their season on Saturday so we met early the next morning to catch a few UT tailgaters before the crowds hit.

We drove to the guards near the stadium and talked them into letting us park illegally for a few hours and interview the early tailgate crowds as they were setting up for the game that day. After a few hours of filming and paperwork we were ready to wrap it and find some lunch. But we decided to ask one last group as we lugged the gear back to the truck. When we asked if they had ever heard of Six Man one of them yelled, "Hey Ken, come talk to these guys, they wanna know about Six Man!"

That is how we met Ken Capps, self-proclaimed Six Man aficionado and University of Texas booster par excellence. Ken proceeded to reveal many wonderful stories about his experiences watching Six Man while the camera rolled. That weekend I reviewed the footage, cut a rough together and took it to my editor, Mike Scannell, to review. We later included my opening sequence in the first cut of the film, but by December of that year mine was dropped in favor of Mike Scannell's much more visually compelling assembly of shots. Except for the Ken Capps sequence. Mike had fallen in love with Ken's enthusiasm and by the summer of 2007, as we approached a final cut of the film, Mike found a spot for a small piece of the Ken interview.

Fast forward to Spring of 2008. After our fantastic World Premiere experience at AFI Dallas Ken inquired about a Private Screening at his Sports-themed Party Room built behind his house in one of the Old Dallas neighborhoods just North of the Inwood theater. He wanted to invite friends who missed the film, some sports-writers and press folks. So we decided to call it a Private Press Screening and Ken was off to the races organizing what would become, as Mike calls it, our best screening ever.

From an invitation for a few friends and press folks the list grew until there was simply not enough room to hold everyone. So Ken installed ANOTHER SCREEN on the deck to hold the overflow. June 14th arrived and the crowd grew and grew until time to screen. It was by far the most involved crowd and the most fun, a diverse group of sports fans, friends of Ken's, press and players. Mix that with great BBQ, lots of drinks and snacks and you have a recipe for a great screening. We even had the Mai-Tai boat from Trader Vic's in Dallas to add to the drink options and ambience. Ken also found some shorts to warm up the crowd, a group of spots about Six Man in Texas done by his friend Tammie Kleinmann. The shorts were great pieces, beautifully done and informative. We were honored to have them screen before the film.

There was a LOT of interest in our film after the screening and I am still following-up on opportunities to get the word out and move toward distribution. The lesson here? Find someone like Ken Capps for your film project, inspire them and let them run with the ball. You will have a much better time AND it will help you discover your true audience. Thank you Ken, and thank you to everyone who attended - ALAN

Saturday, April 19, 2008

WE'RE GUSHING

OUR WORLD PREMIERE at AFI Dallas was a great experience. Not only did we have two packed screenings (the first one completely sold out) but we were treated wonderfully by everyone in Dallas from the volunteers to the staff to other fans and filmmakers we met. We made some contacts that might be helpful for the film and are starting to follow up on those. We did as much shameless promotion as possible for Six Man, Texas and ended up getting rid of almost all of our posters (100) and postcards (500). We also had a great time throwing out footballs during both Q&As (got rid of 100 of those) and met with a lot of people who drove many miles from surrounding Six Man communities to Dallas just for our premiere. Thanks so much to everyone from Six Man communities who attended. All in all it was a wonderful time!

And I cannot say enough about AFI Dallas, it is well-run and quite professional with very helpful and friendly volunteers. Target and Victory Park have gone out of their way to support a festival whose stature and importance can only grow in the festival community. I believe AFI Dallas will take its place alongside SXSW and Austin Film Festival as the best of Texas.

As I said, we're gushing.......

Thursday, February 28, 2008

WORLD PREMIERE

GREAT NEWS - Six Man, Texas will have it's World Premiere at the AFI Dallas Film Festival sometime between March 27th and April 6th. Check back for Details and screening times. We are sooooo happy to have a Texas Premiere.

Wednesday, January 9, 2008

Credit where Credit is Due

There's an old saying that any publicity is good publicity, as long as they spell your name right. So just imagine the kick in the stomach you feel when you see a front page story on a project you poured your soul into and they don't mention your name at all.

You may have already read Dipu's entry on this blog about the Christmas Day front page story on Six Man, Texas and how excited were all were about. After all, it was great publicity for our little documentary and an interesting read. Only problem was, a major contributor was not only left out of the mix, his considerable contributions were attributed to someone else. Unfortunately, that someone else was me.

Some 6 or 7 column inches of type after the story jumped from Page 1 to A14, a paragraph reads:

"He wasn't really sure what it was about," said Tom Chamberlain, an Austin film editor Barber hired in 2005 to help him untangle the images. He recommended that Barber revisit some of the towns and film something other than football game: Who knows what would develop?


That 'graph becomes 100% accurate when you replace "Tom Chamberlain" with "Mike Scannell." I winced when I read it, but felt even worse by the end of the piece, because that was the only mention of any crew other than Alan and coproducer Laura Toups.

Now don't get me wrong, I'm not shy about taking credit. It's just I prefer it be legitimate. That 'graph was about Mike not me, and he should have gotten the mention. Two and a half years of slogging through 157+ hours of raw footage and 10 or 12 rough cuts, should earn you that.

Heck, how about an interview at least? Mike wasn't interviewed, perhaps because the writer, Eric Dexheimer, got the impression I was the editor, and called me instead. (He knew I cut the trailer, and must have assumed I cut the movie too.) What's weirder still is, he quoted that quote he used in the piece as attributed to me by Alan. I immediately recognized this as something Alan would have said about Mike and told Eric that I didn't say that, Mike Scannell, the primary editor, did.

Further, I explained that I was brought on later in 2005 to help Alan get that new footage. Yes, I proposed a story line we used as a starting point to direct the editing effort, but by the end of the interview, I was confident that I had made it clear that Mike was Editor in Chief and I was mainly a camera and lighting guy, who merely assisted in post production. I even remember suggesting that Eric interview Mike.

So it was a shock to see that paragraph. I felt for Mike because I know exactly what that's like. A ferw years back, Nueva Onda, a restaurant near S. Congress and Oltorf screened my feature film, In Flagrante, as part of their movie night series. I sent a notice of the screening plus a press kit to the Statesman and the Chronicle. The Statesman ignored it, but to my delight, the Chronicle printed a boxed mention of the screening in the film section with a promo photo from the film.

Then I read the accompanying text and my heart sank. Somehow, despite having a press kit with ample references to me having written and directed it, they attributed those jobs to some other guy, whose name I remember from the Film Threat review he wrote for the film. How ironic that some reviewer, who obviously never made a film in his life, was credited with mine.

For goodness sake, none of us are getting rich off these films people! Could you at least get our names right?

Having just written that, let me be clear that I don't mean to defame Eric with this post. He's a very nice guy, and a very good writer, and the story is more than we could have asked for. It's just that Mike did a fantastic job finding the film in Six Man, Texas and at the expense of an unbelievable amount of time. Simply put, he deserves credit for it.

Tom Chamberlain