Aspen ShortsFest film festival really does delight and inspire! Had a great time!

Just home from the annual Aspen ShortsFest film festival; a first for us! I loved it! Unlike most film festivals that show feature-length films, most of the ShortsFest films run between 1 and 20 minutes. They’re shown in 90-minute blocks called programs. Because it is an international competition, everyone in the audience gets to rank the films on a scale of 1-4, with 4 being “loved it.”

Needless to say, we watched a lot of short films! My favorites were Lunch Date, Eyes on the Stars, Felix, Out of Erasers, and The Voorman Problem.  I haven’t heard yet whether any of them won awards.

As much as I enjoyed the films, the most valuable part of the festival was the comedy writers panel. Called "The Sometimes Hilarious Pain of Writing Funny," the panel was moderated by Elias Davis (Carol Burnett Show) and featured Shauna Cross (What to Expect When You’re Expecting), Alexander Payne (The Descendents), Mike Reiss (The Simpsons), and Robert Weide (Curb Your Enthusiasm). They answered...


questions for a full 90 minutes!
Highlights of their talk that I remembered to jot down in my notebook:

·         “Just make something! The tools are out there today, so there’s no excuse!”

·         “Movies resist dialogue; theatre laps up dialogue.”

·         “When writing for television or movies, you have to remember that you are creating cinema.”

·         “Collaboration in comedy is important because it’s great to have an audience.”

·         “Unlike dramas, comedies don’t come on with their own sense of importance.”

·         “Movies are not books.”

·         “Real writers are pretty serious readers.”

·         “A joke is fragile.”

·         “Writing is problem solving.”

·         Tips for writers trying to get into television. “Write a script for an existing TV show.” The writer from The Simpsons said that he reviews about 800 scripts a year. They also said, scripts that offer a particularly compelling roll for an actor, “great show-offy parts for actors” have a way of finding their way to the biggest names.

Aware of my interest in making a short Claymation stopmotion video to go with my music, friends Kitty Nicholason and Bill Viehler invited us to join them at the festival Saturday. Bill is on the Boulder Independent Film Festival (BIFF) board, so he and Kitty are film festival aficionados. It was very interesting listening to them and the BIFF executives talking about the Aspen films!

I was really inspired by the whole experience. The whole idea that age has no barrier in this field was so obvious throughout the festival. Cinema is cinema. There is no formula when it comes to the necessary and extraordinary collaborations that bring a story to its virtual life. And after my brief time in TV news where I had to tell a story in 30 to 90 seconds, I gained a whole new level of respect for short-story telling.

So, the opportunity to watch, question the filmmakers, and listen to the pros talk about it from an art perspective at the ShortFest, was the most spontaneous, unexpected, insightful wonderful gift! We are so grateful to Bill and Kitty for introducing us to short films. Was great fun.

I’m hooked!

To learn more about the Aspen ShortsFest, go to
http://www.aspenfilm.org/index.php/events/aspen-shortsfest