Please vote on the Charlotte Film Festival Facebook Page so we
can receive an encore screening on Wednesday!
(You might have to scroll down the wall and view older posts
to find the survey.)
Here are some of the other awards we've been honored to receive on the festival circuit:
- Best Louisiana Narrative Feature, 2012 New Orleans Film Festival
- Best Picture winner at the 2011 Action on Film Festival
- Gold Remi winner at the 44th Annual WorldFest-Houston
- Best Director, Runner-Up, at the White Sands Int'l Film Festival
- Best Picture, nominee, Angeleno Film Festival
- Best Director, nominee, Action on Film Festival
If you saw one of our festival screenings, please rate us and post a review on imdb
and on our facebook page, where you can see great photos of the screenings.
And don't forget to sign up here to get updates about the film.
Here is some of the amazing press Flood Streets has been getting:
Our holiday crowdfunding campaign was a great success! Here are some of the
wonderful prizes for our contributors:
12/20/11 - Catering Fit for a Chef
When I was producing Flood Streets, there were a lot of details to
worry about, but the one that scared me the most was food. We had
a 25-day shoot planned with a big cast and crew, three Thanksgiving
dinner scenes, and hundreds of extras.
I had no idea how I was going to make all this happen within my
budget, so I just kept putting it off, until finally it was a week before
principal photography, and I still hadn't called anyone. My AD, Katie
Ledet, finally took matters into her own hands. She'd worked with
Fleur de Lis Catering when she was a student at UNO, and she
thought owner Wendi Smith might be able to help us.
Wendi Smith has been cooking since she was five, learning the family
recipes for things like BBQ, hogshead cheese and homemade wine.
She learned how to cure meat that came from the family livestock,
and helped her parents grow their catering business in DeQuincy
just outside Lake Charles.
When I called her in to cater Flood Streets, she wasn't daunted by my
budget or my dietary embellishments (some folks were vegan, some
were South Beach and all of us liked lots of veggies). Wherever we
werehaving lunch that day, she was always there to meet us on time with a
spread of hot food, including food for my hundreds of extras and my three
Thanksgiving day shoots.
Her first time catering for a movie set was for the TLC series, Take Home
Chef. Yes, you read that right. That means her first production gig was
cooking for other chefs. Talk about pressure! She nailed it, though, with
celebrity chef Curtis Stone raving about her banana pudding, so she left
her job as a restaurant manager to pursue catering full time, and since
then she's catered several productions, and movie sets have quickly
become her favorite kind of job.
“I love to learn how movies come to life,” Wendi says.
But she's been keeping busy in other areas as well, buying a big boiling
trailer for crawfish and crab boils, and leasing the kitchen at the back Molly's
on Decatur Street, called Munch Kitchen where she serves up gourmet mac
and cheese (including a gluten-free style) and top shelf burgers made from
beef, chicken and lamb (as well as a vegan option). Her most popular nights
there are Tuesdays and Thursdays when she runs $1 Taco specials.
To help support us even more than she already has, Wendi is offering 10% off
all catering for friends of Flood Streets. Just mention this post when you contact
her at 504-495-4816 or
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
. She's also offering two
gift certificates – one gives you $20 worth of food at Munch Kitchen (that's
a lot of $1 tacos!) and the other is $50 worth of crew catering, finger food,
party trays, or whatever equivalent food need you have. So if you support
our holiday campaign at any level (even the $5 level), your name will be
put in a hat to win one of our seven prizes. Those are some pretty good
odds, so head over to our home page to check it out!
12/12/11 - Friends don't let friends go to Bourbon Street
If you're thinking of visiting New Orleans, I worry for you. I worry you'll end up
on Bourbon Street, holding an oversized drink, trying to ignore the terrible rock
blaring from strip clubs, wondering if this is all there is to New Orleans.
I worry so much for you, I got my good friend Michael Patrick Welch to donate
my favorite guidebook to our holiday drawing. New Orleans: the Underground
Guide is the most up-to-date, meticulous guide to everything cool in New Orleans,
and it's one of many amazing prizes you could win if you buy Flood Streets
merchandise during our holiday crowdfunding campaign.
Welch's book is the most enjoyable guidebook ever written, and I routinely read
chapters at night for my own cool, underground edification. The copy that's being
donated for our drawing is the latest edition with meticulously updated information,
plus new sections on comedy, tattoo parlors and festivals. As a musician himself,
Welch's guidebook majors in music, and his detailed list of New Orleans bands is
worth the price alone, but the guidebook doesn't stop there.
Through funny, opinionated prose and beautiful photographs, it takes you by the
hand to Welch's favorite restaurants, art galleries (including the latest on St. Claude),
B&Bs, daytrips, and festivals.
So don't make me worry. Buy some Flood Streets merchandise, get your name in
the hat to win this great guidebook, and the next time you or a friend plans a trip
to the Big Easy, you'll get a wonderfully curated taste of what the city this really
about.
12/11/11 - The elements of a good haircut
We have so many amazing prizes that have been donated for the Flood Streets
crowdfunding campaign, I wanted to write more about each one. Today... let's talk
about the amazing haircut somebody's going to win from Jo Starnes at Yours Truly
Salon.
I first met Jo on the set of the feature film "Jack of Spades," where she was doing
hair for all the cast, including Jennifer Coolidge. You know how you meet that special
someone and can just tell they'd give you a great haircut? It was that way with Jo.
I started going to her, and even though I was rocking the same look for several
years, she made it look much better. She gave me great styling advice tailored to
my personality (lazy), and she corrected little mistakes like when I decided to cut
my bangs with a dull kitchen scissors.
Then one day I needed a change, so I told Jo to do whatever she wanted. My only
requirements were that it be significantly shorter and a different color. And, as you
can see, she nailed it.
She sampled hair colors against my face to find the right tones for my complexion,
and she chose a cut to work with my curly hair and with New Orleans humidity.
If you go to our home page and contribute to our Holiday Crowdfunding
Campaign, one of you is going to win a spot at Yours Truly Salon to see for yourself
what I'm talking about. If you want to completely change your look with a new color,
that's on you. But we can get you started with a bad ass haircut.
12/10/11
We've just announced the prizes for our big drawing on January 2nd! Prizes...
- Fleur de Lis Catering, the delicious food that kept us all alive on the set of Flood
Streets, is donating free catering.
- The entrancing Ali Arnold of NOmadic Tribal bellydance has donated a free
bellydance lesson for one lucky winner and her friend. Ali has been doing Tribal Bellydance
for 13 years, and she's been my teacher for 2 years.
- Jo Starnes of Your's Truly Salon will give somebody their best haircut ever. She does
my hair, and she's amazing.
If You're Out of Town...
- New Orleans: the Underground Guide by Michael Patrick Welch. This is a must have
if you're visiting New Orleans or have friends who visit a lot.
- Panorama Jazz Band's newest album “Come Out Swinging”. This includes many of
their songs that we used in the movie.
- Rachel Dupard's debut album “Child of the King.” She's an amazingly talented
musician and actress, and as her star continues to rise, you can say you have her first
album.
12/6/11
Thanks to everyone who's supported our Holidya Crowdfunding Campaign so far. To
show our appreciation, everyone who buys merchandise (at any support level) will
have their name put in a hat for a big drawing we're going to do at the end of our
campaign on January 2. Prizes to be announced very soon, but trust us, they're
awesome, and there will be several chances for you to win!
7/20/11 West Coast Premiere at the 2011 Action on Film International Festival,
on Wednesday July 27 at 7pm at Regency Academy Cinemas in Pasadena, CA.
We've already pre-sold more than half the tickets, so don't wait until the day of. Get them here.
We're nominated for Best Picture and Best Director of a Feature Film. Well, thankee kindly!
6/10/11
Our next screening will be as an official selection of the
San Antonio Film Festival on Thursday, June 23 in the 2:00pm - 5:00pm slot
at the Instituto Cultural de Mexico - Auditorium
600 Hemisfair Plaza Way
San Antonio, TX 78205-3204
Here is the Facebook event where you can RSVP
ticket info at SAFilm.com
6/12/11
Great premiere at WorldFest-Houston!
We got a front page story on the
Houston Chronicle's entertainment section! Check out our facebook page for more photos!
We just found out Flood Streets got into the Boston International Film Festival!
We're screening Saturday, April 23, 3:30pm at AMC Theares at 175 Tremont.
And don't forget to sign up to get updates about the film here.
In the Land of What Now, a collection of short stories that were adapted into the movie Flood Streets, is now available via Amazon/CreateSpace.
2/19/11
Flood Streets will have its premiere at the 44th Annual WorldFest - The Houston International Film Festival, April 8-17, 2011. It is nominated for awards in the categories of first feature film and low-budget feature!Screening dates coming soon!
6/21/10
These past couple months we’ve been very busy working on post production for the film, and I’m happy to report we’ve been making great progress!
Ever since the movie wrapped, we have been working nonstop on the editing. It’s a long and delicate process to edit a feature film, but we’ve got lots of talented and hardworking people on board. We’ve worked from a two-and-a-half hour assembly edit down to an 87-minute cut, and the movie just keeps getting better. The performances are beautiful, the music is amazing, and stories of this city are really coming through.
We have applied to a few film festivals as a work-in-progress, and there are several more with deadlines in the next three weeks, so we’re working to have a new cut done in time for those.
Okay, I know what you want to ask me, because it’s the question I get asked the most.
When are we going to get to see the film?
Answer: Because we are an independent film, unaffiliated with any major studios, we don’t have a set release date. Instead, we start our theatrical tour through film festivals. The biggest film festivals want to host the world premier of a movie, and smaller festivals want to be the first ones to show it in their city.
So to qualify for festivals, we can’t just start organizing screenings of the movie as soon as the final cut is done. Once we hear what festivals we’ve been accepted to, we’ll let everyone know through this email list, so please make sure we always have your most current contact information.
In the meantime you can get your Flood Streets fix by checking out our YouTube Channel of some of the musicians in the film http://www.youtube.com/user/FloodStreets?feature=mhw5.
We’re also up on imdb http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1627892/.
As we finish editing on the movie, we’ll continue to update these sites with behind-the-scenes footage, interviews with cast and crew and other goodies. Then we’ll start to work on a trailer.
And don’t forget to friend us on Facebook and to suggest us to all your friends who love great music and independent cinema. http://www.facebook.com/floodstreets.movie.
1/1/10
Flood Streets is in post-production, stay tuned for a trailer in late Spring!
In the meantime, we'll be releasing short videos of several of the musicians featured in the film, like this one:
