One of the great examples of the community support of the Little Rock Film Festival is the local filmmaking component right here in Arkansas. It’s no surprise that many of the Arkansas-based films that premiere at the festival go on to other great festivals and win tons of awards. If you ever want to get into the local filmmaking scene a great start would be joining the Arkansas Filmmakers Forum founded by filmmaker and featured panelist Gerry Bruno.
The Arkansas Filmmaker Forum hosts special events and gatherings for filmmakers and artists to talk about projects and hear speakers from the state talk about their craft. The festival is lucky this year to have two such events being hosted by the Forum as a part of the program!
If you’ve ever been to a party or a screening and spied a producer or possible investor you were just unprepared to speak to then Hip Pocket Pitches is the perfect panel for you to attend. Resident producer and one of the best extemporaneous speakers you’ll meet Tim Jackson (The Last Ride) and executive producer and founder of the production company Jigsaw films Courtney Pledger (Cirque du Freak: The Vampire’s Assistant) will be giving you tips and tricks to selling your film off-the-cuff and all extemporaneously. What better place to learn how to pitch your film than at a film festival? The panel takes place at 6:00 pm Saturday, June 2 and is free and open to the public.
The second event the Forum is presenting is a screening of the first ever short film shot and presented in 3-D from the state of Arkansas. Color me red and blue but then color me intrigued. The film is called Europa and was directed by UCA professor Bruce Hutchinson and was largely crewed by students in the Digital Filmmaking Program at the college in Conway. Another interesting note is that it was written by LRFF staff/husband and wife team Justin and Mallory Nickels. The film is about an astronaut who discovers alien life on one of Jupiter’s moons, Europa. Filmmakers involved with the film will be on hand before and after the screening to discuss the process of shooting the film in 3D with a special camera mount and the post-production workflow as well as some of the films CGI and special effects. This is event is free to members of the Arkansas Filmmakers Forum so be sure to go to their facebook page and join!
