Wednesday Shorts

Sadly, it has been way too freakishly wintry for me to be talking about going out and wandering around in short pants. So that's not the kind of shorts we're talking about.

We are, in fact, talking about short films.

**Sidenote**
I'm not using the "Royal We," here - I'm assuming that you are talking back to me while I write, and thus "we" are having a conversation. I have to do this in my imagination a lot because I know you're out there reading this but so few of you actually ever make any comments. At least not that others can see. In my mind, you're all commenting all the time. Which is why - to get back to my point - I'm saying "we."
**End Sidenote**

You know that short film that was done at our house last fall? (Oh... Sorry... that would be Christopher's and my house - not "our" collective house, because even though it's not a huge number of you reading this, I think that if you all moved in with us it might be a tad tight. Not that you aren't all lovely and we wouldn't love to have you come one or two at a time, obviously.) It's the short film I talked about here. Well, tonight was its Film Festival Premiere at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Film Festival.

It was in a bundle of 5 Minnesota Made short narrative films - 4 dramatic pieces and one pre-zombie apocalypse wedding-day comedy. And it was - once again - really fun to see "Golden" on the big screen. This time, I even paid attention to the narrative, instead of just looking at our house. And, you know what? That made it even better. I even teared up a couple of times, even though I knew the whole story.

And it was fun to hear a few extra stories about it tonight during the Q&A after the films were shown. For instance: "Why did you use a short focal range?" Because we were working in a tight space with, usually, only 2 feet from the camera to the person. I hadn't ever thought of that, but... yeah... our long, narrow living room doesn't exactly provide lots of space for long shots. Neither does our long, narrow kitchen. Or the small, squarish piano room...

When I mentioned to the director this time I had actually watched the story, not the house, he commented that he is still watching scenes, thinking "So, the sound guy is just out of frame over here, and the camera was there..."

Unfortunately, the evening ended fairly quickly - which I guess makes sense with short films. But there's one great takeaway that I can offer: Supporting small, independent arts can lead to incredible outcomes. For Christopher and me, the weekend of filming last fall has resulted in new friendships and a couple of fun - very unusual for us - nights out.

And a friend of ours who was in the audience tonight even saw me on the way out and affirmed our brush with fame when he said "I wondered if that might have been you and Christopher [listed on the screen in the thank-you section]."

It may "only" have been a short. But it sure has been sweet.