Posted by Anwuli Okeke on Oct 14, 2015 | 1 comment

The 5^th annual On Location event presented by New Filmmakers Los Angeles took place on October 10, 2015 at the Hollywood Center Studios in Los Angeles, CA. The evening included a red-carpet screening and award ceremony, food by Pink’s hot dogs, a full bar, and an after-party!

Hosted by Guy Branum (Chelsea Lately, Totally Biased) with music by Jason Kramer – KCRW, the event celebrated the city of Los Angeles with 21 short films submitted by emerging filmmakers. Each short film, of one-to-five-minutes-long, showcased the city of Los Angeles through the filmmaker’s perspective and was eligible to win a prize –- a package, valued at thousands of dollars, that included several items needed to support a filmmaker’s career.

Prizes

Filmmakers won prizes in 3 separate categories:

1. Films two minutes in length or shorter,
2. Films two to five minutes in length
3. A grand prize (all submitted films qualified regardless of length).

Winners of the Night

Change of Heart (director: Jesse Steccato & Josh Silfen) in the two-minute or less category
This 1st place prize winner will receive:
– $1000 Mole Richardson Rental Package,
– $500 cash from NewFilmmakers LA,
– A film permit from FilmLA valued at $625,
– A pre-lit green screen sound stage package valued at $1200 from Hollywood Casting and Film,
– A $100 Studio Depot gift certificate
– And a MovieMagic Scheduling and Budgeting Software bundle valued at $1000

The Invisibles (director: Edgar Alvarez AKA Alter Eddie) in the two-to-five minute category
This 1st place prize winner will receive:
– $1000 Mole Richardson Rental Package
– $500 cash from NewFilmmakers LA
– A film permit from FilmLA valued at $625
– A pre-lit green screen sound stage package valued at $1200 from Hollywood Casting and Film,
– A $100 Studio Depot gift certificate
– And a MovieMagic Scheduling and Budgeting Software bundle valued at $1000

A Day In: Los Angeles (director: Cody Autterson & Andrew Schneider) for the grand prize.
This Grand Prize Winner will receive:
– A $40,000 production prize package from Alternative Camera Rentals,
– $1000 cash from NewFilmmakers LA,
– A film permit from FilmLA valued at $625,
– (1) package of 3 festival music licenses for tracks in your next film and a 30 minute consultation with a Billboard-award winning music supervisor valued at $1500 from Seven Seas Music
– A pre-lit green screen sound stage package valued at $1200 from Hollywood Casting and Film,
– And a MovieMagic Scheduling and Budgeting Software bundle valued at $1000

The Experience

One could feel the excitement and anticipation in the room as the audience (and emerging filmmakers) settled down for the screening. As the films played across the screen, laughter, sighs or silence were audible –- all reactions from the audience based on the stories being shared.

The movies reflected diversity — which Los Angeles is famous for — as the genres spanned comedy to documentary, the scripts ranged from no dialogue to full-blown conversations and the themes touched on love and loss. Watching the films of this new crop of content creators, bringing them into contact with industry professionals, and having their works highlight their city–while delighting an audience of film lovers within their local community–was certainly worthwhile.

Closing Thoughts

As NFMLA continues to provide a platform for emerging filmmakers to share their work, receive support on their filmmaking journey and be potentially discovered, I’m eager to see more creative content come out of the platform and the filmmakers that come through.

Anwuli Okeke

Anwuli Okeke is a vlogger about Africa and the founder of iLunafriq, an SVOD platform dedicated to showcasing African films. Follow her daily findings on Twitter.