Dear People Who Will Be Reading This Blog,
My name is Kat Candler and I’ve been asked to blog for Rooftop Films over the next week as I descend upon NYC for the IFP Conference. I’m an indie filmmaker, screenwriter and UT Lecturer based in Austin, TX (the best freakin’ city in the whole wide world).
I’ve been to the IFP three times in the last ten years. Twice for screenplays back in … 2001 and 2004 and a third time for the inaugural 2005 Rough Cuts Lab with my feature, jumping off bridges. I’ll be back this year with a teen comedy script, Nikki is a Punk Rocker participating in the Emerging Narrative section. Needless to say the IFP has been really good to me. So I heart IFP in a big, big, way.
Nikki is a Punk Rocker is a teen comedy about Nikki and her all girl teen punk band that go on a small tour from Tallahassee, FL to the SXSW Music Festival before graduating from high school. But unfortunately Nikki’s once-punk-rocker-now-over-protective mom is chaperoning the tour. So no drugs, no booze, no sex– yeah, right.
The week leading up to my 7am departure tomorrow morning has been nothing but insane. I’m finishing up post on a short film, Hellion, which stars the fantastic Jonny Mars (The Happy Poet, Good Night) and 8-year old Deke Garner. And then I have a teen thriller, Love Me that goes into production in a week and a half in Calgary through Dolphin Entertainment and Anchor Bay. Even though I get to NYC tomorrow, I’ll be sitting at a coffee shop cramming in a rewrite all day to hand over by Monday morning.
I’m also leaving behind 22 badass students at UT from my Advanced Narrative Digital Production class. So in between meetings I’ll be sending them script notes, assignments and “you can do it!” emails as they start pre-production on their short films.
Okay, so yeah, back to the IFP–
Nikki is a script I started writing the summer of 2010 and polished up last spring. It’s got my teen punk rock heart all over it. I’ve spent the last 6 months in talks with music licensing people (there’s lots and lots of music in this bad boy) and setting up the fantastic ladies from The Donnas to write the songs for my fictitious teen punk band, Riff Randall. I’ve done pretty minor location scouts around Austin and started preliminary discussions with folks to give the project legs.
I’m bringing my summer intern Beth with me to NYC. In fact, she’s probably already there. She’s a grad student in the film program at UT and one of the best interns a girl could ask for. She spent all summer helping me put together our marketing packet and a killer look book along with indie film poster extraordinaire, Yen Tan and animator Karinne Berstis. Which when I land tomorrow I need to find the closest Kinkos to print them out. So much to do and remember! My little brain is about to have a major Scanners explosion.
I’ll cut this blog entry short (although it’s not really that short) cause I gotta go do laundry, pack and kiss my husband on the cheek. He’s super bummed cause I’ll be in NY a week, back for two days for his beloved Fantastic Fest and then back out the door again to Canada for a week.
Sigh.