Check out the Death To Prom teaser video (aka Sizzle Reel) above! This will give you a great idea of what the final movie will look like. Filming of the entire feature took place in June 2012 so check out the rest of the site, follow along, and join the prom committee today!

Death To Prom Cast Shot

Visits and Tests

Posted on by

Sundance 2013 detail
Time to catch you up on a few things, it appears. We’ve been busy.

In mid-January I, Jeremy, spent a week out at the Sundance film fes­ti­val. Matt and I attended last year and met a lot of peo­ple that we’ve stayed in touch with over 2012 and I was able to recon­nect with them, as well as meet a whole new group of amaz­ing folks. The iPad was loaded with a rough cut of the film and our EPK and I had a stack of post­cards always on my per­son. It was a busy time of meet­ings, pre­mieres, snow­board­ing and maybe a few par­ties. If you haven’t ever been, you should give it a try. You don’t need to be a big shot famous per­son to have a good time at Sundance. Heck, I even was inter­viewed on the street by the IndieFlix team.

Speaking of the rough cut, we had our first test screen­ing last week. It was a small group, more tech­ni­cal in nature, but it was our first sets of out­side eye­balls on the movie and it went very well. We learned a lot. Some things we’ll be tweak­ing, some things we’ll be adding or remov­ing, some things are good as they are. Everybody agreed we had an actual movie, so that’s some­thing (ha ha!), and every­body really loved the sound­track so far. We’ll be doing another screen­ing for a larger and younger audi­ence next week and look for­ward to find out how it plays with them. We’ve also sub­mit­ted to our first cou­ple of film festivals.

Butter City 2013Last week we were also invited to appear on the local TV show “Butter City,” which is all about film­mak­ing in Minnesota. It was a blast and host Joanna Kohler and her team made us feel very wel­come. Look for it in the new sea­son on TPT and online.

In the mean­time, there is the Best (or Worst) Prom Photo Contest we are run­ning on our face­book page. You can vote on your favorite sub­mis­sions and sub­mit your own for chances to win DVDs of the movie and maybe even be fea­tured on-screen in our credit sequence. Post those pho­tos now, we love see­ing them.

weloveyoux1000000We love you for all the sup­port you’ve shown so far. Please keep post­ing on face­book, twit­ter, google+, or wher­ever. It helps so much.

McKnight Foundation Awards Death To Prom Screenplay

Posted on by

The 2012 McKnight Screenwriting Fellowship award goes to Matt Stenerson for Death To Prom.

Since 1981, the McKnight Foundation has pre­sented awards to more than 1,500 artists in var­i­ous media. These gen­er­ous prizes go to sup­port the lives and works of artists all year and to encour­age them to grow and explore their art.

Many years after first writ­ing out the story of Death To Prom, and after being a final­ist in both the Sundance Screenwriting Lab and Francis Ford Coppola’s American Zoetrope Screenwriting Competition, the arts world has rec­og­nized Stenerson for his craft of story just weeks after wrap­ping prin­ci­pal pho­tog­ra­phy of Death To Prom.

The Shooting Stats

Posted on by

The more we do this movie-making thing, the more I’m get­ting into graphs and sta­tis­tics. Thankfully fill­ing that desire, our script super­vi­sor, Aleshia, sent over some num­bers about the shoot­ing of Death To Prom.

I was stunned to real­ize we spent almost 200 hours shoot­ing footage on-location (or attempt­ing to shoot, Day 1 was bru­tal but that is another story). That num­ber seems so big! But when you break it down into a daily for­mat, I was inversely(?) sur­prised to find that we only spent an aver­age of 10 hours/day at work. This is a pretty big deal in the film world, where 12+ hour days are (seem­ingly) very com­mon and even expected.

Our short­est two days were about 6.5 hours each, while our longest day was almost exactly 16 hours as we had a retail loca­tion for only a sin­gle day while they were closed. That day also saw us cover over 11 pages of script! Insanity. It was a great, but drain­ing, day.

Combined data of the video and audio files and some behind-the-scenes stills was almost 400 gigabytes.

Christopher Straub adds style to Death To Prom

Posted on by

Christopher StraubChristopher Straub, Minnesota-based fash­ion designer and Project Runway Season 6 con­tes­tant, has lent his fab­u­lous styl­is­tic hand to the fea­ture film Death To Prom with three cus­tom dresses.

All the char­ac­ters in Death To Prom get to show off their wardrobe flair, but Frankie and Kim get the spe­cial treat­ment, show­ing off the col­ors, tex­tures and lines of Straub’s fun and edgy cre­ations. From volu­mi­nous pur­ple tulle to punky black leather, Straub’s dresses com­mand atten­tion and fit per­fectly with lead char­ac­ter Rene’s fer­tile imagination.

And they fit right in with Straub’s approach to fash­ion. According to an inter­view with Lavendar Magazine, he design­ing for “some­one still younger, styl­ish, look­ing for some­thing unique, some­thing with a lit­tle excite­ment to his or her clothes… I’m also look­ing for that girl that’s a lit­tle younger than me who really just wants to find some­thing cute and funky, and show off to her friends.”

Follow Christopher and find his fash­ions on his offi­cial web­site, ChristopherStraub​.com.

Joher Coleman joins Death To Prom cast

Posted on by

Joher ColemanJoher Coleman, known for his teen role on the 1980s sit­com Head of the Class, has joined the cast of Death To Prom as Ishan Jain, father of Frankie.

Coleman has also been vis­i­ble in films, movies and ani­mated shows over the years, from Earth Girls are Easy to Scrubs and more.

“We’re very pleased to have Joher on our cast. His easy-going demeanor and pro­fes­sion­al­ism allowed him to slide right into our pro­duc­tion and he brought a fab­u­lous read­ing to one of our few adult roles,” said Jeremy Wilker, co-director and cin­e­matog­ra­pher. “It was one of those swel­ter­ing Minnesota sum­mer days and he didn’t seem fazed by anything.”

Coleman splits his time between the mid­west and Los Angeles.

Fundraising Launch

Posted on by

Death To Prom fundraiser invitation We are kick­ing off our pro­duc­tion fundrais­ing with both a new kick­starter cam­paign and fundrais­ing party at the fab­u­lous JET SET in down­town Minneapolis. The party will be held on Thursday, April 19th, from 5:30 — 8:30pm. You’ll be able to watch the teaser video, view orig­i­nal fash­ions from the movie, meet cast & crew, enjoy music by DJ JR and show your sup­port! Please RSVP today so we have an accu­rate headcount.

If you are unable to attend in per­son (no! we want to see you all dressed up for a party!), con­sider mak­ing a dona­tion that day via mail or PayPal through our fis­cal spon­sor, IFP Center for Media Arts, or our kick­starter cam­paign.

And the most help­ful thing you can do is to like, fol­low and share us with your friends. Word of mouth for inde­pen­dent film­mak­ers means SO much.