THE LONELY PORTRAIT, 17min., USA
Directed by Marc Marashi
An AirBnB guest stumbles upon a hidden piece of art that, once hung up, has an unexpected and unsettling effect on the home.

https://instagram.com/thelonelyportraitfilm
https://instagram.com/mna_film_company

Get to know the filmmaker:

1. What motivated you to make this film? This was prompted by a miserable one-two punch of Covid and turning 40. Just my mortality being crammed down my throat in every possible way and realizing I'd never actually pursued this thing I wanted to do my whole life. So instead of buying a Corvette for my midlife crisis, I bought a camera. My friend, Andrew, who is the lead in the movie, is an actor and we'd been workshopping ideas for years without actually following through. After I bought the camera, Andrew went out and bought a bunch of other equipment, and we just kind of hit the ground running.

2. From the idea to the finished product, how long did it take for you
to make this film? This was a long one. I went to film school 20 year ago, but I basically had to relearn filmmaking while we made this. We initially shot the whole thing on iphone in a night, without a script, just plotting it out as we went along. The result was bad, but we could tell the story actually worked. So that's when we bought a real camera and just shot it again. I spent a few months doing FX work, making all the different paintings, editing, color correcting, etc... During that period, Andrew and his wife had a baby, so we kind of pumped the brakes and had about a year of downtime. Then, as we were kind of gearing back up to start working on something again, we revisited the film and realized we still weren't happy with it. So we reshot about 80% of it yet again, and that's what the finished product ended up being. All told, I'm going to say it was probably about 18-20 months.

3. How would you describe your film in two words!? Bad Painting!

4. What was the biggest obstacle you faced in completing this film? We were a 2-man operation, so we were both just wearing a lot of hats. There was no specific detail that proved to be standout difficult, but it was just learning how to do color correction, After Effects, sound editing, cleaning up poorly exposed footage (of which there was more than I'd like to admit). It was a lot of months spent watching tutorials on YouTube.

5. What were your initial reactions when watching the audience talking
about your film in the feedback video? It was great! The filmmaking process sort of exists in a vacuum, so it's great to get the finished product out there and see how people respond to it. We'd gotten some reactions in person after screenings, but these were definitely the most thoughtful responses we've gotten so far. So thank you for that!

6. When did you realize that you wanted to make films? When I was a teenager. It just me some 20 odd years to do.

7. What film have you seen the most in your life? Probably Evil Dead 2?

8. What other elements of the festival experience can we and other
festivals implement to satisfy you and help you further your filmmaking
Career? Oh man, if you guys had like... seven million dollars laying around to finance a feature film, that would sure be helpful! But no, this whole process has been cool. I can't think of anything off the top of my head I would add or change.

9. You submitted to the festival via FilmFreeway. How has your
experiences been working on the festival platform site? It's actually made this all super easy. I wasn't aware of FilmFreeway's existence prior to making this movie, and I'm just surprised how streamlined the whole process of submitting to festivals is.

10. What is your favorite meal? Korean bar food with a tower of beer and a bottle of soju.

11. What is next for you? A new film? We just started submitting our second film to festivals, and we are in the process of wrapping up shooting on our third. On top of that, we have a completed script and some extensive preproduction done for a feature we want to make. So as these films continue to play the festival circuit for the next couple years, we are going to be shopping that around as well.