'Viola'
Award-winning short horror film.
“alexa, add ‘laurels’ to the shopping list”
I’m very pleased to announce that my short supernatural horror film ‘Viola’ has had a very pleasing amount of success on the festival circuit.
It’s been a while coming, but it was worth the effort. (You can read the blog here for more details of the journey.)
So far it’s won ‘Best International Film’ at The Thing in the Basement Film Festival; ‘Best Cinematography’ at the LA Crime & Horror Festival; ‘Best Scare’ and ‘Best Cinematography’ at the Independent Horror Movie Awards; and ‘Best Director’ at the London International Film Festival. It’s also made ‘Official Selection’ for a handful more.
Thanks to Covid, most of those were ‘online’ festivals, so I’m a little frustrated that I didn’t finish the film a year or so earlier. But it did finally get its ‘Real life’ premiere at Paracinema in Derby in September 2021, and then screened again later that day at Dead Northern in York. Fortunately (due to some kind scheduling) I managed to watch them both.
Since then, it’s also shown at a few other festivals, including Unrestricted View, and Austin After Dark; I was tempted to attend the latter, but really couldn’t justify the cost of the flights (even with a free bar!).
Thanks again to my splendid actors David Frias-Robles and Marian Elizabeth, DoP Will Price for making it look sick, the rest of the crew for their invaluable input (1AD Junny Yap, Editor Richard Lozberg, 1AC Owen Kelly, Hair/Make-Up April Green, Production Designer Emily Sanderson and Art Department Asst Lauren Ward), Mat Motte for the sound/music mix, and of course Hilary Beaton as the voice of Viola.
