Category: Blog

Produced By 2015 – Getting to Meet Kevin Smith

I attended the 2015 Produced By conference held at the Paramount Lot this past weekend, and attended lots of interesting panels. One of particular interest to me was a “Conversation with Kevin Smith” panel. While the subject matter of his films aren’t always in line with my own interests, I’ve always appreciated the personal nature of his early works, and how in his second decade of being a filmmaker, he reinvented himself as a podcaster. Through podcasting, he was able to remember what it was about filmmaking that excited and invigorated him, and he is likely more productive now than he ever was.

After the panel ended, I got a couple minutes to chat with him and share my admiration for him and his body of work. He is truly one of the most generous and kind people I have met, and he is ever thankful for his fans and audience, and recognizes that without them, he couldn’t make the films that make him a unique voice.

Regardless of how you feel about his films, his mindset and drive should be inspirations to us all.

Kevin Smith & Kevin Tostado
Kevin Smith & Kevin Tostado

Next Project

Next up for Tostie Productions will be a comedy film, currently titled All Hail the Squash Blossom Queen. We’re planning to shoot in Spring/Summer of 2014, and once we have contracts finished with our cast, we’ll be happy to share more details!

We’ve already got an IMDB page up, as well as a listing on Slated.

Here’s the synopsis:

[blockquote quoted_by=”Tostie Productions, LLC”]All Hail The Squash Blossom Queen is a romantic comedy about Bumbershoot, a fresh-out-of-high school kid that is virtually invisible to everyone until one day his only friend, Hannah, blackmails him into competing in the small town’s local pageant to prove to everyone once and for all that “it’s what’s inside that matters”… And it doesn’t hurt that Bumbershoot’s dream girl, the gorgeous Brittany, will be his main competitor in the pageant. [/blockquote]

If you have any questions about the project, please send them to me on Twitter @Tostie.

Cheers!

Kevin

“Yellow Lights” – Indie Fest USA!

Originally posted at YellowLightsMovie.com:

Yellow Lights has been accepted at the 2007 Indie Fest USA held in Anaheim, CA on October 26 – November 2nd!!!! I’m hoping for an early screening date for Yellow Lights as I fly to DC on November 1st for Rob & Lilly’s wedding, but this is still awesome news!

Once I get the schedule, I will be sure to share with all of you when our screening will be!

From the acceptance email:

Greetings filmmaker,

Congratulations! We are pleased to inform you that your film has passed our three round screening process and is now an “Official Selection” of the 2007 INDIE FEST USA International Film Festival at Downtown Disney in Anaheim, California.

Congratulations again and welcome to INDIE FEST USA!

“Yellow Lights” – Soundtracks are shipping!

Originally posted at YellowLightsMovie.com:

The Yellow Lights soundtracks have arrived and they both sound and look absolutely great! It includes all 18 songs heard in Yellow Lights plus two bonus tracks! Make sure to order your copy today in the Yellow Lights Store for only $11 plus shipping. If you order it with the Yellow Lights DVD, save 20%!

“Yellow Lights” – DVD is printing!

Originally posted at YellowLightsMovie.com:

As Tom described it, this is “a big moment”! I have placed the order for the production run of Yellow Lights on DVD. If all goes as planned, two weeks from now (June 14th) I should have the DVDs in hand and I will be able to start shipping orders placed on our store.

The soundtrack production order will be placed sometime later this week!

“Yellow Lights” – DVD being proofed

Originally posted at YellowLightsMovie.com:

After many painful hours dealing with rendering and figuring how best to write to a dual-layer DVD, the Yellow Lights DVD is currently being proofed and tested out to make sure that if you get a copy, there will be absolutely no bugs in the disc authoring.

The production printing of the DVD and Soundtrack will likely take place early next week with a hopeful in-hand date around the 2nd week of June!

We’re also getting some assistance with the artwork for both the DVD and soundtrack from a friend of Tom’s, and I must say the new artwork is looking mighty fine!

“Yellow Lights” – Store Going Live Shortly

Originally posted at YellowLightsMovie.com:

The Yellow Lights DVD is in the process of getting finalized and the production order should be happening within a week. This DVD will have lots of special features as well as a 30-minute behind the scenes documentary of the making of Yellow Lights with all-new cast and crew interviews as well a hilarious blooper reel.

The website store will be up within a couple days from now so that we can start taking pre-orders for once I have the DVDs in my hands ready to ship. We’ll also have digital and CD versions of the awesome soundtrack available for order.

Stay tuned and keep checking out the website!

“Yellow Lights” – Festival Update

Originally posted at YellowLightsMovie.com:

Since the last time Tom posted in October, we have now entered Yellow Lights into 13 festivals far including Sundance, SXSW, Seattle, 2 in Boston, Phoenix, and more, and we’ve just started to hear back.

Unfortunately, Sundance did not select Yellow Lights to be a part of the 2007 Festival. We knew our odds wouldn’t be great because they only choose 16 films in the Independent Narrative category out of several hundred submissions.

We still plan to enter Yellow Lights into another 5-6 festivals that will be opening later in the year and have many still to hear back from. We’ll be sure to post with our progress as well as screening dates for any festivals we do get into.

Also, in October, I visited Olin’s campus in Boston and recorded a director’s commentary with Tom and Bennett Chabot (Brian in the movie). We also recorded my portion of the behind-the-scenes documentary that you will be able to watch on the DVD coming out next year.

We also got together as many of the cast and crew as we could and took them out for a Thank You dinner for all of the hard work that was put into the making of Yellow Lights. You can view pictures from this reunion dinner on the Flickr: Yellow Lights photoset.

We’re still definitely hoping to shop Yellow Lights around and find a distributor, so make sure to tell your friends to come to our website and check out the trailer!