8/31/08

Our award-winning short, Open Ticket, is up and ready for viewing in its entirety! You can also download the iPod versions for your fancy portable viewing pleasure! Take a look!

A little more about the film: Open Ticket recently screened and won the “Best Short” Award at the Foursite Film Festival in Ogden, Utah. Shot in New Jersey and Israel, this short drama delves into the life and subconscious of one man coping with the loss of his deceased wife.

5/26/08

Happy Memorial Day! We have good news for all you PC users!

For all of you that have had trouble viewing our Quicktime videos, Aslander Productions is proud to announce that our website now offers all our films in Flash video formats as well as Quicktime and iPod. Click here to check it out!

Much thanks to all our fans who have been checking out the new site and sending us feedback. We hope you like the new features!

4/27/08

We've revamped our website! Check out Aslander Production's fresh new look at www.aslanderproductions.com.

Now you can view all our award-winning work in one convenient place! Featuring downloadable Quicktime and Ipod/Iphone versions of:

• BRAND NEW FILM - Monkey in the Middle - Aslander's latest comedy short directed by David Aslan
• Mr. Future - Winner: 3rd place, Best Editing, and Best Comedic Actress in the 2007 Grand Prix Film Racing Competition
• Open Ticket (trailer) - Winner: Best Short, 2008 Foursite Film Festival (complete film coming soon!)
• The Turkey Alibi (trailer) - Winner: Best Comedy, 2007 Independent Features Film Festival
• Beyond Inspiration (trailer) - Official Selection: 2007 Garden State Film Festival

We hope you enjoy the new look! Comments and/or suggestions are always welcome.

3/13/08

Exciting News! Last Saturday, “Open Ticket” – one of Aslander’s most recent short films – screened and won the “Best Short” Award at the Foursite Film Festival which took place in Ogden, Utah. Special thanks to all the festival’s volunteers and supporters, and especially to Scott Halford who put together the festival and made it so memorable. We highly recommend you check out their website www.foursitefilmfest.com and look into the works of other filmmakers featured at the festival.

A little more about “Open Ticket”: Shot in New Jersey and Israel, this short drama delves into the life and subconscious of one man coping with the loss of his deceased wife. A stellar performance by actor Sy Aslan hailed so many compliments and admirers – that it’s apparent to everyone at Aslander a future star has been born!

2/11/08

A few weeks ago Aslander Productions entered a short film, “Mr. Future,” into the Film Racing Grand Prix 100-Hour Film Festival – and the results are in! “Mr. Future” won 3rd place, and also snatched two additional awards for “Best Leading Actress in a Comedic Role” (round of applause for Jaymie Gerard) and “Best Editing”! You can view the film and read more about the festival at:

http://www.filmracing.com/Films/competitions/grandprix2007.htm

In other news, “Open Ticket,” another recent short by Aslander Productions, got accepted into its first film festival! The 5th annual Foursite Film Festival (www.foursitefilmfestival.com), which takes place March 5-8 in Ogden, Utah, has invited “Open Ticket” to be a part of its Shorts Program playing at 4:00pm on March 8th at Peery’s Egyptian Theater.

7/30/07

The Turkey Alibi is an official Award-winner! Last night, during the Awards Ceremony for the Independent Features Film Festival, The Turkey Alibi received the Viewer's Choice Award for Best Comedy! Congratulations to all the cast and crew who helped make this recognition possible - we couldn't have done it without you! :)

And of course, many thanks to everyone who came out to The Turkey Alibi's first public NYC screening at Tribeca Cinemas yesterday. The turnout was fantastic and we really appreciated all the support- not to mention all the good vibes you brought into the theater. Thanks for sharing the moment with us!
For those of you who still want to catch the film but couldn't yesterday - The Turkey Alibi will also be screening this Wednesday, August 1st at The Anthology Film Archives at 32 Second Ave (corner of 2nd st.) at 9:45pm as the second part of a double feature. Check out www.newfilmmakers.com for more info. Tickets are $5 at the theater. Hope to see you there!

7/6/07

The results are in! The viewers have spoken! Thanks to your votes, THE TURKEY ALIBI has been officially selected to screen at:

Tickets are $12 and can be purchased through www.tribecacinemas.com.

And don’t forget! THE TURKEY ALIBI will also be screening that same week at:

The NewFilmmaker Summer Series
Wednesday August 1st, 9:45PM
Anthology Film Archives (32 Second Ave @ 2nd St)

Tickets are $5 and that gets you in to see some shorts and two features the same evening! (The Turkey Alibi is the 2nd feature that evening.) Check out more information about their program at www.newfilmmakers.com.

5/31/07

** INDEPENDENT FEATURES FILM FESTIVAL (July 27-29 @ Tribeca Cinemas in NYC), the world’s first film festival where films are chosen via a web-based competition, has selected “The Turkey Alibi” to be a contender! We need YOU and your friends (and anyone else you can spread the word to) to rate/vote for our film! The competition begins TOMORROW JUNE 1ST and goes until SATURDAY JUNE 30th. Just go to www.independentfeatures.com, log in, click “Browse Movies” up top, and look for us alphabetically (click “T” then click on page 6). If you visit them now you’ll only be able to see our trailer, but starting tomorrow you’ll be able to see the entire movie! And you’ll be able to vote! Please spread the word! J

** NEWFILMMAKERS has selected “The Turkey Alibi” to be a part of their Summer 2007 New York Series! The screening will take place WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 1st at 9:45 PM @ Anthology Film Archives: 32 Second Ave. NYC (the NE corner 2nd Ave. and 2nd St.) For those of you who are free and in the area, please come by and enjoy the screening! You can read more about NewFilmmakers at www.newfilmmakers.com

4/9/07

The Turkey Alibi has made it into another film festival: ReelHeART International Film Festival (RHIFF), taking place Monday June 18th through Saturday June 23rd in Toronto Canada. You can read more about them at http://www.reelheartfilmfestival.com

4/2/07

The Turkey Alibi has gotten into a new international film festival!

DeReel Independent Film Festival, based in Melbourne Australia, has selected “The Turkey Alibi” to be a part of its 2007 Showcase! The festival will be taking place in Australia between May 3rd and 13th. You can read more about them at www.dereel.com

7/3/06

After cutting down the movie by about 5 minutes, we sent it to numerous festivals (Toronto, AFI, Hamptons, Red Bank, Hawaii, Austin, Woodstock, Big Apple, and Chicago) for the fall. Thank you all for your festival suggestions, we looked into all the suggestions you sent us. In the end, the ones we chose had to do with each festival’s “premiere status” rules as well as which festivals had more “bang for the buck” – in other words, which festivals usually enjoy the most press and large audiences. We’ll hear back from these fests sometime in August and September, and will of course keep everyone updated if we get in to any.

While you are visiting our website, please be sure to check out our new trailer for Beyond Inspiration. Beyond Inspiration, a documentary that examines the link between campus activism and propaganda, was directed by David Aslan and shot by Nick Capote. It is weeks away from becoming complete, and when it is we will send it to film festivals that focus on documentary-filmmaking.

5/17/06

While the World Premiere in Baltimore got off to a rocky start due to some scheduling issues, The Turkey Alibi still impressed the masses and was on the receiving end of many compliments from friends and new acquaintances.

After the compliments and constructive criticisms from all screenings so far, we have decided to take a closer look at the film and re-edit some things to make the story flow even better. Thank you to everyone who gave us their input!

Of course, we are not letting this re-editing process slow us down from submitting to more festivals. So far we have submitted to the Hamptons Film Festival, and plan on submitting to Toronto International, American Film Institute, Woodstock, among many others.

4/22/06

The Turkey Alibi will have its official World Premiere (and by “official” we mean you have to pay to see it) at the Johns Hopkins Film Festival next Saturday, April 29th at 8pm in Baltimore, MD. If you would like to attend this screening or know someone who would like to go that lives in that area, please check out the details at www.hopkinsfilmfest.com.

We’ve also updated our website to include some pictures from the Hackensack, NJ screening (aka, the other World Premiere) so make sure you visit www.aslanderproductions.com/the_turkey_alibi.htm to check them out. We’re planning on sending The Turkey Alibi to a lot more festivals within the next few weeks, so stay tuned!

4/4/06

In other news, "Suicides Collide," a new song by Gonna Get Got written just for The Turkey Alibi (which those of you who attended the premiere heard during the credits) is now available to listen to for a limited time. The song features the great Triple G rapping about Turkey's two main characters and is absolutely fantastic. If you're a myspacer, we highly recommend checking out GGG's my space and spreading the word to all your friends.

3/28/06

We just now got word that we are definitely and absolutely ON for Monday, April 3rd.
You are welcome and encouraged to invite all your friends and family. Here are the details:

MONDAY, April 3rd 7PM
at The Bergen County Technical Schools Auditorium
200 Hackensack Ave., Hackensack NJ 07601

Driving directions from the turnpike:

See you next week at the big premiere!

3/9/06

As we wait for the official website to be published, we’ve found a way for you to view the TURKEY ALIBI TRAILER in the meantime!

Go to http://www.ifilm.com/ifilmdetail/2707411

If that doesn’t work go to ifilm.com and then search for “TURKEY ALIBI”. It should be the 1st or 2nd search item.

There are a few things wrong that we have put inquiries to ifilm.com about (i.e. the synopsis doesn’t display itself and the very first still image is not something we chose but seems to be a random computer glitch)…. But despite these minor flaws – you can view the trailer!

3/8/06

As of yesterday the trailer for THE TURKEY ALIBI is finally complete! We are in the process of trying to put it on the web… so please be patient as we spend the next few days figuring out the technical aspects and requirements.

As for the movie, we are still working very hard on audio mixing – which has proven to be one of the most taxing and challenging endeavors of the entire project so far. To understand why, think of recording sound (for example, the dialogue that our actors produce on set) as capturing a very particular wave. The actual recorded sound will vary depending on many factors, i.e. the room’s environment, the distance between the source and the microphone, the direction of the microphone, not to mention the actor’s voice projection. Every subtle difference can make all the difference. This presents a problem for filmmakers because one of the most crucial elements in making a film seem like it is happening in real time (and hasn’t been assembled together through bits and pieces) is for the audio to sound the same. Because of the delicate nature of the sound wave, this illusion must often be heavily crafted and treated, which is why some actors were asked to come in to do audio dubs at the end of January through February. After dubbing, we had to add effects to their voices to make it sound like there was no difference between set-recorded and studio-recorded sound.

In the last month we finished mixing and editing all of the dialogue in the film. Now we are working on recording and mixing in the final soundtrack. While March looks like it will be a tough month to get a lot of work done on the film, we are shooting for the stars and aiming for complete completion by the end of the month.

Please keep the first two weeks of April in mind as possible screening dates. Unfortunately we will not know for sure for another two weeks if this is plausible, but we like to be optimistic! We will of course keep you all updated.

1/31/06

THE TURKEY ALIBI’s completion is in our sights. While various elements of the movie still need to be polished here and there, our main focus this past month has been cleaning up the sound – including writing and recording an original score and mixing all the dialogue for a smooth audio track. This is also what we will spend most of our time working on in February.

In the meantime, we’re preparing a trailer, official website (coming soon!), original poster and DVD artwork.  In addition to that we are constantly looking into film festivals and markets, as well as venues in which to hold a possible screening. Most venues, especially in New York, are above and beyond our budget allowances, so we are looking into many possibilities – from friends’ homes to restaurants to theaters in New Jersey. At this point, we believe the film has a very good chance of being complete in March, but of course we’ll keep you posted.

12/19/05

THE TURKEY ALIBI is coming along nicely in this cold month of December. We are still in the process of color correcting, audio mixing, composing and recording original music, and adding titles and sound effects, but in the meantime we also submitted the film as a “Work In Progress” to our first film festival - Tribeca!

Right now we are researching all the Film Festivals out there, so if anyone knows a good one that we may have skipped, let us know! We are also looking into theaters that rent so we can have a private premiere for everyone who helped bring THE TURKEY ALIBI to life. Again, if anyone has any leads in that department, we are always open and appreciative of suggestions.

It looks like the film will be done by the end of January, so stay tuned for more updates after the holiday season!

12/01/05

It’s a very exciting time for our little turkey alibi: the film has just been edited down to a version that will very closely resemble the final product. At this stage in the process we are mixing our sound, adding music and sound effects, and color correcting and adding titles. Actors – I may be calling a few of you in the next couple weeks to schedule an audio-dubbing session, so stay tuned J.

The film will most likely be done in January or February, and we will let everyone know about the premiere well in advance.

10/29/05

It’s been a little over 5 weeks since the last update, and I’d just like to let you all know that we have just finished a complete rough cut of “The Turkey Alibi”. By rough cut I mean that every scene has been edited and assembled together, so the film exists in its first draft form. Right now it stands at about an hour and fifty minutes, but will probably become much shorter once we edit it down further. While there is still much to do: revisions, soundtrack, audio dubbing, creating a credits sequence, etc – we have reached a very important landmark in the post-production process. Thank you all again for your continued support and words of encouragement!

At this point it will be difficult to predict when the film will be completely finished, but we hope it will be ready to view sometime in January.

9/19/05

Thank you all for your support, input, and talents on the production and pre-production phases of Aslander's first feature-length romantic comedy, "The Turkey Alibi".  Now that the shooting is wrapped, we are about 2 weeks into the film's next phase: the wonderful world of post-production.

The editing process requires capturing all the media (picture and sound: both of which are already digital) into the computer. Once the media is captured, we synch up the sound and picture for every single take, and then go on to assemble a rough cut of each scene. As you can imagine this is a very slow, technical, and at times tedious process - but also necessary in order to move on to the creative aspect of editing. Just to give you an idea of where we are in this process: we have about 30 hours worth of footage to go through and capture, and have done about 7 so far.

Throughout the process, we are also keeping our eyes open for grants, film festivals,  and distributors that focus on extremely low budget film projects. Taking one step at a time, we will research these things in more depth once the film is near edited completion, but if anyone happens to come across information in these areas, we will gladly take the input.

Once again, thank you all - and congratulations - for your invaluable help on the making of "The Turkey Alibi". We will keep everyone updated on the film's status every other week or so, but if you would prefer not to be on this mailing list, just let us know. Actors: we will let you know about
audio-dubbing when we are closer to that point, most likely in several weeks time.

Thanks to Roy Weiss and everyone at Sumo Graphics for helping us celebrate
in style! :-)