TMDFilms attended the Castle Rock Film Festival this past weekend for the festival premieres of two of our short films - the suspense/horror Alone and drama The Burden. A big THANK YOU to everyone who came out to support us!

For those of you who missed it, the 2009 Castle Rock Film Festival was a fantastic weekend full of great films and great people! It kicked off Friday night with an evening of music & videos in the Douglas County Event Center. The night was divided between performances by a diverse mix of musicians and showings of a collection of trailers and actor demo reels, including promos for all of the accepted films that would screen during the festival. There were also appearances by Miss Colorado Katie Layman and the 501st Legion - by far my favorite part of the night was the numerous photo ops with various Star Wars characters!

Selected films began playing at 10am on Saturday morning. We were quite pleased with the venues they selected for the screenings. The selection of films shown was fantastic (and I'm not just saying that because we had two shorts selected!) It was an honor to screen our work alongside that of so many talented regional filmmakers!

In addition to the film screenings (and a live read of the winning script), CRFF hosted a panel discussion called Tenacity In Independent Filmmaking. The panel featured an impressive lineup of filmmakers and industry folk who provided some great information on filmmaking in Denver. I can say in all honesty that the discussion was so interesting and informative that the two hours flew by and I was disappointed when it ended.

CRFF went above and beyond in making sure it's attendees were taken care of. They thought of everything. The amount of thought they put into the little details was impressive, especially for a first-year fest. Rather than a simple schedule of events, they printed programs with interesting articles about some of the films that played the fest as well as how CRFF came to be. The weekend was packed with events, including screenings of accepted films and some local features (including Intelligent Life, Gerald, and the local hit Ink.) Saturday nights Awards Ceremony was followed by a comedy show, recorded live at the event by Agitated Productions. They even hosted an exclusive Filmmaker's Lounge both nights (which was only for accepted filmmakers and VIP pass holders). I attended this on Saturday night, and not only was it a great opportunity to meet like-minded people, the selection of food they had available was incredible.

For those of you making movies in the Rocky Mountain area, I highly encourage you to submit your film next year to the Castle Rock Film Festival! We couldn't have asked for a better festival experience. If you didn't submit this year, you missed out! Make sure you don't miss out next year!

So from all of us with TMDFilms, thank you, CRFF, for a wonderful weekend! We appreciate all of the hard work you put into your inaugural festival, and we look forward to your future events!