A BIG thank you goes to Benjamin Dawson for composing the great music for Excelsior. He really portrayed the right emotion in each scene. We would definitely recommend Benjamin to other filmmakers looking for a composer!
Now that the Excelsior DVD Giveaway has officially ended, it is time to announce our winners. Since we must declare a draw for first place, free DVDs will be mailed to both:
Our Second Place winner is Andrew Bornemann, who will recieve $0.25 off when you order the DVD. Thanks for participating, Andrew!
For everyone else, you can still see 8 minutes of the Behind the Scenes Featurette free with the post of the Excelsior trailer once or more. See below for details.
To purchase the DVD directly, send a check for $10 (including s/h) to:
Excelsior the Movie
6200 230th St S
Hawley, MN 56549
NEW: Any person who posts the Excelsior trailer at least once will receive exclusive password-protected online accessto the first 8 minutes of Excelsior's Behind the Scenes (BTS) Featurette! Just send an email to info@excelsiorthemovie.com after posting your link on the Giveaway blog post.
Enjoy! -The Excelsior Team
The Excelsior Special Edition DVD is now available for sale! Praise the Lord for His faithfulness throughout production. In addition to the actual 15 minute dramatic short film, we have also included a detailed 30 minute Behind-The-Scenes featurette, a revealing commentary on the entire film, outtakes, deleted scenes, and an instructional video on how to make your own camera dolly.
To celebrate, we decided to host a DVD giveaway. Here's how it works:
1. Watch the NEW trailer (below).
YouTube
Vimeo
2. Copy the html code and post this trailer in as many unique locations as you can: blogger, facebook, twitter, your website, etc.
3. For each place you post the trailer, comment on this announcement with a link to where we can find it.
4. The person who posts the trailer in the most places by October 10th wins a free DVD! (A $10 value)
5. The two runner-ups will receive a $0.25 credit toward the DVD for each place they posted the trailer.
To purchase the DVD directly, send a check for $10 (including s/h) to:
Excelsior the Movie
6200 230th St S
Hawley, MN 56549
The Excelsior crew has been very busy as of late. After the San Antonio Christian Film Festival moved the early entry deadline to August 15th, we decided to buckle down for some serious editing and finish the movie in time to have it postmarked by that date. Well, I have news to tell you. It looks like we made it by the deadline! Praise the Lord!
The past few weeks have been a blur of activity. Hundreds of emails going back and forth, Skype meetings, special effects, color correction, last minute audio recordings ... But the most important development was the finalizing of the original soundtrack by our composer, Benjamin Dawson. We are very, very pleased with the result! It definitely takes a dedicated team to make a film.
We look forward to posting a trailer to the movie very soon. Until then, I remain,
Last weekend Caleb and I (Hannah) drove to our friend's house to film the last scene needed for Excelsior. This was an important scene in Doug's apartment bedroom. A big thank you goes to the U. Family for allowing us to use one of their bedrooms!
It's amazing how long a scene can take to shoot. This particular scene is only about 2 1/2 minutes long edited, but it took us 5 hours to get everything set up and filmed. We couldn't have done it without especially Maria, Lydia, Anna, Clara, and Yenta helping out with the lighting and all of the other little details!
Here are some behind the scenes shots from our photographer for the day, Clara.
We experimented with using pillow cases to dim the lighting when it was too harsh. It worked pretty well!
For the beginning of the scene, Doug is on the phone, so we had Lydia U. saying the person's lines on the other end of the phone to help Caleb act and remember his lines.
My brother Daniel made an amazing curved dolly after Andrew gave him all the instructions on how to do it! Wow - it adds so much quality to the shot!
Some over-the-shoulder shots. :-)
Caleb did a great job acting, and we're so thankful to the Lord that all of our scenes are shot and everything went considerably well! Now, to continue our work on post-production . . .
