2004 In Review; Looking Forward To 2005

Well, 2004 has been very eventful for my little company here. We launched our website in late 2003, and it has really taken off with over 1000 visits. We legally incorporated, so we can play at being a grown-up business now. We produced seven shorts, three of which we're proud. Among those was our first 35mm film. "Wiener Envy" was recognized as one of the 100 best short scripts of the year by the American Gem Short Screenplay competition, and INDIAN RIVER ORANGES was one of 400 feature scripts chosen for consideration by the Sundance Institute out of the 2,000 submissions they received for their January 2005 lab. Of course, it didn't get in.

That's a fairly successful year, but we're determined to make 2005 even bigger.

We're going to produce at least three shorts on film: an untitled Ryan Pomeranz film and two projects that I will direct, including "Melissa With A Heart Around It," which is now slated for fall instead of spring. "Naked" is on its way to several film festivals, and if it gets into any of them, I will probably continue to submit it to others. We'll also be submitting "Insta-Life" and "The Ticket" late in the spring, along with the Ryan Pomeranz film and my spring project. That means this year, we could see as many as five different Candle Fish Pictures shorts at film festivals across the globe. I'm also still trying to get my two minute animated short developed, so that could possibly be on screens in 2005.

In the writing department, INDIAN RIVER ORANGES is making a full-on assault at screenplay festivals and contests. I'm submitting to just about anything with a decent prize. Hopefully, it will see some success. I will also be submitting "Melissa With A Heart Around It" to American Gem next week, in hopes it can blow "Wiener Envy" away as a strong contender. I've also begun two new feature scripts, one a gritty adult drama and another a Pixarish family-friendly action adventure. I hope to have the first finished by summer and the second finished by the fall, and I will be sending both of those to competitions as well. Maybe even another crack at Sundance?

WWW.CANDLEFISHPICTURES.COM will continue to develop as a website. We will continue to build the STREAMS TO OTHER PONDS library of helpful film related links. But that's just the small potatoes. By the end of the year, perhaps even by the beginning of the summer, we will be launching a revolutionary new website -- for now I will simply call it "the microwave project." If not totally groundbreaking, it will certainly be very unique, cutting edge, and interactive.

And finally, by the end of this year, I hope to have INDIAN RIVER ORANGES in a serious stage of development. I want to shoot this sucker no later than 2007, but if we can dig into a feature by 2006, I will be all the happier.

So that's where we've been and where we're headed. We're very thankful for the year we've had and very hopeful about the year to come.