Category: about writing

Best Film Awards Win!

Jessica R.J. Fraser just won another Laurel for her short film Seashells! She is named as a semi-finalist in the Best Film Awards, Best Director competition out of London, England. We’re very pleased to have her work recognized internationally!

Best Film Awards Jessica Fraser

To view click here: Seashells

To find out about the Best Film Awards, follow @best_film_awards

Jessica’s Films “Still” + “Seashells” in Bright Ideas Film Festival Dec 2020

We’re so EXCITED here because Jessica Fraser’s films “Still” and “Seashells” were part of the Bright Ideas Film Festival! You can now view these two short films on Vimeo for a limited time. You can vote for your favorites of the festival!
They’re rerunning most of the festival this week! Runs from now to Dec 26th, 2020 8 p.m. Pacific.

still – by Jessica fraser

“Still” is Jessica’s stop-motion skateboarding film. She did all of this by herself including music, special effects, direction and writing. Personally, I love what she did with the titles.

“Still” is at 8 minutes & 13 seconds –>

Bright Ideas Film Festival 2020 – Screening 2, Part 2

seashells – by jessica fraser

“Seashells” is Jessica’s West Coast film about friendship. Again, she did it all except act one of the parts! This is a beautiful film.

“Seashells” is at 17 minutes & 30 seconds –>

Bright Ideas Film Festival 2020 – Screening 3, Part 1

voting

BIFF- Audience Choice Vote- Screening 2 – Post Festival

BIFF- Audience Choice Vote- Screening 3 – Post Festival  

Bright Ideas Film Festival was tremendous! Full of young eager filmmakers and their pieces! We watched it Saturday and were very impressed.

Dec 2020 Book Launch – Stellar Evolutions

There is an online book launch for Stellar Evolutions this Monday, December 1, 2020.

It’s available to SF Canada members and others via FaceBook.

I will not post the link here as I’ve seen at least two examples of ‘zoom bombers’ and I don’t want interruptions to the event.

So pleased to be in this book! I congratulate Rhea Rose on the creation of this ‘Best of” volume as well as R. Graeme Cameron for his hard work editing and producing Polar Borealis!

November 2020 Stellar Evolutions

Stellar Evolutions is published and available on Amazon.ca for kindle and is also available as a print book if you like on Amazon.ca. Stellar Evolutions contains two of my poems: A New Day and Law of Love. This anthology features poetry and stories in the areas of science fiction and fantasy.

About Stellar Evolutions

Stellar Evolutions cover

A particularly interesting collection because it features emerging Canadian writers, covers a broad swath of Canadian speculative fiction, and includes as much poetry as prose.” –Robert Runte–Author, editor, critic of Canadian speculative fiction.

Oh, Canada! Welcome to this world-bending collection of speculative writing Canadian style. Between these boreal covers, a compilation of must-read fantastic fiction by trending and diverse authors will take readers to the next level of story discovery.

This gathering showcases stories and poetry by many award-winning, award-nominated, yet diverse authors’ and their best works, selected exclusively from Polar Borealis Magazine, a Canadian speculative fiction publication dedicated to discovering the finest ideas in a large land of divergent narratives. folklore where sleepy felines are purrfectly unpredictable, if not damned.

Fungi Film Festival – Nurse Log

Nurse Log by Jessica Fraser

To be exhibited in the online Fungi Film Festival October 2020.

UPDATE:

#FFF screening: October 23 Jessica’s interview on #NurseLog is tonight!

FFF – More screenings: October 23, 24, 28, 30 2020.

Times vary #filmmakers #fantastic Get your tickets at http://fungifilmfest.com .

Times and dates vary due to worldwide #filmmakers.

I viewed two nights: #1 was plagued by streaming problems but #2 was #fantastic so get your tickets at http://fungifilmfest.com

Jessica’s #interview was moved to this time because it was cancelled due to night #1 streaming service errors.

#fungifilmfest#studentfilm

#fungifilmfest
See the trailer at: Fungi Film Festival

#film #shortfilm #filmmaking #fantastic

The Fungi Film Festival premieres during the peak of mushroom season in the Pacific North West and streams live:

  • Friday, October 16 – 7PM PST (this night provides the audience with the special chance to vote for the winner of the FFF’s Audience Choice Award)
  • Saturday, October 17 – 8PM PST
  • Friday, October 23 – 6PM PST
  • Saturday, October 24 – 10AM PST
  • Wednesday, October 28 – 10AM PST
  • Friday, October 30 – 6PM PST

All screenings contain the same 30+ films (3.5 hours), but each screening date will host a different filmmaker for a live audience Q&A session.

… Jessica’s is called: Nurse Log!

Buy Tickets to Fungi Film Festival 2020

Screenwriting August 2020

Lights, Camera, Paranormal Action! prep for Frontières

The script for “Lights, Camera, Paranormal Action” is available to interested producers now.

My first list consists of the producers I met in late July at Frontieres Film market.

I also added the list of local producers I met in March at the WIFT-V festival during their pitch sessions.

It was wonderful to realize that there are people actively looking for new scripts.

I’ve now sent it to producers who agreed to read it during our meeting.

I loved the experience of meeting the producers and was pleased with the level of interest the script garnered.

More Writer News

  • Two of my poems have been chosen to be in “Stellar Evolution” a ‘best of’ anthology coming out this Autumn/Winter in Canada. Really pleased about that!
  • Also, I won an Honorable Mention in the WOTF Quarter 2 results for my story “Tail Creek”. I’m still hoping to sell that one, now with the ‘win’, maybe I can.
Lights, Camera, paranormal Action image of Cat girczyc screenwriter card
My new card

Frontières Market Pitch

Lights, Camera, Paranormal Action! prep for Frontières

The week before Frontières and couple of great things happened to Lights, Camera, Paranormal Action!

  1. I got this wonderful banner via the tremendous and generous talents of Kelman Design and Glen Schroeder working on the “Movie Poster” for me. At Frontières, I’ll show a full page movie poster with cool backgrounds and more visual representation of the story in it. It’s thanks to the wonderful WIFT program that this is happening and I’m very pleased.
  2. The Dark Side winners, myself included, had a 2 hour pitch consultation from Jan Miller. It was a great experience and I heard wise advice, not just for my pitch and project but for all four of us. I must now complete my one-pager for the festival and submit that by Wednesday next week. There are so many ways to pitch and it just isn’t something I’ve done a lot. All of my sales were done to people I already knew, who asked for written story ideas. But that was in television, and I was working on shows that were looking for stories. This is my movie and it is looking for a producer.
  3. At Frontières my pitch is in the Created by Women Pitch Session, presented by Telefilm Canada with Women in Film + Television Vancouver. I’m so pleased to be able to showcase my first feature project along with the other 3 up-and-coming female screenwriters from across Canada. This year we are doing it via Zoom. Previously, the festival was in person and it would have been daunting to go up on a big stage to present my story. However, I also have some trepidation about delivering on Zoom. We have many questions yet and next week will be important for our preparations. The pitch itself can only be five minutes, then they give us a Question & Answer period with the panel of experts. Plus, while the Market is going on, we can have meetings with producers, distributors, sales agents, and other interesting people, with a view to pursuing the project.
  4. I feel very lucky this week! I also won an Honorable Mention in a short story contest. See my Bibliography for more info.

June 2020

I’ve been working on my script “Lights, Camera, Paranormal Action!” since the #DarkSide week in early March. It’s done to first draft now at 105 pages. First drafts in film and TV are really ‘starting points’. You need to get through a few drafts before sending it anywhere serious. So, it’s not yet at the point where I’m sending it out to producers. I’m looking at a rewrite or two before July’s pitching at the digital edition of the Frontières International Co-Production Market – July 23-26, 2020.

Next step is the story editing which is provided by Women in Film. I’m really pleased to have another set of eyes on it. So far, only one writer friend has read LCPA and she likes it, so that’s good! However, I’ll need some critiquing to get it into super shape for pitching and for selling ultimately.

Graphics design – I’m so pleased to be working with Kelman Design – Keli Manson and Glen Schroeder on the design of my pitch poster! I can’t reveal any of the design yet, but it’s truly wonderful. I want to put it on all of my things! It’s not done yet, there are phases to developing a great graphic for something like this and I’m learning about what my Designers need to know in order to proceed.

The image must be something useful for the Market but also something that is a true sales tool. It needs to tell them what they are (potentially) buying, using images, colours, fonts, tone, and texture.