About Watch "Stills" Reviews & Screenings Production Photos Slugco
What happens when two brothers escalate a one-point tennis match beyond “a friendly game”?
Over their Spring break (April 2008), Ben and his friend Dylan made a two-minute movie. In contrast with "009", which had six filming days and countless days of editing, this movie had one filming day and just a couple of days of editing.
Here is the movie, some stills, and some production photos. (One of the "stills" isn't really still.)
- Carl
p.s. You're encouraged to share the link to for this movie with anyone who might find it interesting. All the Slugco.com and BenKadie.com material is shareable.
YouTube Version
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November 15, 2008: The Cucalorus Film Festival of North Carolina today
showed “A Friendly Game”. Time Magazine calls Cucalorus one of
its Film Festivals for the Rest of Us". The festival considered over
1000 films and selected 157. Click the logo to the left to see "A
Friendly Game" in the Cucalorus catalog. |
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October 26, 2008: The Chicago International Children’s Film Festival (CICFF), largest annual festival of films for children in the world, today screened “A Friendly Game”. The film was one of 220 films selected from over 600 submissions. The CICFF is the only Academy Award qualifying children's film festival. http://cicff2008.org/ | |
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September 28, 2008: The Sidewalk Moving Picture Festival screened both
“009” and “A Friendly Game” as part of
their teen filmmaker program. The festival, one of TIME magazine's “Film
Festivals for the Rest of us", is a celebration of new independent
cinema in downtown Birmingham, Alabama. Click the poster to the left to see "A Friendly Game" in the Sidewalk on-line catalog. |
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“A Friendly Game” wins Regional Festival September 14, 2008: "A Friendly Game" is among the winners of the 32nd Annual Young People’s Film & Video Festival. Students in Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Montana, Utah and Alaska competed in the festival which the Northwest Film Center coordinated. A jury of educators and film professionals judged the films for their storytelling, originality, artistic merit, technical achievement, and investigation of subject matter. Only 15 productions were chosen for the festival from over 100 entries. The Festival Winners’ Program was screened on in the Portland Art Museum. Click on the poster for the NW FilmCenter web site.
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Sept 14, 2008: The Chicago International REEL Shorts Fest screened both "009" and "A Friendly Game" at Columbia College. The festival, with sponsors such as the “The Onion” humor magazine, seeks to showcase films “to REEL PEOPLE in the Chicagoland area.” A still from "009" appears of the festival’s poster. Click the poster to the left to see the full-size poster.
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On August 16, 2008, Ben introduced "A Friendly Game" to an enthusiastic crowd at the Fremont Outdoor Cinema. The film appeared before "The Iron Giant". Other Three Minute Masterpieces will appear in coming weeks. | |
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As the youth winner from the Seattle Times Three-Minute
Masterpiece digital film contest, "A Friendly Game" was invited to a
second screening at the Seattle International Film Festival. This time
as part of the FutureWave program for artists under 18. Click the little poster for details from the afternoon including comments to the young filmmakers by author Sherman Alexie. |
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"A Friendly Game" is the J. Michael (Youth) Award winner at
the 2008 Seattle Times Three-Minute Masterpieces screening. Of more than 100 entries to the Seattle Times contest, eleven films were Three-Minute Masterpieces winners, receiving a screening at the Seattle International Film Festival (SIFF) . At the very fun screening, "A Friendly Game" won the J. Michael Award youth filmmaker award. Ben is the first filmmaker to win the youth award twice. (He won last year with "Perilous Skies".) As the youth winner, Ben received a generous prize the Rima Family -- the J. Michael award is a memorial to their son. Click the logo to see the newspaper article announcing the Three-Minute Masterpieces on-line availably. Here is the Seattle Times' description:
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| LA | "Keep up the good videos coming!!!!" | |
| Tucson |
'"Friendly Game" is terrific [...] And you've got wonderful actors.' |
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| Wausau, Wisconsin | "Fun Movie and great special effects!" | |
| Texas | "Very interesting special effects! I liked it!" | |
| On-line forum | "That absolutely rocked! [...] It was amusing and just the right length; long enough for a good laugh and a "how'd he do that?" but short enough to keep the interest. Again, fantastically amusing and well-done video!" | |
| Newcastle, WA | "Hey, this is a great video! I really liked it and I hope you make more great videos like this!" | |
| Seattle | "Totally Cool soooo awesome" | |
| YouTube Comment: | "This is great!" | |
| Peoria, IL | 'I loved "A Friendly Game". I spent the weekend with some friends kids a couple of weeks ago and they liked it, too.' | |
| An LA Filmmaker: | “I love that short, amazing! You’re going to have to teach me all your special effects. Wow, that was great, a really good story mixed with effects, great!” | |
| Theatre professional, Illinois: |
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| Maryland: | "Your video short was truly delightful, and your effects and animations are wondrous to behold! You'll be a favorite at a film festival!" | |
| St. Louis: | "Very funny short! [My daughter] won't stop bugging me to play it." | |
| Unbiased star actor's grandparents: |
"That's terrific. We are waiting for the next one. What is the price of
the shares in their company - we may be interested, for several hundred
shares anyway!" |
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| San Francisco: | “I liked this a lot. [I'm going to forward this to a friend] I know she’ll laugh and laugh.” | |
| Seattle: | “Fun!” | |
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(Send your unbiased, positive reviews to sluggy@slugco.com.) |
The boys shoot the film on a local tennis courts. The day's light rain, while not ideal for filming, keeps other court users away.
