MorrisonFilm

Forever’s Not So Long Recap

Last week was an eventful one in the life of my short film, Forever’s Not So Long. In the span of 7 days Garrett and I went to two cities on opposite coasts, collected 2 awards and appeared in 3 newspaper articles.

We won the Grand Jury Prize for best narrative at the SIFF 1 Reel festival. This was an amazing and unexpected win and it’s really been the highlight of the entire experience so far. Then on Sunday we won an audience award at the DC Shorts festival, one of the best, most filmmaker centric festivals we’ve attended. I want to make a new short just to go back to DC Shorts next year.

We were reviewed in two papers, the Seattle Times and then in the Washington City Paper. Tessa Moran of City Paper wrote:

This apocalypse narrative reaches beyond the genre’s typical gloom with well-placed humor. The take-home: that once past the superficiality of initial courtship, spending one’s life with someone can happen in only a number of hours: the unglamorous yet pleasing sex life; the simple but precious experience of reading together; the quarrel over a little too much spice in the stir-fry.

Tom Keogh of the Seattle Times wrote:

A couple of films at Bumbershoot have end-of-the-world themes. The best is Shawn Morrison’s drama-comedy “Forever’s Not So Long” … about a man and a woman, strangers to one another, who hook up for the last four hours of Earth’s existence and look as if they’ve lived a lifetime together.

I was also interviewed by a capital hill magazine Roll Call about my film and DC Shorts. I enjoy this one most because, well, I’m selfish and the article heavily features my quotes.

As if all this wasn’t enough, the buzz surrounding our win in Seattle generated over 16,000 views of the movie on Vimeo since September 5th (a span of about 2 and a half weeks) bringing the total Vimeo views to over 55,000. That number really smashes our expectations for the film. Not so much from a success standpoint as simply pure views. That the feedback is still so overwhelmingly positive (I can count 4 or 5 negative responses out of hundreds) is just so encouraging for us.

But it’s not over yet. We’d like to try our luck at a few European festivals (we hear the Euros love depressing arty shorts) and maybe some kind of DVD release. We’re not sure yet. I’m still taking in the last 2 weeks and enjoying the moment.