August 27th, 6:090pm-9:00pm
Colorado Media School
404 S. Upham St., Lakewood, CO
Think you can make a movie cut to play at both film festivals and on TV? Not so fast! This and other nuggets, insights, and hard-earned lessons from husband/wife filmmaking team, Doug and Marianne Leviton, of Whistling Boulder Productions.
Whistling Boulder Productions, Inc. was formed in 2010 to produce documentary films.
Marianne Leviton is the president of the company and writes, produces, directs, and edits the films. She began making films in 2005 when she founded the Boulder Filmmaking Incubator which created a collaborative environment and collective for independent filmmaking. Her short films have won awards for best directing, best acting, and best art direction and have been featured in top 10 screenings at multiple short film festivals.
Doug Leviton is Whistling Boulder’s cinematographer, soundman, grip, assistant editor, IT guy, and whatever else needs doing. Doug’s experience behind a camera started as a kid with still photography in the 1970’s. His images have been published in Time, Money, and People magazines. Never far from a camera, Doug made his career as an optical engineer for NASA where he published 80 some papers on engineering related to space optics. He worked for over 20 years on optics for the Hubble Space Telescope and also NASA’s new James Webb Space Telescope. Now retired from NASA, he continues to consult in the field along with making movies.
Since 2010, the Levitons have focused on documentary work. At that time they produced a series of grant-funded, short documentaries for the Historic Motley County Jail in Matador, Texas. During the production of those documentaries, a near-tragic story unfolded when a devastating wildfire struck Motley County. Not long afterwards, Whistling Boulder raised grant funding for a feature documentary “A Line in the Sand” to preserve this heroic event.
Completed in late 2015, “A Line in the Sand” was voted the audience’s 2nd favorite movie at the Rockport Film Festival and was awarded Best Documentary and Best Woman Filmmaker in June 2016 for the Chandler International Film Festival. The movie has been aired multiple times on PBS. The film has also been featured in community events focusing on water shortage issues. In August 2018 the film was screened at the grand reopening of the historic Palace Theatre in Spur, TX. The box office donated $600 of the ticket sales to Spur’s volunteer fire department!
Doug and Marianne’s plan for their next feature project is “Saving SOHO” – the story of an international team of scientists and engineers who, beyond all odds, resuscitate the lost SOHO spacecraft from its long deep-freeze at a distance of 1,000,000 miles form Earth.
It seems only natural to go from real cowboys to space cowboys!
Please note we are also looking for several submissions for this event. These micro presenters will have ten minutes to show their under 3 minute video, give a summary of the production as well as take questions form the group. If you have a documentary piece you would like to show and make a brief presentation on, please forward the submission link and request to Robert@ProfessionalVP.com.
As always remember, we spend the first 30-45 minutes of our Meetup sharing light snacks and networking with other industry professionals.
We do ask for a $10 donation to come to this meeting if you are not already a Annually Paid Member. The donation covers expenses like food and drinks, web site hosting, Meetup fees and other expenses.
Hope to see you there!
Please feel free to reach out if you have any questions or suggestions about our Meetup.
In humble service,
Robert Butcher
President- CoPVA
www.CoPVA.org
