The White Spruce Wins Two Awards in NJ Film Festival
We’re excited to announce that our short film, The White Spruce, took home two awards from the Brightside Tavern Shorts Film Festival, held in Jersey City, NJ this past weekend!
The White Spruce won BEST COMEDY SHORT FILM and BEST DIRECTOR OF A COMEDY which went to Grey Sky Films co-founder, MARK SERAO. The film also received a runner-up accolade for BEST ENSEMBLE CAST.
Our co-founders and film production crew produced this comedy short in the Fall of 2014. The White Spruce film production was carefully scripted, planned, and scheduled to be shot within a three-day span in November 2014. Why November? Well, the film is set on a Christmas Tree farm, and Grey Sky Films found the perfect location right in nearby Long Valley, NJ!
The three days of filming collided with an abnormally cold streak of weather, with high winds and and below freezing temperatures. Grey Sky Films upheld a tightly coordinated production schedule to make the most of the natural daylight, to acquire all the shots needed at the right times of the day for visual consistency, and also to minimize talent’s long-term exposure to the cold.
One of the most magical aspects of this production was the amazing talent of The White Spruce’s ensemble cast. The film features our protagonist, Guy, and his ultimate crush, Amy, as well as a slew of characters: a pair of mobster brothers, a group of professional carolers, a sickeningly joyous family of six, a creepy little girl, a stodgy British couple, a hippie tree-hugger, a naked tree-lover, and a man obsessed with his chainsaws just to name a few.
We’d like to thank the entire cast for their outstanding work in this film, and say congratulations to them all for the BEST ENSEMBLE CAST runner-up accolade the film received this past weekend.
Stay tuned for more film festival news in the future, and if you’d like to be in-the-know about our next film production, join our newsletter!