The Huffington Post tells the story of how fans of the book helped propel Something Like Summer to bestseller status and literary awards, and on its way to the movie screen.

The article, “A Book and Its Film Version — Made Possible by Readers and Viewers,” features interviews by HuffPo writer Nicholas Kralev with the novel’s author Jay Bell, director J.T. Tepnapa and screenwriter Carlos Pedraza.

The post describes how both the book and the upcoming film didn’t depend on traditional publishers or studios to bring the story to life. Here’s an excerpt:

It was one of Bell’s readers who urged him to pursue a screen adaptation. … He resisted for months, until he saw Judas Kiss, which he had “followed through fundraising and development” from a distance. He decided that those filmmakers were the team he could trust to turn his book into a movie.

Director J.T. Tepnapa and screenwriter Carlos Pedraza didn’t need much convincing. “I read Something Like Summer and fell in love with the characters,” Tepnapa said. “Jay’s novel spoke to me so personally. I was a gay kid in a small town where it wasn’t always safe to be gay. Like so many of us, my first stabs at love were clumsy and left me feeling lonely.”

Kralev, who liked the book enough to write about it on HuffPo, is the author of the books “America’s Other Army” and “Decoding Air Travel.” He is a former Financial Times and Washington Times correspondent and appears on CNN as a foreign affairs expert.

HUFFINGTON POST writer Nicholas Kralev blogs about 'Something Like Summer'. Click the image to read the article on the HuffPo website.

Related Links

• Read the full article on the Huffington Post website
• About Huffington Post writer Nicholas Kralev
• Sign up for our newsletter to keep up with Something Like Summer news
• ‘Like’ the Something Like Summer Facebook page

CONCEPT ART This promotional photo, featuring two models as the novel's main characters, Ben and Tim, evokes the original artwork on the cover of Jay Bell's acclaimed novel. Click the image to view full size.

AS WE MOVE into preproduction for Something Like Summer, we’ve released concept art for the project on its Facebook page.

PROFILE PIC This image is now the official avatar for the film on Facebook. Click the image to view full size.

“We’re preparing to raise money for the film’s production budget,” said writer-producer Carlos Pedraza, “and this promotional art will help illustrate for potential investors our vision for bringing this novel to life.”

While the adaptation of Jay Bell’s acclaimed, best-selling coming-of-age novel has not yet been cast, the promotional art depicts the lead characters, Ben Bentley and Tim Wyman, with two models who will give the book’s ravenous fans some idea of the direction producers may be taking in casting the roles. The photos evoke the novel’s cover art, an illustration by Bell’s husband, Andreas.

“Fans have been speculating for a long time about what the actors will look like who will bring these characters to life on screen,” Pedraza observed. “This promotional art offers a window into how we’re approaching casting. We spent weeks just casting these models!”

ADVANCE PEEK The Kickstarter campaign for a new camera afforded a glance at the casting concept for the main character, Ben Bentley. Click to view full size.

KEEPING UP Blue Seraph Productions is launching a newsletter to inform Something Like Summer fans about how the project is coming together. You can subscribe here »

Blue Seraph is preparing to launch the website for Something Like Summer very soon, Pedraza added, “so fans will get to see a lot more concept art as we launch into fundraising for the project. They got their first glimpse in the Kickstarter “Two Movies, One Year” art we used in our recent campaign for a new camera to shoot the project.”

Related Links

• Subscribe to our newsletter
• Something Like Summer Facebook page
• Kickstarter page

Director J.T. Tepnapa and cinematographer David Berry made a field trip this week to pick up the RED Scarlet camera with which we will be shooting The Dark Place in less than a month.

THE BOX at the center of the full RED camera setup. We call it The Brain.

RED Digital Cinema is located in Irvine, Calif., about an hour’s drive south of Los Angeles, where Blue Seraph Productions is based.

THE PRICE TAG? Just over $26,000. And it was funded completely by the 281 backers on Kickstarter who provided the financial support to make The Dark Place a reality. Thank you, backers!

And we have pledged to make the camera available to other independent filmmakers so that they can reduce their camera costs, too.

Our camera is the 4,011th one sold by the company (it’s numbered — “like a piece of art!”, according to J.T.).

TRICKED OUT With all the accessories needed to make the Scarlet feature-ready, here's what it looks like.

ABOUT THE SCARLET This camera is a huge step up from the DSLR we used to shoot Judas Kiss, the Canon 7D. The camera itself — the “brain” — is only the core of a much larger set up of mounted accessories that together form what truly is The Camera.

RED makes the cameras that major studio productions and television series are shot on. It’s the real deal.

Here are some of the films shot on RED cameras: Oz the Great and Powerful, Thor: The Dark World, Joss Whedon’s Much Ado About Nothing, The Great Gatsby, and The Hobbit.
 

KEEP UP on the latest news about Judas Kiss and our upcoming two features, The Dark Place and Something Like Summer.

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STUNNING CAST Meet the lead actors of 'The Dark Place,' (from left) Timo Descamps, Sean Paul Lockhart, Eduardo Rioseco and Blaise Embry.

THE DARK PLACE goes before the cameras April 19 near Portland, Ore., starring Blaise Embry and Ricardo Rioseco, joining co-stars Sean Paul Lockhart and Timo Descamps.

The mystery-thriller explores the uncanny mental ability of young Keegan Dark (Embry), whose attempt to reconcile with his estranged mother sparks a conspiracy that threatens his life and his family’s livelihood.

LEARN MORE at the brand-new website, TheDarkPlaceMovie.com, which introduces the film’s stellar cast and spotlights the creative team that brought you last year’s acclaimed scifi-fantasy drama, Judas Kiss.

Related Link

• The Dark Place official movie website

SUCCESS The Kickstarter campaign for The Dark Place and Something Like Summer‘s new RED Scarlet camera came to a successful conclusion, raising $34,624 in its month-long effort from 281 backers.

“This was a team effort,” said producer Carlos Pedraza. “It brought us 281 wonderful backers to whom we are grateful for their support.”

FINAL STATS Here's how the month-long Kickstarter campaign successfully ended.

Pedraza and his Blue Seraph Productions partners, director J.T. Tepnapa and writer-producer Jody Wheeler, had aimed to raise $25,000 via Kickstarter, targeted toward the camera purchase. They met that goal March 9, with almost two days left for stretch goals.

A NEW FOCUS They shifted their focus from money to backers. “Funding is important, but building a relationship with supporters is a higher priority for the long term,” Pedraza said.

STORYBOARD REWARD All backers will get a page of storyboards for The Dark Place.

The team set its first stretch goal to increase the number of backers to 250. The campaign reached its monetary goal with 215 backers on its second-to-last day. As a reward to all 250 backers, the campaign offered each one a page of storyboards depicting a planned action sequence in The Dark Place.

The campaign reached its stretch goal mid-day on the final day. That led to the second stretch goal — 300 backers by the conclusion of the fundraising effort. Producers offered the backers a virtual visit to the working set of The Dark Place when it shoots this spring in Oregon’s wine country.

TIME RAN OUT before reaching the 300-backer goal; 281 was the final number.

“We’re happy our projects attracted so much support,” Pedraza concluded. “Independent films are often more about passion than profit but such generous financial backing makes production and distribution of films like ours a viable proposition, both artistically and commercially.”

He added, “We look forward to staying in touch with our backers for a long time, giving them first notice of the big events we see in the future for The Dark Place and Something Like Summer  — casting, starting production, world premieres, film festivals, lining up distribution, and, finally, delivering the finished product to their doors and/or video screens.”

LIMITLESS

“I had to say yes,” Tepnapa said.

The festival marks the first time Judas Kiss is officially screened subtitled in Spanish. It has screened or aired on television in German and French.

The festival runs from November 15 to 25. This year marks its 11th outing.

The festival describes Judas Kiss as “a sci-fi drama [that] has won major awards in the United States (first place Alternative Spirit at the Rhode Island International Film Festival, and Best Debut Feature at the Fort Worth’s Q Cinema film festival.

WATCH the Judas Kiss trailer, subtitled in Spanish.

Judas Kiss joins 83 other official selections (16 features, 19 documentary features, 15 documentaries and 34 short films) from Germany, Argentina, Australia, Bahamas, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Spain, the United States, France, Israel, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Norway, Puerto Rico, the United Kingdom, Turkey, Venezuela and, of course, Ecuador.

Also invited is director Ira Sachs (The Delta), whose new film, Keep the Lights On, is on the festival circuit this year. (Read Judas Kiss writer Carlos Pedraza’s review of Sachs’ film.)

El Lugar Sin Limites (The Place Without Limits) considers itself more than a film festival. It screens films throughout the year in various cities throughout Ecuador, and hosts a variety of other arts events supporting the country’s GLBT community.

Related Articles

• El Lugar Sin Limites Film Festival website (in Spanish)
• About director J.T. Tepnapa
• Writer Carlos Pedraza’s review of Keep the Lights On

Judas Kiss debuted on AfterElton’s Top 100 Gay Movies poll at No. 62.

The poll of the website’s readers is conducted each year. Here’s the entry on Judas Kiss. Here are the Top 10:

1. Shelter, 2. Brokeback Mountain, 3. Rocky Horror Picture Show, 4. Beautiful Thing, 5. Latter Days, 6. Weekend, 7. Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, 8. A Single Man, 9. Milk, 10. Maurice.

And here’s the full list (click to view full size):

Related Link

• AfterElton’s Greatest Gay Movies: Judas Kiss

‘Cowboy Creed’ Official Trailer; watch it in HD on Vimeo.

The period short film stars Kendall Wells, John Carrigan, Tara Platt, and Anthony De Longis with Doug Drexler, Leandro Cano, and Wayne Webb.

Directed and written by Ben Alpi, Cowboy Creed tells the story of Phineas (Wells), a young man who must face the most harrowing showdown of his life when the international criminal “Limey” (Carrigan) kidnaps his ladylove Miss Graves (Platt).

OFFICIAL POSTER for 'Cowboy Creed'

The trailer features rich original music composed and performed by Joe Terrana and textured sound design by Ralph Miller. The film is produced by Blue Seraph’s J.T. Tepnapa, with cinematography by David Berry. Carlos Pedraza is an associate producer.

POSTER Also released was the first official poster, featuring artwork by Scott Deyett of inHouse Graphics.

Principal photography was completed last December and the film is currently in post-production, bringing together composer Terrana and visual effects wizard Joël Bellucci.

A release date for the complete Cowboy Creed film has not been chosen, but as director Alpi says, “Keep your ear to the rail for more.”

ABOUT RUNIC FILMS Runic Films is an Los Angeles-based film production and entertainment company dedicated to upholding the traditions of mythic storytelling. Blue Seraph Productions is a Los Angeles production company. Their previous work has been featured in the New York Times, BBC, Variety, Frontiers, Fab magazine, the Today Show, MSNBC, and other international news outlets.
 
 

By CARLOS PEDRAZA
Writer-Producer

LOS ANGELES — Blue Seraph Productions stages a table reading Saturday, May 19, for its two features in development, Something Like Summer and The Dark Place. The event represents an important milestone in the films’ development process.

SECOND DRAFT scripts for Blue Seraph's two new feature film projects are ready for their table reading in Los Angeles on May 19.

WE ARE MORE fortunate than most independent filmmakers, in that investors put their faith in us early in the process, fully funding development for these two independent films. Development for our first feature, Judas Kiss, took place over the course of more than three years. That effort was aided by funders who knew our work in Star Trek, and wanted to support us as we moved into producing our own original work.

With The Dark Place and Something Like Summer, we’re applying what we’ve learned about development, financing and pre-production to move more quickly, more efficiently, through the process, to get to principal photography much faster than we did with our first feature.

THE DARK PLACE is a mystery-thriller written by Jody Wheeler. J.T. Tepnapa will direct.

With Judas Kiss, we walked into its table reading in spring 2008 (!!) with a 120-page script (by comparison, the shooting script  was 104 pages; the final cut of the film was the equivalent of 94 pages). Though the actors were seated, we recorded the reading with a three-camera setup, edited in real time like a live television show.

The readings for the two new screenplays will be staged similarly, using the resources of our production partner, Butterknife Network.

We have gathered an ensemble of 14 actors, including Sean Paul Lockhart, who has won raves for his co-starring role in Judas Kiss, and who is attached to star in The Dark Place.

Why are table readings so important?

• It’s the first time the story comes to life. Try as one might, a writer can only guess how a script might actually look and feel to an audience. Hearing the words spoken by actual people, feeling the pace of how the story unfolds — these are valuable insights that help refine a screenplay into a final shooting script.
• You can’t estimate how much a movie will cost without a final screenplay. Everything is based on the shooting script. When you consider that it costs thousands of dollars to shoot each page of a script, every line of dialog, every piece of narrative should be there because it must be there to move the story forward. You can’t afford to waste the dollars you raise on scenes or dialog you shouldn’t have shot.
• When you begin the casting process, the images of live actors who voice the script help producers and the director imagine what actors eventually may play these roles.

At this point, it’s important to move these stories out of our heads, off of the paper, and a step closer to reality.

SOMETHING LIKE SUMMER is based on the acclaimed novel by Jay Bell, adapted by Carlos Pedraza. J.T. Tepnapa will direct.

As we prepare to pitch these projects to investors, the recorded table readings give us something tangible to show them. Each film becomes more concrete — more real, if you will — to the people whose support we need to bring the stories to full-fledged life.

With Judas Kiss, this process took two years, from reading to principal photography. This time, we aim to reduce that timeframe to months.

THERE WAS NO Facebook, and little in the way of effective social media, when we started Judas Kiss. Today, we can leverage that technology, and new federal legislation that facilitates crowd funding, to help us make the case for financing our next projects.

We’re chronicling this journey on the Blue Seraph website, and on the Facebook pages for The Dark Place and Something Like Summer, and shortly on new websites for each of the films.

If we learned anything from our experience with Judas Kiss, it’s that a lot of people want to be a part of the stories we want to tell, and we plan to give them every opportunity to do so.

Related Links

• Something Like Summer Facebook page
• The Dark Place Facebook page