Watching the monitor as actors Alix Efaw and Jon Rust film a scene from Love Potion
LOVE POTION is a psychological horror story with supernatural overtones written and directed by award winning filmmaker James Carey and starring and produced by Lainie Smith. The Cinematographer is Ahren Steis and Melissa Steis serves as the Production Coordinator.
DIrector James Carey works with actors David Caprita and David Lee Garver
The cast includes David Lee Garver as Chris, a young man obsessed with getting his ex-girlfriend, played by Alix Efar, back at any cost. David Captria and Lainie Smith play the two people who can help realize that dream by selling him a magical love potion. Yet what is the price to your soul for making a person love you again after they have moved on.
Director of Photography Ahren Steis films a scene
The other cast members featured are VJ Roberts, Aubri Ebony, Shannon Thomas, AnaLisa Patterson, Elizabeth Gibbs, Rebecca Lambrusco and Samantha Goodell. Our 1st AD was Justin Nicholson, sound was Rio Richardson, HMU was Samantha Goodell, and costume coordinator was Todd Graham.
LOVE POTION is a psychological horror film with supernatural overtones that we are shooting in Atlanta, GA in January of 2023. It is what is called a “proof of concept” short film to present to producers/movie studios as the showcase for a possible longer film or TV series based on the story elements of our film. We also plan to release this film on the film festival circuit as well.
I do not usually promote my filmmaking projects on this site. I try to keep it just about travel related blogs and information, but two big film related events are coming up for me that I am really excited to share.
First, a film of mine (A Cost of Freedom) that I have talked about here a few months ago is going to screen on Nov. 10th in Los Angeles. I am flying out for the event from my new home in Atlanta, GA. I will do an entire post on the event, the red carpet, the response to the film and Los Angeles in general since I have not ever just been there as a tourist. I always lived there when I wrote about it. More to come on that exciting event.
The other event and the one I am talking about today is the launch of the website for my next film project LOVE POTION. The site is live right now and starting to draw attention which we are super excited about. The site is also a base for our crowd funding which will officially start on Tuesday, Oct 25th when we kick off our Indiegogo.com page. We are trying to raise $8000 to produce the movie and I hoping that you support the project by sharing information and these posts, following and possibly even contributing to the film at www.lovepotionthefilm.com
LOVE POTION is a psychological horror film with supernatural overtones that we are shooting in Atlanta, GA in January of 2023. It is what is called a “proof of concept” short film to present to producers/movie studios as the showcase for a possible longer film or TV series based on the story elements of our film. We also plan to release this film on the film festival circuit as well.
Ahren Steis, Lainie Smith, James Carey
I wrote the script and will be directing the movie. The leading actress and Co-Producer of the film is the award winning Lainie Smith, a very well known Atlanta actress and motivator of this project. The Cinematographer will be Ahren Steis, and his wife Melissa Steis will serves as the Production Coordinator. We have assembled a stellar cast which will be announced at a later date.
There will be many more travel articles coming your way, but we ask you if you would SUBSCRIBE, FOLLOW and SHARE our information about LOVE POTION. This way YOU CAN BE PART of the film as well. Reach out to us at any of our social media sites listed at the bottom of this page or email us at :
It’s been a while since I wrote a movie review and posted it on this blog. However since this is the time of riots in the streets and COVID-19 plus there’s no place to go, new movies seemed like a pretty safe subject.
Peter Travers, the movie reviewer for Rolling Stone magazine and the host of Popcorn on ABC TV, just presented a list of major motion pictures that were coming out this summer. And of course, most of them were not going to appear in movie theaters so the only place left for them to go were streaming services. And the very first one he mentioned was a very low budget film noir science fiction thriller that takes place in a little bitty town in New Mexico in the late 1950’s or early 1960’s. This movie is called The Vast of Night and it is a wonderful movie by first time feature director, Andrew Patterson. You can find this movie on Amazon Prime since it was produced by Amazon Studios, and it’s truly worth the search.
WOTW Radio Station where the mystery begins.
Basic story is a small town in the 1950s and a couple of teenage science nerds uncover a strange sound on the phone lines and then on the radio air waves. They spend the entire movie trying to track it down only to find it comes from above. In the meantime, during their search they run into interesting characters and scary stories of previous alien visitations and people being taken like in Close Encounter of the Third Kind. Oh, so you’ve all heard this movie plot before, right? Well not exactly, because this is told in a fresh new super interesting way unlike any science fiction movie I have ever seen or heard.
Changing camera styles like people change their socks you go from intense closeups that last for minutes at a time to tracking shots that follow our heroes wandering through their small town. Sometimes the lighting is moody and dark, other times it is bright and cheerful filled with color. How the director Andrew Patterson got this much movie from what is obviously a very limited budget is a work of genius.
Sierra McCormick as Fay as she discovers the sounds from Outer Spaces.
Patterson also allows his actors a lot of room to do their work and in the process gets some amazing performances. Especially an about 10 minutes sequence with no cuts where Sierra McComick from Supernatural, who plays the female lead Fay, sits at an old manual phone switchboard for a small town and connects the different people who call. Yet during this sequence the first hint of what is to come appear through the phone lines and you watch Fay’s growing concern as to is happening. She handles multiple calls and each one is different but also you see her increasing puzzlement and fascination as the mystery begins to unfold. Her performance by such a young actress is astonishing.
However, this not even the most outstanding performance in the movie. That belongs to Gail Cronauer as Mabel. Ms. Cronauer delivers a long, extended monologue that in lesser hands would have bored the short attention span of today’s audiences, but she is riveting. Even more amazing is there are no cutaways during her long scene as she is filmed from only one side of her face, yet she holds the screen totally.
Jack Horowitz as DJ Everett Sloan
Another shout out as well to Cinematographer M.I.Littin- Menz and his film/light crew for some really inventive shooting. There is one extended tracking sequence where the camera goes through the entire town including inside a high school basketball game which most of the small-town citizens are attending that I am not really sure how they accomplished it. At first, I thought is was a drone shot then a steady cam then…. However, they did it – it is a great sequence and the editing by Junius Tully is flawless.
My only complement is it starts extremely slow. It is about 20 minutes before we get to anything that resembles a plot point. And that is the point because Patterson and his screenwriters James Montague and Craig W Sanger are purposely distancing you from the material. This is a movie where you have to come to it, it’s not going to come to you. Patterson is also making you pay attention to the small details that will become very important later on in the movie. Boring small town existence in the middle of nowhere, the 1950 switch board telephone system and reel to reel tape recorders which seem incredibly innocuous at first but later become very important as the movie progresses. But if you’re looking for a movie to jump at you from the 1st frame this is not the movie for you. This one takes some patience, but it’s worth it.
This movie season is going to be very different and most of it will be in your home or a drive-in. The is the first highly recommended movie of the summer and you should try to find in on Amazon Prime.
You must be logged in to post a comment.