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OUR 2017 JURY

Michael Tully- Filmmaker
After his directorial debut, Cocaine Angel, world premiered at the 2006 International Film Festival Rotterdam, Michael Tully was named one of Filmmaker Magazine’s 25 New Faces of Independent Film. Since then, he has directed Silver Jew (2007), Septien (2011), Ping Pong Summer (2014), and is currently in post-production on his latest feature, Don’t Leave Home (2018). He is the founding editor of HammerToNail.com, a website devoted to championing ambitious cinema.

Matt Edens – Writer

In more than two decades as a writer for both broadcast and cable television, Matt has scripted everything from Saturday morning cartoons to true crime documentary series such as A&E’s City Confidential, Snapped on Oxygen and Murder Comes to Town for Investigation Discovery.

Victoria Lesiw – Editor
Victoria is a film editor and writer with over a decade of experience. She has edited multiple award-winning features and shorts spanning a wide variety of styles and genres. She recently relocated to DC from Brooklyn, NY to work with Vice Media.

Dan DeLuca – Actor
Dan wrote/produced/ directed the award winning feature “Two-Minute Heist, and wrote/produced the 2007 theatrically released film “Crazy Eights” (Lion’s Gate)d .  He co-directed/produced the 5 time festival winning feature, “On The Wing,” (2015) and wrote/produced the 2017 feature “The Night Watchmen.”   He has written 20 screenplays, produced, and directed a series of short documentaries,  commercials, corporate videos, and music videos. As an actor, DeLuca  is best known for his role as Dr. David Parenti, in the HBO series “The Wire.”  Other roles include Veep, House of Cards and a string of independent features.  Dan is currently producing a feature as part of “ON DECK FILMs.

John Grove – Cinematographer
John Grove began his freelance career as a Director of Photography in Los Angeles after receiving a bachelors degree in Cinematography from Columbia College of Hollywood. Grove has been at the helm of features, music videos, TV shows, documentaries and commercials. His work is defined by his composition, use of color, camera movement and versatility to light and shoot all styles of genres/ projects. Now back in his hometown near Baltimore, Maryland, he has been a cinematographer on many projects including Christmas comedy feature “Elf-Man” and gaffer or camera op on shows such as “Restaurant Divided”, “Cupcake Wars”, “America’s Most Wanted”, “Stories of the ER”, “Pati’s Mexican Table”, “Master of the Mix” and many more.

Richard Jefferies – Writer/Producer
Richard grew up in Frederick, Maryland, where he graduated from Frederick High School in 1974.  After 34 years of building a career in Hollywood, Richard returned to live in the Frederick Area. During his time in Hollywood, Richard delivered 28 Feature Film writing assignments to major studios including Tron: Legacy, Cold Creek Manor (which he also executive produced) and Man of The House at Disney, Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer at Fox, Searchers and The Bad Place at Warner Bros.  Richard has done uncredited writing work on many movies including Sci-Fi features Virus, Species and Imposter.  Richard wrote, directed and produced Organizm aka Living Hell, which premiered on SYFY Channel and wrote the cult honor classic Scarecrows. Richard joined Wisearce Films in 2010, where he co-wrote and produced the Christmas Comedy Elf-Man.

Rona Mensah – Actor
Rona Mensah detests writing bios. Here’s the boildown: She’s a Company Member at Maryland Ensemble Theatre, Frederick, MD She’s a radio personality with Today’s 97.5 in Martinsburg, WV.  Catch her mornings from 5am-9am. She loves being a part  of the 72 Film Fest and is ever impressed and amazed at the creativity and talent in the festival.

Matt Davies – Sound Editor
MPSE is a Supervising Sound Editor, Foley Artist and Partner at Studio Unknown in Catonsville, MD. Spanning a wide range of genres, Matt has been involved in creating sound work for Netflix Original Feature Films, Award Winning Indies, Animated Shorts, Broadcast Commercials and TV shows. Overseeing the creative team, Matt directly works with Filmmakers to draw out themes and concepts to enhance productions through sound. Matt is also an alumn and professor at MICA, where he works across multiple departments to instruct storytelling through sound, as well as designing workflows and curating Sound FX Libraries for his students.

PRODUCER’S NOTE:

Conceived pretty much at the same time as Year 11 Tarot (and the first part of the three year cycle that will conclude with Fears and Superstitions), we had a big jumpstart on the theme for this year. But schedules (mostly with shooting the feature film LEDA) prevented us from doing too much in the way of clues, so Shae Yamrus created EPISTULA, letters that hinted at some of the subjects behind some of the constellations.  Each were mailed out to teams that registered within the first 72 hours.  It was a different way of revealing the theme, and we ended up doing something similar for Year 13 (which closes out this cycle of criteria).

Team participation was record breaking- we even had to cut off registration at 52 teams.

Wesley Pastorfield’s artwork took center stage again and Samuel Tressler designed a poster surrounding it.

A two and a half hour shoot atop a rooftop in downtown Frederick was scheduled with Mikael and Doug, and some inspiring promos were squeezed out of that as well as all of the content to be shown on Saturday Night.  For the second (third?) time we decided to create content that would be somewhat interactive and feed into the host’s actions on stage. Just like the fairy tale year, a non-72 related accident occurred and caused us to rethink our plans.  Because of the interactive nature, and most of it not making sense without the stage performance, Clark pulled everything out of the program hours before the showing, and for the first time ever there was no Mikael/Doug/Jeff or Kerline content.  A small portion of this content will be used as promos for Year 13.

For the first time, we created a video to open the Launch Party, this one shot with Becky Brown who had costarred in Syzygy, the adaptation of the winning 72 Script Fest a couple years prior.  The Launch hosted by Mikael and Doug again at Cafe 611 with musical guest Cheshi was a rocking good time, with teams using a laser pointer to point to a star in the sky that opened up into a constellation myth.  The Launch Party criteria program was once again developed by Tim DeFoggi and Mike Hoolehan.  Shae Yamrus designed some hard copies that were handed out to teams as they picked.

Joey McAdams once again did the opening, a combination of a shoot with his newborn child who was introduced in this intro, and crazy cool animations of constellations he was interacting with.

Mike Yamrus continued with Presentation/Awards.  We once again held the After Party at Nido’s.

It’s always interesting giving teams a prewritten story such as Fairy Tales and Constellation Myths.  Some teams very much benefit from being able to deconstruct and be inspired to create a new work from an established story, even ones that clearly don’t fit the mold of western storytelling. Other teams try (perhaps a little too hard) to make a literal adaptation out of something that oftentimes cannot be adapted literally.  And of course there is distinct benefits and/or pre-conceived bias of getting well known myths.  All part of the fun and randomness of 72’s themes.  We once again, and for the last time, played up the fact that Leda was part of a constellation myth (Gemini).

Friday Night broke records as far as length of night going past Midnight and causing us to rethink how we handle Friday Night’s structure.  A poll was introduced to Year 13’s registration and the majority of people voted to keep it the same.  Our attendance was up significantly from Tarot year.