Eggshells | www.tmdfilms.com
Q: Why did you become a filmmaker?
EA: I should probably have an answer for this question, right? Truth is, I don’t really know. It just kinda gradually happened. When I was younger my friends and I would play around with my dad’s old Magnavox camcorder, a huge beast of a machine that recorded right onto VHS, and shoot lots of goofy videos, scripted and improv. And I shot a Star Wars parody called CAR WARS when I was a senior in high school. But I didn’t really consider doing anything more with it, not at first. I started out as a writer… I wrote a lot in high school and college, mostly short stories and outlines and beginnings of longer pieces, and then when I was in high school I wrote a feature length film script. I went off to college – CSU in Fort Collins (I started out as a biological sciences major, of all things) – and at some point during my second year it occurred to me that perhaps I should try and make that script into a film. I don’t remember how or why, it was just a thought I had that never went away. So I did. I charged the entire thing on credit cards (I do not recommend this), and it turned out about as well as you’d expect a first time film that was written/directed/shot/edited by a first time filmmaker would, which is to say, not very well at all. And I just never stopped. (The making films part. I don’t charge them on credit cards anymore. Seriously, that was a really bad idea. Don’t do it.)
Q: What are we going to see at the EFP? Has it screened elsewhere and what are your plans for it?
EA: Eggshells is a film I wrote “based on a true story” about something I went through a few years ago. It’s something that I made as a way of “closing the door”, so to speak, on that chapter of my life.
This one is personal… more so than anything I’ve ever made before. I’m equal parts excited and terrified to share it.
Eggshells won the August 2014 Open Screen Night, and I plan to submit it to film festivals eventually, once I get through it’s EFP screening!
Q: What else are you working on?
EA: I’m still trucking away in production on Trauma. And I recently helped produce a little film you may have heard of called Jean Claude Van Damme’s Damn Van, which makes it’s damn return to The Bug Theatre in January! I’m also working on a promotional video for the fantastic Bug Theatre, which will premiere at EFPalooza 2015 in January, and I’ve got a little short that I’m thinking about making early next year.
Q: Tell us one weird thing about you or your movies.
EA: My cat appears in them – a lot. And all of my shorts have an easter egg from a previous film in them.
Q: Where can people go to find out more about you?
EA: My website – www.tmdfilms.com – has information and links to watch all of my previous short films. I’m also on Twitter and Facebook – @eileenagosta on both. And TMDFilms has it’s own Twitter and Facebook pages, too.
Q: Is there anything you’d like to say about The Emerging Filmmakers Project?
EA: Discovering The Emerging Filmmakers Project and The Bug Theatre changed my life. True story. I couldn’t be more proud to be a part of these two amazing organizations. If you’re local and you like and/or make films and you haven’t been there you’re missing out. Seriously.
Eggshells will screen December 18th at The Emerging Filmmakers Project.
