“HOME” Film Festival Case Study
Narrative | Dramatic Features
Film Name: Home
Genre: Drama
Length of film: 14 min
Date: 2023
Director: Kanya Iwana
Producer: Kanya Iwana, Zack Rice, Christina Alba
Writer: Kanya Iwana
Cinematographer: Madeline Leach
Editor: Kanya Iwana
Composer: Tanerélle, Bartek Gliniak
Production Company: Rumah Films
Budget: $45,000
Financing: Investors Fundraising
Shooting Format: Digital
Screening Format: 16 : 9
World Premiere: LA Shorts Film Festival
Awards: Outstanding Achievement (Cal Film Fest)
Website: text
The Official Trailer for HOME
Watch The Trailer for HOME Directed by Kanya Iwana
A Short Biography of Kanya Iwana
My name is Kanya and I am the writer/director of HOME
The Kanya Iwana Interview
indieactivity: What is your film about?
Kanya Iwana (KI): “Home” is a film about a woman grappling with purpose, belonging, and strife to perfection. Our protagonist, Lana, struggles to memorize her lines for an acting audition, while distracted by the contents of the text as it mirrors so heavily her real life. The monologue explores the feeling of losing one’s home, in which they existentially question the meaning of one; meanwhile Lana finds herself at odds with the living space she’s currently in. There’s this added stake of being in a foreign country, when going home isn’t really an option. Whatever’s back there adds fuel to her need for perfection. However this obsession almost eats her up, and whether she meets a successful end is kept grey. This is a state of mind I’ve definitely experienced during my auditioning days years ago, and I wanted to bottle it up and explore through writing and directing.
Tell us about the festival run, marketing and sales?
Kanya Iwana (KI): “Home” premiered at the LA Shorts Film Festival, and will be screening at Hollyshorts Film Festival. It has won several accolades at local film festivals such as Cal Film Festival (Outstanding Achievement: Short), with Kanya Iwana nominated for Best Director and Best Editing.
Give the full Official Synopsis for your film?
Kanya Iwana (KI): When Lana continues to stumble through the words in her audition piece, she grows increasingly frustrated. She continues to be hauntingly distracted by a pounding sound in the hallway, even though the house is supposed to be empty. When she approaches, nothing is there. With great effort she tries to refocus while other distractions emerge, including a triggering phone call from her mother and her manager, respectively. Meanwhile, the content of her monologue becomes more and more parallel to her past life, a mirror to her sadness. In her paranoid state, her sanity fractures, and she must decide how far she can go to connect with the piece.
Development & Financing?
Kanya Iwana (KI): I wrote an earlier draft a few years before we began pre-production. When producer Zack Rice signed on, we went back into the script and revised and updated per notes from Zack and our EP, Zhailon Levingston. We secured financing for the short by offering participation in a feature film I wrote and will direct called IBU. Although we did not go the traditional route, i.e. filming a scene from the feature, “Home” is an exhibition of my directorial spine and visual tone. With one location and a budget we raised through friends and family, the short is intended to provide a glimpse into the innovative storytelling, visionary direction, and compelling performances that will define our feature film.
Production?
Kanya Iwana (KI):
Schedules, Deadlines, Pre-Production: As we locked financing, we continued to rework and polish the script until it was ready for production. We locked financing Q1 of 2023, and we started to set a date at the end of May to begin production. Then we knew we wanted to hit the first round of festival deadlines early fall, so we built an efficient post production schedule that takes up about two months early in the summer. We had been in an ongoing and open communication with our set collaborators, including our lead actress Arawinda Kirana and cinematographer Madeline Leach, which made scheduling a lot easier. We began a very short but efficient pre-production. Building the shot list was rather easy since the vision was so clear. We knew we had three days to shoot without a pre-light, but because production takes place in one house, we were able to find wise ways to build our days. At the same time, Madeline and I have started building our look book, which to be fair, we’d been talking about for months. We wanted to make sure we prepped excellently to guarantee a smooth, easy, and enjoyable production for everyone involved.
Filming:
We began Principal Photography May 20th, 2023. It was, as predicted, quite an easy feat considering we’ve prepped for the shoot. If there was ever a hiccup, it was ever so small or solved immediately with effort, that it never derailed our schedule. It was a dream production, and it made me feel hopeful that this can be the standard way of working in film. When we wrapped, I never felt like we’d missed anything visually – we did plan on having some ADR set ups for the V.O. and additional ad libs and sounds from our lead. But I walked away feeling happy.
Post Production:
We’d allocated 2 weeks for picture editing. During this time I had worked with our producers to perfect our cut. We quickly jumped into any VFX cleanup which took our artist half of a week. Then, we moved towards 2 weeks for color, sound editing (with 1 day of ADR), all at the same time. We had our music composers work on the score with the final cut in a week. Then it was a bit of a dance to mix in all the sounds together. Our final burning of the film was done successfully on our deadline, with everyone pulling together with much passion and talents, making this film completely whole.
Festival Preparation & Strategy?
Kanya Iwana (KI): We produced “Home” to shine a spotlight on the exceptional narrative talents of our star, writer, director, and producer, all of whom are attached to our feature, “Ibu”. Our festival strategy focused on local Los Angeles festivals to invite our cast, crew, friends and family to partake in the screening as well as give our talented team exposure to Hollywood executives.
The Release?
Kanya Iwana (KI): Our plan is to let the festival season run its course, then we move towards online releases (Short of the Week, Vimeo, No Budge). We’re also planning a screening event, collaborating with film non-profit organizations and local theaters to celebrate our crew and promote the feature, which is in the packaging phase.
Advice from the Filmmaker?
Kanya Iwana (KI): It can be extremely frustrating to say “keep going” to filmmakers that in fact have kept going, no matter how long. But I first wrote HOME in 2017 and had been passively working on it, until our producer, Zack, encouraged me to revisit it and turn into a proof of concept for our feature, extending the life of the short itself. The lesson for me is that, yes, sometimes it makes sense to shelf something, but it does not mean to completely give up on the larger goal. I’d encourage other filmmakers, myself included, to always think about the long term goal and take everything day by day towards the goal.
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