New Girl Pictures’ micro-short film The Echo is featured this week at the DaVinci International Film Festival‘s “COVIDaVINCI” program, an ultra-short program produced by the DaVinci International Film Festival for films made during the COVID-19 quarantine with social distancing in place. The 3-minute animated tale of two snails having an existential crises fits in with many of the recurring themes of 2020.
“It was really cool to rediscover this little gem of a script that I wrote back in 2014 come to life as an animated film. It’s incredible to me that it’s resonating with actors and with audiences all these years later. This experience definitely has me parsing through all my old scripts to see if I can find work that can be revisited now,” said writer/co-director Samantha Macher.
“We cast two amazing voice actors and worked with them remotely to record from their own home studios, which was an interesting challenge,” said producer/co-director Laura Hunter Drago. “We initially got over a thousand submissions from actors who wanted to audition for the roles, which is not typical for a production company of our size… I think people were really itching to do something creative, so I’m glad we were able to provide that. I definitely kept all of those awesome auditions to come back to for future projects.”
The Echo was also named runner up at the Coven Film Festival Quarantine Challenge that screened through Seed & Spark in July. It is making the festival rounds just as Drago and Macher’s feature film, To the New Girl, has released on VOD to rave reviews from critics and audiences. That film, based on a play of the same name written by Macher, centers on ten women who attend an open mic night to read letters to the new lovers in their exes’ lives in a tragicomic, powerful evening.
The DaVinci International Film Festival runs from September 10-13, 2020. The festival will be virtual, but is based out of Los Angeles. The Echo is up for an attendee-voted audience award, and can be seen in the COVIDaVINCI program (https://davincifilmfestival.com/).
About New Girl Pictures
New Girl Pictures is a film production company created by Laura Hunter Drago and Samantha Macher. Based out of Los Angeles focused on creating content by and for women, with a special emphasis on hiring new female filmmakers in positions behind the camera. The company’s first feature film, To the New Girl, had its festival premiere at the TCL Chinese 6 Theater on Hollywood & Highland in early 2020 and was awarded Best Feature (First Time Filmmaker) and Best Writer at the Queen Palm International Film Festival. Their short film, The Echo, was named runner up at the Coven Film Festival Quarantine Challenge and is an Official Selection at the DaVinci International Film Festival.