In the middle of the night, a girl receives a mysterious phone call from an inmate... Directed by John Carl & Jonathan Kirk Original Short Story by Vikki Crane Screenplay by Jonathan Kirk Produced by Lucy Burne Original Music by Joshua Frerichs CAST Grace Alexandria Collins Calvin Matt Gold Sleeping Guy Jonathan Kirk Phone Operator Mary Rebekah Cinematographer Lance Kuhns 1st Assistant Camera Kyle Forbes Art Department Mary Helen Forrest & Lucy Burne Audio Aaron Landucci Editor Won Novalis Sound design/Color John Carl Equipment Courtesy of DuckDuck Collective Special Thanks to Justin Rossbacher, Alexia Sky, Ryan Booth, Shaun Boyte, Christopher North, Blaine Hogan, Bjorn Amundsen, Davy Kesey - - - - Over the past couple years I've been working on a bunch of narrative film projects with a really fantastic community of people. This is my #1 favorite thing about living in NYC. Filmmaking is a team sport with highly specialized positions so it's been great living in a place where all those positions can be filled. It's been an extraordinary period of learning and growth for all of us. You really don't know what you don't know until you just try it. You have to do it. You can read books about pottery all day, for example, but at some point you have to throw some clay on the pottery wheel and just try it. What a journey it has been. We've each taken turns filling various roles on various projects. It has been beautiful to see the fluidity with which people move from positions of leadership to positions of serving and vice-versa. And we've learned what we didn't know. Each film improved over the previous in certain ways. We all grew as filmmakers and as friends. And it's just the start. The grand vision is collective improvement by iterating: just keep going. It's been such a special experience. I'll releasing a bunch of these films (out of order) in the coming weeks and months and more new ones after that. Some fancy ones and some that were whipped together. I'm learning that part of the process is "show your work". Sooooo, to that end, I am very proud to release: BENEDICTION. (This film is extra special to me because it is based on a short story written by my Aunt Vikki!)