The results are in and a number of talented filmmakers have received jury awards at the 12th Annual Dances with Films Festival in Los Angeles.

Out of a field of over 1500 films, about 90 were selected for screening this year. Of those 90, two Zenfilm projects  were chosen; Jennifer Grassman's "Pretty Girls" and Southern Backtones "Slumber Party". Both projects were produced in conjunction with the artists' record labels TLM (Jennifer Grassman) and Rat Pak Records (Southern Backtones).

"Pretty Girls" won the first jury award for music video in the 12 year history of the festival. Music video has been a category for non-juried screening in past years. Last year Zen's "Forever" video for the Backtones won the audience choice award for music video at DWF.

"The exciting thing about this years music video screenings is that the music videos ran movie trailer style prior to every screening at the festival", says Zenfilm director W. Ross Wells. "This ensured that a large percentage of attendees saw the entries throughout the festival."

The Zenfilm music video project which has been going on for over a year and a half has attracted national attention, resulted in music videos that have been broadcast nationally (MTV networks) and internationally (Much Music and others). The goal has been to draw recording industry attention and business to the Houston market. As a result Zen, currently has two music video projects in development and two in post... all for East Coast record labels.

The artists as well as the creative teams at TLM and Rat Pak are honored to have been selected for this years festival. Of course the entire team that worked on "Pretty Girls" is thrilled to bring home the DWF Star for music video.

Pretty Girls was filmed at two historic locations in the Greater Houston area, at 69 year old SugarHill Recording Studios and the 158 year old Briscoe Ranch in Richmond.

The video was produced by Andrew Amelang and Dan Workman for TLM and Merideth Melville and Jarrod Gullett for Zen.  Cinematography duties were shared by Raul Casares (Richmond Unit) and Wayne Forster (SugarHill Unit.)  Panavision Plus 8 Houston and MC Lighting/The Lighting Zone helped make the productions possible through their support.

Unit photography by Everett Taasevigen.

Congratulations and thanks to all that made this win possible. Rock on!

W. Ross Wells
Director
Zenfilm
Commercials. Music Videos. Viral Media.