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Film Festival Submission Deadlines 2011

Sterling — Sat, 04 Sep 2010 04:31:10 +0000

In 2011 we’ll be submitting our feature film “Lullaby For a Lunatic” to festivals around the world. Below you’ll find our calendar of film festivals we’re planning on submitting to.

All dates posted are the anticipated film submission deadlines. We’ll soon be posting more comprehensive information (i.e. festival websites, early submission dates, prices, festival location and submission costs).

Scroll to January 2011 to take a sneak peak at the calendar.

Leif Nygaard: The Intellectual Antihero

Sterling — Sat, 17 Jul 2010 00:34:56 +0000

“Dialogue should simply be a sound among other sounds, just something that comes out of the mouths of people whose eyes tell the story in visual terms.” – Alfred Hitchcock

Our 2 month hunt for a protagonist for our feature film “Lullaby for a Lunatic” has come to an end. After sorting through over a thousand applications, holding open acting workshops, working closely with agencies & scouting at acting schools we have finally found our protagonist. His name is Leif Nygaard.

A LITTLE ABOUT LEIF

Leif graduated with a bachelor in modern/contemporary dance and has studied acting at the Actors Foundry in Vancouver BC. Leif is passionately dedicated and works in great depth with his preparations for roles. His short films, to name a few, have been to Slamdance, Brooklyn International Film Festival and Toronto International Film Festival winning awards along the way. You can see the trailer for his recent short film “Fish in Barrel” Directed by Randall Okita below.

Initially we conceptualized Leif as a supporting character for the film. He came in and read for a challenging part that we were having a hard time finding potential candidates for. Leif impressed all 4 of us at the casting table and we quickly came to a unanimous “yes” decision to call him in for a callback.

A few days later I was doing some prose storyboarding and trying to visualize the different candidates in our protagonist’s role. We had about 5 strong candidates for this role. Each actor was very different from the next and each one would color the film differently. I was visualizing all 5 of the actors in the final film. But who would our protagonist be?

I remember holding an acting workshop in my studio last year and I invited Assen, a method acting teacher from Methodica Studios to help give instructions and guidance to the actors. At one point in his lecture he told the actors to “pity casting directors”. What he meant by this was that as the casting process continues actors get increasingly stronger. By the time a casting director is doing their 1st or 2nd round of callbacks, great actors are fighting for their shot at the role. Directors don’t come out of this process with 1 clear choice. There are usually 2-5 top contenders for each role. Each great in their own way. This really complicates a casting director’s life.

I kept running different scenarios in my head with the top candidates. Laying on my floor with my storyboard finding the major narrative beats of my scenes and running the potential actors through my head. Over. And over. And over. And over. And over. Drinking coffee. Pacing. Almost coming to a conclusion. Drinking more coffee, then coming to a different conclusion. Pacing and more pacing. Then doubting myself. Trying to start from scratch…. Then while I was visualizing one of the scenes with one of the other actors, Leif an actor for another character peaked his head around the corner in my imaginary set. “How did you get past security” I asked (becuase of course I have and need security in my imagined set). He just stood there in front of me and asked “Do you mind if I just try this and you can see what you think?”. For me this was a step in the wrong direction. I didn’t answer. I just stood there and stared at him blankly. Even if I liked him it would make the other part we initially cast him for open which means we would need to re-open auditions. Not only would it be a logistical nightmare but his look wasn’t what I had imagined. If we go with Leif we would be totally casting against type and both imagined Leif and the real me knew it. But I let him run the scene in my mind becuase I needed a break from seeing the other actors anyway. Leif ran the scene and all of the sudden everything felt very different. He looked great and his performance (although different from what I expected) was very strong.

I needed to go for a walk. I asked Leif to sit down with the other imagined actors in the audition room while I go for my walk. Apparently, even though I could afford security in my imagined set I couldn’t afford trailers for the actors.

The actors sat there reading their sides and trying to not be distracted by one another. My heart was racing and I was overwhelmed with excitement. But part of me caulked it up to too much coffee and a short lived manic episode.

I came home from my walk and started studying the scenes of the film again. This time instead of running it with 5 actors, I ran it with 6. The other imagined actors didn’t like that when I got back from my jog I threw in another competitor, but they all grinned and politely said “whatever is best for the film”. I sensed most of them didn’t mean it.

What was it that was drawing me towards Leif? Well for starters, Leif is the intellectual antihero. Good looking, fit and bohemian. He can play the brooding poet, the romantic dreamer or the self-destructive artist and both his emotionality (i.e. femininity) and masculinity serve him very well.

The next day (in the real world… not in my imagination) I called Leif’s agent and asked if I could get his contact info to workshop a few scenes with him for a couple of hours. I thought it would be helpful to stop running the scenes in my mind and do it in real life.

I meet with Leif a few days later. Immediately I was struck with the thought “this is right, this is right, this is right”.

We started to workshop a handful of scenes at noon. An hour passed, two hours passed, we’ve had coffee and talked a lot about our character’s goals, dreams and expectations. We filmed a few scenes. Another hour passed. It was soon dinner time. We had more coffee. We experimented with a few more character ideas. We searched for a voice, we talked about relationships. The sun went down. We filmed a few more scenes and then watched them. The next thing we knew it was midnight. We kept digging for insight into our protagonist. We experimented with new ideas and we came up with some details for our character’s backstory. We ended the evening by projecting Leif’s short film on an 8 foot canvas. 14 hours and 16 minutes later, with only half a meal in our stomachs, wired from all the coffee and inspired by all of our ideas, I knew I found our protagonist. We were done. I also realized that I’m the reason that Unions exist.

It took an audition, a callback, many imagined scenes and a 14 hour and 16 minute workshop for me make a decision… but I got there in the end.

Welcome aboard Leif.

“Leif’s an extraordinarily strong actor – very committed and very hard working. I was speaking to Dorothy about his huge potential and called him her “Norwegian Johnny Depp”. His work in last class was heartbreaking and very high end. I also think he’s a superb guy – soft spoken and earnest, but witty and charming…a really nice presence to have in class or on set…”

-Matthew Harrison
The Actors Foundry

Still Searching: Location Scout Short Film

Sterling — Thu, 20 May 2010 20:04:08 +0000

Film designer Timothy Hung and myself have been out location scouting for the last month or so and we’ve decided to put together a short film entitled “Still Searching” (Starring Annie Chen) that allows us to showcase some of our locations for our feature film “Lullaby For a Lunatic”. The video will be edited within the next week. Stay tuned!

Codependence Short Film

Sterling — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 20:50:49 +0000

Innocence and vulnerability are represented in this short film in one character who is cared for by a stronger, dominating yet maternal other character.

Due to the nature of their relationship; a dependency is created which is shown by physical attachments, interconnectedness and weight sharing.

The film then explores two different scenarios. Once the codependency is created, both characters become vulnerable yet strong and work together to create something beautiful. The direction changes however when the stronger character abuses their power. The result is destruction, violence and self abuse.

We’ve also used this short as an opportunity to introduce audiences to parts of dancers that they don’t normally get an opportunity to see in a live performance. By moving the camera close to the dancers the the audience can see the dancer as human rather than a disconnected visual object. We’ve done this by showing the small details such as blinking, pulses, breathing, reaction and smaller body parts such as the spinal chord, neck, collar bone, ribs and wrists.

Starring: Caitlin Griffin, Danielle Gardner & Monique Constant

Enjoy.

Mars to Jupiter Short Film

Sterling — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 04:14:33 +0000

Mars to Jupiter is both the name of our most recent short film and the name of the song in the video. The song was created by a brilliant musician out of Tokyo, Japan named coppe’ : mango + sweet rice and the song is entitled “Mars to Jupiter”. You can also check out her MySpace page here. The song is significant becuase our short film is about the integration of a Rwandan genocide survivor into North American society. We explore her struggles, her judgments and her cynicism. You can see the short film below staring Zara Durrani and Mireille Urumuri.

Foley Artists

Sterling — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 04:01:24 +0000

We’ve almost completed the post production for our two most recent short films: Mars to Jupiter and Codependence. Last weekend we filmed a handful of pickup shots (photography above) as well as completed both the narration and foley for both films (Thank you Greg and Sasha).

We’re also finalizing finishing touches on the subtitles, sound and music for the short documentary we filmed, then somehow managed to break, last year entitled The Purpose of Life is Rice… Wink. We went to commercial Drive to interview Danse Crowkiller last night in the rain to find out what’s happened to him since we’ve finished filming. He’s been stabbed, had his corner burned down, his bags stolen and most recently he was attacked with a metal bar which cut open his head and broke his arm. The hospital also cut his hair, which I thought was a sort of tragedy, but he seemed to be indifferent towards the new hairdo. For those of you that know Danse, you’ll know that he loves fashion and he loves his hair.

Short Film

Sterling — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 01:25:39 +0000

Mars to Jupiter is both the name of our most recent short film and the name of the song in the video. The song was created by a brilliant musician out of Tokyo, Japan named coppe’ : mango + sweet rice and the song is entitled “Mars to Jupiter”. You can also check out her MySpace page here. The song is significant becuase our short film is about the integration of a Rwandan genocide survivor into North American society. We explore her struggles, her judgments and her cynicism. You can see some teaser footage for the film below staring Zara Durrani and Mireille Urumuri.

Below you’ll find a few production stills from one of the most recent short films out of Romantic Child Studios. We’ll post all information regarding this short film and the progress we’re making with it on this page.

Enjoy!

Codependence Short Film

Sterling — Sat, 26 Sep 2009 06:26:56 +0000

Codependence is one of Romantic Child Studios latest short films. It’s a tale about the human experience of codependency and coexistence with the plot being communicated through modern dance. The film won’t be released to the public because we’re submitting it to festivals. However we have put together a small trailer so you can see sample footage.

Codependence Short Film Trailer from Romantic Child Studios on Vimeo.

Innocence and vulnerability are represented in the short film in one character who is cared for by a stronger, dominating yet maternal other character.

Due to the nature of their relationship; a dependency is created which is shown by physical attachments, interconnectedness and weight sharing. The film then explores two different scenarios. Once the codependency is created, both characters become vulnerable yet strong and work together to create something beautiful. The direction changes however when the stronger character abuses their power. The result is destruction, violence and self abuse.

We’ve also used this short as an opportunity to introduce audiences to parts of dancers that they don’t normally get an opportunity to see. By moving the camera in close to the dancers the the audience can see the dancer as human rather than a disconnected visual object. We’ve done this by showing the small details such as blinking, pulses, breathing, reaction and smaller body parts such as the spinal chord, neck, collar bone, ribs and wrists.

Enjoy.

Films about co-dependence, war and subways

Sterling — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 20:24:05 +0000

We’ve been busy in the studio lately. We’ve recently shot 2 short films & music video. You can see some of the production photographs from the 2 short films below.

Short Films

Sterling — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 19:58:17 +0000

Last month Damian Kuehn shot the short film “Conviction” in the studio. We prepped for 1 day and we shot for an entire day and night. You can see some of Damian’s work below. You can also see the behind the scenes footage here.

Conviction from Cinemanifesto on Vimeo.

Here is the trailer for the short film “Inside Out”

Inside Out – Trailer from Cinemanifesto on Vimeo.

Another short film called “Bridge”

Bridge from Cinemanifesto on Vimeo.

This was shot in 2 hours by Nihat Karakum, we spend more time setting up the camera and dolly than filming… I wanted to experiment and learn how to use the PANASONIC AJ-HDX900 DVCPRO HD CAMCORDER…

Reel scientist from Nihat Karakum on Vimeo.