Thesis Project in the Works

Well, as I mentioned in the “About Me” section, I am a senior at Columbus College of Art and Design. This of course means that I have to do a senior project. For this I am doing a short film with a running time of about 30 minutes. The story is actually based around a feature length screenplay that I had written last summer. Hopefully this short could generate some attention and help get the feature produced. The feature screenplay in entitled “My Little Film Project” and I assume that the sort is called that as well. Although lately I’ve been leaning more towards the title “This Little Film Project,” basically it’s a toss up and therefore the project is technically untitled.

The project is a drama comedy or “dramedy,” which focuses on Chrissie Morgan and Emily Stone, two high school friends who have a misadventure after Chrissie recruits Emily in helping her with a student film for a portfolio. That’s right; this is a student film about the making of a student film. Emily is willing to help out, but over time gradually tries to take hold of more and more control over the project. It is a pretty straight forward narrative, however it could be looked at as a metaphor for “is art truly your own, or is mainly dictated by outside forces?” In the world of Hollywood, this outside force would be producers. Now I’m aware that this meaning is kind of a stretch, but it’s a concept that I’ve struggled to get my head around since beginning art school.

This is my first experience with using sources like craigslist.com to find actors. In the past I’ve had to resort to using friends and I always felt like a burden. With all these past projects, it was also mainly male dominate. I wanted to gain more experience with actresses, so when I sat down to write the script, I made it mainly a female cast.

Below are some stills from the project which is now in the stages of editing. Now these are only stills from the raw footage, they have not been color corrected or anything like that yet, so bare with me here.

Amy Skelton (Left) plays Emily and Maria Patterson (Right) play Chrissie.

Conflict over an audition.

Conducting research.

Trouble in paradise. Emily wants back in.

Dawn Marrow plays an actress trying to land a roll in Chrissie's movie. This is a reprise roll from an earlier project.

Amanda Morelli fills in for what was meant to be another reprise roll. Due to schedule problems, it don't work out.

Ben West help out with sound and cinematography. He also plays one of the only two male rolls.

Gary Kleinpaste plays the other male part. This part is in the film for literally ten seconds.

Raising money for a video project...why didn't I do that?

Friends who know how to share.

Chrissie does not approve.

With things worked out, its back to the drawing board.

Filming was done over a span of five days with one for re-shoots and pick-ups. Editing will be completed over the next two weeks. The project has to be ready for the annual CCAD media studies senior show in which the project will be screened.

The screening will be on May 15th in CCAD’s Canzani Center in the auditorium. Time is still TBA.