Location Survey for Production Binder

Driving Instructions

Owner: Giuseppe Ruta (gigruta@gmail.com)

Availability: 10:00pm-10:00am

Fee: $100

Light: Dimmer for ceiling lights, Tungsten, plenty of outlets

Sound: Small hums from fridges can be turned off.

February Post February Post!

Okay, so I had my casting auditions today.  And lemme just say, it was fun!  I got a bunch of friends to help out and we all had a good time.  I enjoyed bouncing ideas, thoughts, and opinions back and forth about each of the actors that came in.  I was worried because I figured none of them would really blow my mind away.  Thankfully, one actor for the Asian character Wade really nailed what I wanted.  A real fun guy came in to play as Nate and he was totally ballin'!

Interesting story happened on the shoot.  Mia Pakulski came to help me out with the casting auditions, volunteering to stay out in the hallways and hand the sides to the actors that came.  She would wait with them and get to know them a little in order to find out if the actors themselves were cool people to work with or not. Now, a few weeks back, I helped Mia's casting audition with the same thing.  I sat in the halls and talked with the actors to see how they were, jotting down notes to myself about them.  Now let's date even further back when we had the casting session in class that one time with Chrissy, Andrew, and I.  One actor was supposed to come that day, but never made it.  It left me a bit baffled as to who to finalize on my character, so I had to set up another casting session for both characters.

On Mia's session, the same actor that missed the in class session arrived and I got to chat with him a bit.  He mentioned that he was supposed to arrive yesterday and that's when I knew who he was supposed to be.  So I informed him to look upon Mandy once again to find the casting session I was to hold.  Today, he arrives, but Mia realizes it is the same guy who tried out, but didn't get picked in the end.  She became really nervous and asked to hide in the room.  I asked her how she was going to do that since it would be the same room as the guy and his audition.  This was improvised:

(this had actually occurred DURING the audition)

It was an interesting day.  But I am more clear for who I'm going to choose now.  It was certainly an entertaining experience and Mia is simply silly.  See ya in March everybody!

My Hunt for a Film Camera

So recently I've been hunting for a film camera and for those of you who are asking "Why would you spend your money on a "Dead" format" listen up. Film in general will most likely never fully disappear. And for those of you who say "Digital's better" guess what. Every single bit of digital equipment has been designed on one idea. TO REPLICATE THE LOOK OF FILM!!! Though digital may have a lot of perks the truth is that it owes a lot to the film era. Now don't get me wrong I own a T2i myself and know that digital is the future of filmmaking but the reason I want to own a film camera is cause well, there's just something about a film camera that's so fascinating. To think that this was how it was done when filmmaking was just in its infancy. Maybe it's my love of history I don't know but I'm gonna find a way to own one of these suckers if its the last thing I do.

I've been busy producing a thesis film called "The Giraffe That Knew Too Much" by writer/director Eric Tosstorff. He is in the masters program here at SVA. Last week we met up with a master student from NYU who owns three RED cameras. My writer/directer Eric is also VFX artist who was able to trade some side work to borrow these cameras. We are shooting with cinescope anamorphic lenses. We are starting production the first weekend of March. We will shoot 10 pages in three days. Currently, I'm in contact with the NY film commissioner to try and lock down two locations.

Please take a look at our kickstarter campaign and help us spread the word to help us reach our goal!



Two weeks ago I gripped and PA'ed on my professors set twice. She is producing a short called "Frog Kisses" for the NY comedy festival. They got a permit to shoot on the Staten Island ferry which we rode from Manhattan to Staten Island and back and forth until we wrapped. It'd be nice to win the festival - fingers crossed!



About three weeks ago I went location scouting with my producer Lorenzo Zanini to find a location to shoot a scene from my film called "The Haircutter". My friend Kriste moved to NY from California a little while ago and Lorenzo and I visited her on the upper west side. While walking to her apartment we noticed this amazing location to shoot this pay phone scene. We'll be able to get away with the scene without needing a permit which is nice. I'm also really excited for this shoot.

Headshots and Resumes and Emails Oh My!

So I've been working like a mad woman for the past week.

I posted some casting calls for my film Disquietude, Jay's film Oriental Crutch and Andrew's film All Fun and Games.  I first posted on NY Casting, leaving separate ads for each.  I got decent amount of submissions....
Scheduled who I can,
but then after a weekend of waiting for Mandy to post my ad for my scheduled Saturday Casting Call it was finally posted....

and my casting email box EXPLODED.
I woke up to find that 50 emails were pilled up after one night. I frantically began to juggle the task of emailing them individually with a Hello Insert Name Here  (thank god for copy&paste), watching reels, and stare at some headshots wondering "Why did this 40 year old woman submit for a 18-24 age range?).

Oh and this what I send to the actors I approve for auditioning:

Hello Jane!

Thank you for your interest in the role of Monica.

The audition date is February 11^th from 3:10pm to 7:00pm.

The audition will be held in Room 402 at the School of Visual Arts (Main Building)

The address is 209 East 23rd Street between Second and Third avenues on the East Side.

The Closest subway is the 6th (get off at 23rd street).

Make sure you bring the following:

A picture id (you will need to sign in with the doorman).

A headshot/resume

Please email me at chrissyvarleyproductions@gmail.com with your audition time preference.

Sides will be available the week of the audition. 

Looking forward to meeting with you,

Chrissy Varley- Director

Pretty simple.


Anyway, I was glad I used gmail for my new casting account.  I was able to tag certain conversations, I know I wouldn't have been able to organize this well with my yahoo account.

But overall, my casting for Saturday is about 70% booked (its from 2:30 to 7)

Casting is coming along for February 9th. I really want to get feedback from Jay and Andrew about certain actors I'm not quite sure will be what they are looking for. I will bring in my laptop in class on Thursday so everyone can take a look.
Then I will finish the bookings!

Also, I wanted to post two other ads on Mandy for All Fun and Games & Oriental Crutch but I would have to pay 56 dollars.

I still think they should be posted. So hopefully Jay and Andrew can post the ads and maybe link the notices to my email somehow. Still need to figure that one out.

Mandy really has it going on. Great results.  Just word to the wise: They charge 26 dollars per ad if you want to post additional calls after your first one. (its a 30 day rule kind of thing).

Anyway, I'm going back to work on the casting.  I'm kind of addicted to this gmail account right now.

-Chrissy

Rang De Basanti

I just recently re watched one of my favorite movies. Rang De Basanti (2006) is a Bollywood movie about politics and corruption in India. The film shows a group of friends who spend their time fooling around. One of the guys in the group is a Flight Lieutenant who's plane crashes. When politicians put the blame on his "careless" flying despite his clean record. India's political corruption is highlighted in this movie and the group of friends fight the system with harsh measures. From the start, India's history is blended into their present day lives. A British girl comes to India to direct a movie based on her grandfather's diary about the revolution. The film shows the relation between the previous revolution and the issue at hand.

The characters presented in this film are charismatic and hilarious. The audience gets to become a part of the group of friends and bonds with each character. The film utilizes every person to help with the story. We fall in love with the characters and the fact makes the ending even more heart-wrenching.

The story moves quickly and each scene is necessary and adds to the idea of this time in India. Whether they are Indian or not, the audience gets to see India in a different light. The people are neither poor nor rich and they still take on an issue as heavy as corrupt politics. I do not live in India, yet when I watch the movie, I believe that the people in a nation have the power to save the nation and with the right measures, it will change.

The movie as a whole is a perfect package. There is the perfect amount of jokes and drama. They mix history and present day to create one story and emphasize the fact that history does repeat itself. The bitter sweet ending makes the movie one to remember. Although it is a work or fiction, viewers can take a lot from it. It promotes nationalism and keeps audiences hopeful for the future of their respective countries. If you're looking for a excellent Bollywood movie to watch, this is one of the first ones you should watch.

TERRIBLE MOVIE I SAW

This weekend I watched a terrible movie called Grave Encounters. My friend Lauren said that our friend Taylor has a scary movie for us to watch. So i was like okay I have not seen a scary movie in a while so this should be good. When Taylor came over she told me that its really scary and that it was in some film festival. I was looking forward to watching it. I put the movie in and even turned off the light so we can be more scared. The movie started out with a man telling us that what you are about to see is from 72 hours of footage that has been cut together for time. and that this is real. So we now see footage from this guy who is the host of a show called Grave Encounters (go figure) where this guy and his "team" go to haunted places and spend the night there looking for ghostly creatures and haunted signs. He puts on his fake over dramatic host voice when the camera is rolling. The are made to look like they were shot on a hand held camera by the camera guy for the show. There is constant zooming in and out and after it happened for a while it was making me really mad that I wanted to start grunting. Seriously if this was a REAL tv show then the camera would not be constantly zooming in and out when he is shooting stuff that is supposed to be cut together to be on tv. REALLY it would not be possible to edit it together anything good enough or find a good shot to edit something decent together. So they are at this old abandoned mental hospital in Maryland. So I was a tad intrigued because i've been to Maryland before and I live close to it. The crew walks around the hospital with a dude who is the caretaker of the place and he shows them all the places where bad things happened to residents and some places that seem to be "haunted". They even bring in a psychic or some dude that "communicates" with the dead. He went with them into various rooms and told the camera that he was feeling deep disturbances. After he said that he and the host laughed. We were watching the "uncut and unedited" version so we saw what they would have edited out for the tv show. The team has the caretaker lock them inside until 6am the next day. They set up cameras and talk around trying to make something scary happen for them to film. I waited for a long time for something to happen. It was so boring. They were just sitting around or walking up and down the hallways. Finally stuff starts happening. Little "scary" haunting things start happening to the members of the team. But it was not exciting at all. The dude never shows up to unlock the door and let them out and when they burst through the door it leads to another hallway. OH NO they are trapped! :O After waiting for something big to happen for a while things finally start happening to them. One dude disappears, another gets pulled into a bathtub filled with blood, they find the dude that was lost and he is wearing a hospital gown and has gone crazy (and he kills himself by jumping down an elevator shaft), the dude who "talks" to the dead gets killed by some invisible thing in a hallway. The thing that bothered me is that we are seeing this through cameras that they are carrying around. Oh yeah EVERY time something freaky and haunty occurred they would run and the quality would get really bad and skip around and the video would get choppy. That ONLY happened when something scary happened. I mean come on now. I've been waiting forever for something freaky to happen and when it rarely does in this movie I can barely see it cause the quality is bad. I would rather see this from a camera watching them film this. Not from their point of view. I might have been scared if I could see the scary stuff. Okay so the host and this really annoying camera girl are left. The girl starts dying and is eventually taken away by a cloud of smoke. The host of the show eats a rat, and continues trying to find a way out. He comes to a room where lobotomies were performed. And what do you know!? Creepy doctors jump out and perform surgery on his brain. He talks to his camera afterwards thats how the movie ends.
THIS MOVIE SUCKED AND WAS A WASTE OF MY TIME. Don't waste your time.