2012 Year in Review

2012 was actually a fairly busy year for Sine Fine Films.  We filmed six short films in two weekend shoots and one movie celebrating the 10^th anniversary of The Gift Bearer.  So let’s break it down and take a look:

The year began with finding out who would be available to film a “reunion” episode of The Gift Bearer and writing a fitting script for the event.  

In the end only the actors who played the original three Silverstone sisters – Christine Komiskey as Atlanta, Morgan Thomas as Minerva, and Brittany Ann Whalen as Peri – were able to attend, but we had a blast and a half filming modern frame plots and made-up flashbacks!  

Unfortuantely we ended up filming the Victorian flashbacks on the hottest day of filming ever.  I think I nearly killed the actors.  Luckily the frame plot scenes were filmed inside at Jen Weber and Bryan Kieft’s lovely abode so there was air-conditioning for about half the filming of the movie.  The next day we finished the flashback scenes in weather that was still hot but not quite so bad (almost, but not quite).  

There were several actors from out of town who needed a place to crash for the weekend.  I figured since the MacLeod farm is always breezy and nice that we could camp out.  So we did…for the first night.  We went to sleep very late (due to long filming night) when it was still hot and sticky out but woke up to a strangely chilly morning.  Of course being Illinois and summer the chill stuck around for all of five minutes. 

We spent the morning filming the first of three short films that were part of a series of shorts called Fortunate Ones. The running theme is that someone wishes for something, but when they get it they realize it’s not actually what they want.

Faerie Tale was the first to be filmed and starred the wonderfully talented Harmony Komiskey as Emily, a girl who wants to be a fairy.  When a real fairy shows up – played by Morgan Thomas – she has to decide between becoming a real fairy or staying with her mother, played by Harmony’s real mother - Christine Komiskey.  

Filming was early in the morning so it wasn’t too hot, but there were some costume issues that ended up working out well.  Overall short and fun to film.  

We took a break for lunch, then headed to Kate’s CU residence to film the next Fortunate Ones script – Forever.  Two people – Samantha played by Kate Weber and Ray played by Andrew Thomas – wake up in a basement tied together with no memory of how they got there.  When the third person in the room – Devon played by Brittany Ann Whalen – wakes up and freaks out they discover Devon’s lover – played by Morgan Thomas – has granted her wish with dire consequences.  

The whole thing takes place in one scene in a basement, so we were happily cool and enjoyed quality air-conditioning. However Kate and Drew were tied up for over an hour in a cramped position and were a little sore, but were real troupers.  Thank you Kate and Drew!  

The evening finished up with filming the final scenes we still needed for The Gift Bearer, during which it actually rained briefly (Illinois has weird weather), then the cast and crew went out to dinner, and the Komiskey’s departed.  I couldn’t face another night outside camping in the heat, so my parents (bless you both) let us all crash at their place.  We watched footage until late into the night then sank into blissful, air-conditioned sleep. 

Brittany bid farewell in the morning and the rest of us got ready to film the last of the three Fortunate Ones’ scripts – Magic-8.  Heather – played by Kate Weber - is unemployed, but waiting to hear from a couple of interviews when her best friend Cathy – played by Rachel Anderson – brings her a birthday present: a Magic-8 ball.  To both Heather and Cathy’s astonishment the ball seems to actually be able to predict the future.  

Filming Magic-8 was easy and fun.  It was almost all filmed indoors, with only two short scenes outside, so less heatstroke for everyone involved.  There were only two actors and with four crew members – Assistant Director Morgan Thomas, Production Assistant Andrew Thomas, me directing, and the brilliant and wonderful Audio Engineer William Chrapcynski, the crew actually out numbered the actors for once.  Two of the scenes were just Kate talking to a Magic-8 ball, so over all the filming was fast and fun.  The weekend shoot was over and we all returned to our more or less normal lives.  

I knew I wanted to film something else in the year and was thinking about filming another Fortunate Ones movie in early November.  When Epiphany Paris mentioned she needed help writing and producing a short film based on an Edgar Allen Poe story I offered to help.  

She wanted to film the same weekend I had been thinking about, so when it became clear that the story was too complex to write quickly I offered up the Fortunate Ones script I had been working on - Family Reunion.  It’s a sweet story about trust and having faith in the ones you love, and mending fences when that faith fails. However it was 27 pages in the first draft and 24 in the second. And almost all of it takes place at night with at least a dozen extras.  We started preproduction on it and were a week in before realizing that it just wasn’t going to happen because we didn’t have the time, actors, or equipment to make it work.  

This was ten days before the shoot.  At this point I had already set up a filming event and had people committed to a film shoot, so I tried to write another script we could film instead, that Epiphany would like and would still be able to use all the actors that said they were coming.  When someone drives a couple hours or more to film for the weekend I like to give them a named character and a few lines, so working everybody in and coming up with a new story took a few days. I dashed out a script, another Fortunate Ones called Sanctuary, but it was again too long – 24 pages – and I was only able to trim it down to 16.  

It was a good idea but needed a lot of work and there wasn’t time for rewrites.  Now, I can film a 16 page script in two and a half days no problem, but I forgot that no one else speeds through shooting with the careless disregard I have for such things as equipment, sets, memorization, and good directing.  Needless to say Virginia wanted to do a great job and make a quality film so she wanted something that was five pages or less.  We searched around from a public domain script that fit the bill and I came up with the idea of doing a poem from Spoon River Anthology. 

In the end she decided it was too much to do and not enough time to do it in, but I still had people committed to the shoot and after all that planning I didn’t want to cancel.  I liked the Spoon River thing and decided to film several of the poem/monologues with various actors.  It was the perfect time of year for it and I was excited because I love Spoon River Anthology.  I had some new actors lined up and the shooting schedule done, with script choices and even costume designs all ready to go.  Then, three days before filming I discovered that I couldn’t get into my mother’s costume units. Now, some people would shrug and do it in modern dress, but these are about 19^th century people and I don’t take kindly to not using costumes when I consider then necessary, so I had to cancel the Spoon River part of the shoot.  

Three days before the shooting weekend and actors were dropping out of shoot one after another so it would have made complete and total sense for me to just throw up my hands and cancel the whole shoot. But I am not known for having any sense.  Besides, by this point I was taking it as an epic challenge to film no matter what, obstacles be damned!  So I rounded up a list of the actors still in the game and called them personally to find out who was definetly going to be filming with us.  I had two or three actresses who could only film on Friday and only two or three who could film on the other two days.  I could have just written once script and shot it slowly and called it a day, but no!  That’s not how I work! 

I sat down and looked at my options.  The only thing I knew for sure on the Wednesday before the film shoot (which started on Friday) was that I had one girl, one guy, and a teepee.  So I wrote another Fortunate Ones script – Only You.  I wrote it on Thursday night for the Saturday shoot, then wrote a script for the friday night shoot based on an idea I had thought of years ago called Goddess Anonymous – a self-help group for diminished deities.  I had an idea third movie but it was 3am on Friday morning and I had two scripts to email to actors and a shoot to prepare for.

Friday night we filmed Goddess Anonymous.  Although the shoot started at 6pm, most of the actors warned me ahead of time that they would be late, which ended up working out really well in the end for shooting.  I had written the script for five actors, which was stupid because I knew I only had four actors.  So I was scrambling to find another actress who could show up that night and jump into the script blind.  I’d like to say it’s the first time I’ve asked that of someone but it’s not.  Thankfully the absolutely amazing and beautiful Nina Samii was able to show up halfway through the shoot (thanks Nina!). 

There are some filming days that are so much fun that you know you will never forget that day, the shoot for GA was that way.  Between the carrot jokes, cupcake fails, and Jen memorizing a speech about blood, guts, and gore using a song and dance it was one of the most fun shoots I have ever had to pleasure to witness.  If I had any doubts that canceling the shoot would have been the right idea, they went out the window that night.  So. Awesome.

  

Saturday we took our time filming Only You, with Brittany Ann Whalen and Bryan Kieft performing and Syndi Eller as the assistant director. It was a fun, relaxed shooting day that started just before noon and ended around 5pm when we wrapped shooting and headed to dinner at a Mexican restaurant. 

There was a lot of silliness and goofing off with wieners and smores, and also a lot of smoke when I put a damp log on the fire.  We had to treat for a while at that point, but finished up a little smoky but okay.  

Brittany, Syndi, and I hung out for a little bit but both actors were pretty sleepy and called it a night early. I spent the night writing the script for the next day’s shoot that I was supposed to have written on Friday night but was just too tired.  I had so much writing that I couldn’t stop and the script ended up being 18 pages, and with the hour approaching 2am I didn’t have time to cut it down.  

C2, a story about two sisters – Courtney and Caden Caldwell played by Brittany Ann Whalen and Syndi Eller – who are the best bounty hunters in the Criminally Cute Division of the Erinyes Agency, a public justice organization that polices the mythic and folkloric communities. Their target is the crafty and eccentric renegade Leshy known as Kasimir – played by Dan Zangerl.  

For a script written while I was half asleep and one that none of the actors had read before arriving on location, it wasn’t too bad.  It was a lot of fun to film out at Meadowbrook Park in a cool looking wooded area (happy Syndi?) on a nice and sunny afternoon.  It was a day filled with breaking handcuffs, loaves of bread, sticky sticks, and the birth of a new product line of nature based make-up and hair care products. 


And it also had one of the funniest scenes I have filmed in years where Brittany’s character, Courtney, has to “look sexy against a tree” and is supposed to think she’s doing a good job but is actually looking really stupid.  Brittany was hilarious! I don’t think I’ve laughed that much since…well, filming Goddess Anonymous on that Friday, but before that since I gave Jen some action figures and turned the camera on her in an episode of Eidolon.

The one problem with the shoot was that I only have one battery for my camera and even with a fully charged battery it won’t last through a whole day’s shoot.  So we ended up having to take a break at McDonald’s to recharge the battery.  The actors went over the script and memorized most of their lines for the last big scene we had to shoot, but by the time we got back to location and got all set up it was getting dark quickly.  We filmed as quickly as we could, but it got too dark to film everything in the woods so we adjusted the lines to be back by the car in the parking lot where there was at least a little bit of light. I have now fixed this problem by getting a second battery so it hopefully won’t happen again.  

All the shoots were a blast and a half to be a part of and I had so much fun at all of them. We ended the year with the annual SFF Holiday Party on December 30^th, watched a blooper video, and although there were less people then in previous years, we had a fabulous time!  

It was wonderful year for Sine Fine Films!  Thank you to everyone who participated in making movie magic and memories this year:

Rachel Anderson

William Chrapcynski

Syndi Eller

Bryan Kieft

Christine Komiskey

Harmony Komiskey

Nina Samii

Morgan Thomas

Andrew Thomas

Jen Weber

Kate Weber

Brittany Ann Whalen
Dan Zangerl

Without all of you it would not have been possible to film at all and it certainly wouldn’t have been half as much fun!

Happy Holidays 2012

Happy Holidays 

from Sine Fine Films!

Since December has been Dream Chasers month while celebrating the ten year anniversary of the show, here's a Dream Chasers holiday themed picture.

Production Diary – Dream Chasers

Once a month I’m going to talk about a specific production, what it was like to film it, and what was involved in making it happen.  This month I’m going to talk about Dream Chasers.

Dream Chasers is a TV show/Mini-series of 8 half-hour episodes.  It was written as 6 episodes, but shows tend to grow in the edit bay (I should probably stop feeding them).  The idea came from a dream I had shortly after my grandfather - Adolphenini Corastasheffski, aka Edward Stasheff (the first) - died, and so the series is dedicated to him.  The dream was basically about a female demon hunter who captures nightmares. The fact that the series is based on a bizarre but oddly fun dream from when I was in a weird mood explains why the show is both very bizarre and oddly fun. 

I regretted not wrapping up The Curse in 2001, so when I was looking for a project to do I wanted to do something set in that universe and decided to do a prequel, building a show around the character Maria Sanchez who alludes to having been cursed herself.  So prequel + curses + nightmare demon hunter = Dream Chasers. 

That’s the basics, but what’s the plot? Well, that’s a good question.

Yeah, I have no idea.  It’s basically about learning how to survive tragedy and rebuild your life with the help of friends, I guess.  Or possibly it’s the search for both survival and identity.  Maybe.  Yeah, I really don’t know, and that’s sad. Very sad. 

Let’s talk about what it was like to film it.  That’s a lot easier to write about.  I had the dream in August, but didn’t write the scripts until October when I sat down and mind-vomited six episodes in like three weeks.  Then I decided to get everything filmed and edited by the second week in December.  Can we say manic? 

We started filming the first week in November, 2002 and finished filming by December 7^th or 8^th (I think), and everything was edited (super fast!) by December 15^th, 2002.  Yikes. Say it with me, folks: M-A-N-I-C.

The casting was the easiest part of the whole production.  Morgan Thomas returned to play the role of her character in the Curse before she took the name and became Maria Sanchez.  Prior to that her name was Marion Smith and her best friend was named Maria Sanchez. Confused yet?  There’s more!  

For Marion’s other half, I cast Holly Simons who I had been longing to cast in a major role since she played in extra in The Gift Bearer and was awesome.  Brittany Ann Whalen was cast as the sassy and sexy ghost hunter Zoey Zurrell, and Paul Costello agreed to play the duel role of Morpheus and Namtaru – the gods of Dreams and Nightmares respectively who looked identical for reasons that might not be fully explained.  The only other major part was Death, who was originally written as the male Thanatos but ended up being switched to the female Atropos when Syndi Eller stepped in at the last minute and accepted the role.

Filming was fast and frequent – all day Saturday and Sunday of every weekend, and sometimes on days and nights during the week when actors were available, for five and a half weeks. 

“Days went by so quickly,” Brittany Ann Whalen said in an interview at the end of 2002, “but this was more fun then I’ve ever had filming for anything before – ever.”

“It was really interesting,” said Holly Simons. “I had a really good time, but it was long…but it was really good.”

There were scenes that took forever to film because the cast couldn’t stop laughing and goofing around.  This show currently holds the record for the Most Number of Takes in a Single Shot with 21 takes to shoot a scene in Episode 7.  It wasn’t all fun and games though.  There were a number of serious scenes to film as well.

“The most memorable moment for me,” recalled Morgan Thomas, “would be when we shot a scene for the last episode and my character had to cry. And I actually did cry, which..you know…surprised me.”

 

“I had two memorable moments,” said Holly Simons. “The first would be me in a corset; that was interesting – first time for that. I couldn’t bend. The second one was when I had to cry with an onion.  I could get the emotions, but not the tears so I had to put onion oil in eyes to make myself cry.”

One of the most memorable filming days for everyone, however, was the day we filmed the horse scenes in Mount Vernon, IL.  We crammed six people into a five person car and drove an hour and a half to the Gibbs Farm where Holly’s family lived.  Eric Gibbs helped saddle up the horses and gave everyone a brief introduction to horseback riding for those who had never ridden one before.  Holly and Brittany both had experience riding horses, and I think Morgan had ridden a horse once or twice but none of the other actors had.   

It was great weather for a late autumn day – not too chilly and partly cloudy with some sunlight.  The horses – Magic, Lady, and Clancy – were wonderfully well behaved and a delight to film with.  I actually wrote in the scenes that take place in the Sorcerer’s World just so I could film with the horses after Holly told me we could film with them. 

• I’ve only had a chance to film with a horse once – in The King of Eflin’s Daughter – and have always wanted to film with horses again, so it was a great experience and everyone had a lot of fun except Morgan who got piled on the top of people for the car ride to and from Mount Vernon. (thanks Morgan!)

Although the weather was beautiful for the horse shoot, it pretty much sucked most of the time.  Being November in Southern Illinois, it was a crap-shoot as to what kind of weather we’d have that day.  There were rainy days, snowy days, the frozen day at Fort De Chartres, a day where the wind was so strong it almost blew away both the scripts and the actors.  And of course there were lots and lots of cold days. 

The scene with the Sorcerer’s Council in Episode 4 was one of the last scenes filmed, and the day it was scheduled for ended up being a cold day after a snowstorm.  The scene comes right after they disappear from a house and thus have no coats on.  The three girls – Morgan, Brittany, and Holly – huddled together for warmth between each take. 

One a chilly day in late November, I somehow managed to convince Brittany to fall backwards into a lake wearing basically pajamas for a nightmare sequence.  Michael Bunnell volunteered to rise out of the lake as a demon and chase her – and although he volunteered, I’m not sure he realized exactly what he was volunteering for. 

In Episode 6 there are several scenes where the main characters end up camping out for several days.  The original day scheduled to shoot this group of scenes turned out to be very cold and rainy.  I wasn’t fully prepared with props, either, and none of the characters in the scenes were wearing coats so everyone was miserable.  We filmed what scenes we could before realizing that it was just too cold and damp to keep going.  In the interest of not killing the actors via frostbite and pneumonia, I decided to call it a day. 

We headed back to Morgan’s house to hang out and possibly film some indoor scenes.  We tried to roast marshmallows over candles and make smores, but it didn’t work too well, but at least it was fun…and warm!

I rescheduled the camping scenes for a different day and that day turned out to be perfect weather for it.  The day started out sunny and warm – a perfect autumn day – and slowly turned cloudy and a little windy, and it ended with a brief downpour.  We had chosen a location (in Giant City State Park) that had a pavilion, so we stayed dry during the storm.  Since most of the shoot was getting different shots for a montage of “time passing”, the different weather types was wonderful.  Everyone had fun roasting marshmallows and hot dogs and playing in the leaves. 

Overall, Morgan froze the most, having to film several scenes with little or no coat on during snowy days and some really cold nights.  I’m amazed (and very glad) she didn’t catch pnemonia and die.  For all the times she froze her butt off on this show, Morgan deserves a golden band-aid away. 

Another problem with the production was the scripts.  And I’m not just talking about the fact that the storyline was confusing at best and like a bad acid trip at worst, but the scripts themselves were hard to read because I don’t spell check them.  Also, I wrote these scripts so fast and handed them out without going back over them to catch mistakes and such which led to a lot of confusion and running jokes. 

“A lot of times we didn’t know what to say,” said Brittany Ann Whalen. “It was more like ‘why don’t leave me alone’ or ‘why did bring me here’. We didn’t know what the hell she was trying to get us to say because she’d leave out words!”

Despite the bad weather days, and me having a huge breakdown between shoots towards the end of filming (Bi-polar!!!), it was a really great experience and a whole lot of fun.  There was a lot of drama off the set involving other people and situations, but filming with everyone was a blast and we all had a great time.

“Best aspect of the show was the people,” said Syndi Eller. “I had a great time. It was my first time acting and everyone was so cool.”

 

“It was really great how people just got together,” said Morgan Thomas. “We got a long really well, and were coming together like a big family.”

“I think that (the people) probably is the best part of the series” said Brittany Ann Whalen, “because we had a lot of fun.”

“We had a blast together,” recalls Holly Simons, “and we all just became really good friends and really close and it was all absolutely wonderful.”

Interview with Morgan Thomas

Each month we'll interview a member of the Sine Fine Film company, asking the same or similar questions, and learn more about the actors and crew. 

This month I'm interviewing Morgan Thomas who's been with the company since the spring of 2001.

Q: How did you get involved in SFF? (And what possessed you to keep coming back for more torture?)

A: How’d I get involved? That is a funny story. First day of college – SIU – I headed up to SPC-TV just to check it out. And there you were Yibble, sitting at the editing bay, making a credit page for The Curse - before even filming The Curse.  I came up and asked “whatcha doing?” and if I could help out, because I’d never done any TV work before.  I thought it would be neat and I wanted to get involved in something.

And I think it was a couple months later – I think Peter Normand popped up at the cafeteria and told me that you’re filming in the woods behind Faner, and if I hurry up I can help. So I run over there and we film the infamous “flying sorcerer” scene (well, he wasn’t filmed, but he did fly).  And I think it was the following weekend or something, I forget how far down the road it was.

 

So I showed up at the student center at the ass-crack of dawn to help behind the scenes and here comes Peter Normand, with this grin that frightened me terribly, and says “you’re gonna be a star!” And I said, “I’m gonna be a what?”  

Here I am, you know, not dressed up at all for a part, and I’m replacing the role for Maria – which was fun… I couldn’t read in the car because of motion sickness to even know what the hell was going on in the script. I sped read on set trying to figure out what the hell the character is about - “Quick! What’s your motivation? Um..I’m a bitch? Okay go with it!”

It was fun!  Maybe I’m masochistic or something, I don’t know, but it’s an awesome, creative outlet to keep me from going completely bonkers. And it’s an excuse to get together with friends that you hadn’t seen in forever.

Q: What was your favorite part to play?

A: Oh geez…oh boy. So many to choose from. It’s a tie between Maria and Minerva really.  Minerva because I could just be a spaz and it was okay, and Maria just because of how long I’ve played Maria.  Minerva - she was just fun to portray, I know I could of done it better but…you know.

Q: What was your favorite filming day?

A: Technically it wasn’t a filming day, but we were on film and I think that would probably be when all of the cast and crew were heading to the Parthenon road trip, I think that was the Parthenon road trip, maybe the Champaign road trip - I know it was a road trip! We were spazzy as all get out that night, just hyperactive and I think there was a seesaw involved.  That was just a day that everyone was just nuts, and it was fun. 

Q: What was your least favorite filming day?

A: The day I had a somewhat mental crack – the last day of shooting for The Gift Bearer (season 1).  That should have been a real big hint that something was wrong, but it actually took a few more years before I went to see a doctor.  Yeah, the day I scared the crap out of Adele.

There were too many directors on set going in too many directions and people were wanting to do their own thing and not really cooperating on the outcome. “I wanna try this.” “No, let’s do this”. I think that’s when we were having issues with some of the actors too that day.  We were having drama non-stop and I finally had a little bit of a dissociative break, cause there was so much stress going on.

  

Q: What’s your dream role?

A: Wow…geez.  What can I play, hmm....?  I sort of got to play a sassy vamp as an actual vampire – I never got to play a sassy vamp until then.  I’ve never done a full on sexy role, I don’t think – like an intentional one.  I’ve done a silly one, and the vampire one.  And I like detectives.  I’m not sure how that would combine though…

Q: What’s your favorite production to watch?

A: I have not seen Perfect Combination, I’ve seen snippets of it but I’ve never seen the whole thing all the way through, so I’d like to see that.  I’ve got some of the Gift Bearer discs you’ve given me and some other stuff.  I haven’t seen the final stuff from the summer shoot.  Favorite to watch…god, I gotta narrow it down.  I like the fairy tale series – Twisted Tales - I do like watching that.

Q: What’s your favorite costume, accessory, or prop?

A: Probably Sherman (the Gift Bearer statue). Yup. 
Berry and me - we kinda had a bonding. 

I remember the – I don’t know if it’s the can-can costume or what it would be called.  I wore it for Gift Bearer during a montage and it was too tight, and I think I stretched it out a little bit.  But I think that was one that I couldn’t get off after I got it on.  You know, the red one?  I couldn’t get it back off!

Oh and that evil skirt at Fort De Chartres – it was too long and I was wearing shoes that were not period and I kept tripping over it. Like it would slide a certain way because of the material it was made of and then it just made me go flip!

Q: Who’s your favorite actor co-star/actor you’ve worked with?  Who would you like to work with in the future?

A: Oh…that’s another toughie.  I’ve got to narrow it down. Russell should be a given – I miss working with him.   I guess it’s a tie between Russ and Bryan on the boys side.

Trying to narrow it down on the girl’s side...  Well, I wish I could have worked with Michelle a little bit more.  It felt natural working with both of them.  Working with them things just…bounced.

With Russ and I it really did feel like he was a brother, so when we were being goofy or batting lines back and forth between each other in a scene it was just natural.  And the creepy incest scene really did feel creepy.

With Shelly it was the same, just kinda natural.  She could deliver a line and how natural she could just…you know, just portray the character.  It set a standard that I tried to keep up with.  

Q: Sum up each production you’ve been in using only one word or short sentence.

THE CURSE

White Feather

THE GIFT BEARER

Brain explodies

MEDEA SCHOOL OF MELODRAMA

Fun

ATTACK OF THE COOKIE PEOPLE

Mimes

DREAM CHASERS

I’m thinking of a road sign that just keeps curving

EIDOLON

Closure

GIFT BEARER: TIME AFTER TIME

To be continued…

FORTUNATE ONES: FAERIE TALE

My hairstyle

FORTUNATE ONES: FOREVER

What is that noise? (There was a pipe making a lot of noise)

FORTUNATE ONES: MAGIC-8

Oops.

Q: Top 5 favorites: (not SFF related)

Favorite Color - Burgundy

Favorite Movie or TV Show – 

The Booth at the End is great, and Road to Perdition is one of my favorite movies.

Favorite Song or Band/Artist

Current favorites are Abney Park and Lindsey Stirling – I like her stuff

Favorite Food or Drink - Beef Ravioli and Vault

Favorite Holiday - Halloween