Albion Park Productions heading to Nantucket with "The Oblique Sector" for the 2011 Nantucket Film Festival

I'm looking forward to getting on the ferry in Hyannis tomorrow for the ride across the sound to Nantucket where our little film, The Oblique Sector, is having it's world premier at the 2011 Nantucket Film Festival!

Sadly, (or not!) both screenings are sold out, but rush tickets are usually reserved for the day of, so if you're on the island, you've still got a shot to get in. We are screening on Thursday and Saturday.

Follow the Albion Park Productions team on twitter for the latest:

Official film twitter: https://twitter.com/#!/obliquesector

Producer/Cinematographer, Brad Kelly (me): https://twitter.com/#!/bradkellyfilms

Director/Lead Actor, Jason Reulet: https://twitter.com/#!/jasonreulet

Writer/Producer, Art Hennessey: https://twitter.com/#!/ArtHennessey

Writer/Lead Actor, Amanda Good Hennessey: https://twitter.com/#!/Amandagh

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/obliquesectormovie

We're looking forward to meeting others in the filmmaking community as well as enjoying the festival and seeing as many other films as we can. Not to mention, enjoying the impossibly quaint surroundings of the former 18th century whaling capitol that is Nantucket.

We'll also be rubbing shoulders with other festival participants such as Ben Stiller, Jerry Seinfeld, Vera Farmiga, Seth Meyers, and special 2011 NFF honoree, Academy award winning screenwriter Paul Haggis (Crash, Million Dollar Baby). Good company!

See you on the island!

Short film "Untied" finished and website live

Untied, a short film for which I was the Director of Photography has been finished by Director/Editor Adam Woodworth and the Untied website is now live.

DJ Hazard as "retired" mobster Sal Antonelli

The film revisits a similar underworld milieu as his award winning Bourbon short, but is not a sequel, as such. As the logline states:

"Untied" is the story of an old, retired mob hit-man, Sal Antonelli, who comes face to face with his own hit-man. In an attempt to extend his life, Sal stalls the hit-man by telling his life story."

Starring: DJ Hazard, Nat Sylva, Amber Daniels, Bianca Cipolla

Original screenplay by Keith Hedger

Headspace

The film was shot this summer in Boston, Worcester and Waltham in HD using 35mm prime lenses adapted for my Panasonic HVX200. Hopefully, I'll do a blog post about the technical aspects of the shoot in the near future. In the meantime, there are a bunch of video stills and behind the scenes production photos on the Untied website.

One nice thing about working with Adam; he has the work ethic and drive to complete his projects, so you know your work will see the light of day. Too often, small indie projects have a tendency to get stalled along the way from raw footage to finished film.

Adam checks out a setup

Expect a local screening, probably at the Brattle Theatre later this winter, followed by the film hitting the festival circuit in 2010.

DJ Hazard as Sal

DJ Hazard as DJ Hazard

"Beneath The Surface," our latest short film, premiers tonight in Providence

Beneath The Surface, a New England ghost story

This past weekend, I shot a short film with team Playomatic for the Providence 48 Hour Film Project.

On Friday night, we initially drew "Road Movie" as our genre, but since we had secured a fantastic near-mansion in Manchester-by-the-Sea as our location, we didn't want to have to leave that behind and hit the road. So we took our chances with the wild card draw. As you can imagine, we were psyched when we drew "Ghost Movie," as it played right into the strengths of our location.

The required elements we ended up with were:

Genre: Ghost movie
Character: M. Chaney, hairdresser
Prop: Pear
Line of Dialog: "If you see him again, tell me."

All competing teams (some 50 or so--about half the number that competed in Boston in April) had to include those same elements; Character, Prop and Line of Dialog, into their film, regardless of what genre they drew.

(The 48 Hour run on pears probably raised a few produce manager eyebrows, too, and it's an Onion headline waiting to happen: "Mysterious Spike in New England Pear Sales Baffles American Fruit Council," but I digress.)

I'm proud of what we accomplished in a short two days.


"She swims at night. Only at night..."

Cinematographically (I don't think that's a word, actually) this one was a lot of fun! I used one of my still cameras to shoot some infrared portraits and timelapses, which we animated into the film. The infrared has a natively "otherworldly" look to it, and it was perfect for the ghostly feel we were after.


Ye Old Oak Tree and backyard swing

I even managed to shoot some ethereal underwater footage in the pool of Leigh in a vintage-looking gown for a drowning sequence.

We shot and edited in SD this time, in the interest of speed and simplicity, since we were editing on my laptop on the fly. But, we went tapeless, again, shooting to P2 cards.

It's great not to have to digitize tapes, especially under such time pressure. Shooting to tape just feels so ancient and creaky now, I really try to avoid it whenever possible. Of course, the hard drives I buy now are measured in terabytes not gigabytes, but that's progress for you.

A Visitation

Some see her. Others cannot.

"Beneath The Surface" premiers at 9pm tonight at the Columbus Theatre in Providence, RI.

Photos ©BradKelly 2008. Pool-side production photo courtesy Art Hennessey.
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