From the Vault: Criminals and Cabin Crew

australian enemy banner

Back in 2010 I was cast in Josh Finch‘s feature film Australian Enemy. Here’s the synopsis:

Chronicles the epic rise and fall of Angelo Morello, a young Calabrian who finds himself entering a life beyond his wildest dreams from small time gambler in the 1960s to controlling the Australian cannabis trade during the 1970s.

I played Tina Morello, a flight hostess and Angelo’s wife. Great script. The whole project was a lot of fun (apart from the time I fell down the stairs running out of a slippery bathroom scene and ended up in the Royal North Shore Hospital emergency ward. More colourful language has never been uttered. A story for another time.)

So we wrapped principal photography on the film and I got antsy for a poster so I offered up my services of art direction and graphic design. Only problem was, I needed to be in the poster, so I couldn’t shoot it. Oh, and it needed to be shot from directly above. On a bed.

concept sketch

concept sketch

Oh how the stars aligned.

No more than a week after I had drawn the concept sketch (when I should have been doing architectural CAD drawings at work), mum informed me that there was a huge scaffold at her house as the ceiling was being painted. Bingo. I called my mate Tristan F-S who shimmied out on what was similar to a pirate ship plank setup over a bed sheet and some pillows that we hand thrown on the ground, and we shot that weekend.

If you find yourself in San Francisco this Sunday evening at 6pm, and you’re as jazzed on indie filmmaking as I am, come on down to the 9th Street Independent Film Center in SoMa and catch the super-ultra-mega-advanced-screening (aka. sound and colour isn’t done, but we have a picture lock) of Frisky – my feature film directorial debut! A lot of legends helped make this project a reality, so bloody get there! Tickets available here: https://friskyscreening.eventbrite.com

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Poster Rollercoaster

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My favourite part about wrapping production on a film is blabbing about it to EVERYONE (as long as post is going smoothly). And what better way to blow my own trumpet than to make a killer poster, and slap it on every last inch of the internet?

In the week between wrapping Winning Formula in Los Angeles and me moving to San Francisco, I bought a shockingly cheap photo studio setup – 3 softboxes and a backdrop rig – and got the entire cast to come in and have their character photos taken for promotional purposes.

During this session, Prudence and I shot the poster as per my concept sketch.

… Or at least what I thought the poster would be. I saved all of this work at very low resolution to my google drive, then promptly had my laptop and camera (with backup images on the SD card) stolen, as you well know, faithful follower of my blog, Klaus.

So there I was with a film poster that was unprintable. Bloody useless for all the good people at Sundance and Canne who will be champing at the bit to get their clammy hands on a full size 27″x40″ 300dpi poster for my micro-budget slapstick comedy. Because if there’s one thing I know, it’s that those good people love micro-budget slapstick comedy.

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Prudence Vindin and Claudia Pickering with George Clooney leaving Canne in a limo in the future. He has really enjoyed Winning Formula. They are indulging in Moët mimosas.

A new poster was needed. Lucky for me, Pru was back in the United states a few months later, and we still had access to our costume headdresses (which were later stolen, so this really was our last shot at it).

We strung up some white fabric in Cassie’s (the costume designer) house, and with the help of Klaus, we reshot a poster far superior to the original. YEW!

Winning Formula Film Poster