DP, Alicia Arinella with writer/director, Julie Tortorici
The crew headed to Park Slope to film the short film, Milestone. It was a short I'd written in the fall and offered to Alicia for On the Leesh's repertoire. She read it and asked if I wanted to try my hand at directing. Me, direct? Uh, okay! She would serve as my director of photography so I knew I had some room for error because there she'd be, backing me up and covering for any mistakes I made along the way.
For the past year or so, I've been trying my hand at new things and new adventures and directing a short film for the first time I felt, absolutely qualified. So what better way to document said adventure, than by capturing it as part of my film, Best Laid Plans! That meant that basically, this weekend we shot two films in two days! A friend of On the Leesh and budding director, Chris Zecco came out to film for Best Laid Plans while Alicia and I shot the short.
Chris Zecco shoots Best Laid Plans
In the end this film will be between 7-9 minutes long. But to get to those golden 7-9 minutes, we required a lot of support and team work. We had a tremendous crew sitting patiently while we were shooting and moving quickly when we needed to set up a new shot.
Crew members, Colleen Slattery and Jessica Arinella about to get some breakfast...
Our very own, Alicia Arinella and Melissa Jernigan posing...
Our makeup artist, Natalie was always on hand to make our actors HD beautiful and, as usual, Alicia led the team seamlessly.
Becky reads over her script while hair and makeup artist, Natalie DiStefano readies her curling iron
Then, of course, there were our two actors, Rebecca White and Brian Patacca who truly did an outstanding job telling the story, trusting a first-time director and having fun within their circumstances.
Working with the actors...
Thank you to everyone involved. Can't wait to see the final product!
