Life Improvised Micro Short Shot in Lisbon Coming Soon

We shot this Life Improvised film titled Encentro on our last weekend in Lisbon in early May, we can’t wait to bring this story about two friends who are keeping a certain matter from each other in order to save their relationship. It was a pleasure to work with Lisbon locals on this one, which will be released in a weeks time through our newsletter. Join our Creatively Connected monthly Newsletter to see Encontro first or subscribe to our YouTube channel for a notification.

“After a pandemic, lockdown lifts and life goes somewhat back to normal. Ines seizes the moment and invites her friend Joanna to catch up on life as they walk through Lisbon, but there’s something troubling Ines.”

Psychological Drama Wraps after Second Week of Production

If week one of filming Machination was a whirlwind, then week two was a hurricane with over 2kgs of worms, blood, moody neon lights, night shoots, early mornings finales and some wicked acting. But damn straight we had the best sleep deprived time of our lives in the process and came out the other end with a treasured film experience to add to our already unforgettable 2020.

Machination took four months of our lives to get from the outline writing to the wrap and we did it all with a minimal crew of no more than six on larger days and just a key cast of four people and had Maltese actor Steffi Thake featuring in 99% of the full-length feature. For those interested in our filmmaking process read how Ivan’s article From Writing to Wrap: Making a Feature in Four Months here.

After 10 days of filming Machination, we wrapped at Selmun Bay around 7am! Picture: Creative Creep Brand

Steffi may have had most of the screen time since the film is about her character Maria and her downward spiral as she deals with mental illness and her past demons during a global pandemic, but Steffi handled it like a champion. The lead actors performance was moving and sad to watch, at times her situation and reaction to what was happening around her was relatable, other times the absurdity of the situation bordered on dark humour.

So now Machination is now in the ‘to edit’ bucket, a task that Ivan Malekin will start taking on in the coming week, while also editing our documentary Cats of Malta simultaneously.

If you want to know more about Machination go to the films official page here and join our Creatively Connected Newsletter for news about the film exclusively here.

Machination Week 1 Done

Our latest feature Machination has just wrapped Week one of production. It’s a two week shoot, but we now have a week off to recover and rest for a moment before planning and prep begins for Production Week two. Machination is about a woman battling the monsters in her head during a global pandemic and stars Steffi Thake as Maria. If the first weeks rushes are anything to go by, it will be a very powerful performance.

We are thrilled with the results so far and grateful to the small but dedicated team helping us to make this film happen during a real pandemic here in Malta, part of the worldly global pandemic which inspired the writing of the Machination story. It may seem like a timely film, but it’s story more than what you see on the surface - it’s story about a woman battling mental illness, facing here past demons and how the two meet to break the human spirit.

Mental illness is a topic we need to talk more openly about as the monsters in people’s minds can be life threatening, and any event that is large and out of our control, spurred on by heightened media can feed anxiety and trigger symptoms for a sufferer. Sometimes with devastating results.

The beautiful thing about working so closely with Steffi in the improvised process from conception stage, from the very first story outline (that was more focused on the absurdity of conspiracy theories and the media hype surrounding such theorists views which emerged through the pandemic here in Malta), is that together, through research and advice from psychological professionals, the story of Maria and the monsters she is battling became more of the character piece we are interested in and can relate to. A big step away from the genre horror film we had originally envisioned, which we honestly were not sure we wanted to make.

The Machination we are filming now is relatable, it could happen to you or me and it’s a character study of a woman who, throughout a pandemic outbreak is being pushed to her mental limit due to the reality she has created in her mind.

The Cat's out of the Bag

Unbeknown to us we scored some media attention for the third time this year from Guide Me Malta, the film they focused on was our local cat lovers documentary Cats of Malta.

While we were conversing with talented Maltese street artist Matthew Pandolfino we were being watched, and so was the art. Matthew’s feline sculpture is famous on Instagram, well known by the locals and is hard to miss when driving along Sliema’s promenade. She sits proudly on a toilet block, looking out above Independence Garden (also known as Cat Park).

Some say that the sculpture is a cat god, looking out for the cats in the garden, but whatever powerful being she is, we were lucky enough to contact Matthew about talking to us on camera just as he was giving her a fresh coat of paint.

We visited Matthew on three separate occasions while the sculpture went from a coloured abstract design to the new luna theme. We can’t wait to put the edit for this section of the doco together and tell the story!

Check out both articles relating to Cats of Malta and Matthew’s cat overhaul in these articles from May 9th and May 17th.

Lockdown Inspires Filmmaking

It’s a crazy time, I don’t have to tell you that, we are all living through this COVID-19 pandemic hell and some of us are having a hard time more than others due to factors in our lives which existed before this hit. Some of us now are feeling the hardship suddenly wash over us as we loose our jobs, our income, our physical connection to others and our sanity.

To keep us going in lockdown and self quarantine we have been writing screenplays, developing ideas and shooting films. These films are short films which fit under our Life Improvised micro film banner and shot mostly in one location, with Sarah Jayne as the lead and Ivan Malekin as DOP.

The first one is called Hiding and is about a woman becoming more and more paranoid about the rise of COVID-19. She puts herself in self-quarantine as she battles her fear.

The second micro-short is called Hoping, and is a reflective look at our ‘new normal’ with hope for the days ahead.

Subscribe to our newsletter to receive these micro-shorts as soon as they are ready for release.

Summer Poster launch

Here it is, a first look at the second character poster for the feature film To Hold The Moon we are currently developing.

This is the character poster for Summer Alba, played by Australian actor Asleen Mauthoor, who is now based in London.

In the film, aspiring actor and playwright Summer is struggling in her career, with her one-woman theatre show failing to find an audience in London. So in an attempt to retreat into the arms of her lover, take her mind off work, and find herself again Summer spontaneously flies to Malta to join her partner Lucinda, an up-and-coming movie actor who is deep in pre-production for a cult-hit zombie film.

Summer, naive to the bad timing, clings to Lucinda and wants to know the future of their relationship, reaching for a way to rekindle the spark the pair once shared. Summer needs to deal with personal feelings of failure, lack of life direction, and faltering communication with Lucinda. But Summer's efforts to mend the cracked relationship prove more complicated than anticipated, and a heated new friendship in Malta confuses Summer further, leading her to new passions and heartaches, and, ultimately, new perspectives.

To learn more about To Hold the Moon visit the website here and sign up to the official film newsletter to stay updated with the behind the scenes news.

The poster was designed by Kathy Kennedy with photography by Kristian Pirotta and make-up by Mirjana Laferlita. We love it and hope you do too. If you do, share it around.

MADC ONE ACT PLAY FESTIVAL APPROACHES

We just returned home from a three hour full technical rehearsal at MADC for our play Hush Little Baby, which is one of six plays taking part in this annual event. This years festival is set to be a beauty, kicking off on Thursday 5th until Sunday 8th September at the MADC Clubrooms in Santa Venera, Malta.

Get your tickets now!

Director Ivan Malekin leads the way in Valletta. Off to our technical rehearsal after collecting our prop balloons early Sunday morning.

Improvised In Berlin

While in Berlin during the most of the month of May we shot our fourth micro short under the Life Improvised banner, called Cry Me a River .

The story centres around one character who has just received some bad news and her the world goes on as she tries to process the news, shedding tears publicly, only to be ignored by strangers who she encounters.

Together with our small team made up of our friends in Berlin, we had a tight knit crew - Laura on sound, Robbert as DP, Kelsey as the main character, and Ivan and Sarah Jayne co-directing, plus two extras and a couple of on-the-spot participants we recruited on the day. Together we managed to shoot this micro short in just 3 hours at the gorgeous Treptower Park in Berlin on a perfect day.

We are very happy with the footage but It may be a while until we post it on our YouTube and Vimeo Channels as we have a backlog of projects, including the previous Life Improvised film shot in Melbourne called XChange to edit and share.

More news to follow shortly on this film and the progress.

TO stay up-to date and get this news first, including images we have not shared here on the website, sign up to our Newsletter - Creatively Connected now.

Ladinkino Cast & Crew Screening

When the cast and crew that had worked on the Berlin chapter of In Corpore stepped out of the Ladenkino cinema room there was one word to describe what they had just seen – intense. All round we had a wonderful night, not only catching up with everyone who attended, but also sharing all our hard work we had put into the film so far.

Although the film was still in a rough stage with more sound design and colour grading work to do, it was good to see In Corpore on the big screen with one of the four teams that made it possible.

Only two people were not in attendance due to having filming projects in other countries (so jealous) and they were greatly missed.

While it poured rain outside, inside we shared laughs and stories from on the set and it was a cosy cast and crew screening in gritty and artistic Berlin.

New Year, New Project

New Year, new film in development.

That’s right, while on a break to visit family in Australia we spent most of our lead up to Christmas plotting and planning a double shoot day for our new improvised, experimental relationship drama titled To Hold the Moon.

To Hold the Moon is an indirect sequel to Friends, Foes & Fireworks with Whitney Harris and Asleen Mauthoor reprising their roles as Lucinda and Summer, as we follow the relationship two years on.

What we needed to capture while in Australia was several images for a proposed poster and some footage for a teaser video as we prep for pitching the project to potential investors in Malta and apply for funding.

The double shoot kicked off at Lightdrop Studios Kensington, where our photographer Kristian Pirotta and hair and makeup artist Mirjana Laferlita helped us to create the concept art director Sarah Jayne proposed around the theme “the relationship between the Sun and the Moon”. Our team, including our acting duo perfectly pulled off all the concept variations and we all walked out of the shoot content .

We finished off the day shooting way past sunset with commercial DOP Daomay Keo and our talent on Half Moon Bay Beach. The theme for this shoot was more of a dream like sequence made up of quick shots, as if dreamt up by the character of Summer showing her ideal oasis with her lover, Lucinda. A short but sweet and dreamlike sequence to introduce our characters and tease about the storyline.

For now we work on completing both of these two creative materials for the film, plus the written documents and then we must move on to applying for funding through the Malta Film Commission, which opens in February.

In the meantime, give our To Hold the Moon Facebook page a like to support the film and also you you can join us on this exciting journey of bringing the film to life.