Project Solitude

Wisconsin Filmmaking Pioneers

2009-01-25T10:45:00.000-08:00

Lights... camera... Wisconsin

by: Steve Prestegard

Northeast Wisconsin is known for many things, but a location for filming is not one of them. That perception may change this year, thanks to four movies that either were filmed or are being filmed in Northeast Wisconsin.

The best known is "Public Enemies," which depicts gangsters John Dillinger, Baby Face Nelson and Pretty Boy Floyd in their 1930s Midwest crime spree. "Public Enemies," which was filmed in Oshkosh and several other Wisconsin locations during 2008, is scheduled to be released around July 1.

According to published reports, "Public Enemies" was estimated to bring in more than $5 million in economic impact, offset by the $4.6 million in tax credits the production received, during filming between mid-March and June.

Burgoo Films of Neenah has produced "The Hungry Bull," described as "an off-beat, whiskey-soaked comedy that chronicles the misadventures of a lovable pair of misfits searching in vain for love and the perfect fish fry."

Two other films also are in the works — "Nephilim," about a priest and a detective searching for fallen angels during the end of the world as depicted in the Book of Revelation, and "Project Solitude," about a professor’s psychological experiment.

These movies have taken advantage of a state effort to promote the state as a place to film. Film Wisconsin, a nonprofit organization, is "working to create a thriving motion picture, television production and video game industry in the state." Film Wisconsin’s Web site includes a list of film crew members and vendors, a synopsis of state labor laws, a weather almanac, an in-development guide to shooting locations, and a list of Wisconsin-based film festivals, including the Wildwood Film Festival in Appleton April 18.

"The Hungry Bull"

The Hungry Bull is a legendary restaurant in Menasha."It used to be a place you’d go after bartime," says Hunter Adams, a Neenah native who studied film at the University of Wisconsin and in France for one year. "There’s only six seats in the place, so there’d be a line of people behind the seats, and as one seat popped up, another person would take it."

Adams, the producer, director and co-writer of "The Hungry Bull," was "definitely intrigued by the idea of shooting a film in the Fox Valley. I’d never seen a film shot in the Valley. There’s a lot of interesting landmarks."

Adams a Menasha resident Kip Irish wrote the film about a man who leaves town after his father commits suicide. Several years later, the man returns "with the idea of looking for the girl he left behind," says Adams, only to discover that she is dating his best friend in high school. The hero then moves in with his late father’s best friend, a widower.

"We kind of sculpted a storyline and characters around the storyline we had in mind," says Adams. "They’re kind of playing fictional versions of themselves. Most of them are actually from the area."

Adams and Irish are submitting "The Hungry Bull" to film festivals, including the Sundance Film Festival, with the idea of getting general release in the spring, with a PG-13 or R rating. "Creating these worlds — making a storyline happen — is what intrigues me," says Adams. "It’s a totally new universe, with these characters."

"Nephilim"

"Nephilim" and "Project Solitude" are being produced by Appleton native Susan Moses, a veteran Hollywood producer. Moses was a banker in the 1980s when "the banking industry was changing — it was becoming more electronic and less personal — and I wanted to be doing something that was more creative." She became the president and chief financial officer of a company that financed films of less than $2 million, "and being involved with that company, I became more interested in the creative process."

Moses describes the producer’s role as "the catalyst that helps to connect the writer, the director, the talent, the key creative members of the crew, and the money. Without one of those things, you don’t have a movie."

The production design for both movies is being done by Cyndee Sweatland, who grew up in Green Bay and lived in New York and Boston before returning to the area. Sweatland describes her job on the movies as designing "the eyes and visual for all the scenes you see," including such areas as artwork, props and the movie’s color palette.

"My father was an extraordinary artist, and that’s what I wanted to do," says Sweatland, who created scenery for the Harlequin Players productions in which her father acted. "I knew before I got to high school that I wanted to do scenery for theaters." After living in New York for 10 years and then working in a Boston commercial scene shop, Sweatland returned to the Green Bay area in 2000 for family reasons.

"Nephilim" is the melding of movies and comic books. Writer and movie director Danny Wilson plans three movies; the first scene of the first movie will start where the last of 12 comic books ends. Computer games and merchandise also are planned.

"Nephilim’s been my life for over 10 years now, so I’m looking forward to shooting this," says Wilson. The genesis of "Nephilim" came in a Catholic high school, where Wilson, bored with math class, would put comic books in his textbooks. When those were confiscated, Wilson substituted the Bible. When Wilson got to the Book of Revelation, a depiction of the end of the known world and the second coming of Jesus Christ, "I thought, this is great; there should be a movie about this. I wanted to depict Revelation in a comic-book universe."

"The movie’s about a gun-toting, motorcycle-riding priest and an ex-homicide detective and two archangels. The priest and the detective work together to stop fallen angels from ending the world by bringing back the Nephilim."

"Nephilim" stars Danny Charvet, who played Craig Field on "Melrose Place" and Matt Brody in "Baywatch" and appeared on "Dancing with the Stars," as Fr. Markus. Huyen Thi, Wilson’s wife, plays Sue Lynn, a detective looking for her disappeared daughter. Veteran character actor John Savage also stars. The detective "makes a specific decision that gives her the ability to see in her dreams what the succubus is doing, and she follows those visitors," says Wilson.

Wilson’s experience with comic books has carried over into how the movie was created, through storyboarding, drawing of each scene before it’s filmed. "With storyboards, you can show what you want to be [computer-generated special effects], and what you don’t," says Wilson. "There’s no second-guessing."

"The storyboards Danny has are a rarity," says Moses. "It’s the technique Alfred Hitchcock used — every frame of a movie was framed before the film ever rolled."

Filming on the $5.2 million movie will take place over one week in Milwaukee, one week in a warehouse-turned-soundstage in Green Bay, and three weeks on location in the Green Bay area.

"Since it begins at the end of the world as we know it, we felt we had to do it in an area that wasn’t as pretty as it might have been," says Moses. The movie was set to be filmed in Bulgaria until Moses attended a film locations expo in Los Angeles, where Film Wisconsin officials were exhibiting.

"We realized that the dollar vs. the euro had flip-flopped, and the production company wanted to be paid in the euro standard, and so we were going to be paying a premium for everything we were buying there," says Moses.

The Wisconsin film credit, she says, "is cash — it’s not just a tax credit — it’s cash in your pocket, so that makes it a pretty appealing thing."

Director of photography Bernd Heinl performed the same role for "Milwaukee, Minnesota," which was filmed in Milwaukee. "He was familiar with the architecture we were looking for, at least in the Milwaukee area," says Moses.

One challenge was finding a church for a filming location. Neither the Green Bay Catholic Diocese nor area Lutheran officials allowed the production to film in their churches, Wilson says.

"There are followers of the Nephilim that are ufologists, there are followers of the Nephilim that are conspiracy theorists, there are followers of the Nephilim that are religiously inspired," says Moses. "The curiosity factor behind the Nephilim is pretty phenomenal."

"Project Solitude"

"Project Solitude" stars Eric Roberts as a professor conducting a psychological experiment with a family of seven in a secluded woods. The film also stars Wisconsin-born Richard Riehle, who has acted in more than 200 films and TV episodes, perhaps most notably as the quartermaster Kendric in the Civil War film "Glory."
The co-writer and director is Rustam Branaman, an actor and producer with a long list of film credits.

"As I was acting, I always admired great directors," says Branaman. "I watched all the great films, and I was like, man, I’d like to do that someday." The spark came when Branaman worked with actor, director and producer Billy Bob Thornton, who had just written "One False Move," which won six awards and was nominated for seven other awards. "He was the first guy who was sort of the catalyst for me to write," says Branaman.

"Project Solitude" is a thriller about a sociology professor who, says Branaman, "decides to do a human variable experiment involving a central authority figure." The professor takes a family of seven into "an extremely isolated woods for 10 days to live off the land. And then people start dying, and no one knows who’s killing people."

Filming in Suamico ended Dec. 23. The film is projected to reach theaters in late 2009, with probably a PG-13 rating

Coming to a theater near you

Independent filmmaking has become popular in the past decade. "The problem with independent filmmaking these days, so many people are making independent films that it’s not making the film, it’s getting a return on your investment," says Adams.

Financing, says Adams, "is always difficult. The nice thing was we were operating at a low-enough budget — our cinematographer was a NYU graduate; he was looking for something to put his name on — we got him basically for beer."

The cinematographer is now producing music videos for Kanye West. Adams’ next project is called "Cheesehead," a "crime thriller/love story," which Adams plans to shoot next winter. Adams is considering creating eight 30-minute Web episodes to "create an online universe for the series." "We’re scouting for a small town," he says, "somewhere in Wisconsin."

http://www.marketplacemagazine.com/content/373_1.php

Action In (920) Part Two

2009-01-08T15:49:00.000-08:00

Action In (920)

2009-01-07T17:09:00.000-08:00

2008-12-17T23:43:00.001-08:00

2008-12-17T23:42:00.001-08:00

Hugs

2008-12-17T23:13:00.000-08:00

Always In Motion

2008-12-17T23:11:00.001-08:00

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Vanessa's POV of Solitude In Action

2008-12-17T23:09:00.001-08:00

Candids From The Set

2008-12-17T17:46:00.001-08:00

Project Solitude Director and Cast

2008-12-17T16:32:00.000-08:00

Danny Vasquez, Rustam Branaman, Jenna Zablocki, Eric Roberts, Kevin Rich, Stacy Stas, Michelle Belegrin, David Frye, Vanessa Evigan

The Great Filming Financial Debate

2008-12-17T10:17:00.001-08:00

Hollywood Comes To Green Bay

2008-12-12T14:00:00.000-08:00

Solitude Casts Star Role

2008-11-19T08:44:00.000-08:00

Project Solitude is set to start filming in December STARRING Eric Roberts. One of Hollywood's edgier, more intriguing characters running around and about for decades, Eric Anthony Roberts started life in Biloxi, Mississippi, but grew up in Atlanta, Georgia. He began his acting career at age 5 in a local theater company called the Actors and Writers Workshop founded by his late father, Walter Roberts. After his schooling at Grady High, he studied drama at age 17 in London for two years at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts, then returned to the States and continued his studies at the American Academy in New York. He made his NY stage debut in "Rebel Women" in 1976 at age 20 and appeared in regional productions, once playing the newspaper boy in a production of "A Streetcar Named Desire" starring Shirley Knight and Glenn Close.

After appearing in such daytime soaps as "Another World" and "How to Survive a Marriage", his career began to shift fast forward when he copped a leading role in a major film. In King of the Gypsies (1978), based on Peter Maas' best seller about a fracturing dynasty of New York City gypsies, he made his debut alongside an intimidating roster of stars including Judd Hirsch, Susan Sarandon, Shelley Winters and Sterling Hayden. Young Eric held his own expertly (winning a Golden Globe nom) while his burning intensity and brooding charm marked sure signs of star potential. After this he won the lead opposite Milo O'Shea in the 1980 stage production of "Mass Appeal". He suffered serious injuries in a car accident during his nascent film career but lost no fans by the time he returned to co-star with Sissy Spacek as a small-town stranger in Raggedy Man (1981). It was, however, his stark and frightening portrayal of two-bit hustler Paul Snider, the cast-off boyfriend who slays Playmate-turned-movie starlet Dorothy Stratten (played by Mariel Hemingway) in Star 80 (1983) that really put him on the movie map and earned him a second Golden Globe nomination.

A wide range of fascinating, whacked-out roles were immediately offered to him on a silver plate. He played another dangerous streetwise hustler type in The Pope of Greenwich Village (1984) opposite fellow rebel Mickey Rourke; a cocky soda pop sales exec in the Australian comedy The Coca-Cola Kid (1985); appeared with more charm and restraint opposite Rosanna Arquette in the offbeat romantic comedy Nobody's Fool (1986) and topped his prolific period off with an Academy Award nomination as a young prison escapee hiding out with Jon Voight aboard an out-of-control train in the ultra-violent, character-driven action adventure Runaway Train (1985). Good things continued to happen when he was a replacement lead in the original run of "Burn This" and won a Theatre World Award for his 1988 Broadway debut.

A risky, no-holds-barred actor, he was often guilty of overacting if given half the chance. His film career began to slide in the late 1980s, appearing in more quantity than quality pictures. A series of missteps led to unheralded appearances in such bombs as the karate-themed Best of the Best (1989); the NY urban thriller The Ambulance (1990); the action western Blood Red (1989), which took three years to release and is now solely remembered for being the only film Eric and superstar sister Julia Roberts appeared in together; and Rude Awakening (1989) when he filled in as a burned-out hippie opposite a Chong-less Cheech Marin. More underappreciated "B" filming came with the 1990s (Freefall (1994), Sensation (1995), The Nature of the Beast (1995), etc.), while also chewing the scenery with a number of mobster types in TV-movies, including one as Al Capone. He soon began appearing as flashy secondary villains and creepies that showcased other stars instead, such as Final Analysis (1992) starring Richard Gere, Heaven's Prisoners (1996) toplining Alec Baldwin, and The Dark Knight (2008), part of the "Batman" series with Christian Bale and the late Heath Ledger.

Film In A Blender

2008-10-29T18:32:00.000-07:00

What do you get when you place an aspiring screenwriter and a seasoned writer/director into a blender? I suspect it would be a bloody mess. But what if the same two people were placed into a development deal under the supervision of an experienced producer? The net result would be an increased likelihood of a fully funded and produced commercial product.

Thomas Hillery (“Tom”) has successfully merged his Master of Liberal Arts in Religion at Harvard University and his Economics degree from Clark University with entertainment and finance. After having written several feature length screenplays Tom determined to find someone who would be willing to work with him to get his scripts from first draft to distribution. While attending the New York premiere of a small film he helped to fund, he decided to attend a series of seminars on film development and production hosted by the NY Independent Film & Video Festival. It did not take long for him to realize that by partnering with an experienced producer, he might have to give up certain creative controls and equity, but he would also gain experience and a fast track for his learning curve.

Tom initially ventured into film when he became an investor in a feature length independent film, “Thunderstruck”, a detective film noir based in Massachusetts. In addition to his financial stake in the film, the director cast Tom into one of the roles. Gaining new knowledge from film production and life on the set was a complete departure from his education or work experience; subsequently the fires of creativity were ignited within.

Resolved to get his scripts produced, he began networking introductions to dozens of writers. Finally, he determined with great certainty that Rustam Branaman would be a perfect writing partner on the project he selected for his first complete foray into show business. Rustam began his career as an actor before transitioning into producing THE UPSTAIRS NEIGHBOR, a festival favorite which also went on to have a theatrical run followed by TOTAL FORCE with Tim Bottoms. As a result of its success the sequel TOTAL FORCE TWO was also produced. Another classic followed, HEADLESS BODY IN A TOPLESS BAR, a controversial but art house favorite. The film was picked up for theatrical distribution at the Seattle International Film Festival.

After reading stacks of writing samples from a host of potential partner candidates, Tom looked at Branaman’s IMDb page for a detailed review of his other credits and then flew to Los Angeles for a series of face to face creative meetings. Their meetings resulted in a signed contract and a plan to begin the process of rewriting one of Tom’s original scripts. Understanding that thrillers can be commercial worldwide, Tom focused on his script “Project Solitude” a psychological thriller set in a small college town where no one could imagine that anything could ever go wrong.

Tom and Rustam selected an obscure hotel in Hollywood where they would “hold up” for a week, only occasionally taking breaks for food and a couple of cigars. It was there that they mapped out a plan for their collaborative page one revision. By the end of the week, they established deepened professional, mutual respect, while crafting a new story outline and updated character summaries. Tom returned to Boston and Rustam began his work on the first draft revisions.

During their intensive week together, a great number of creative exchanges and numerous discussions ensued about how to handle transitions, script problems and resolutions. Theirs was a process of doing the compromise dance. In the end, allowing Rustam to lead Tom into territory he knew would bridge the project into a commercial zone, kept them within the budgets imposed by the producer. This was perhaps Tom’s most dramatic arc.

Within a year of Tom’s initially attending the NY film festival seminars, his film, “Project Solitude” has been set up to film in Wisconsin under a parthership with Pulse Studios in Green Bay. The script has been packaged, locations scouted and DP brought on board. Rustam has also been set to direct the film, a decision easily endorsed by Tom.

Perhaps the biggest lesson for Tom has been one of compromise, with a close second being his understanding that making films equates to making any other product. Without careful planning, adequate funding and knowledgeable partners, the odds against success are huge. With the proper tools in hand, no one can offer guarantees, but based on the outcome of his journey so far, Tom is convinced that working with experienced partners has proven his chances to have increased substantially. Tom has avoided with blender, forgoing a bloody experience in exchange for an investment into his future.

Who's Who In Solitude?

2008-10-28T21:48:00.000-07:00

Executive Producers: Jay Schillinger & Tom Hillery
Producer: Susan Kay Moses
Director: Rustam Branaman
Writers: Rustam Branaman & Tom Hillery
U.P.M.: Michelle Hammond
Casting Directors: Christine Joyce & Gerald I. Wolff - Los Angeles
Pulse Studios - Green Bay, WI (Local casting)
Art Director: Cyndee Sweetland
Location Manager: Matt Vaessen
Production Secretary: Ami Irmen

Start Date December 8th, 2008
Length: 18 days
Location: Wisconsin

For additional information contact Pulse Studios: Green Bay, WI 54303
Phone 920.857.9927 or FAX 920.857.3258

Press Inquires: Attention Bob Parker

Now Casting

2008-10-28T21:38:00.000-07:00

Project Solitude is currently being cast for lead and supporting lead roles by Big Bad Wolf Casting (Gerry Wolf and Christine Joyce)in Los Angeles, CA. Set to film in Wisconsin in December, local casting will be done by Pulse Studios in Green Bay, WI in two weeks.

The film is a psychological thriller set on a remote island.

STORY LINE: Seven subjects participating a paid psychological study in conflict resolution find themselves on a desert island for ten days, where their sense of isolation, terror and mutual increases as the dead body count rises...

Another Film Heads To Wisconsin

2008-10-28T20:31:00.000-07:00