In Conversation with Michael Oblowitz Director of Confidential Informant
Confidential Informant stars Mel Gibson, Dominic Purcell, and Kate Bosworth
Here & Beyond
Date: 18th June 2019
Director: Colin West
Producer: Quinn Armstrong
Writer: Corey Aumiller, Colin West
Lead Cast: Sisa Grey, Christine Kellogg-Darrin, Greg Lucey
indieactivity: What is your film about?
Colin West: Here & Beyond is about a scientist who is diagnosed with a form of dementia and, with the help of his angsty teenage neighbor, attempts to use a time machine to relive his memories. This story was inspired by my relationship with my grandfather, Lyle. He spent the last thirty years of his life taking care of my grandmother, Marge, who suffered from Parkinson’s disease. Soon after she passed, signs of his memory-loss became evident and eventually he was diagnosed with dementia. He actually passed away a few months ago and this story is meant to be a kind of subjective look at what it might have been like to be in his shoes in his later years.
indieactivity: Tell us about the festival run, marketing and sales?
Colin West: The film has screened nationally at festivals including CINEQUEST, Boston Sci-Fi Film Festival, NewFilmmakers LA, and Other Worlds Austin where it was awarded Best Short Script. Soon it will be screening at the Miami Science Fiction Film Festival and we’re waiting to hear back from many others. We have recently started working with London Flair PR to rep the film, which has been very helpful in raising awareness and building a community. They’ve been great and have secured us interviews, reviews, and news spots on blogs and in local press. We’ve also been doing as much grassroots PR as possible, handing out promo cards at festivals and posting to social media. Every little bit helps.
indieactivity: Do fill in the ‘Dramatic Feature’ below?
- Director: Colin West
- Producers: Michael Orion Downing, Nick Benjamin, Quinn Armstrong
- Budget: $10k
- Financing: Annenberg Foundation
- Production: Los Angeles, CA
- Shooting Format: Arri Alexa Mini, 2K
- Screening Format: DCP
- World Premiere: Other Worlds Austin Film Festival
- Awards: Winner: Best Short Script, Other Worlds Austin Film Festival
- Website
indieactivity: Give the full Official Synopsis for your film?
Colin West: Here & Beyond centers on the relationship between a scientist who has just been diagnosed with dementia and his sassy teenage neighbour who, by the end, helps him through it. The scientist is a recent widow; his wife and former kids science TV show host suddenly passed away several months ago. Now a recluse, when he gets the news that he will be loosing his memories in the near future he sets out to rid his day-to-day life of anything that reminds him of her. The teenager sees him doing this and helps him out, coming across a strange machine in the garage: “Ruth’s secret project”. Eventually she discovers that it is a time machine the scientist’s wife had built but had never managed to get working. So the teenager sets off to find a way to turn it on and send him back. At its heart, it’s a kind of coming-of-age meets looming death story.
indieactivity: Development & Financing?
Colin West: I co-wrote Here & Beyond with my frequent writing collaborator, Corey Aumiller. You wouldn’t believe how many versions of this script there were… I’m almost embarrassed about it frankly. We spent a few months in the script phase trying to determine how far we wanted to push the time travel conceit. That was the main thing that took time; the kind of sci-fi vs reality aspect of it all. In the end, since we’d worked the script so much, there were many elements of the writing that sort of spoke to each other and overlapped.
This really helped when we got to the edit and wound up cross-cutting the climax of Here & Beyond. Those scenes ended up literally talking to each other. As far as financing, we were fortunate. This is my Master’s thesis film from the MFA program at USC. I was lucky enough to have been awarded with an Annenberg Scholarship, half of which was paid to me in cash, so I wound up just putting that right into this film. Probably not the best long-term choice… but I try not to think too far ahead. And honestly we were able to save a lot of money since most of the crew was using the film as their thesis as well and we could use much of the school equipment. I was lucky in that regard.
indieactivity: Production?
Colin West: Even though Here & Beyond was my MFA Thesis film and USC had a very defined schedule to follow (most thesis films take two semesters to complete), our team was determined to get the film done in just one so we really had to stick to a plan. We began production at the end of January and shot over the course of six days (two long weekends). We went right into the edit and had a first cut done about a month later. I’d already been in conversation with our prolific composer Mark Hadley. We had a great time coming up with the kind of TV show theme song and expanding upon that for the underscore of the rest of the film. It was all modular synth.
Soon after we started the edit I went off to Seattle to produce a feature film directed by my friend, Quinn Armstrong, for about 15 days. So.. things were a little (lotta) crazy. My incredible editor, Alejandro Marquez Vela, would send me cuts and I’d give him notes at like 2AM. When I got back I was able to edit in the room with him and we got the final cut done a few weeks following that. Concurrently we had a bunch of stop-motion animated scenes I was creating in a closet in my apartment at night when I was not in the editing bay with my editor during the day. It was then off to sound and color correction concurrently as my editor (and now post-production supervisor) was working to find a way to stitch together the animation with the production footage, VFX, and titles.
Our color grading was done by our DP, Fei Tang. She knocked it out of the park in every way. Santiago Rodriguez Herran was our sound designer and I remember being absolutely floored when he played the sound he’d created of the time machine firing up. I was like “play it again!” We had a good time in the mix stage, staying way later than we were allowed to, and had some champagne when we did the final export. We had our final DCP ready by May 1st. It was a tight schedule, but it kept us motivated, passionate, and the end was always in sight.
indieactivity: Festival Preparation & Strategy?
Colin West: Being that the film has a sci fi tinge, our festival plan was to focus mainly on genre festivals. We ended up submitting to the early deadline for most festivals and this of course meant we had to wait 6-9 months to begin hearing back. But it also meant we could afford to submit to more festivals and get on the minds of programmers early in the process. I was thrilled to premiere in December at the Other Worlds Austin Film Festival and was happy to have won the Best Short Script award there. Our festival run is now gaining momentum and after Cinequest, one of the largest festivals we’ve screened in to date, we’ve partnered up with our publicist, London Flair PR, to try to keep the momentum going.
indieactivity: The Release?
Colin West: The film is yet to be released widely, but we’ve got a secret plan for that…
indieactivity: Advice from the Filmmaker?
Colin West: Getting into this industry is all about hard work, perseverance, and a good attitude. It has far less to do with what you know at the beginning than your attitude about the whole thing. I’d say as an aspiring writer/director you should be out there making films, no matter the budget, and being involved in filmmaking in any way you can. I would also recommend heading to the library and watching every movie they have there. Streaming platforms, while great, have a very limited and specific kind of film they like distributing and as a filmmaker, especially a young one, I think consuming as many art-house and foreign films as possible will help you expand your view of what film is and can be.
