A Case Study
Narrative | Dramatic Features
Film Name: Into the Valli
Genre: Drama
Length of film: 76 Minutes
Date: 2018
Director: Pat Bradley & Nick Buscarino
Producer: Producer: Nick Buscarino, Melissa Morse & Vincent Steves
Executive & Creative Producer: Pat Bradley
Writer: Pat Bradley & Nick Buscarino
Cinematographer: Christopher Lind
Editor: Brian Dors
Composer: Samantha Rose
Production Company: Always Write Productions & Lead-Based Productions
Budget: $30k
Financing: Self
Shooting Format: 4K S35 R3DCODE RAW
Screening Format: 16:9
World Premiere: New York Festival of Cinema
Awards: Multiple Best Director, Best Actor, Best Editing, and Best Ensemble Cast
Website: WWW.INTOTHEVALLIFILM.COM
Watch The Official Trailer for Into the Valli directed by Pat Bradley & Nick Buscarino
indieactivity: What is your film about?
Pat Bradley (PB): Into the Valli is an onion of a film. It starts out as the story of a man whose underlying obsession with an iconic singer interferes with the normal, mundane life that he lives and quickly peels back layers revealing deeper meanings for every action he takes.
Tell us about the festival run, marketing, and sales?
Pat Bradley (PB): We’ve had a rough early festival run. We finished the film in early 2018. Submitted to a few festivals and didn’t get into any. We needed more input from those that weren’t involved in the film so we had a private screening in which we received tons of positive and negative feedback from our guests.
This brought us back into the editing room for some slight alterations after seeing very similar feedback from a high percentage of viewers. We tested the waters with the newer version of the film in 2019, and it did significantly better. Scoring more selections, nominations, and eventually, we started winning some different categories.
We have yet to market or sell the film; however, we’re currently weighing a few offers and deciding on the best move to make for the film.
Give the full Official Synopsis for your film?
Pat Bradley (PB): An official synopsis is a little tough for me without giving so much away. A large portion of the film is beneath the surface but…
Chris Parella is a mentally ill and flawed man, a half-assed father, a terrible husband, a horrible friend, and an even worse singer who is struggling to find his place in the world. Damaging anything and anyone he comes into contact with; he begins to isolate himself, focusing on his one true obsession.
Slowing him down from reaching his goal of winning his local karaoke competition is not possessing any actual talent or skill; however that doesn’t stop him one bit; in fact, he doubles down on his preoccupation. Realizing that what he needs in his self-ruined, could have been, potentially perfect adult life is, struggle, pain, and heartbreak. Going deeper into isolation and his infatuation with Frankie Valli he attempts to model his own life after his, even if it means manufacturing death.
Development & Financing?
Pat Bradley (PB): Into the Valli began as a one-scene short film. My partner on the film Nick Buscarino came up with the concept for the short film on one of his long drives home from school. He pitched me his idea and then wrote an 8-page short.
We felt it needed expansion to hit as hard as he pitched it, so we partnered up to write a longer version of it. Stuck with opposing viewpoints on how to tackle the character of Chris/Frankie; we decided to write two separate features and conjoin the best parts of each. When both our versions were complete, we sat and picked through them to form the final script.
Once we agreed on our story, I started pitching to a few investors. After a few meetings, we decided that the money we would receive didn’t outweigh the control we would lose, so we funded the film ourselves. In hindsight, money for investors would have allowed us to find a new location to film the much-needed large chunk of emotional scenes that we had to cut.
Production?
Pat Bradley (PB): I’ll have to take a long breath for this one… after finalizing our script and our character traits/values/beliefs we started to budget the film to the best of our ability. We sent the script in for some coverage and got great feedback in return. We decided to cut some scenes from the film so we would be able to afford to produce the project ourselves.
Once we had our final line budget, we started with the cast. For the role of Chris/Frankie we pitched a few “named” actors who all passed due to the subject matter, which gave us a little hesitation in producing the film. We pushed on. Using backstage.com we held auditions in Manhattan over a full weekend. We held callbacks and the second round of auditions two weeks later, followed by another round of callbacks and the third round of auditions.
After finalizing our cast, Nick was doing the location scouting and I was in charge of finding the crew.
Finding the crew seemed a little too easy at first. I posted an ad for the crew on Facebook film groups & Craigslist, asked some local filmmakers whom I wrote for previously for recommendations all while searching Mandy.com as well. We locked in our Sound Recordist early, as he worked on our “practice short” earlier in the year with us. Everything fell into place quickly… AND then it all fell apart. The DP that we hired, decided to back out on us 16 days before we were to begin shooting after he was offered his “dream job” in another country. With him backing out, he was also taking his crew which consisted of a gaffer, grip, makeup, and an AC. He was able to give me the contact info of our DP who we hired after just seeing his reel and a phone call. The DP wanted to bring his own crew; which saved us tremendously. I wound up finding a great makeup guy via personal recommendations. Without the crew we ended up with, I don’t think we would have had THIS particular film. It would have definitely been something different, and I’m glad.
For locations, the indoor scenes, we looked through SetScouter.com and quickly realized it was significantly out of our budget, improvising we decided to check Airbnb. He found a place for the family’s home that we agreed on and messaged them directly. He explained exactly what we were doing and the owners agreed to allow us. We had them sign a location release form and that was locked in for four days. Next, Nick set out to find Chris’s go-to karaoke bar. With Nick living on Long Island, there were plenty of those close to him that he was able to scout. He found a local bar that does live music and would allow us to shoot there for 4 hours in the morning before they open and then another two hours while they were open for business in the evening. After locking that down, we searched the areas for out-of-the-way places we could shoot where there weren’t many people, making notes of traffic during different times of the day. Once all the locations were locked in, we moved on to the paperwork.
The last obstacle in our way was Nick’s job. His time off was denied just a mere few days before shooting. He wound up quitting his job so he was able to come on set.
Unlike the casting and most of the pre-production process, production went very smoothly. We shot the entire film, in eight consecutive days + one day months later. Most of the film takes place indoors, but the few outdoor scenes, we shot on day one and it was extremely cold & very windy. The cast/crew was rotating in and out of running cars with the heat on. The wind forced us to actually redo 90% of the dialogue in ADR during post, thankfully day one was the only bad day.
The only significant events that happened during principal photography were some of the cast members were no-shows and we had to make last-minute arrangements. The person playing our drug dealer “Ronnie” was the film’s makeup artist. The guy hired for the role never showed up, and he volunteered. The same went for Cheri’s father, except that he canceled two days prior so we had time to find a replacement.
Ohh and one cool thing that happened was… in filming the cemetery scene, we had to rush in and rush out guerilla-style, we magically found a tree that already had “FRANKIE” deeply carved into a tree just randomly in the cemetery. We shot that, using that moment as Chris’s reverse metamorphosis into Frankie. It was either pure luck or the indie film gods looking down upon us.
After we wrapped, we had a long editing process ahead of us. Our editor said he would help us with the rate if he was able to take his time and do it during his downtime and in between other gigs. His normal rate was significantly out of budget range so this was a no-brainer to us. After he sent the rough cut, instead of going back and forth with time stamps and compressed versions, we decided to just meet up and go over it live and continue this again and again until it was done. I was home for three months after surgery, so I wound up driving 45 miles to his house 2-3 times a week to look at overdrafts.
Finally. we ended up with a 66-minute film that we had no idea what to do with. We already had to cut a huge emotional chunk of the film out because of a personal family issue of mine. So we weren’t sure how to proceed. We took some time and tried to cut it down to a 22 minute short and it was really BAD. We ultimately decided to save up for another few months while we wrote some scenes to add time. During that time, some of the casts’ looks changed, some moved out of state, so we wound up writing just flashbacks and casting all new actors and actresses. This allowed us to shoot one more day and get the final runtime to 75 minutes.
Once we wrapped the flashback scenes, we had to fit them into the story, visually. The early flashback scenes were written as a new opening so that was easy. The middle flashbacks were a little tough to find the proper spots for. I wanted to find the exact look on Chris’s face, along with previous lines of dialogue that could be a setup for the flashback. It was a very specific combination I was looking for of where to cut to them. It took about a week but we found the exact moments that worked perfectly.
After that, we had a night of ADR and music placement. We used a private screening at a theater on Long Island as a viewing & makeshift focus group which helped finalize our film.
Festival Preparation & Strategy?
Pat Bradley (PB): Like everything else for the film, our preparation was research and just asking other filmmakers. At this point, we were technically first-time filmmakers. I have solely been a writer since 2003 and Nick was a student, so we had to adopt the learn as we go strategy. This was our first foray into the film “business”, so we had no real strategy going into festivals a.k.a. just submit!.
Luckily, a curator from one of the first festivals that we applied to (which was a top-tier festival) actually called me after we received their rejection letter. She spoke to me for over an hour about our film and how it would do on the festival circuit. She enjoyed the film a lot but it wasn’t the type of film that would ever play in their festival without a name attached. She also advised me on how to research festivals that would fit our film and not vice versa because she didn’t want to see if die on the vine. She said this was due to the nature and tone of the film; which after we applied her advice, it worked out extremely well for Into the Valli.
The Release?
Pat Bradley (PB): We will be releasing the film for free via Youtube on March 25th, 2022 @ 8:30 PM Eastern Time
Advice from the Filmmaker?
Pat Bradley (PB): Unfortunately, I’m not sure I have any real one size fits all beneficial advice to offer. Different purposes and goals for creating a film all would differ in the advice I could offer. Gun to my head and I have to give some… I’d say whatever genre & budget film you’re going to make, find other indie filmmakers in that same range, take them out for coffee/lunch and pick their brain if they’re willing, you will learn more from that small meeting than whatever you’ll learn from research.
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