Narrative | Dramatic Features
Film Name: Deathless (short)
Genre: Thriller
Date: 2020
Director: Katie Carpenter & Jenna Kanell
Producer: Kevin Welch
Executive Producer: Nelson Cruz
Writer: Chris Gervais
Cinematographer: Brett Mullen
Composer: Name
Production Company: Cinebite Media Inc.
Budget: $10k
Financing: Self-financed
Shooting Format: RED
Screening Format: 19:9
World Premiere: Underground Indie Film Festival
Awards: 7+
– Best Actor Alex Collins (Trapped Film Festival)
– Best Production Design Jackson Butler (Trapped Film Festival)
– Best Screenplay Chris Gervais, (Trapped Film Festival)
– Best Cinematography Brett Mullen (Trapped Film Festival)
– Best Picture 2nd Place (Trapped Film Festival)
– Best Indie Short (Underground Indie Film Festival)
– Schrader Ray Storytelling Award (Sozo Bear Presents A Night At The Movies Online!)
Website
indieactivity: What is your film about?
Katie Carpenter & Jenna Kanell: Deathless is a world that’s in the present day, but 30 years after everyone stops aging, dying, and getting pregnant. Everything freezes. Which creates a Wild West of sorts, where some people find pleasure in the small things, and others ruthlessly take what they wish with no consequences. Without fear of God, how do people truly act? Ultimately, Deathless is an exercise in morals, and what choices people make when they have all the time in the world to live with them.
Tell us about the festival run, marketing, and sales?
Katie Carpenter & Jenna Kanell: We’ve been fortunate to show at 7 festivals around the country this year, our main PR push has been through FilmFreeway and Facebook.
Give the full Official Synopsis for your film?
Katie Carpenter & Jenna Kanell: Three thieves descend on a farm in search of “The Living Sisters,” twin girls and the only human births since “The Crash,” a day when people stopped dying, growing, or getting pregnant. The twins are sought after by a King who collects all things rare in a chaotic world of people without mortal consequence.
Led by Bill Black, the thieves pose as needy travelers to gain entrance to the compound and speak with the family about the famous sisters. Their father, Andrel, reveals the girls were born but they were true mortals and died as toddlers. Bill accuses him of lying and threatens to blow the entire house up with dynamite, killing the girls if they’re hiding and leaving everyone else with months of painful “regeneration.”
Development & Financing?
Katie Carpenter & Jenna Kanell: This short is actually part of a larger feature script that we are currently developing into a feature length live action and an animated series. We’ve been working on the short, feature and series for about two years at this point. Deathless is such a rich and deep universe that the writer, Chris Gervais, has created. We really struggled in the best way to approach the short and ended up deciding to do a piece that could play as the opening to the larger story. Introducing characters and trying to create easy to understand impacts on the audience is really important in short form productions so I like to think we pulled that off. Katie and Kevin split the cost of the production with our EP Nelson Cruz to come up with the funding and then we called in every favor we had to crew up. We are lucky to have very talented friends and a strong story and vision that lead to others wanting to be involved.
Production?
Katie Carpenter & Jenna Kanell: Kevin is a DGA 1st AD as well as a Line Producer/UPM so he took the script and created all the scheduling breakdowns as well as helped figure out insurance, paperwork releases, crewing up, rentals, etc. So once the script was finished he got started on the schedule and Katie and Nelson went to work casting. Then the biggest piece of the puzzle was the location and the look. We knew we needed something that we could pass off as a somewhat post-apocalyptic compound and just stumbled upon Mark McJunkin on Facebook who is now a great friend.
He has a property outside of the city he’s been working on fixing up and it was a great starting point. Over the course of about a month, we would work on weekends building and dressing the sets until we had what you see in the film. Also, it rained the entire shoot, at the time it was awful but it gives the film a great look and really grounded it into more of a real-world feeling. Lastly, the edit proved to be a bear, we went back and forth on multiple different ways it could go and ultimately landed on a version where beats were played out and space was added to try and give the audience time to breathe in the midst of the chaos.
Festival Preparation & Strategy?
Katie Carpenter & Jenna Kanell: We talked to friends and fellow filmmakers about their experiences at festivals and tried to prioritize the ones they raved about. We also made a spreadsheet with festivals we were interested in, deadlines and dates, etc since our team is on two different coasts.
The Release?
Katie Carpenter & Jenna Kanell: The film has not been widely released yet, we are waiting for our 2020 festival run to be over and then will likely release on Vimeo and YouTube.
Advice from the Filmmaker?
Katie Carpenter & Jenna Kanell: Go for it! We tend to get in our own way a lot of the time as filmmakers trying to tackle everything at once. Come up with a story you are passionate about and can get other people passionate as well. If you don’t have a lot of money, find a lot of time and work at it and just chip away. And go work for free for other people you respect and want to work with because when it comes time you are going to need a lot of favors of your own! Lastly write with what you have in mind, if you have access to something incorporate that into the story to build production value. Lastly Lastly… Have Fun! It’s stressful creating content but it’s important to step back every now and then and remember how lucky you are and how fun it is to make movies 🙂
Tell us what you think of Deathless What do you think of it? Genre? More genre? Let’s have your comments below and/or on Facebook or Instagram! Or join me on Twitter.
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