The trio behind the new Â鶹´«Ã½Ó³»based Production Company Sociable Films actors Nicholas Carella (Harpers Island) and Ali Liebert (Bomb Girls), and director Michelle Ouellet - started with a simple notion. We wanted the types of roles that we just werent getting Liebert explained, and we really wanted to work with our friends. Ouellet adds so youve got to try and make your own work, especially when it comes to directing.
We started about a year ago, Liebert notes, [but] Ive been away from Â鶹´«Ã½Ó³»[doing Bomb Girls], and Michelle and Nicholas live here, so we had Skype meetings every Saturday for over a year. They agreed that they wanted to not only make movies, but to create a humanist filmmaking process that engaged others in the industry, hence their tagline Making movies sociably.
We want to support other filmmakers and nurture talent, a sort of collective style of filmmaking, Ouelett offers, we want to put it out there if youre doing a film and need help Ill come out and do craft services on your film. This will help promote a sense of community; well all rise and be successful if we help each other out. After acquiring several stories everything began to fall into place; the rapid transition from vision to reality surprised even them.
We had our launch party on May 5th and After Party our improvised feature [about a group of friends coming together for a wedding] came to life; it was crazy how fast it came together, Liebert says. They also found themselves in the enviable position of not only having secured funding (the stars just aligned) prior to filming theyve also inked a distribution deal with Breakthrough Entertainment, eliminating the bugbears that can often hamstring a production. So, after four weeks of pre-production madness they started filming.
But as theyre learning, improvisational filmmaking is not without its own unique challenges. We spent a lot of time meeting about these characters, so we had a framework and know what were shooting but we dont exactly whats going to come across, Ouellet concedes. In addition to shooting multiple takes to provide a slice of life for the characters Ouellet came up with a unique solution to flesh out the characters I told a couple of the actors to just take the piss out of the other actors to get some genuine reactions, and we did an improvised dinner where everyone came in character.
And the spirit of their vision seems to be taking hold, Everyone working on the film [After Party] has been so positive about pitching in to help with all the work, Liebert notes, and she positively beams when she adds that One of my best friends came on [the project] and it was great to just say I have a great role for you and if you want it, its yours.
