Today shooting will officially commence on the new feature film Presque Isle. To hear more about the project we'll give the keyboard over to the erudite author himself, Rob.
M.E.K.
PRESQUE ISLE, a screenplay I wrote several years ago, has become a co-production between our new production entity Citizen’s Cinema, and the San Francisco School of Digital Filmmaking. Set on a remote island on a lake in Northern Wisconsin, PRESQUE ISLE will be shot on forest and lake locations in the Santa Cruz Mountains. A man returns to the island summer cabin paradise of his youth. The place is now abandoned but the memories, dreams and fantasies of deceased ancestors, current friends and ex- lovers seem to inhabit the untouched forest, long ago preserved as a sanctuary by his grandparents. A man who has lost his way in modern urban culture, now seeks it again in a place which seems untouched by time and progress.
This story came to me unbidden, almost like a poem. It appeared and I wrote it down. I trusted it because it seemed like automatic writing, a gift from the Slipstream. I’m going to take on this complex and challenging film in collaboration with the San Francisco School of Digital Filmmaking run by Jeremiah Birnbaum and Stephen Kopels and the Pixel Corps, an international Computer Graphics Guild headed up by Alex Lindsay, an ex ILM honcho. I think with these collaborators we can make a unique amalgam of pre-conception, computer magic and Direct Action spontaneity. Both Chikara Motomura (Sound) and Michael Edo Keane (Co-producer), principals in our new Citizens Cinema venture will play prominent roles in the production, and longtime friend and fellow traveler, Mickey Freeman, will be the Director of Photography. Filmmaker James Savoca will co-produce and Nancy Hayes Casting has led the way in finding local actors. Lead players are Kieron McCartney, (also lead in the 9 @ Night production PAN and a character in the 9 @ Night films USED and GO TOGETHER), his wife Kara McCartney and Robert Viharo long time friend and featured player in almost all of the 9 @ Night films.
We are about to dive into a chasm of mutual imagining and collaborative effort to make something emerge on a bright screen, somehow on some small someday out there somewhere, where we hope it will thrill some, outrage others, and make the sun burnt souls we seek feel a little less lonely.
R.N.
