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Status: The Drawing premiered at NewFest in June.  More festival dates and DVD’s coming soon.

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Trailer: Watch it here.

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Length: 7 minutes

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About the project: When two young brothers are left home alone, they have to navigate their complex relationship over the course of one afternoon.

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In August 2009 Cinereach selected The Drawing as one of the four films to be developed and produced as part of the Reach Film Fellowship.  In addition to funding the project, the Fellowship paired Gabriel with mentor Laurie Collyer, (SherryBaby, Nuyorican Dream), and held a series of workshops and feedback sessions with directors, producers, editors and others who have established careers in independent film.  The Drawing was filmed over two days in mid-November.

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Cast:

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Diogo Taveira (Joe Mayfair)

Diogo was born in Coimbra, Portugal and came to the US in 2003.  He is in 5th grade and enjoys soccer and taekwondo.  He also loves to draw monsters and superheroes and recently he began writing short stories about his drawings.  His performance in The Drawing garnered special praise from Still in Motion: “…this kid has major screen presence and was a sharp casting choice by Long.”

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Jonathan Watts (Nathan Mayfair)

Jonathan is 13 years old and has been acting in radio and TV commercials since he was 8.  He lives in suburban Philadelphia, PA where he is in 8^th grade.  He plays the cello, is on the football team and loves playing Xbox with his friends.

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Charles Goforth (Neil Mayfair)

Charles has been an actor and acting teacher in New York City for many years.  He currently teaches at the LAByrinth Theater Company.

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Filmmakers:

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Gabriel Long (writer, producer, director), full bio here.

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Nicole Karczewski (producer, assistant director) has produced non-fiction work for Discovery/TLC and WNET/thirteen, as well as several independent documentaries. In narrative film, she has produced a number of independent projects, most notably the feature film Buick Rivera-an international co-production and winner of the Heart of Sarajevo Award. Prior to focusing on film & television production, Nicole taught Digital Storytelling at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image, and worked for 3 years at the Margaret Mead Film & Video Festival at the American Museum of Natural History. She studied Anthropology and Media as an undergraduate at New York University, and has a MA in Cinema Studies from the University of Melbourne, Australia.

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Erik Sorensen (producer) is a recent initiate into the film world.  He spent several years in various areas of the music industry, working in radio, artist management, music licensing, and audio engineering.  While working for Sean “Puffy” Combs’s Bad Boy Entertainment label, he worked alongside the A&R department and studio staff on Grammy award winning album projects for acts such as Mary J Blige, Jay Z, and Britney Spears and others.  Currently he works for Martin Scorsese’s Sikelia Productions.

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Benjamin Conley (director of photography) is a producer, partner, and director of photography, at Conley Brothers Productions.  The company’s first feature film, ‘Colin Hearts Kay’, will be hitting the festival circuit in 2010.  Ben shot and produced web episodes for Condé Nast’s blog network in 2008, including the online episodic ‘Pretty Imperfect’ and the online talk show ‘The Daily Special.’  The latter show received an honorable mention nod at the 2008 Webby Awards.  In 2008, he was also on location in Indonesia for ABC News shooting a story about the devastating earthquakes in that region.  While in film class at UCLA, Ben wrote, directed, edited and produced his first short film, ‘Taken’, in 2007.  A native Californian, Ben attended UC Berkeley.

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Yvette Granata (production designer) is a production designer who lives in Brooklyn.  She graduated from the University of Michigan where she studied literature and the narrative form. After moving to New York in 2005, she became involved in filmmaking and has since worked in TV, music videos, shorts, and feature films.  Yvette is mainly interested in the process of narrative storytelling, the interpretation of our visual experience, and in collaborating with others on creative and innovative projects.

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Amy Boyd (hair, make-up, costume) is a professional makeup artist working out of New York City. She enjoys all aspects of makeup and has worked on various films, plays, and fashion projects. Her repertoire includes Mercedes-Benz fashion week, print, and old age and gore special effects.

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Rob Cristiano (assistant camera) was born and raised in Brooklyn, NY but lost his accent during four studious years at Boston College.  In five years as a producer/editor at MTV Networks, he worked on more than 15 DVD releases ranging from The Hills to The State. Rob previously collaborated with Gabriel Long and Ben Conley on the indie feature film Colin Hearts Kay.  He currently freelances as a crew member on various productions, edits music videos, and lives with his very own brother.  You can sample Rob’s portfolio and learn more about him at: http://CargoCollective.com/RobCristiano

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Maki Takenouchi (associate producer, graphics) is a Production Designer based in New York City.  Professional set design work for advertising campaigns include Urban Outfitters, Target, Keds, and Kohler.  Prop styling credits include Vogue, Town & Country, and the New York Times Magazine.  Maki recently designed both the sets and costumes for Chuck.Chuck.Chuck., which was awarded a Bel Geddes grant for Production Design.  She is the 2009 recipient of the Made-in-NY Mentorship Program for Production Design in film, and is currently mentored by Production Designers Mark Friedberg and Debbie De Villa.  She has a BA in Fine Arts from Yale University.

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Director’s notes:

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In one of our early meetings, my Fellowship mentor Laurie Collyer said that a short film should be approached like an experiment.  She told me, “Make your mistakes now,” when there are none of the financial obligations and other pressures that come with making a feature film.

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I made my fair share of mistakes writing and directing The Drawing, and learned a tremendous amount as a result.  Most importantly, I learned about the need for clarity.  The story behind The Drawing began with an image: an angry father looming over his two young boys, threatening them from across a table.  That was enough to inspire a first draft, and from there I began revising. Five or six drafts later, the dialogue was tight and the story moved smoothly, but I got the sense from people who read it that it could be better.

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With a little prodding from Laurie and the Cinereach staff, I sat down to address some important questions I had been avoiding during my revision process:  What is this story fundamentally about?  How am I connected to it?  Why is it important to me?

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I don’t have siblings, and I’ve never found myself in the kind of situation depicted by that original image, but as I answered those
questions, the themes of loyalty and manhood emerged.  When I revised the script with these in mind,  a more thematically focused draft emerged.

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Because The Drawing only had two main characters and one location (in contrast to the last short I made, which was much larger in scope), my crew and I were able to take the time to achieve clarity with how we were visually telling the story.  One example occurred at the end of the first day as we were rushing to get a shot of the father arriving home.  During pre-production, I had discussed the story at length with my director of photography, Ben Conley.  When we were shooting, he had a good sense of what I was going for beyond simply what was in the script.  For the shot of the father, Ben made a last minute suggestion to have the bat, (a prop that is central to the story), in the foreground. This shot turned out to be the best in the film because it clearly evokes the films central theme while powerfully rendering the action.

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The editing process also reinforced the importance of clarity.  In showing the film, getting feedback, and re-cutting I found that the moments people reacted to most were the ones where the action was illustrated clearly.  Where the film seemed weak, it was generally a result of muddled storytelling.

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I’m proud of the completed film, glad to have learned from my mistakes and successes, and eager to make the next one.

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Production notes:

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Schedule:

2 days of principal photography, 1 day of pickups (no cast)

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Crew:

director, 2 producers, cinematographer, gaffer, assistant camera, production designer, sound recordist, hair/make-up/wardrobe, production assistant; art director and set dresser helped prepare the set before the shoot, but weren’t on set during production

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Camera:

Canon 5D and 7D with 24mm, 50mm, and 85mm Canon prime lenses;  24-70mm and 70-200mm Canon zoom lenses

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Lighting:

Joker 400 HMI, lots of china balls, and practicals with 200 watt bulbs

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Sound:

Sound Devices 744T Recorder and 442 Mixer, Lectrosonics wireless mics, and Neumann KMR 81 boom mic; Zoom H4n with Sennheiser boom mic for audio pickups

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Post-production:

Edited on Final Cut Pro, mixed using Pro Tools