Abbie at the Australian Museum!

Erin and I are thrilled to announce that "Abbie" has been selected to play in "The Best of Metro Screen" lineup at Jurassic Lounge on Tuesday 2nd August.

Jurassic Lounge is a fairly new Sydney event held each Tuesday evening at the Australian Musuem; combining art, music & 'new ideas.' A novel concept mixing the delights of booze & dinosaur bones!

"Abbie" will be debuting on the opening night of Jurrasic Lounge's second season - Tuesday 2nd August. So if you're free come along, grab a drink & we'll see you in the Short Film Screening Room!

Cost: $15 at the door [incl 1 Free Drink]
When: Tuesday 2nd August - 5.30pm to 9.30pm
Where: Australian Museum, 6 College Street, Sydney

www.jurassiclounge.com/aug-2-2011/

- Taylor

My Mother Her Daughter

Erin & I are thrilled to announce that we have begun work on a new project! This time our team is also joined with fellow film school graduate Chris Hogben. We're in the exciting first stages of development and would love for everyone to jump onboard early to stay in the loop.

You can find out information about our new film from the following places:

My Mother Her Daughter on Facebook

My Mother Her Daughter on Twitter

If you're able to, we would also greatly appreciate if you could support the project by donating to our Pozible project. The money we raise on this will help us pay for all of the costs we're incurring in the development stage:



Well that’s all for now. We hope the year so far has been lovely for all & hope to update you all soon with more exciting news :)

- Taylor

New Metro Screen Interview Online

Metro Screen have just released their latest online 'film maker's journal' video, featuring both Erin and I speaking about the making of "Abbie."

To see Metro Screen's previous videos featuring Erin being interviewed, take a look at our Press Page.

Second Screening for Abbie

On the 23rd of February, Metro Screen will be screening all of the first break funded films from 4pm-6pm at Chavuel Cinema. Come along if you missed out on the cast & crew screening of Abbie - or if you just want to see it again! Erin and I will be there celebrating the completion of all of the 2010 funded first break films & we'd love to see you!

Click here to see Metro Screen's eNews release & a list of the films playing.

Abbie Takes to the Skies!

Erin and I have been (not always so successfully) keeping a little secret. However it has become time to reveal that for the next two months if you're planning on traveling anywhere within Australia you can now treat yourself to a screening of "Abbie"!!

"Abbie" will be screening on QANTAS domestic flights throughout February and March in the following time slots:

31 Jan - 4 Feb: PM / 1 - 5pm

14 - 18 Feb: EVE / 5 - 11pm

21 - 25 Feb : PM / 1 - 5pm

28 Feb - 4 March: PM / 1 - 5pm

14 - 18 March: PM / 1 - 5pm

21 - 25 March: EVE / 5 - 11pm

28 Mar - 1 April: EVE / 5 - 11pm

We're both so excited, it's our first public screening of "Abbie" - let us know if you manage to catch it!

To see the full page press release - go to the press page.

- Taylor

Abbie - IMDB

Erin has been busy entering "Abbie" into a couple of international film festivals and we hope that within the next couple of months when the first round of results for these will be available we will be able to share some good news (fingers crossed.)

However in the meantime through entering these festivals "Abbie" has become eligible for an IMDB page! Follow the link below to check it out:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1787645/

- Taylor

Abbie - Trailer!

For those of you who haven't had a chance yet to see any of what we have been working on for the past year and a bit, here is your sneak peek to the film! Erin and I are both pleased to present the trailer of "Abbie"

- Taylor.

End of the Year for "ABBIE"

Erin and I have had a really busy couple of months since finishing the final deliverables of “Abbie” for Metro Screen. Here’s a quick update on some of the things we’ve been up to:

On the 11th Nov: I jetted over to NZ to watch my first short film “Driven” screen at the Show Me Shorts Film festival.

On the 29th Nov: Erin and I spoke on the Metro Screen panel at the AFTRS foundation industry day. It was great to meet everyone who came in for a private interview with us afterwards.

On the 4th Dec: We had our cast, crew, friends and family screening of “Abbie” at the Tap Gallery on Oxford Street. The night was such a reward after all the hard work that went into “Abbie.” Thank you to everyone for coming and showing your support!

On the 5th Dec: We were very excited to hear that our fabulous editor, Fiona Strain won a prestigious ASE award for her work on the television series “Whatever! The Science of Teens.” She was also nominated for in the short film category for “Driven.”

On the 16th Dec: We began work on the trailer for “Abbie” – we hope to have this available for public use early 2011. We’ll update the blog again when it’s ready!

During all this time, Erin has been busily sending screeners to short film festivals all across the globe, so fingers crossed we can have a confirmed international premier for “Abbie” by mid 2011.

Don’t stress if you can’t wait that long to see the film again! Metro Screen is still to announce their screening of “Abbie” at the Chauvel Cinema – predicted to be in mid January. Keep checking the blog for more details.

Until then, Merry Christmas! & Happy New Year!

- Taylor

Finished

Abbie is complete and whilst Tay is getting together all the deliverables to be handed over to Metro Screen this week, my mind has very quickly switched to the best part of making a film, the screening! We plan to have the screening followed by an afterparty in about a months time and we'll be inviting cast and crew, friends, investors and industry cohorts. If you're interested in coming please contact us.

- Erin

The finishing line is in sight!

The deadlines are encroaching! Animation has been composited, credits locked off, sound mix booked and the sound design and music are close to fully developed. The next to be booked in is the grade, of which I haven't thought about it a while, so the other day I watched the edit (for about the zillionth time) with the grade in mind. It was very exciting to revisit my initial ideas with an almost complete film and as each element develops in post my ideas and hopes for the film become increasingly tangible.

I can't wait to see it complete!

- Erin.

Lots of Exciting News - Animation

Animation has taken us through an interesting couple of weeks. We were so excited when Mark finished the Stop Motion paper man, who looked so great and was loved by our test audiences when we added him into the cut.

Irene has now finished the 2D animation for the credits, it looks really lovely, some examples of her tests for it can be seen on the Animation Page. We have now handed that over to Chris to composite.

Chris has already composited the Paper Man, which looks fantastic! Chris has now also agreed to work on the 3D Animation we’re sure he’ll do just as perfect a job as he’s been doing with his compositing.

Everything going to plan, we hope to have all the animation done to hand over to Geri and Chris within the next couple of weeks.

- Taylor.

Lots of Exciting News – Sound

Over the past few weeks, Erin and I have been very busy as we bring “Abbie” closer to it’s finish. Since our last post we have had several more rough-cut screenings before locking off the cut apart from the animation.

We were both very pleased that both Tony Vaccher and Geri Green liked the cut enough to attach themselves to Abbie. Yay! Tony to do the sound mix and Geri to be our Music Composer. Since that time we’ve had several sound meetings with Xavier and Geri, both of whom have had some really exciting ideas.

- Taylor

Sound Screening

On Wednesday evening we had our first sound screening with myself, Erin, Fiona (our editor) and Xavier (our sound designer) the evening was a really great opportunity for us to evaluate how much work we really have ahead of us, and it's a lot! Xavier is now going away to create a test scene of sound design and music composition so we can better determine how much time we need to spend in the sound design process. Realising all the possibilities we have with sound made the evening exciting yet simultaneously daunting. We have a lot of work ahead of us, but I am so grateful for the amazing ability Erin and I have harnessed by bringing both Xavier & Fiona on board on the project.

- Taylor.

1st Screening

Yesterday Erin and I had our first rough cut screening with our Editor Fiona Strain, our Executive Producer from Metro Screen David Opitz and a special guest Ian Brown from AFTRS.

The day went really well: David said it reaffirmed that he had made the right decision in choosing to give "Abbie" funding and Ian said it was a charming, sweet film, very slick. Aside from niceties, we had some really good constructive comments which are going to help us move forward in terms of refining the cut and the pace.

Bring on sound!

- Taylor.

THAT'S A WRAP!

2nd and final shoot day complete

We wrapped for the final time last night and I am so happy with what we have! Our actors, Jacinta and Franc were fantastic and the marvelous production design was certainly the talking point amongst extras.

Thank you so much to everyone involved, I couldn't have asked for a better team!

- Erin

1st Day Down, 1 More To Go

We concluded the first day of shooting for "Abbie" at 8.30pm yesterday night, amidst mixed feelings of exhaustion and exhilaration. I reviewed the rushes with the Editor and they look amazing! Time to start Day 2!

- Taylor.

Supporting Actor

We now have our supporting actor - Franc Violi who will be playing the role of The Boss! We had a number of people audition for the part many of whom were great but no one really stood out as being perfect for the role. We eventually came across Franc's showreel and called him in for an audition straight away. He impressed us immensely and we were very excited to cast him, so congratulations and welcome Franc.

We have Props!

Alison from our Art Department was recently working on a film which was shot in an abandoned building and she came across a room full of all these amazing props - perfect for our shoot! So we promptly organised to rescue them before the building was demolished. Even though there was a predicted cyclone, we braved the weather and recruited family and loved ones to help move.

Abbie is Cast

Congratulations to Jacinta Acevski our final decision for the lead character, Abbie. Auditions were a long and difficult process and many thanks has to go to all the girls who came along. It was a fun couple of days and ended up being a really hard decision making the final pick.

We are really excited to see what Jacinta will bring to the role and are looking forward to start rehearsals. For more information on Jacinta, go to our CAST page.