Thursday, August 1, 2013
Sunday, July 28, 2013
Searching For Ben Affleck
Searching For Ben Affleck
My name is Anthony Terracciano, I'm in the movie Argo, if you've seen it, you've seen me but my name isn't on my performance. Nobody knows it's me because Argo didn't give me a credit at the end of the film, not only that, IMDb won't recognize me for my work in Argo, they won't even list me as an "uncredited" actor in the film. That is why I set out to make this film, I believe Ben Affleck is a good person and when he is made aware of this small injustice that he will intervene and help me get the credit I deserve on IMDb. My friends and I went everywhere trying to get this interview with Ben, we went to movie premieres, parties, restaurants, etc..All in hopes of talking with Ben or meeting someone who will help us get closer to reaching Ben and talking with him about this injustice. As an interesting side-note, not only am I not credited for my performance, I helped choreograph and improvise the scene with Ben Affleck, we rehearsed it four times and got it in three takes. You know, I worked 12 hours on the film Argo that day and I made less than $100, I don't get any residual checks and no one knows it's me. This is a true injustice in the world of Hollywood movie making and when I get my interview with Ben Affleck we will see how he reacts, will he help me get my well deserved credit? Will he not care? Watch the film and find out.
Thank you for your support!!
Wednesday, April 3, 2013
Exclusive Interview with Executive Producer Antonio Racciano
NEW RELEASE: August 12, 2012
Mostly Infamous (2012) Written/Directed by Anthony Terracciano
A behind the scenes and candid look into the real lives of Rock 'n Roll Groupies. Inspired by Cameron Crowe's brilliant film Almost Famous, we see what it is really like for these girls who are the muse and inspiration to some of the greatest music ever written.
We have an exclusive interview with the Executive Producer of the film Antonio Racciano.
Me: I have really been looking forward to this release. Did you enjoy making the film?
Antonio Racciano: We had a good time making it, everything went really well on this one, not too many problems to contend with.
Me: What's amazing to me is that you always and I mean always come in on schedule and under budget. How are you able to do that?
Antonio: Planning, planning and more planning. Murphy's Law is always a factor and we are completely aware of that fact. When things go wrong and something always does we just work around it, go through it, under it, over it, whatever the obstacle. Basically we're just a bunch of really creative guys and we're good at brainstorming solutions on the set.
Me: What's the new film about?
Antonio: It's about the real lives of Rock 'n Roll groupies. Almost Famous by Cameron Crowe, is a true masterpiece of filmmaking in my opinion. I always wondered what that life was really like.
Me: You didn't Direct this one, why?
Antonio: I've decided to spend the majority of my time developing projects and taking on the role of Executive Producer. We have a new, incredibly talented Director in Anthony Terracciano, who has taken on this project with great vision, I'm really proud of this film and Anthony did an amazing job.
Me: The last time we ran into each other was at Telluride, with your showing of "Their Unique Journey Inside Hollywood", that film was well received critically but hasn't reached the masses, why do you think that is?
Antonio: It all comes down to Distribution and Marketing. We are in the process of finding a Distribution partner. We want to partner with Miramax, I am a great admirer of Bob and Harvey Weinstein and have been for years. I think Harvey is a genius, in every sense of the word.
Me: Why do you think Harvey is a genius?
Antonio: Honestly, I could go on and on but for one, he's a brilliant Editor and he has a good eye for what should be on the screen. Harvey and Bob are both incredibly talented in what they do, their track history speaks for itself and that is why we want to partner with them.
Me: What are you working on next?
Antonio: We have just finished "Mostly Infamous" and we're working on getting the film out there for people to see. Anthony is in pre-production on Doorstown, a documentary on Jim Morrison and The Doors. We have an interesting cast for that one, Anthony has already done interviews with Oliver Stone and Ray Manzarek.
Me: Will you be in the editing room with Anthony for that one?
Antonio: Yes, always... In post-production I practically live in the editing room. I absolutely love that part of the process, it is truly where the magic happens.
Me: Thank you for taking the time to sit down with me for the interview, it is always a pleasure.
Antonio: Thank you.
Here is a link to watch Mostly Famous by Antonio Racciano Productions https://sites.google.com/site/antonioraccianoproductions/
Tuesday, March 26, 2013
lumnus stars in independent movie to be released in early April
Alumnus stars in independent movie to be released in early April
An alumnus who once studied human interactions and abnormalities at Ithaca College has now switched his dream to acting. Daniel Dambroff ’09 will star in an indie film called “Brilliant Mistakes.” It is set for DVD release April 9 and will air on TV sometime in the spring. The Rhode Island International Film Festival and Toronto Independent Film Festival have picked up the film, which finished shooting in Connecticut in 2011.
Accent Editor Jackie Eisenberg talked with Dambroff about the film, his time at Ithaca College and his goals as an actor.
Jackie Eisenberg: Tell me about this movie. What is it about?
Daniel Dambroff: The name of the movie is “Brilliant Mistakes.” In a sense, it’s a love story between the character that I play, his name is Marcus Wright, and his girlfriend, Gabby, and he basically has plans to marry her one day and the whole big picture. Before he can do so, she is involved in a car accident that puts her into a physically debilitating state, and she is unable to speak or walk. My character’s core principle is loyalty and fulfilling your work, and so the movie is essentially the course of him trying to fulfill his promise to her of one day marrying her.
JE: How did you get involved with this film?
DD: I went to an open call that was being held in New Haven, Connecticut. I showed up at 11 o’clock or so, and I didn’t get seen until about six, so I waited about seven hours. So it was pretty brutal. I just attended the open call, and I auditioned, and the rest is history, as they say.
JE: You weren’t an acting major, right? You were a psychology major.
DD: Indeed I was. I did exploratory for my whole freshman year and then I think half my sophomore year, and then I majored in psychology. I took a couple theater classes. I took Acting 1 and Acting 2, and I did Intro to Theater.
JE: What made you want to make this your full-time career?
DD: Well, basically I’ve always enjoyed performing, and I was in the coed a cappella group, IC Voicestream, and that kind of provided a creative outlet for me, and I think when I was at college, I was just thinking very practical, and I was just under the impression that going to school, I would do something that I could get sort of a concrete degree in and then after graduating, I kind of just sat back and I thought about what I really wanted to try and do with my life and what I was enjoying most, and I knew that if I didn’t ever try to pursue this, I would always regret it. So I’ve always had the desire, but it was only upon graduation that I was like, “I need to try this. I’m going to be upset if I never do.”
JE: Tell me about the Rhode Island and Toronto film festivals.
DD: We got into the Rhode Island International Film Festival, which was a lot of fun. It’s actually where we had our world premiere. We had about 400 people show up to that, which was really exciting to wear a suit and everything, so that was fun. We got into Toronto, but we got into the Toronto Independent Film Festival, which is very different from the Toronto International Film Festival, which is the one that is very well known.
JE: Are you looking to go more into film or television or do you want to pursue stage acting?
DD: I think that I definitely want to try to stay on this course of TV and film; it’s a really good outlet for exposure. So what I want to try to do is I want to continue on this course and hopefully get to the point that I can get a little bit of a name for myself, I can come back to try to get on the stage.
JE: What are your plans for the future?
DD: Well, I’m constantly auditioning and I’m constantly networking, and basically the [hope] is that this film gets seen by the public, which it will with the distribution deal, but the [hope] is that it gets some decent exposure for me and it can open other doors.
Will The “Veronica Mars” Kickstarter Revolutionize Indie Film?
Will The “Veronica Mars” Kickstarter Revolutionize Indie Film?
Crowdfunding has been a way of life for indie film for years, but with fractions of the $3.7 million (and counting) banked by Veronica Mars. Could indie films ever measure up?
Image by UPN; Jess Pinkham
It's been a week since Rob Thomas and Kristen Bell broke the internet with their Kickstarter campaign for a feature film version of Veronica Mars. In less than 24 hours, the film reached its $2 million goal, securing an unprecedented deal with Warner Bros. Digital for distribution, marketing, and promotion. Over the subsequent week, some 56,700 backers have donated a running total of $3.7 million to the effort — a rough average of $65.50 per donation — blasting past the previous Kickstarter record for a feature film project several times over. In just seven days, this plucky teenage gumshoe has managed to rewrite the rules for crowdfunding a movie production budget, causing many professionals in Hollywood to give sites like Kickstarter a serious new look.
The day the Veronica Mars Kickstarter campaign started, television producer Shawn Ryan tweeted, "Very interested to see how this Veronica Mars kickstarter goes. Could be a model for a Terriers wrap up film." Zachary Levi told Entertainment Weekly he was already contemplating a Kickstarter campaign for a Chuck feature film. Showrunner Bryan Fuller said to The Hollywood Reporter that he's nowseriously considering discussing with Warner Bros. how he could revive Pushing Daisies as a feature film, despite his reservations about the budget he would need. (On the other hand, Joss Whedon told BuzzFeed that, for now, a crowdfundedFirefly film is "a total non-Kickstarter for me.")
With the bright media spotlight so suddenly fixed on crowdfunding, it may surprise observers new to the phenomenon to learn that, before Ms. Mars and her Neptune, California, crew showed up to the party, Kickstarter had already successfully raised nearly $100 million for independent films. About 10% of the films at the Sundance Film Festival in 2012 and 2013 were funded via Kickstarter, as was the 2012 Oscar winner for Best Documentary Short, Inocente. For four years now, crowdfunding sites like Seed & Spark, Fractured Atlas, Indiegogo, and Kickstarter have been helping cash-strapped indie filmmakers build their production budgets, finish the final edits, and screen the finished films at festivals.
Most importantly, they've also connected filmmakers with their audiences in a profound way. "Almost as important as getting you funds, those sites build a community around your project," says writer-director Jonathan Lisecki, who raised roughly $30,000 for his delightful romantic comedy Gayby via Kickstarter and Fractured Atlas. "It creates a level of excitement and anticipation for your film, at least from the people who feel like they are a part of it."
And for many in the indie world, it's not nearly clear yet how Veronica Mars' runaway success with crowdfunding will affect this still-developing economic ecosystem.
Ava DuVernay on the set of Middle of Nowhere. Source: middlenowhere.com
"When I look at [Veronica Mars on Kickstarter], I can only think, Oh, good for them, but it has nothing to do with me," says Ava DuVernay, writer-director of the 2012 indie darling Middle of Nowhere. "That's a show that had huge national exposure on television for however many seasons it was on, week after week. It's a venture that will eventually be supported by a corporate structure. It's wonderful that it happened for them, but for me, as an independent filmmaker who literally makes films for less than a half million dollars — my last film [budget] was $200,000 — what's happening there is outside the context of true independent filmmaking."
Echoes Lisecki, "There are hundreds and hundreds of films each year that are asking for, like, 25 grand, 30 grand, 50 grand. I'm not quite sure how many people could pull off $1 million." To wit: Big Gay Love, starring Lisecki and Buffy the Vampire Slayer's Nicholas Brendon, just reached its modest $20,000 Kickstarter goal after 27 days of trying. Veronica Mars cleared that bar in a matter of minutes.
The Mars model isn't a complete outlier, however. Producer Josh Penn — who worked with nonprofits to fund the Oscar-nominated Beasts of the Southern Wildbut has turned to Kickstarter to help finance two documentaries — is more sanguine about what Veronica Mars means for crowdfunding. "It shows that crowdfunding can work all scales of projects," he says. "It really opens up the possibilities of what can be made. These [crowdfunding] tools were being used for much, much smaller projects only. I love the idea that there's a way to do something totally independently just because people believe it should be made. ... It's a whole new model for filmmaking."
For Penn, one of the caveats to Veronica Mars' success — that it had a huge built-in audience itching to support it — only proves that established indie filmmakers should consider their own fans when planning their next films. "If we had gone out three years ago and said, 'We want to make Beasts of the Southern Wild on Kickstarter,' we would not have been able to fund the entire movie," he says. "If we went out now and said, 'We want to make Beasts of the Southern Wild 2' — which we don't want to make, for the record — I think maybe we could. It would be an interesting experiment to see if we could be able to garner enough support to fund an entire film like that."
At the very least, indie filmmakers can be more ambitious with their fundraising goals — but only to a point. "The lesson for independent filmmakers here is not that you can go out and raise $3 million," says Josh Welsh, co-president of Film Independent, a non-for-profit organization that helps indie filmmakers (and puts on the annual Indie Spirit Awards). "Filmmakers need to have a sense of reality to what's really feasible to accomplish. At the same time, they should not be too modest in their aspirations. I encounter both of these [issues] with filmmakers."
Welsh says that a smart, focused, energized crowdfunding campaign has the very real potential to make upwards of six figures. "If your total budget is $500,000 and you're able to raise $200,000 on Kickstarter, that's incredible," he says. "Non-refundable money — [where] you don't have to pay an investor back — is a huge asset to your film. To me, the space where you're seeing the most impact of Kickstarter right now is in low-budget, quality filmmaking."
Lancaster native co-stars in independent film 'Cruel Will' set for April 2 release
Lancaster native Arron Kinser as Paul and Marissa Pistone as Lily star in 'Cruel Will,' set for an April 2 release. / photo provided
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LANCASTER — Paul has a problem — his father-in-law hates him. His wife, Lily, is caught in the middle, even after her father’s death. And that’s when things start to get weird.
That is the premise behind “Cruel Will,” an independent psychological horror film co-starring Lancaster native Arron Kinser, with Arthur Romeo directing. Kinser plays Paul and Marissa Pistone portrays Lily.
The film is set for an April 2 release on Netflix and in video stores. It also will be available for sale online and at some department stores and portable DVD outlets. The movie is presented by Larsen Bay Entertainment, the production company the 30-year-old Kinser owns in Long Beach, Calif.
“We actually got the idea for the movie seven years ago,” Kinser said. “We started filming it about a year and half ago, with post-production work going on for the past 12 months.”
Because of the $100,000 budget, the original script had only four or five actors and used just a couple locations. However, the script expanded as work on the film continued.
“This is the first film that I’ve been this much involved in,” Kinser said. “I wasn’t working the first day of production, but I came in anyway and took everything in. The second day was my first day as an actor, and my first three days were the hardest because I shot a lot of struggling scenes. I went right into the tough scenes.”
Kinser credits director Kevin Smith with helping get him started in his film career. Kinser worked on the set of the Smith film, “Clerks 2,” and is friends with Smith’s mother-in-law. He said the first “Clerks,” about bumbling New Jersey convenience store clerks, was one of his favorite movies growing up.
Kinser graduated from Teays Valley High School and produced educational videos his senior year. After graduation, he went to California. He also spent time as a child in Ashville and Canal Winchester.
Although he didn’t want to give too many details, Kinser said his next film will go into production in 2014 and will have a $1.2 million budget. But before that, he plans to visit family in the Lancaster area and plans to attend two showings of “Cruel Will” in Columbus.
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