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“Hold On”
Festival List
Director's Statement
Stills
Production Notes
Credits
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“CASTLE IN OUR OWN BACKYARD”
We were so lucky to find a “castle” in our own backyard of Baltimore, Jackie Julio’s hometown and a city where Doug
Olear has spent much time as an actor. The Cloisters, the castled sanctuary of “Rose,” is a masterpiece of medieval
architecture touched by elements of the Renaissance. It is a filmmaker’s candy store with a tower that houses a spiral
stairway, suits of armor that guard archways and an amazing staff that gives access to a multitude of furnishings and
props that round out the Gothic ambience.
“CHRISTMAS IN JULY”
If anyone would have told us that we’d be frantically searching for a store that sells Christmas lights in July, we would’ve thought they were crazy until our incredible DP, Jon Chen, suggested we use a “Christmas Light Rig” to capture the
fireplace/candlelight ambience we wanted for some of our interior castle scenes. The effect entailed wrapping about 50
strands of 100 white, Christmas lights around a 6’X6’ frame which was then suspended from the vaulted ceiling. It
created the soft glow we intended, and we are definitely ready for Christmas!
“POSTER BOARDS”
With Rose’s “Wall of Fame,“ exhibiting her Masters degree in Combinatorial Mathematics and her Doctor of Physics
degree in Quantum Mechanics as well as articles about winning a Nobel Prize in math and writing a book on Chaos Theory,
we wanted to establish that Rose is a “math and physics genius,” capable of developing a mathematically precise formula
that would allow her to crash her wheelchair and survive with minimal injuries.
Our scientific consultant, a graduate student in physics, created formulas based on many variables, including the weight
of Rose and of her wheelchair, the degree of incline and the velocity of the wheelchair. What she came up with was very
impressive. We transferred her formulas to 20x30 poster boards and did a test shot of them. The general consensus
was that the boards did not convey cinematically the meaning of the formulas which was crucial to the climax of the film.
So we moved on to Plan B and with the help of our set designer, Richard Peete, and our production assistants, Benay
Berger and Bryan Shilowich, reworked the boards. We kept as close as possible to the original concept but created a
more cinematic, albeit “spoon fed,“ picture of the information we needed to get across.
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