My name is Alan Weischedel and Im a
writer/filmmaker/actor living in Los Angeles originally from Lebanon, Oregon. I
have just completed filming a project called The Boyfriend. Its a tale of
disillusion and loneliness.
Synopsis
Eddie loves Anna. Eddie
adores Anna. Eddie thinks Anna is the one. Eddie buys Anna gifts. Eddie thinks
Anna will be a great dancer someday. Eddies mother is happy that he has found
someone. ..
Anna has never
met Eddie.
Directors
Statement
The film is based on a true incident
an actress told me had happened to her. After she had finished performing in a
play she came out into the house to meet her parents and found a 30 year old native
Kenyan man sitting with them who she had never seen before. She found out that
this man was posing as her boyfriend and had been talking to her mom and dad as
if they were dating for a while. The other events from the film come from other
research I had done on stalkers and some out of my own invention. The idea was
to create a character that has honest and true desires. That desire is to be in
a loving relationship.
The style of the film is directly
influenced by the Neo-realism genre. Films like Chop Shop, Keane, Le Fils (The
Son), and Elephant. The idea was to capture the events as a reality as opposed
to a thriller, giving the events more credence and weight. By choosing to do
this I believe the story that we present evokes more sadness and loneliness and
disillusion. It really is a personal film. We are all told very young that we
will all get married, have kids, have a good job, get an education; but as we
get older we realize that in reality, many of our greatest loves in our lives
dont love us back, some of us are unable to have children, some of us never
get married, and many of us hate our jobs. Its a great and true sadness in our
modern lives that this reality escapes some of us, even those of us who are
perfectly sane.
Production
From the very beginning it was decided
to shot the film with the least amount of cuts possible. The reason behind this
was to create a reality for the character to inhabit. Fewer cuts also gives the
film a documentary feel. No conveniently placed cameras capturing action from a
dramatic angle. The camera would itself live in the world just like the
characters and the audience would then live in the world as well. There are about 10 shots in this film that
are about one minute or longer, quite a lot for a film less than 30 minutes. In
one particular shot as the camera was pulling back the sound guy was on the
floor and had to roll out of the way and get out of the field of view of the
camera. Needless to say, this scene was shot many times.
We shot on a shoestring budget.
Stealing locations where we could, borrowing equipment from fellow filmmakers,
and literally paying people in coffee. Many of the deep background extras in
the theater scene were actually children from a theater camp that were having
class upstairs.
We need
your help
We are heading into the final stages of
post-production and most of the film is complete. Weve done everything that we
can on our own with almost no budget at all but now we are in a place where we
have to spend some money. We could submit to one or two festival on our own but
thats all we could afford. We would like to submit to as many as we can so
that we could get this film to an audience. And to do that we need your help.
We need your help to raise money for film festival fees, DVD production, and
promotional material (the later two help out with the first one). So please donate what you can every bit
helps. The more money we raise the more people get to watch our film. Thanks
for your time.
Cast
Alan Weischedel
Julianna Piechovski
Fredrick Ponzlov
Lynda Berg
Greg Hutto
Stephen McCain
Alexa James
Amanda Ashley
Tony Dang
Jonathan Holborn
Kristin Ige
Crew
Writer &
Director...Alan Weischedel
Director of PhotographyWhitney
Houser & Tony Dang
Editor..Steve
Hauber
Sound and MusicKevin
Keller
Visual EffectsJace
Sparks
Casting...Julianna
Piechovski
