6.13.2011– The film experiment “subHysteria” is screening in Los Angeles on Monday, June 27 at 7:00 pm as part of the 18th Film Courage Interactive. The screening will take place at the Downtown Independent, 251 S. Main St., Los Angeles, CA 90012, with a second showing on Tuesday, June 28 at 7:00 pm PT. A discussion with the director and cast will immediately follow each screening. Tickets are $10 and may be purchased at the venue box office. More at http://www.downtownindependent.com/events/film-courage-presents-1.

Without warning, a small group of people from various walks of life are trapped underground in the subway. As the hours pass without outside communication, sufficient food or a conceivable escape, the real possibility of death overcomes the passengers. “subHysteria” is a raw display of behavior when people are forced to confront mortality.

Based on the groundbreaking film styles of cinema verité and French New Wave, “subHysteria” was made with 16 improv actors in a New York City subway car. Filmed at the FDNY Training Facility on Randall’s Island in New York, the international cast created the movie with no script—only character sketches, a rough plot outline and their instincts. “Sometimes I would imagine that I was in some kind of a contest,” said actor Osvaldo Benavides of the experience, “and there were some rules and you had to make the best of it.”

“It has been almost 50 years since John Cassavetes’ groundbreaking film ‘Shadows’, and my intention was not to reinvent the history of independent filmmaking,” director Leonard Zelig said. “I wanted to refresh the genre, to bring back the freedom, uniqueness and organic flavor of on-camera improv.”

“subHysteria” made its world premiere last year in Venezuela, grossing a total of $213,000 for the $160,000 film. Just this month, the film’s producers finalized distribution agreements in Europe and Latin America, with DVD distribution by Grayson Pictures in the UK and Ireland and Amazonia Films in Venezuela.

“subHysteria” was directed by Leonard Zelig and co-written and produced by Javier Perez-Karam and Roberto Alcazar and features Lavrenti Lopes, Osvaldo Benavides, Estelle Bajou, Ginger Kroll, Hwalan, Cem Uyanik, Gayle DaCosta, Hector Palma, Elaiza Gil, Rebeca Aleman, Isabella Cascarano, Brian Schlanger, Quadiri Bolare, Shannon Lower, Tommaso Matelly and Sally Gifford.

I’m here at FX Design tripping with this studio, today is the day when we have to put everything in order, revise the pro-tools session, link missing files, add OMF’s to the mix, what? you feel I’m talking in tongues? Well I’m making and learning too.

The space where I’m mixing is like a movie theater, with the board in the center of the space and speakers all over the place. The greet me this morning with a little mate and media lunas, what else do I need?

After 5 months out of the blogging scene we’re back with excellent news! We’ve got representation!!!! Yes Wonderphil Productions is our Producer Rep, the agreement was signed on Mid January and now is official! They represent films at many of the major Film/TV markets, including the American Film Market, Berlin, MIPTV, MIPCOM, DISCOP, Eurasia and the Cannes Film Festival/Market, among others. They job is to secure domestic and international distribution in all media.

We’re also preparing everything for our world premiere in Venezuela on April 30th, the poster that you see here is the theatrical poster for Venezuela.

Promotion for our premiere will start on March.

Stay tuned! and if you want to be updated in real time, just follow the filmmakers in twitter @leonardzelig and @perezkaram

Watch it, comment on it, rate it, and share the luv… let’s make this viral!

As we’re getting closer to the exhibition phase, we decided to design a new poster that could help us translate better the whole concept.

I hope you like it.

Now, we are working on the previews. It sounds easy, but sometimes it is kind of hard to make them interesting and get the people to know the story, and at the same time not saying more that you have to. If all previews could be big explosions and dramatic music…

Last week, the production team of the movie had a little chat with the people of Venezolanos en Broadway (Venezuelans on Broadway, an organization of Venezuelans that live in NYC and have jobs that involve creative or artistic skills). It was the perfect opportunity to test what we have on our hands, so we decided to show them the first 11 minutes of the latest version of the movie that we had in a hard drive.

Production Designer Tao García (center) and Director Leo Zelig (left) in the Q&A

All the people liked what they saw, and somehow it was a great experience to listen to what people that is not sentimentally attached to the movie have to say. We also had a little Q&A session where Improv was one of the main topics, as well as the budget and the technical difficulties during production.

Producer, Javier Pérez-Karam (left), checks some notes in the meeting with VEB

Soon, the previews will be ready, and it would be great to know what you think of them…

STEP 1 ADR

Luis "El Pillo" Herrera ADRing

We have two days of ADR, all the actors came to replace all the lines that we couldn’t hear properly and to add some spice to a couple of scenes.

ADRing the Incident

STEP 2 Color Correction

We have several sessions at Crew Cuts, we were really amazed with the immensity of the room we used. Definitely we were really lucky of have a prime post-production facility like them helping us with the color correction.

Our first visit to our Color Correction Station

We had the best colorists ever, Josh and Andy, and the best color correction producer Stephanie who called us everytime a slot was available to go there and work.

Josh and Andy on Duty!

The color concept worked! Sometimes you have it in your mind but you don’t know how it will look…

Coloring green

The last session was on mid May! We received the hard drive with everything on it, the color correction look sick!

Javier receives the holy grial: The hard drive!

STEP 3 Audio Mix

The people from Zampol and Mixology Lab have been polishing every detail of the sound, last Tuesday we went to the studio to hear how they are going and we’re almost there.

Watching the movie for the 44th time while we listening to the newest audio mix

STEP 4 Visual FX

I’m writing this post while Tao is building dust in a couple of key scenes…

After Effects is helping us to create some VFX

STEP 5 CGI (Computer Generated Images)

We never had access to the real subway tunnel, so the people at StudioFreak in Argentina is modeling one for us, yesterday we received the first draft of the design of the subway tunnel…

This is the first modeling design! We're excited!

We’ll try not to wait 2 more months to blog again, we’ll keep you posted!

The color correction is being done at Crew Cut, and it’s a great deal to give a more important role to colors in the final image that all of you will see on the screen, since it was such a beautiful work that Philip Armand did in the set with his crew. Now all the work can get to another level just by working the levels, and hues and all of the different parameters of the video signal.

For all of us who saw the final cut will be a great deal to watch sH without proxy in the audio like a real phone ring instead of somebody in the set doing the sound with his voice. I’m glad that we have such a great team in audio post at Zampol and at Mixology.  With the foley and the sound effects, believe me, sH will be another story and a much better one, since you’ll be able to get more involved in the hole process of being in a subway car for such a long time.

Just a little more time and sH will be a really entertaining feature that hopefully will detach you from reallity and give you something to think about EVERYTIME you use the subway system…

While Javier and Gustavo were editing, all I could see was the scenes that they were working on. And in the meetings that we had to watch the improvements there was only separated scenes, so sit and watch the hole thing without having to imagine what would fill the gaps between scenes was one of the more fulfilling experiences in my film life.

Knowing that only a few details separate the raw footage from the final cut is so exciting. Not to tell about the possibilities of improving the experience by working on the audio. I’m so proud of the things that we accomplished with such a short budget, and of course all the hard work provided by everybody involved.

At 4 PM we met with Sven Herrmann, the editor of all the promos, we had a little session about the teaser of the film, and we came up with a very nice concept. The teaser should be ready by Friday.

Sven is showing us the audio track of the teaser.

At 6 PM we had a meeting with the two editors of subHysteria, Javier Perez-Karam & Gustavo Bernal, we saw part of the film in multi-camera vision for the first time, that means we were watching the images of the three cameras in one scene in the same screen, that was fascinating.

Gus is playing the multi-cam.

We talked about structure, style, rhythm...

It was our first official editing meeting, so we were just getting in the same page. We will have over 200 multi-cam sequences, so I offer my help to edit the backstories of the characters, while Javier & Gustavo cut the subway.

Very exciting day!