Interview with Filmmaker Klaus Hoch (EMERGENCE)

November 8, 2019 matthewtoffolo directing a film, feedback film festival, film director, short film, short film festival, Uncategorized, wildsound film festival Experimental FEEDBACK Film Festival, Klaus Hoch (EMERGENCE), short film

EMERGENCE played to rave reviews at the September 2019 Experimental/Dance/Music Festival in Los Angeles.

Matthew Toffolo: What motivated you to make this film?

Klaus Hoch: I co-created a new way of creating music with Peter and wanted to create something that expresses the music.

I had the idea in my head for a long time – using music to have humans emerge from the inanimate world, become sentient and then return to the inanimate state.

I do a lot of doing single-take, hand-held, visually-enhanced, performance videos and wanted to expand on that: a single-take drone shot, choreographed to dance, with expressive effects within the take.

2. From the idea to the finished product, how long did it take for you to make this short?

About 8 months. I’ve had the basic idea for a long time. I had Peter compose the music for the concept. The actual shoot was just 1 day.

There was a lot of searching for a large enough, appropriate location and a drone and operator that could respond to the choreography.

Since it’s a single long take, the post was relatively fast except for the visual effects woven into the single shot at various places.

3. How would you describe your short film in two words!?

Drone Dance ? Two words is really hard for a project like this.

4. What was the biggest obstacle you faced in completing this film?

The main problems were finding: 1) a choreographer and dancers, 2) a specific location – large, textured enough, with natural light and available. and 3) a drone pilot (and drone) who could execute what I had in mind – a long take with intricate moves and getting close to the dancers.

5. What were your initial reactions when watching the audience talking about your film in the feedback video?

Surprised at the different things they saw in the work. How they interpreted what I had conceived. It was all good.

Watch the Audience FEEDBACK Video:

6. How did you come up with the idea for this short film?

I see and imagine things then try to film them. I have always liked the idea of the inanimate coming to life as a human – being awoken by art, in this case music.

The dancers emerge from the piano as aspects of the piano (the costumes), discover life, discover each other, reject the exterior world (the blinding light) and then return to the inanimate world (back into the piano)

7. What film have you seen the most in your life?

Chinatown.

8. You submitted to the festival via FilmFreeway, what are you feelings of the submission platform from a filmmaker’s perspective?

Great. It worked very smoothly for this music video.

9. What song have you listened to the most times in your life?

I couldn’t possibly pick one.

10. What is next for you? A new film?

Another feature film. I did one several years ago (then I developed an illness which now I’ve recovered from).

Interview with Filmmaker David-Alexandre CHANEL (PASSAGE)

August 1, 2019 matthewtoffolo feedback film festival, film director, short film, short film festival, toronto film festival, Uncategorized, wildsound film festival David-Alexandre CHANEL, Experimental FEEDBACK Film Festival, Matthew Toffolo WILDsound, passage short film

Matthew Toffolo: What motivated you to make this film?

David-Alexandre CHANEL: At THEORIZ we constantly explore the relations and convergence of reality and virtuality. This project started as a scientific research project exploring how we can use immersive videos, tracking, interactivity, real time visuals – tools we use everyday for our work on stage, shows or event – for a cinema/film setup. We explored different paths and came up with a prototype of a mixed reality room were you could film actors and project the visuals around them, reacting to their movements and the camera. Starting there, we used it further it begun to write and produce the short movie, to explore what we could do with this new technique.

2. From the idea to the finished product, how long did it take for you to make this short?

Taking into account the whole tech and research work as well as the production, i took one and half year. The writing and production of the movie itself took 6 months, with two months visual and tech pre-production and three days of shooting.

3. How would you describe your short film in two words!?

Very hard task ! I will go with : Experimental virtuality

4. What was the biggest obstacle you faced in completing this film?

The biggest obstacle was definitely directing and managing a whole short movie production with a tool I never used, which were still a prototype at the time. So I had the task of directing both the development and technical challenges, as well as directing the content and story. It was extremely intense, but I had a great team and I’m quite proud of what we could achieve with the means we had.

5. What were your initial reactions when watching the audience talking about your film in the feedback video?

It’s always incredible to get feedback of the audience because there is several layers of things to get in the movie. Different people always catch different part of it. Lots of people think it’s just CG and green screens but it’s not ! Also on the story side, there is some details hidden, and part of it is also open to interpretation so it’s very nice to see what it people got out of it.

Watch the Audience FEEDBACK Video:

6. How did you come up with the idea for this short film?

We were working and exploring a lot how we could innovate with innovative tech for film shooting. Then when we started writing the story. At that point, the tech itself became an inspiration, hence having the character uploading themselves in a virtual world and the movie playing with what is real or not constantly.

7. What film have you seen the most in your life?

I’m actually not into watching a lot of time the same movie. Except some short movie when I’m in awe with the aesthetic of it. I’ve watched a lot of movies speaking about virtual worlds and playing with the concept, who were definitely part of an inspiration for this movie, obviously some well known movies like Matrix, ExistenZ and Ready player one are a good example of this topic.

8. You submitted to the festival via FilmFreeway, what are you feelings of the submission platform from a filmmaker’s perspective?

It was great to easily connect with festivals and community internationally, the platform played a big role for our team to be able to connect easily with a wider audience.

9. What song have you listened to the most times in your life?

Haha, that might be all the songs of the Mechanical Animals album by Marilyn Manson

10. What is next for you? A new film?

I would love to explore more this technique !

But we are going forward already, our next movie will be a real time experience in VR, where you will encounter an avatar and going through different world by helping each other. We want it to feel super real, so we are working with cognitive science and haptics research labs exploring how we can trigger new sensations in virtual reality.

Interview with Filmmaker Marieta Landkroon (DO NOT SING TO ME, MY BEAUTY)

July 16, 2019 matthewtoffolo directing a film, feedback film festival, film director, short film, short film festival, toronto film festival, Uncategorized, wildsound film festival Experimental FEEDBACK Film Festival, feedback film festival, Marieta Landkroon (DO NOT SING TO ME, MY BEAUTY)

Matthew Toffolo: What motivated you to make this film?

Marieta Landkroon: Unfortunately, classical music is still often seen as ‘dusty’ and ‘boring’. As a young artist, I want to show a wide audience that classical music can be incredibly inspiring and impressive. Within the culture of music videos there isn’t much attention for classical music and that is one of the aspects that makes this project innovative and distinctive.

2. From the idea to the finished product, how long did it take for you to make this short?

It took more than 2.5 years to realize the production of the music video. The first production meeting between director Marieta Landkroon and producers Jamillah van der Hulst and Conrad Alleblas took place in the winter of 2016. With the help of the founding sponsors of the project the song for the music video was recorded in October 2016. It then took another 1.5 years to get the funding in place; sponsors came on board, the Amsterdam Fund for the Arts offered their financial support and a succesfull crowdfunding campaign was executed in April-May 2018. Finally, production took place in the first two weeks of June 2018.

3. How would you describe your short film in two words!?

Mystical experience

4. What was the biggest obstacle you faced in completing this film?

To get the funding in place. It was a process of 1,5 years.

5. What were your initial reactions when watching the audience talking about your film in the feedback video?

It is absolutely great to hear that the audience understand what is happening, even though they don’t speak Russian. The music and the images are very abstract and poetic in a way, so I’m glad to hear that the images communicate the message right.

Watch the Audience FEEDBACK Video:

6. How did you come up with the idea for this short film?

The idea for making a classical music video was based on my love for film and classical music and the realization that the combination of these two arts is almost non-existent as a music video.

7. What film have you seen the most in your life?

Sleeping Beauty.

8. You submitted to the festival via FilmFreeway, what are you feelings of the submission platform from a filmmaker’s perspective?

A good place to search for interesting Festivals who can help distribute your film

9. What song have you listened to the most times in your life?

Tough question… the one that pops my mind is ‘The Memory Remains’ by Metallica

10. What is next for you? A new film?

I hope so! But first I’m working on a new photography project about the seven archetypal Greek goddesses together with a costume designer.

Interview with Filmmaker Joshua Nicholas Goodman (TOM)

July 16, 2019 matthewtoffolo feedback film festival, film director, short film, short film festival, toronto film festival, Uncategorized, wildsound film festival Experimental FEEDBACK Film Festival, film director, Joshua Nicholas Goodman (TOM)

Matthew Toffolo: What motivated you to make this film?

Joshua Nicholas Goodman: The idea of exploring the point of view of a ‘peeping tom’ and his process. Also to make the audience feel like the voyeur that we all are and then show extremes of it.

2. From the idea to the finished product, how long did it take for you
to make this short?

It took just over a year to finish.

3. How would you describe your short film in two words!?

Peeping Tom

4. What was the biggest obstacle you faced in completing this film?

It came in the editing. Knowing when and how to finish the film. Re-shooting. Being ready to send out that final cut. There was no deadline, so we had to make our own, otherwise we’d still be filming.

5. What were your initial reactions when watching the audience talking
about your film in the feedback video?

It felt surreal that there were people watching it and commenting on something that we worked hard on creating over the past few years. It’s wild that people are on the other side of the world watching it. I loved everything they said even just for the fact that they said anything about it at all.

Watch the Audience FEEDBACK Video:

6. How did you come up with the idea for this short film?

We had a location of an empty house for a week and wanted to take advantage of it. We sat in the house toying with different ideas and eventually came to the idea of starting with a “peeping tom” character looking and peeping around. It started with the location and subject matter and grew from there.

7. What film have you seen the most in your life?

Taxidriver or Reservoir Dogs

8. You submitted to the festival via FilmFreeway, what are you feelings
of the submission platform from a filmmaker’s perspective?

It was with ease and great communication that made the experience a memorable one. I hope to continue to submit more to the various outlets Wildsound offers.

9. What song have you listened to the most times in your life?

Nirvana and Wu-Tang Clan

10. What is next for you? A new film?

Writing some feature length films maybe a short. Always creating.

Interview with Filmmaker Michele Manzini (IN THE HOUSE OF MANTEGNA)

May 31, 2019 matthewtoffolo directing a film, feedback film festival, film director, short film, short film festival, toronto film festival, Uncategorized Experimental FEEDBACK Film Festival, film director, IN THE HOUSE OF MANTEGNA, Michele Manzini

IN THE HOUSE OF MANTEGNA was the winner of BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY at the April 2019 Experinmental/Dance Festival in Toronto.

Matthew Toffolo: What motivated you to make this film?

Michele Manzini: Ever since ancient times the conscious subject has no body. It is a subject that has renounced its body and that, therefore, keeps a distance from the errors that, as Plato said, are caused by the “barbarous filth” of our desires, of our passions, of our most visceral needs. This has been and, according to me, still is an insuperable problem in Western thought, a problem that it has tried in continuation to resolve: how to free oneself of the body in order to arrive at knowledge of reality. My works inhabit this great contradiction.

2. From the idea to the finished product, how long did it take for you to make this short?

I have always worked with deferred times. There is a phase of investigation and of putting into focus conceptual themes, and this can be a very long period. Perhaps as a result of this I often find myself working contemporarily on different ideas for work. The second phase is that of making, and usually that is very brief. Often just a few weeks.

3. How would you describe your short film in two words!?

Reality is always revealed with irreconcilable polarities. By trying to think about this we arrive in a place that reason could never take us to. A kind of overcoming of the idea of harmony. A reality that always shows itself to be a contradiction, a dismemberment, a place in which contraries coexist and interweave in an arabesque where everything is present and nothing is excluded. An “atopic” dimension in which the body becomes the decisive element: the boundary between conflicts and a window on new worlds.

4. What was the biggest obstacle you faced in completing this film?

In every work of mine the greatest difficulty is to establish with those who collaborate with me a common “conceptual territory” within which to act. I write a lot and then we discuss these texts together in numerous meetings. For me it is necessary that the work is extremely coherent. Together we look for a direction towards which to direct our research and then I leave it up to them to show me what I am unable to see.

5. What were your initial reactions when watching the audience talking about your film in the feedback video?

I do not always manage to follow my work in the various festivals around the world. When this happens it is an experience that greatly enriches me. For this reason I believe that the idea of having a video with the public’s feedback is absolutely extraordinary.

Watch the Audience FEEDBACK Video:

6. How did you come up with the idea for this short film?

The house of the painter Andrea Mantegna in Mantua has always fascinated me. Then I remembered one winter during a visit to the Brera gallery in Milan when I stopped in front of the painting of the “Dead Christ” by Mantegna. An amazing work that is capable of recounting the extreme and deeply human nakedness of that body, while keeping it covered. Starting from this image, I began to think about the possibility of a project.

7. What film have you seen the most in your life?

I do not see many films. My training is above all literary and linked to the visual arts. I look at and study much of the painting of the15th to the 17th centuries: Mantegna, Tintoretto, Caravaggio … the composition of the image, the handling of light and the bodies in that kind of painting is a continuous source of inspiration for me. Instead, the cinema that has always interested me is that in which the relationship between the protagonists and the architectural and urban space is very strong, and so Antonioni, Kubrick, Wenders, Lynch, Greenaway …

8. You submitted to the festival via FilmFreeway, what are you feelings of the submission platform from a filmmaker’s perspective?

I use various platforms for choosing festivals, but FilmFreeway is the one that decidedly suggests the most interesting things and those that are qualitatively the best. It is very simple and speedy in its management of its content and allows you to analyse closely each individual festival. For me it is an excellent work tool.

9. What song have you listened to the most times in your life?

My musical training has its roots in English Post Punk and arrives as far as all the British Invasion of the 1980s. I still continue to follow some of the musicians now: Brian Eno, David Sylvian, Robert Fripp, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Karl Hyde, and so on.

10. What is next for you? A new film?

“In the House of Mantegna” is the second work of a trilogy titled “Umanesimo tragico”. I will begin to shoot the third video of the project next month. At the same time I am working on a project for a series of live performances.

Interview with Filmmaker Lisa Le Lievre (SIRENS TANGO)

May 3, 2019 matthewtoffolo directing a film, feedback film festival, film director, short film, short film festival, toronto film festival, Uncategorized, wildsound film festival Experimental FEEDBACK Film Festival, feedback film festival, Filmmaker Lisa Le Lievre (SIRENS TANGO), Sirens Tango short film

Matthew Toffolo: What motivated you to make this film?

Lisa Le Lievre: After making my first experimental dance film in 2007 I realized I wanted to learn more about film making and I ended up working on many different narrative short films. When the opportunity to make my own film arose, I wanted to experiment with creating a dance film with a well constructed three act narrative, that might be appealing to a larger non-dance audience.

2. From the idea to the finished product, how long did it take for you to make this short?

18 months.

3. How would you describe your short film in two words!?

Beautiful and evocative.

4. What was the biggest obstacle you faced in completing this film?

Getting past my own limitations, both real and imagined. I had never done anything this big before so there were a lot of doubts and budget restraints had me wearing many hats. I thought I would never get everything done leading up to the shoot, and in post it was challenging trusting my choices.

5. What were your initial reactions when watching the audience talking about your film in the feedback video?

Wow what a fantastic audience! So much detail goes into making films with the intention of layering meaning and its very exciting to hear the audience unravel these clues and put the story together.

Watch the Audience FEEDBACK Video:

6. How did you come up with the idea for this short film?

I knew a dancer who wanted to do a Tango with her husband so I started researching and working on a concept for a dance film around the Tango. But before I got it together they both retired and moved away. I continued to develop the story however and found different dancers to work with. I think it would have been a very different film with the original cast!

7. What film have you seen the most in your life?

I can’t think of a single film? I am currently re-watching Hero as inspiration for a project I would like to do.

8. You submitted to the festival via FilmFreeway, what are you feelings of the submission platform from a filmmaker’s perspective?

FilmFreeway is a fantastic platform for filmmakers. Being able to submit to worldwide film festivals from a single project page is so convenient. I think it has really opened up the audience potential for independent films, especially in unique genres like dance.

9. What song have you listened to the most times in your life?

Anything I have ever edited to! And Beethoven’s Piano Concerto #5 – 2nd Movement.

10. What is next for you? A new film?

I have a couple of dance films in mind so I will see what gets momentum!

Interview with Filmmaker Marco De Ornellas (THE DUCHESS)

April 7, 2019 matthewtoffolo directing a film, feedback film festival, film director, short film, short film festival, toronto film festival, Uncategorized, wildsound film festival Experimental FEEDBACK Film Festival, feedback film festival, Marco De Ornellas, THE DUCHESS short film

THE DUCHESS played to rave reviews at the February 2019 Experimental Film Festival in Los Angeles.

Matthew Toffolo: What motivated you to make this film?

Marco De Ornellas: Every story comes from a different inspiration. This film was born after I did a photoshoot for a brand at a bar in Harlem, NY. The bar had an energy about it that reminded me of the hotel in the movie “The Shinning”. At that moment on I could see the movie in my mind. And if you’re wondering, yes, its the bar in the actual movie.

2. From the idea to the finished product, how long did it take for you to make this short?

Production took about a month. I worked with a great team that helped me to speed things and bring my idea to reality.

3. How would you describe your short film in two words!?

Surreal suspense

4. What was the biggest obstacle you faced in completing this film?

As an independent producer and filmmaker it is always challenging to make a film. The biggest challenge for this one was the editing and scoring. The film is filled with symbolism and visual metaphors, so finding the film’s rhythm while building the narrative was a fun obstacle to work with.

5. What were your initial reactions when watching the audience talking about your film in the feedback video?

To smile. I was taken by a feeling of fulfillment and happiness, specially when someone said my work reminded a David Lynch film. He is a massive inspiration to me as a filmmaker. I am honored for the comparing.

Watch the Audience FEEDBACK Video:

6. How did you come up with the idea for this short film?

Initially the location inspired me, then the film came in a dream. I meditated on the idea and the visuals started filling my consciousness.

7. What film have you seen the most in your life?

Should I start a list? haha I have lost track how many times I’ve seen “Lord of the rings”, “Legends of the fall” and “The dark knight”… Big time favorites are “Streetcar named desire” and “rebel without a cause”.

8. You submitted to the festival via FilmFreeway, what are you feelings of the submission platform from a filmmaker’s perspective?

It is really great. Makes the filmmaker life easier.

9. What song have you listened to the most times in your life?

That’s a hard question. Normally the music changes accordingly to the moment I’m living. I grew up listening to Elvis so its safe to say that rock n roll runs deep in my blood.

10. What is next for you? A new film?

Yes, I am currently shooting two productions, my newest fashion film titled “Son of the Wild” (working title), and a documentary film which subject is environmental awareness and sustainability through the point of view of native cultures.

Matthew Toffolo's Summary

Daily summary of the life/movie world.

Experimental FEEDBACK Film Festival

Interview with Filmmaker Klaus Hoch (EMERGENCE)

Interview with Filmmaker David-Alexandre CHANEL (PASSAGE)

Interview with Filmmaker Marieta Landkroon (DO NOT SING TO ME, MY BEAUTY)

Interview with Filmmaker Joshua Nicholas Goodman (TOM)

Interview with Filmmaker Michele Manzini (IN THE HOUSE OF MANTEGNA)

Interview with Filmmaker Lisa Le Lievre (SIRENS TANGO)

Interview with Filmmaker Marco De Ornellas (THE DUCHESS)

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