Toiling Under The Bright Sun

After much organizing, budgeting, getting all the stuff needed, planting the posts for the crosses, fitting the actors with their costumes, dealing with the location and a lot more which is hard to list because it is so much, the production of the Female Christ film titled Seditiosa went into full production.

The plan is to follow the story in a chronological order, something not common in filmmaking, because it lends itself to that. The main characters will go through the story as it is told.

It began nicely enough, with Yahel, Judith and Magdalena arriving to the Hill of Skulls, where they see the ominous posts, one an empty cross. Below the cross a dog eats the flesh out of a big bone, a skull lies near it.

The Crucified To Be arrive to the area and each reveals their character. Yahel has a vision while Judith curses the Romans. Magdalena, however, the most pragmatic of the three, has none of it, and insists they have nothing to do there and they should get on their way.

And that’s how the shooting began, establishing the characters and setting the story.

Somethings became very clear. On the problematic side, the sun was incredibly bright and it will be like that for a long time. No clouds! There was wind, cold wind coming down from the snowy Andean range. The crew had to adapt to those circumstances.

Another issue is time. There are two main characters with lots of tattoos, so it takes time to cover them and that is now part of the scheduling. Our team knows how long it takes to do that.

The shooting began with two cameras, the plan is to have a third one and maybe even a fourth. A lot was accomplished in the first days of production. Many scenes are in the can now and Jac has begun the work of assembling those scenes and cutting them. He has the two first scenes already in first cut, with sound FX and music. It’s not like the final cut, but pretty close. He’ll have all the shot scenes in rough cut before he starts shooting the next few scenes.

During the first days of production it became clear what can be accomplished in one day. The conditions of working in that location, which are fine, have their own and very clear possibilities and limitations which must taken into account so the location can be used to its full extent and then there’s the matter of the light… the sun does not respect shooting plans, it comes and goes at its own irreversible schedule.

The cast is working very well. Jac knew what to expect from the three leading ladies and their initial scenes were pretty easy to do. He didn’t know what to expect from the rest of the cast, most of them are new to him. The big test came when he worked on the stoning scene. The woman to be stoned was great and showed great potential for future movies. She even intimated that she could do partly nude scenes… after saying that she wouldn’t. One thing was clear at the end of the day, she loved it.

So, the film is now ongoing. It’s looking good, in a low budget kind of way, we can’t have thousands of extras, not even hundreds, and even the dogs are not showing up as we wish they would, we were hoping for at least four… no, just one showed up at shooting time.

One person, the driver perhaps, asked a question about the accuracy of the area with what the film is portraying. He is aware that the film is the story of a Female Christ in the year 30 AD or so. Jac’s response was simple. It’s an alternate universe. It feels right.

When Jac was directing the scene where Yahel confronts the high priest, she responds in a defiant way to what he says, which basically is ‘you should occupy the place God gave you as a woman and not interfere with us men‘. Not literally, of course. She responds I occupy the place the mother gave me, far from the men that abuse her Word.

We’ll see what the future holds. It’s very inspiring to be in the middle of a new production with a big cast, in a great place, with an amazing story. We wished we had raised more funds to overcome the limitations that come from not having a lot of cash, as The Rutles sing “all we need is cash” to make a great movie greater.

We should have a new campaign Make A Great Movie Greater… hmmm

We’re considering fundraising again, to cover some extra costs, to the tune of 5,000, maybe with pre-sales of the film. The way I see it, if Jac already has the first scenes cut before he shoots another bunch, it’s very possible that the film will be ready at the end of July.

However, our release date is, still, August 2023.

The production of Seditiosa is ON!

I insist, it wont be long before I’ll have the great news that the production was wrapped.

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