Conversatorium III
This intriguing conversatorium is changing its subject, apparently, from Seditiosa to St Eulalia, which, in a logical way, is natural.
But there are still some comments about Seditiosa and future projects if any. Here we go.
wanttoknowmore: I agree with part of this – people are not willing to support a movie they don’t see ever being made. Asking for a $40K retainer before doing anything is a bit high of a mark. Maybe split the projects up. I don’t buy the economy angle. The buy in is not $1000. There are other reasons.
We’re not asking for a retainer before doing anything, that’s just silly, we are already doing a lot with the goal of making the film. Jac went back to the location, recently, to make a deal with the people there, he walked to the one spot from where he could look over the place to see how it was and it was different, grassy.
We already are looking into the props, the effects, the cast and more importantly at this stage, the costumes. One costume in particular for one of the main characters, the Egyptian Priestess, Mila, needs a good Egyptian costume, not to mention special costumes for the Roman ladies. There’s someone who is going to be bringing some of those costumes from NY, next month.
I stick to my theory that one possible reason people are not contributing is because the campaign is stuck and yes, people are hesitant to put any money, be 1 dollar or 1,000 if they feel that the movie will never be made.
The campaign offers 4 movies for a contribution of $100., that’s only 25 bucks per movie. When the four movies come out the cost will be almost twice that. The thinking was that if 100 people pre-bought four movies, that would give us 10,000, plenty of cash to start shooting the film. Five people gave over 100, which was great… one person gave 1.53, I’ll never understand why.
That was a good beginning but it stopped.
We never expected to raise the total of our goal. That figure, 40,000, is just a goal for the four movies. The Seditiosa goal was 25,000 and with the campaign we raised 14,000 or so, the additional money came from direct contributions.
The lack of funds does not stop a project, it delays it. The Crucified Four movie is in development, it hasn’t been cancelled, but we don’t have a date to start shooting, not yet. There are some factors that we have to look into before setting that up, but the fundraising campaign is not one of them.
Below you can see the location we used for Seditiosa, as seen from a hill, with one post still standing, which is difficult to see from that distance, but it’s there, the other two are gone. And the area has a lot of grass.
AWHR037 Well I think I am late for this conversation lol, but have you ever thought about adding a scene depicting removing Yahel or others from the cross lol I mean it may be a fitting end to them.
The film is done, it was released over a year ago. What we can consider is having one of the Crucified Four be removed from her cross… or maybe two of them… or maybe three of them… who knows, everything is possible in a new production.
Ligia was removed from her cross in a new video. She looks kind of cool all dead, kind of.
JDArts: Seeing the premise of Ligia being crucified three times makes me want to see a movie based on Saint Eulalia of Barcelona. I know there’s a movie called “Martyr,” which was inspired by Saint Eulalia, but it’s a far cry from the original story.
I’d like to see a movie about the 13 martyrdoms of Saint Eulalia in the future.
Loinclothslave: I think the entire forum would love to see a movie about St Eulalia of Barcelona!
Martyr, or The Death of St Eulalia, is a film set in modern times, with Carmen playing Camille, an actress model who wants to recreate the martyrdom of St Eulalia, going through all of the tortures she believes the martyr went through.
The original idea included something like flashbacks to the actual story of St Eulalia. The plan was to shoot those scenes in France. Jac went to Paris, did a large casting. He had all the possible actors, extras, he checked where he could rent the costumes. He also did some location scouting and found, with Carmen’s help, a great area where to shoot the ancient scenes. It looked good. Unfortunately there were not enough funds to do it.
stepnash: I totally agree and it would be fairly easy to do, needing only a few soldiers and the governor, it seems the main problem is the fact that she was very young, about 13 or 14 years old, it should be possible to make it realistic perhaps as a religious project.
Cruxlover24 Dani or Mila would be fantastic for the role!
JDArts I like Simonne more for the role of Saint Eulalia
Loinclothslave: The age part is easily fixed by just making her a little older. Just an innocent devout woman in her 20’s
Jac first had the idea of making a film about St Eulalia in the early 80’s. He was in Cuba, working on his Haiti project, recreating some scenes from colonial times in Haiti, he was also doing the editing there and the recording of the music. He had the entire Cuban Symphony Orchestra doing the music for him. Some of the laboratory work was done there as well. Those were the times of expensive production and… celluloid!
He was living at the very famous Hotel Nacional during that time, and he was there … for two and a half years! Good times.
For reasons too long to explain, for about two or three months he had a lot of time in his hands, he did a lot of reading, researching for possible movies, he began writing a script, The Passion Of Mariselli, a story taking place in Colonial Cuba. A young woman who defies her father and has fantasies of being a martyr. Very good story.
During those days he visited a lot of bookstores to get some good books. One of those books, published in Hungary, in Spanish, attracted his attention. It was a book about medieval paintings from Spain. There was one painting that got his attention. The Altar Piece about St Eulalia.
That was a revelation for Jac. He set out to investigate all he could about that saint. To make a story short, some years later, when Jac was in Bolivia to make a film, he met Carmen. He cast her for a leading role in a new TV miniseries he was about to produce. During her rehearsals, which involved some scenes where she’s tortured and killed, one of her characters, at least, he found she was tremendously talented, he thought she could be Mariselli, for the story he wanted to make in Cuba, which involved a crucifixion. After shooting the TV miniseries with her, they began to work on the possible scenarios for a crucifixion, just as tests, at first.
The tests they began to work on, first very short ones and improvised, later more elaborated with more camera work, showed how comfortable Carmen felt on the role of a crucified victim. Each recording was very intense, as far as the acting. It didn’t matter that those were just try outs, Carmen was showing what she was made of. Eventually, in a few months, they worked on the first long feature film with a crucifixion theme, Red Feline on The Cross and some time later they worked on Martyr or The Death Of St Eulalia. Jac didn’t have to raise any money for that. With the release of Red Feline on The Cross, a film that cost 500 dollars to make, rfpix was created and this whole adventure began. The film was selling a lot, so much so that Carmen didn’t need to work during the time she was going to college in France and she was traveling back and forth from France to NY to Bolivia. It was not difficult to jump into making Martyr.
Jac has the script for a film about St Eulalia, the story that he wanted to do in France but couldn’t. And it’s not so complicated, there are no crowds, just few characters that tell the entire story of what Eulalia went through with a few innovations from Jac’s imagination.
In theory, it could be made in Bolivia, it would be less complicated than any of the Crucified Four movies and there would be a complicated selection of the protagonist. Who can be Eulalia, who can perform as amazingly as Carmen did in Martyr? Maybe any of our big stars. Dani? Mila? Simonne? Ligia? Sol? Someone else? Maybe?… Maybe.
Sometime ago, Jac began looking at some pictures that a very beautiful young woman was sharing with him. She’s someone related to Carmen, she’s French. Jac started wondering if she would like to be in a couple of movies. Jac thinks she’s perfect for both Maricelli and Eulalia. She’s at the same age Carmen was when he thought of her for those two roles.
Those two amazing stories he shelved decades ago began to stick their little heads up and making some noise, making some waves, interrupting some dreams, sneaking up on him, shaking him up. He often thinks about them when he’s preparing to feed the cats, or when he’s walking the dog.
Regardless of those dreams, at this point there are some very good films he’s working on, whether there’s money or not, and that’s that.
