Stunt Kitty Films Announces Upcoming Eight-Part Web Series: The Portal
While we might have previously mentioned we were working on a new project during the pandemic stay at home directive, we'd like to take the time now to officially announce Stunt Kitty Films' quarantine project and our biggest production yet, an eight-part web series titled THE PORTAL which is currently in post production.
Over the past many weeks Debora has been working hard at the herculean task of assembling the footage we shot earlier in the year. If all goes as planned, we hope to be able to premiere the first episode of our series sometime in the beginning of November.
THE PORTAL is about a woman who escapes the pandemic lockdown by astral projecting out of her body to her childhood home only to discover a dead body. In a panic she calls her nephew and fellow astral projector and together they go about trying to solve the mystery of who the man is and why he was murdered in her family home.
Debora Roventini co-stars with her nephew Philip Faiss and are joined by a talented group of actors we are fortunate enough to be able to call friends and family who were generous enough to give up a few hours of their time during the lockdown to appear in our web series.
Stay tuned for more information regarding our production and a future release schedule which we will share as soon as we know it.
In the meantime, enjoy these behind the scene photos from our latest production.
Every project begins with a written script or in the case of THE PORTAL eight written scripts which the director must then re-interpret into visual presentations.
Debora draws her visual interpretations (storyboard) directly onto her working scripts, transforming each into an original work of art in the process.
Filmmaking is a family affair with Brave the cat insisting on being involved in every step of the process.
There's something for everybody in the filmmaking process. Working in tandem with the storyboarding process, I am designing a camera log to note camera settings during process.
This photo of our set (living room) was taken a week or two after beginning principle photography. The taped marks on the floor are for the positioning of props and the camera during various set-ups.
Debora's nephew, Philip Faiss, co-stars with his aunt in THE PORTAL appearing remotely from his home in Las Vegas, Neveda in all eight episodes.
I think this is the set-up from Episode 5, over Debora's shoulder of special guest star, Ken MacFarland. Each of the episodes feature guest appearances by one or more of our many talented actor friends.
Debora and I pride ourselves on our propmaking. Over the years I've constructed a harpoon, laser blasters, an ancient tome of the supernatural and a Lovecraftian monster among other things for our films.
Papier-mâché is my personal medium of choice when making props. Unfortunately the short lead time on this project required me to go another route which turned out okay too.
This is a newspaper Debora fabricated featuring two characters from the series, professors Harrison Berke (Tim Maiden) and Martin Perrier (Martin Perea). Debora absolutely fell in love with the newsprint paper we found to run through our printer.
Here's our set (living room) from another angle showing our equipment set-up prior to shooting. Each day I would have to move furniture to one side of the room or the other to clear the set for filming.
THE PORTAL is the first film we've photographed using a DSLR camera with manual only settings. It was daunting at first, but after a few days of shooting we became quite comfortable with it's operation.
To be clear, there is no bright side to the 2020 pandemic though it did afford us the time and energy to rediscover our passion for filmmaking. For that we are thankful.
Debora has always wanted to portray an artist in a film for no other reason than to show what an artist really looks like when they draw or paint.
Thank you for taking the time to learn about our project. With any luck we hope to complete our series sometime in November and hope to begin streaming episodes over the holidays. Please stay tuned for more information.