A short film by Carlos Tikaram, Chris Fraser, Maurizio Donati & Tim Houghton. A photocopy guy's (Matthew Diesch) life is shattered when his boss decides to upgrade his beloved photocopier but the photocopier isn't going to give up without a fight...
BEHIND THE SCENES
(Contains spoilers)
After the completion of our first short film, Mum's the Word we had to make a another short film, but this time it had to be around 6 minutes.
Carlos came up with the idea of the story about a guy who got super powers after being photocopied, who then used those powers to kill his boss by forcing him to photocopy himself over and over again.
Early story refinements removed the superpowers concept as it would be complicated to do, and we felt we wouldn't be able to do it justice.
As with Mums the Word, we had a just a week to work out the story and write the script, find actors, and find a location.
Firstly, the script. We all sat down together and worked out what the overall story was going to be.
After the story was worked out I went home and wrote the first draft, based on all our ideas and then we all had a look at it and changed it. We continued to work on the script up until the day before filming.
With Mum's the Word finding a location was hard but this time Carlos secured a location thanks to his numerous contacts. A bit of trivia - the office in the film is actually on the ground floor of a two story factory.
Finding actors was harder as this time - we had to find two. For this one we emailed an acting studio, Studio 111, sending them our character descriptions which they passed along to their actors.
From this we got Matthew Diesch as Ray Kazinski. We didn't meet him until the first day of shooting which was nerve wracking but he worked out perfectly. He was great as Ray, and we a great guy to work with. We got along so well that when we were casting for the next film, Catalyst, he was our only choice for the role of Bob.
The boss, Mr Cooper, was harder to cast. We had someone agree to do it, but he had to pull out the day before shooting. That's the problem with asking people to work for free I suppose.
That left use with only one choice. One of us would have to play Mr Cooper. After ruling out me and Maurizio because we wouldn't fit the role we decided the fairest thing to do would be to do a coin toss to decide whether Tim or Carlos would play the part.
I was secretly hoping Carlos would win, and he did. Despite not really wanting to act I think he did a great job. I love the part when he holds up the photo of himself, angry that it has been altered.
Filming took place over two days and was overall another fun shoot. Though there were some stressful moments. Both of our lights blew and we had to go pick up some more which lost us valuable time but we overcame it and shooting was completed on schedule.
The main thing about the film I wasn't happy with was the ending didn't come across like we'd hoped.
Often people who watch the film think that at the end Ray has been promoted above Mr Cooper, and is now his bosss. That's not the case.
All that scene was meant to convey was that Ray now had his boss respect, or at least was slightly scared of him but due to Ray wearing a suit and one line of dialogue that was cut involving Mr Cooper asking if Ray could copy some documents - but asking him nicely.
Overall I think it was a cool little film, and as they all had been so far, a great learning experience!
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Catalyst (Short Film)by sherbetpictures1,135 views
you gotta love Mr. Cooper. yeow.
ShadowcatNatasha 3 years ago
Oh that Mr Cooper ...hes so angry but soooo hot
oddprods 4 years ago