APEIRON: a new work in full sci-fi style, out on August 17th 2015.
Let’s take a closer look at the work done by the authors.
“Toughts are not subjected to time. Every trace of them remains in the spacetime, and we can have access to that trace in every moment. Because we are energy. We are vibration.”
Gregory Arthur Slate
Quantum Physicist – 1998/2029
In 2050, Earth is destroyed by a nuclear war, which determined the death of 90% of the human race. Thousands of people lived inside fallout shelters for years, waiting for another chance. One of them is Adele Stein. After seven years spent in a bunker, she is turned away from her family, and brought to one of the few continents still liveable: Antarctica.
What is left of the world, and of mankind, is governed by the Oculus. President Nix is in charge of the antarctic outpost, and he wants the rules to be respected, no matter what. When Adele threats the president, he will banish her from the Oculus base, directly in the middle of the frozen lands. Almost dead, Adele will be saved by the Resistance, controlled by the officer Matthias Miller.
He tells Adele the truth: they’ve been deceived. The plan was to reduce human population drastically, to start a mind control on all the survisors using a machine called Apeiron. Apeiron was developed by a scientist, Doctor Gregory Slate, who worked with his friend and business partner Scott Moore, from 2016 to 2027.
Gregory told Scott that from the first time he was connected with the machine, he started to see someone in his mind. Gregory said a young woman told him to destroy Apeiron before it was too late. But when he told Scott about his intention to destroy the machine, he killed Gregory and sold the project to a private society: The Oculus.
But, before he died, Slate left instructions to his daughter about how to build another machine with a frequency identification code. The Influencer’s frequency.
Most of the people can only fill time. An Influencer, instead, can transcend it. People with this ability can control everything. The Influencer’s frequency, their vibration, is high, and unique. Doctor Slate said the second machine would have been kept secret, until this woman would not have come. Adele has to find all the other Influencers, to protect them and to start, togheter with the resistance, the biggest rebellion ever planned.
Being an independent filmmaker is difficult.
It is because ideas and projects often clash with the reality of an Italian film industry that doesn’t feel like risking investing in young people who have slightly more ambitious projects. And then you find yourself alone, in a world of sharks ready to eat each other and without regrets.
But the filmmaker never leaves his dream. He feeds him as if to a hidden creature that on the one hand takes everything away from him, and on the other keeps him alive.
This is what happened with Apeiron. A project whose first words were put on paper years ago by Alice Del Corso, a young screenwriter and writer with a strong passion for science fiction and fantasy.
“It wasn’t me who wrote Apeiron, he came looking for me”. Alice explains, defining the creative process as a series of moments of deep introspection in which the idea speaks to you and tells itself, and you can not help but let it flow.
The story was written and archived, waiting for the right moment to be able to bring it to light. The moment that came almost three years later, precisely in February 2015, with the news of the selection at the short film corner of the Cannes Film Festival of another short film by Castle View Studio, directed by Filippo Morelli and written by Alice Del Corso. “We were in London for work, and this news gave us back our energy”, explains Filippo, director of Apeiron. “It was like turning on the light in the room of opportunity again. We knew we were going to the Cannes Film Festival, and we didn’t want to miss the precious opportunity to show industry professionals what we were capable of. So, we got to work ”.
On February 21, 2015, the day after receiving the news, in the small London apartment there was already brainstorming on the story, discussing budget, crew, vfx, shooting days, production times, casting …
Everything moved very quickly, and a few days later, there was already an announcement on the casting sites to find native English speakers. From London, Alice and Filippo started making phone calls, quickly putting together a crew of all Italian professionals, who in just over a month would have created what is now a four-minute promo that speaks for itself. “From London we took care of the story, the writing of the screenplay, the selection of the actors, the storyboard – also developed on the basis of the visual effects that would have been created – the budgeting, etc … while we also organized ourselves to return home and leave with location scouting “, explains Filippo,” which began in Tuscany in mid-March. ”
The science fiction genre also provides a scenography that does not represent what we are usually used to seeing in everyday life, but to be able to create a similar type of scenography it takes money, and time. Things they didn’t have enough.
he team therefore had to make the promo credible, but with cunning. Captivating but without exaggerating, putting the story in the foreground and using the visual effects as a frame at the service of the latter, and not the other way around.
Filming began on 04/14/15, and ended on 04/17/15, and took place in a studio and other carefully chosen locations.
“Being Apeiron set in the Antarctic ice, and having to shoot in a studio, we needed to extend the set a lot, even if the work was made easier by the excellent pre-production studio; then thanks to the pre-viz on the storyboard it was possible to set up the green screens, also based on the camera movements, being able to solve the major stumbling blocks more quickly in post production ”, explains Marco Salvatori, VFX supervisor.
APEIRON Backstage Pills: VFX
Another challenge to overcome was to bring to life the technologies used in Apeiron, from the holograms to the screens used by the actors. This part of GFX and Motion Graphic was entrusted to Emanuele Serra who developed all the visual style UX design of the technology in Apeiron.
Post-production work began on 21/04, which ended on 10/05 and included editing, music, sound design, 2D / 3D vfx and color correction.
The promo was therefore completed just three days before the start of the Cannes festival. Filippo and Alice immediately began to show it also during the meetings they planned, meeting an enormous success, and already talking about its future development.
However, before the release on the web, which will take place on August 17, 2015, and the official screening still to be planned, the promo will undergo a final review phase, to make perfect some details that have not been taken care of due to lack of time, but which are however important.
The purpose of the realization of this promo is to attract producers who want to make a feature film, or a TV series, as the story is adaptable to both possibilities.
Apeiron_cast
Beatrice Gattai – Adele Stein
Rocco Fasano – Matthias Miller
Benjamin Stender – Alexander Hughes
Antonio Branchi – President Nix
Filippo Todorov – soldier
Achille Marciano – scientist
Andrea Loreti – scientist
Apeiron_crew
Produced by Filippo Morelli, Alice Del Corso
Filippo Morelli – director
Alice Del Corso – screenwriter
Fabio Conchieri – executive producer
Achille Marciano – executive producer
Lorenzo Costagliola – director of photography
Alberto Pioli – DOP assistant
Simone Giorgi – boom operator
Andrea Giachini – composer
Michele Cantoni – storyboard artist
Marco Salvatori – vfx supervisor
Emanuele Serra – lead motion graphics animator
Ornella Cantini – costume designer
Alice Morgillo – make up artist
Francesco Ciabattini – second assistant camera
Matteo Pagliarosi – sound designer
Matteo Lugara – assistant sound design
Marciano Prototipi – set designer
Valerio Cioni – assistant set designer
Monica Galluzzi – hair stylist
VFX
Marco Salvatori, Luca Valletta – compositor
Emanuele Serra – matte painter, gfx, motion graphics
Andrea Peverelli, Chiara Masini, Valerio De Vita – roto prep artist
Daniele Conte – lead 3D artist
Andrea Giglio – 3d modeler
Sponsored by: Del Corso Parquet, Società Agricola F.lli Fraccaroli, Don Lorenzo della Grillaia, Dott. Ferrari Teresa.