Alex Ferrari, "Broken" director: Mr. Media Interview, Pt. 2
ANDELMAN: Now, we’ve talked about marketing, and we’ve talked about producing a quality short at a low price, but tell folks what the movie is about, if they buy the DVD, kind of what the Evelyn Wood version of the plot is.

FERRARI: Basically, it’s about a girl who is kidnapped by a group of very colorful and violent people as well. They know who she is, but she has no idea who they are, and they are surprised that she doesn’t remember, and they keep trying to pry information out of her. There’s something inside of her that they want, but when she’s pushed too far, certain things happen, and it’s kind of left up to your imagination. The ending is very Hitchcockian, so it’s kind of left up to the audience member, is this whole thing real, is it not real, things like that. But that’s basically what the story is, and of course, there’s a lot of nice action, people die. It’s a good old-fashioned family film.




ANDELMAN: As you look back on the production and if you look at the DVD today, do you look at it and do you tear it apart and say, “Oh God, there’s a mistake”?

FERRARI: Oh, God, yes. Everybody does. Any artist does that. I’m sure Steven Spielberg goes back and says, “Oh, my God, look at that. God, it looks so fake!” Of course I do. I look at it now, and I’m a different director now. I’ve gotten two and a half years of experience under my belt, so I’ve done a lot more, and I would tell that story completely differently today than I would back then, but that is an expression of who I was as an artist back then.

ANDELMAN: And where are you with Broken? Are you still pursuing doing that as a feature?

FERRARI: We got calls from a lot of studios, and a lot of producers were interested, and unfortunately, the mistake we made was, we didn’t have a full-blown script ready when all this attention and heat came on us, so by the time we were ready with the script, it was a year later. We still had the connections into the thing, but we weren’t as hot as we were prior, so when they read the script, a lot of people loved the script, but unfortunately, we also made the mistake of writing a script that would easily cost $40 or $50 million.

ANDELMAN: Wow.

FERRARI: Yeah, just a big sci-fi extravaganza. A Matrix-style kind of film. I think our arrogance got a little bit ahead of us with that, and our egos kind of were writing checks we couldn’t cash, if you will. But you live, and you learn, but everyone loved the script and were very excited about it and wanted… any other projects I had to please bring it to them, things like that. So with the next project I came up with, I decided to write the script first, the feature script first, keep it on a budget that I know I could work with $2-3 million, which is a very small budget, and then be able to do a short or a demo of some sort and then do the same process that we did with Broken but this time having everything ready literally.





ANDELMAN: And so what are you doing today? Do you have other projects along this line?

FERRARI: Yeah. I just finished shooting a short film called Cyn, short for Cynthia, and it’s about a five-minute short film. We shot it on HD, and we did it for under $1,000, had a bunch of visual effects in it, a ridiculously over the top title sequence. That’s the way I preface it, because it’s so over the top. It’s like dropping a bomb to kill a cockroach. Over the top. And we’re just about done with it. We will hopefully be done with it this week, and then we are going to start sending it out for reviews and to the festivals and start the process again, and the Web site is alittlecyn.com. And that was a cut-down version of a short film for a feature I have called Red Princess Blues, which is a feature, a revenge thriller that I wrote with basically hot chicks and guns, good old-fashioned violence.

ANDELMAN: That’s never popular.

FERRARI: That’s never popular. I know, it’s tough. It’s that and the documentaries, I’m telling you, and the Jane Austen novels, but we are trying to keep it under $2-3 million and not a lot of visual effects. So I’m shooting the first ten minutes of that feature at the end of the summer to try to get excitement from the studios, again, to see if they can finance the film. So that’s where I’m going right now with that, and the Web site for that is redprincessblues.com.

ANDELMAN: Okay.

FERRARI: And I have a bunch of other stuff going on. I could go on for hours.

ANDELMAN: You must have a regular job.

FERRARI: Yes, my regular job is post-production. I own my own visual effects company called Numb Robot, which is at numbrobot.com, and we do visual effects for HD films and for high-end commercials and feature films in general of any budget, but we try to focus on indies, purely because we’re indie film makers ourselves, and a lot of indie film makers don’t have access to high-end visual effects or even title sequences or color correction or clean audio, something that will bring up production value on these things. So that’s where I do most of my work is in editorial, color correction, and visual effects, so that’s what pays the bills right now.





ANDELMAN: As someone who was a film student back in college, which was a long time ago, I know that there are a lot of people out there who just daydream about making a movie themselves. I just think it’s very cool that you put up the money, you put in the time and the energy, and you got this done. And obviously, you are doing it with friends, I guess, and people that you either work with or you know.

FERRARI: Yeah, I’ve got a great crew of people. I’ve been building this kind of team for the last handful of years of people that I’ve met in the industry and people who believe in the projects that I’m doing and want to work and very talented people. All the people that work with me at Numb Robot, Dan Creegan, Sean Falcon, these guys were all really good artists that just didn’t have an opportunity or an outlet for their art, so I was able to give them a place where they could stretch and spread their wings a little bit and get some attention for the work that they did and just getting a group of people together who know what they’re doing and are high-end professionals, which is a key. As a director, I’m trying to build this little unit so where I could literally just, all I need is a little bit of cash, and we could turn it on and go, and that’s what I’ve been doing for the last handful of years. So with Numb Robot, I compare it to George Lucas’ Industrial Light & Magic, obviously not at that level but a place where a director can go and play with his ideas and do conceptual paintings and art and animatics and do all the other good stuff that we do and play. So it’s a beautiful thing to have as a film maker, and post is such a huge part of the filmmaking process, and a lot of times, since it’s at the end of the journey, a lot of times the money’s not there, or people forget about it…. oh, don’t worry about the color, don’t worry about the audio, and there you go, and then we’ve got a U2 movie all of a sudden.

© 2007 by Bob Andelman. All rights reserved.

Labels: Alex Ferrari, Broken movie, Miami, short film, Sundance Film Festival

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