A fan film for BSG. With a very pretty female lead:
WE KNOW WHO WE ARE
Jerry Seward, Kelly Coffey, Rick Moreau
By Desiree Washington
In We Know Who We Are, the Battlestar Galactica is under attack and it is up to Sheba in Engineering to correct a dire problem within the ship. When she reaches her destination, she finds one of her crew dead and a man she’s never seen before fiddling with controls. When she confronts him, he claims the dead man is a Cylon and that they need to work together to save the ship. So should she trust him or not? The decision she makes forms the climax of this engaging short film.
Kelly Coffey and Jerry Seward came up with the film’s premise while brainstorming during a science fiction fan club meeting. “We seemed to be going in the direction of doing an adventure-filled promo ad for SCI FI but ultimately we decided to do a more serious take. Like the present series has done so well, we wanted to do something that spoke to the themes of paranoia, trust, and identity,” says Seward. Coffey, who acted as co-writer and director on the film, adds, “We flushed out ideas within the club and Chuck Gordon came up with a first draft. I asked if I could revise some of the dialogue and story, and he was gracious enough to let me at it.”
Creatively, the team took inspiration from John Carpenter’s film The Thing, according to Seward. “The original source material for The Thing was a 1938 short story, ‘Who Goes There?’ …[W]e used something similar in a title that said identity and paranoia. In the Battlestar Galactica Universe, you may know who you are but then again you could in fact be something else entirely,” he says.
Members of Coffey and Seward’s sci-fi club U.S.S. Solar Wind and the Saginaw Area Writers Group are aspiring filmmakers, and this made it easy for the two creatives to assemble cast and crew. They just picked from among group members. Seward brought on a filmmaker friend, Rick Moreau, the director of photography, from outside the Solar Wind Club. Says Coffey, “Rick Moreau, our magnificent DP, helped on a short promo film I worked on for the feature Cyber Hunt and also shot a screen test for Joanna LaRose who plays Sheba in We Know Who We Are.” Coffey adds, “I really like [Rick’s] style and he knows his stuff. Greg Gunther, Chuck Gordon, Jerri Manry, Lynn Scherzer, Laura Frey – are all from the Solar Wind... Chris, who plays the stranger, plays in the band The Banana Convention and came to us on a recommendation from Joanna.”
To achieve a realistic Galactica engine room feel, the producers shot in a boiler room at a mid-Michigan community college. Other than restrictions regarding where the production could go within the facility, Delta College (http://www.delta.edu) was “extremely gracious,” Seward explains. “They were thrilled, in fact, because it's not often they get asked if someone can shoot a movie there.”
But production didn’t run as smoothly as Coffey and Seward would have liked. “We were done shooting in about 3 hours,” says Coffey. “The big problem we encountered was that we didn’t realize how noisy it was going to be. We had to time our dialogue scenes with the rhythm of… one of the big cooling systems. At one point, the mike fell off of Joanna and we didn’t realize it because it was noisy and we were engrossed in the action. We didn’t find out until Rick and his friend Mark [Van Benschoten] started editing.” Seward adds, “It was extremely noisy - to the point of being nearly deafening - and it was hard to concentrate.” The noise forced the team to eliminate some of Joanna’s scenes, but they are happy with the end result.
To produce We Know Who We Are, the producers enlisted crewmembers possessing their own equipment. The film was shot with a Panasonic DVX-100. “That was just right for the project in creating that high-def, loose camera feel,” according to Seward. “Afterwards, our DP Rick Moreau and editor Mark Van Benschoten edited everything together using Final Cut Pro.”
With production completed on We Know Who We Are, Coffey and Seward are free to pursue other creative endeavors. “I’m working on a comedy short called Chick Book, which I hope to shoot in the fall and I’m assisting on Jerry Seward’s film Cyber Hunt,” says Coffey.
Cyber Hunt is in the pre-production stage. “…[W]e have actual stars from the Star Trek and Babylon 5 series involved,” Seward explains. “[Cyber Hunt is] an ambitious, independently-produced sci-fi action film that will shoot in Detroit in Summer 2008. A lot of people don't realize that there's an amazing filmmaking renaissance starting to happen in Detroit - it wants to eventually be the next Toronto in terms of film and TV production - so it's great to be in on the ground floor, so to speak.”
To watch We Know Who We Are, click here: We Know Who We Are
Seward is a freelance newspaper journalist. He mainly writes human-interest pieces.
Coffey is a production assistant for the City of Midland and Saginaw Educational Television.
They also both sit on the committee for the annual Riverside Saginaw Film Festival.
WE KNOW WHO WE ARE
Jerry Seward, Kelly Coffey, Rick Moreau
By Desiree Washington
In We Know Who We Are, the Battlestar Galactica is under attack and it is up to Sheba in Engineering to correct a dire problem within the ship. When she reaches her destination, she finds one of her crew dead and a man she’s never seen before fiddling with controls. When she confronts him, he claims the dead man is a Cylon and that they need to work together to save the ship. So should she trust him or not? The decision she makes forms the climax of this engaging short film.
Kelly Coffey and Jerry Seward came up with the film’s premise while brainstorming during a science fiction fan club meeting. “We seemed to be going in the direction of doing an adventure-filled promo ad for SCI FI but ultimately we decided to do a more serious take. Like the present series has done so well, we wanted to do something that spoke to the themes of paranoia, trust, and identity,” says Seward. Coffey, who acted as co-writer and director on the film, adds, “We flushed out ideas within the club and Chuck Gordon came up with a first draft. I asked if I could revise some of the dialogue and story, and he was gracious enough to let me at it.”
Creatively, the team took inspiration from John Carpenter’s film The Thing, according to Seward. “The original source material for The Thing was a 1938 short story, ‘Who Goes There?’ …[W]e used something similar in a title that said identity and paranoia. In the Battlestar Galactica Universe, you may know who you are but then again you could in fact be something else entirely,” he says.
Members of Coffey and Seward’s sci-fi club U.S.S. Solar Wind and the Saginaw Area Writers Group are aspiring filmmakers, and this made it easy for the two creatives to assemble cast and crew. They just picked from among group members. Seward brought on a filmmaker friend, Rick Moreau, the director of photography, from outside the Solar Wind Club. Says Coffey, “Rick Moreau, our magnificent DP, helped on a short promo film I worked on for the feature Cyber Hunt and also shot a screen test for Joanna LaRose who plays Sheba in We Know Who We Are.” Coffey adds, “I really like [Rick’s] style and he knows his stuff. Greg Gunther, Chuck Gordon, Jerri Manry, Lynn Scherzer, Laura Frey – are all from the Solar Wind... Chris, who plays the stranger, plays in the band The Banana Convention and came to us on a recommendation from Joanna.”
To achieve a realistic Galactica engine room feel, the producers shot in a boiler room at a mid-Michigan community college. Other than restrictions regarding where the production could go within the facility, Delta College (http://www.delta.edu) was “extremely gracious,” Seward explains. “They were thrilled, in fact, because it's not often they get asked if someone can shoot a movie there.”
But production didn’t run as smoothly as Coffey and Seward would have liked. “We were done shooting in about 3 hours,” says Coffey. “The big problem we encountered was that we didn’t realize how noisy it was going to be. We had to time our dialogue scenes with the rhythm of… one of the big cooling systems. At one point, the mike fell off of Joanna and we didn’t realize it because it was noisy and we were engrossed in the action. We didn’t find out until Rick and his friend Mark [Van Benschoten] started editing.” Seward adds, “It was extremely noisy - to the point of being nearly deafening - and it was hard to concentrate.” The noise forced the team to eliminate some of Joanna’s scenes, but they are happy with the end result.
To produce We Know Who We Are, the producers enlisted crewmembers possessing their own equipment. The film was shot with a Panasonic DVX-100. “That was just right for the project in creating that high-def, loose camera feel,” according to Seward. “Afterwards, our DP Rick Moreau and editor Mark Van Benschoten edited everything together using Final Cut Pro.”
With production completed on We Know Who We Are, Coffey and Seward are free to pursue other creative endeavors. “I’m working on a comedy short called Chick Book, which I hope to shoot in the fall and I’m assisting on Jerry Seward’s film Cyber Hunt,” says Coffey.
Cyber Hunt is in the pre-production stage. “…[W]e have actual stars from the Star Trek and Babylon 5 series involved,” Seward explains. “[Cyber Hunt is] an ambitious, independently-produced sci-fi action film that will shoot in Detroit in Summer 2008. A lot of people don't realize that there's an amazing filmmaking renaissance starting to happen in Detroit - it wants to eventually be the next Toronto in terms of film and TV production - so it's great to be in on the ground floor, so to speak.”
To watch We Know Who We Are, click here: We Know Who We Are
Seward is a freelance newspaper journalist. He mainly writes human-interest pieces.
Coffey is a production assistant for the City of Midland and Saginaw Educational Television.
They also both sit on the committee for the annual Riverside Saginaw Film Festival.
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