VIDEO: RI’s Last Sicilian Productions Goes Digital With First Short Film, “Confronting Silvestri”
GoLocalProv Lifestyle Team
VIDEO: RI’s Last Sicilian Productions Goes Digital With First Short Film, “Confronting Silvestri”
Last Sicilian Productions, established in 2015, performs original productions at Theatre 82 & Artists Exchange in Cranston, and other spaces throughout New England — and is branching out into film and TV in 2020.
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“But as things started opening up again, I slowly started feeling like my old self. As my son was doing the distance learning thing, he talked about a teacher who was mean to the students and how it made him feel,” he said. “So after months of nothing, this idea hit me and over father's day weekend I wrote CONFRONTING SILVESTRI, story about 2 brothers and one of them who decided after 30 year to write a letter to his former Middle school teacher and he wants to read it to him in person. His plan doesn't really go the way he thought it would because Mr. Silvestri is still a mean man. “
About Film Production
“So after writing the short-film, I contacted my friend Greg Hall (who I've worked with on many projects in the past) and I said let's get the band back together,” said Albanese. “Since I can't do any live theater like I have the past 5 years because of the virus, I said let's do a film project! He was very excited to something again and was on board within seconds! I then called my actor friends that I have worked with over the past few years and offered them their roles and the all said yes immediately. It was because we were all sitting around for months with nothing to do and when you're an artist, it's torture.”
“So after writing it on Father's Day weekend, getting Hall and the case in place and the locations, we filmed it about three weeks later, over one weekend. Yup, we shot it all in 2 days,” said Albanese. “It was a small group of us and we were careful it distance and not breath on each other. When a actor wasn't on screen, he or she help out behind the camera and that usually was holding the boom mic. And on one of those days, my good friend and stage manager of my theater production, Mike Cronin was the bomb operator! It was a fun weekend and we felt alive again doing what we love.”
“So after filming, Hall worked on it in the post-production side, doing the editing for about a month,” said Albanese. “After looking at the final cut, I see a few things we could of done differently but for what we had and the time we had, it came out pretty damn good! Basically a day to write, two days to film and four weeks to edit. If I actually had the time (at least 4 weeks) and an actual budget, who knows what kind of film we could make. But we were just grateful to be doing something again. And since live theater in a no for now, I basically have to start over and bring the same formula that I used to start my theater group four years ago and build up an awesome following and fanbase, and bring it to the digital media platform on my YouTube channel.”
This Comedy/Drama was Written, Produced & Directed by Nick Albanese.
The Cast: Joseph Petrucci, Nick Albanese, Mario Carneiro, Erin Lynn Mulry, Christopher Silva
In Association with Aquidneck Media.