We are moving stories

“The film is really about how nothing is ever as it seems, which is especially true about people. We put up extraordinarily high walls to hide who we are at times, and our movie examines how hard it is to break those walls down when someone is committed to hiding who they really are.”

“The Hollow Child is a story about family and what it requires to connect with other people. The lead character Samantha must stop being self destructive in order to save her step sister who has gone missing. I have a broken family and I have struggled with the same demons. How important is family in terms of personal identity? How far would you go to set the wrong things right? Do you have the courage to admit when you are wrong?”

“It’s a world to escape into. When we wrote it, when we shot it, when I watched it, I wanted to be one of the gang, to go on the adventure with them, to discover the new world alongside these fellow goofballs. Hopefully you will too! And if you’re a creator, of anything, it should feel very familiar; at its heart, it’s about the creative process, and how daunting and fraught with dangers, real and perceived, that process can be.”

“You should watch this film if you’re interested in New Orleans mythology. You should watch this film if you enjoy an intense and complex movie. You should watch this movie if you’re looking for something that is different from most festival fare. I try to make a movie that’s as layered as possible.”

“The idea came to me one day while imagining myself older and living in my dream house (for me, that’s a haunted, PSYCHO look alike house), I suddenly became vividly aware that my partner and I would eventually die, and that one of us would go first. I built the story around the themes of happily growing older, the fear of losing one’s partner, and the desire to be reunited with one’s family.”

“I love films such as The Never Ending Story and E.T. the Extraterrestrial, I always highly identified with the troubled hero type but rarely (close to never) got to see a fantasy story starring a girl, to this day I’m still waiting to see a movie of that caliber with a girl hero. I got tired of waiting and made my own.”

“I made The Phantom 52 because I was moved by the story of a real whale out there in the ocean speaking in a frequency no other whale can hear. It is sad, but it is also amazing. This whale has persevered since at least 1989.

This animated short is my way to relate to that whale’s experience. To relate it to my own experience driving lonely highways...and to expand that idea into a sort of ghost story for folks who love whales and trucks and animation.”

“At the heart this is a love story about two people who have both suffered hurt and loss and they inadvertently begin to help each other even though they are not fully aware of each other’s background when they first meet. I think we all desire to be with someone that helps us get through our worse times and not be afraid or judgemental of us. ”

“There are a lot of ghost hunter shows, but this film gives the audience a more intimate look at what it means for someone to devote themselves to this work. The film doesn’t solve mysteries or offer answers to eternal questions. Films can’t deliver that kind of certainty. Looking at Michael’s work I think it’s easy to identify with what drives him. In essence he describes the role of art in our universal quest for meaning and purpose.”

“I’m obsessed with ghosts and cannot stop making movies about them. Quiver belongs in a loose series of six shorts about hauntings I made over the past five years. While developing the story, it occurred to me that desire is often the first feeling that penetrates the numbing effects of grief. Both desire and grief are reactions to absence. I wanted to make a film about a woman falling in love with what haunts her and taking a new direction after a traumatic shift in her life. The ghost intrigues rather than terrifies her and that is reflected in the film’s tone.”

“GRAVES is the sequel to the supernatural teen drama you’ve never seen. It is set ten years after the world was saved, the big bad killed, and life returned to normal. Except it all kind of sucks. Except our heroes aren’t really over what happened. And now, the demons are coming back. And yes, that’s a metaphor.”

“I starred as Adderall Boy but there was a stage where I truly felt like Adderall Boy. I definitely was addicted to Adderall; it wasn’t a vicious, life-changing addiction, but I loved it. I would be working on videos non-stop all day long, and in turn, it gave me a local following and a lot of attention; at a certain point, popping pills everyday became a habit and it made me extremely introverted, and I ended up isolating myself like crazy.

I kind of got caught in this vicious cycle that I couldn’t snap out of, so I had to just quit cold turkey. It was necessary. So although Adderall Boy kind of mirrors some of my experiences with Adderall it also serves as closure from this kind of dark period in my life.”

“ I will tell the story of a 1st generation Mexican-American female scientist who reconnects with her culture through the skeletal remains of immigrants she finds in mass graves.”

“It is lighthearted and funny with warm tones and a fantasy setting, so if you want to clear your head and explore a new world, it may be just what you need! It may remind you of previous experiences or see things differently, and I hope you’ll enjoy it!”

“It’s a supernatural thriller that throws you right into the middle of a high-stakes story about a couple on the run from a nefarious and mysterious group. He is undead and she’s trying to help him stay out of the clutches of this organization. The acting is fantastic and each character takes a full journey in a short period of time. In addition to the film’s entertainment value, it’s a portrait of a couple dealing with grief and loss and allows the audience to consider how they, too, would handle trying to grieve under such unusual circumstances.”

“I believe that the theme of “the struggling artist” is one we as creatives can all relate to — however I wanted to really push that idea by exploring the concepts of negative and positive energies. In particular, the notion that we as human beings tend to focus on negative energies and things that can tear us part, where we could use that negativity to bring positivity into our lives.”

“There’s a unique experience that many groups in this country have had where they can’t trust authority or realise that they are powerless against the institution. It’s one of the most draining and awful feeling to go through, and this film shows that anyone can be subject to that.”

“I don’t think PAINKILLERS is something that people have seen before. It’s a genre film with paranormal elements, but at the heart of the story are the very real and heavy themes about grief and coping with addiction. Making the film was a lot about being responsible in portraying the way PTSD functions and how it works within the world we created.”

“Having an unexplained paranormal experience as a child gave me an innate curiosity in the unknown and the unexplained. One location from my childhood riddled me with fear; the infamously haunted Quarantine Station, Manly. My brother would scare me with spooky tales of extreme paranormal experiences that would take place on their nightly ghost tours. This made my own paranormal experience more real and frightening.”