Saturday, December 21, 2013

USC Film Grad Comes Home with 'Live Action Pop-Up Book'

This afternoon in Hanford, CA, David Dibble will be the focus of local moviegoing attention. A number of his shorts will be screened at the Hanford Fox Theatre, led by Adonis, a ten-minute dating comedy that won the American Pavillion Emerging Filmmakers Showcase at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival.

Although the title Adonis brings to mind the alpha-male form or a sculptor molding anatomically correct clay, it's in this case the name of a dog that the protagonist uses to meet girls. All done more in the form of a cartoon or, as Dibble likes to describe it, a "live action pop-up book."


Like the groundbreaking 300, Dibble shot his movie entirely with green-screen at Sound City Studios in Van Nuys, with help from cinematographer Michael Victor Roy and various relatives:

Dibble enlisted the help of his family as they built the grandiose miniatures that became the sets. Creating the to-scale beach front amusement park, city streets and neighborhoods - this was no easy feat to accomplish.

Although Dibble won at Cannes, he was rejected by Palm Springs ShortsFest. As yet another reminder that rejection should never be taken by aspiring artists as the final word, he took the advice of Monika Skerbelis, director of the Emerging Filmmaker Showcase at Cannes, and attended anyway:

I headed to the Palm Springs ShortFest with Adonis co-star Velinda Godfrey, who was also attending because she was the producer on Boats Against the Current, which was screening at the event. Step one was to promote Adonis.
Velinda took on the honorary role of producer and mentioned Adonis (and Boats Against the Current) to everyone she met. She’s quite the producer!...
At the final party, I met a distributor who was very excited that I was the director of Adonis because it was one of his top 5 favorite films at the ShortFest. He was attracted to the film after seeing the magnet, which lead him to the poster (the marketing is working!). Meeting him was a great finale to a great experience.

[Adonis]

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