Django Unchained Actress stars in First Time French Feature Director’s “Found IPhone” Horror Comedy
Los Angeles’s Old Zoo serves as the set of feature film shot entirely on iPhone6.
After directing over a dozen short films, French filmmaker Tristan Convert announced he has directed his first feature, SCRATCH, an original horror comedy starring Daniele Watts (Django Unchained), for which he has launched an Indiegogo campaign, to reach $10k for finishing funds. Set in Los Angeles’s known-to-be haunted Old Zoo, SCRATCH is one of the first, if not the first, found footage films shot entirely on iPhone6.
SCRATCH tells the story of two would-be filmmakers who decide to shoot a music video for a local nu metal band on an iPhone at an abandoned zoo. A recipe for disaster. Watts plays Samantha Steel, the “goth rock diva” and lead singer of the band.
“SCRATCH is meta-theater. It’s also an update on classic found footage films like The Blair Witch Project. It’s a ‘found phone’ feature. Cinema vérité-style, but not taking itself too seriously,” says Director and Producer Tristan Convert. “The audience will see what the filmmakers’ crew in the movie is shooting from the point-of-view of their iPhones. The handheld, POV-style frame will be intimate, close to the characters, swirling, falling, selfie-ing, complete with texts and IOS updates interrupting the shoot,” he adds.
Convert created SCRATCH as a unique take on an American black horror comedy. Throughout the film, one by one, the members of the cast and crew are scratched by an infected person, which causes them to transform into their primal, savage selves succumbing to their basic instincts. SCRATCH is a classic contagion story, e.g., the werewolf myth, but the infected persons are not zombies. In fact, the savages are not evil at all. They simply crave sex and food. However, they lack the ability to control their impulses, and therein lies the conflict.
“At its core, SCRATCH is about our struggle to contain the beast within,” Convert explains. SCRATCH explores key themes like: What differentiates us from animals? And what does it mean to be truly free?
SCRATCH is currently in post-production, for which Convert has launched a fundraising campaign on Indiegogo to raise $10,000 to be used for color correction, sound mixing, and securing music rights.
SCRATCH’s anticipated completion date is fall 2016.
SCRATCH is co-written by Tristan Convert and Akilah Green and produced by Tristan Convert, Akilah Green, and Sébastien Bizeul.
About Tristan Convert:
Convert is a French filmmaker. During his studies at The University of Science and Technology in Lille, France, he focused on radical filmmaking. In Paris, he worked on feature films and documentary production. Based on his early projects, Convert received several grants to study cinema at Pictanovo and The European Center for Film Production (CEFPF). His last short film, Le Chat Noir (“The Black Cat”), was premiered at the Hollyshorts Film Festival, won Best Short Film at the Black Earth Festival, was a distinguished finalist at the Generation Court Film Festival, and was an official selection at the San Francisco Shorts, New York Chashama Film Festival, Nevada City Film Festival, and Arizona Underground. Subsequently, at Eli Roth’s suggestion, Convert moved to the United States and settled in Los Angeles to prepare SCRATCH.
About Akilah Green:
After spending almost a decade practicing as a lawyer-lobbyist on Washington, D.C.’s infamous “K Street,” Akilah moved to Los Angeles to pursue a career in screenwriting. Akilah currently works full-time generating and pitching funny stories, segments, and beats for Chelsea Handler’s upcoming Netflix talk show, Chelsea. As well, she consults for Real Time with Bill Maher on HBO and is a weekly columnist for The Root. Akilah has a Bachelors from the University of Texas at Austin and a Juris Doctor from the University of Michigan. In addition to co-writing and producing SCRATCH, Akilah has written a number of television pilots for development.
About Sebastien Bizeul:
Sébastien Bizeul has been an actor and co-director in the Frozen Zebras troupe in Delhi, India for several years where he has been involved in plays such as No Exit from Jean-Paul Sartre and Art from Yasmina Réza. He directed comedies at the French Embassy School of Delhi where he also taught theater for many years. Before that, he produced short films and computer graphic movies. He also wrote a satirical action novel, As Soon As, about an anti-hero discovering a world conspiracy. After traveling the globe, most extensively in Asia and Africa, Bizeul has recently settled in LA.
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