Friday night, at midnight, I was at the Oxford Cinema (yes, the same Oxford Cinema that was recently featured in Brian Wood’s comic Demo) to catch the “sort of secret” premiere of Mirco Chen’s movie The Birth Of Serfs.
I’ve been hearing about this project for ages–back before shooting started Mirco was an occasional HGPA event attendee (albeit often an invisible one), and the movie was occasionally discussed. Indeed at one point I had a chance to look through Mirco’s script and storyboards, and was very impressed. He’s kind of disappeared for the last few months into the post-production work.
Several other HGPA members were involved with the filming, including Drake who was a good portion of the crew as well as the “best boy”, and Bob “Mayo” Gibbs. It turns out that with the right lighting and music Mayo is a credible threat.
I don’t want to talk too much about the movie, except to say that it’s kind of a zombie movie, and that there is a character named Citibank Mastercard in it, since apparently it will be having its official premiere as part of the Atlantic Film Festival–at least it will if the judges get around to accepting it for the festival–but I can throw you a few links:
Here’s some stills from the film
Here are some possible posters, all from Chad Boutilier’s blog:
Here’s a shot of the director (Mirco is the obviously Italian one on the left):
Mirco keeps a “sketch journal” style blog that he updates regularly. I’ve become kind of obsessed with Quity. I can’t explain it, except to say that you start in the archives on March 20, 2006 and work your way forward. The March 24th Quity was the one that locked me in as a fan.
Oh, and in addition to making independent films, Mirco is also an animator–I think that’s his “day job“. You can see one example of his work in this video for the song “Fog” by Wintersleep.
Oh, and he also has designed some great t-shirts.
